From Dominic Wright : Being a football fan is 100% about buying in to the future
As an Arsenal fan and a season ticket holder, it is very difficult to take a balanced view of our club.
The problems we have right now at Arsenal are well documented on this and other websites.
Too sum up, they are as follows:-
Too many awful players on ridiculous salaries (When the likes of Chamakh come on, how are they not crucified?? They are not fit to wear the shirt and its our job as fans to make them aware of that)
Farcical transfer activity every season
Not taking cup competitions seriously
No plan B when Plan A doesn\’t work
Questionable substitutions
Lack of winners in the side
We always sell our best players
Every season we have at least one sustained spell, at a key time where we suffer relegation form.
Last season we had 3 such sustained spells.
No defensive coaching
Ridiculous attendance numbers based on tickets sold, not actual attendance
No apparent set-piece practice
But, what about the positives that nobody ever mentions?
We once again have some great games to watch. (Spurs and Man City were awesome)
An amazing stadium.
We can come from behind to win again.
We finished 4th and have another year of Champions League games to look forward to.
We finished ahead of Spurs and Chelsea
We have a secure financial position
We have 3 proper central defenders again.
We have a great keeper (Who cares about Almunia)
We have a solid midfield.
We have a much tougher style of play.
We have Steve Bould
We have the Ox
We have Podolski.
We had RVP, and we might have him again, but if someone offers £35 Million plus, Id take it.
If you ask me, it\’s not that bad, and apart from Man Utd (who won nothing this year), would you honestly swap places with anyone else?
Would you have any other manager except Mourinho and Ferguson who are both not available?
Man City won the league, Chelsea won the CL, but they are both vulgar organisations now. I wouldn\’t change anything considering what else is available.
In my view we have a club to be proud of. I can honestly say that I enjoyed the last season more than any other season since our move to the Emirates.
Okay, you might say that\’s not saying a lot, and of course it was nowhere near the unbelievable Highbury years between 1998 and 2005, but let\’s not forget who we are and where we came from.
We constantly berate Chelsea and Man City for having no history, but we never remember ours without a ridiculously biased view.
We had great teams between 1930 and 1938, a great team in 1970, and 1971, and the best team we have ever had between 1998 and 2005, but if you take out those 17 seasons where we won 15 trophies, the other 108 seasons yielded a total of 10 trophies.
Of those 10, we won 5 league titles in that 108 year period. That\’s one trophy every 11 seasons, and 1 league title every 21 seasons.
Football is all about winning, but being a football fan is about much more.
It’s about being part of a club and being part of something you are proud of. Yes, clubs, and Arsenal in particular take advantage of our own gullible attitude by sucking us fans dry of our hard earned cash, but they have us exactly where they want us and so they do what everyone else would do in their position.
They know it is socially unacceptable to change teams, and they know your peers and your family will look down on you and say you are not a real fan if you don\’t attend games.
Is it therefore footballs fault, or society\’s fault that the game is where it is today?
One thing that is certain is that to imply that us Arsenal fans are suckers for buying the future that we are sold year after year by Wenger is a disgrace. Football to a football fan is often everything. It is their life. It is their life because it offers them hope in a world where a lot of people don\’t always have much hope.
For the lucky few who have other things in their lives to be hopeful about, it becomes less important but still holds interest, and those people should never forget what football is to the masses, and shouldnt forget that its the masses that make the game on great.
To imply that we are dumb because we\’ve been sold the future is in my view derogatory to 95% of football supporters. To make a statement like that is very similar to making a TV programme like the X Factor, although it is clearly not as profitable. Thousands of people turn up every year to an audition based on nothing more than false hope, just for someone to take the piss out of them.
Except for the 1 or 2 who are any good, would these people actually bother if they had anything else in their lives which offered them that hope? I doubt it, and for the X factor to exploit these hopeless people is absolutely unfair, no matter how amusing.
In short, all of football is completely 100% all about buying in to the future. If it wasn\’t, nobody would turn up to any game apart from those between the top four in the last couple of games of the season.
Should we somehow become more sophisticated just because we support Arsenal? Are we better than everyone else? Maybe, but I doubt it.
The principles for all fans whether you support Barcelona, Arsenal, Man Utd, England or Woking, remain the same. We follow our team in the hope that we will one day experience that Utopia moment of winning a trophy. Yes
Wenger sells us that story constantly, but the future is ultimately what being a football fan is all about.
More than that, the future is what life is all about for most people. The belief that there will eventually be a better day.
Look at Portsmouth. For years they have done nothing, yet they have always had their fans. Fans who in the last 30 years have followed them in their thousands in all 4 divisions. Fans that back in the real world don\’t have many employment opportunities, and fans which struggle every day to make ends meet. Why do they still turn up home and away? Because they belong to something, and because they believed that one day they might just win something.
Luckily for them their story is rare, and they won the FA Cup. The fact that it could ultimately cost them their club will never take away the memory of winning at Wembley, and whatever happens, Portsmouth will still exist in some sort of capacity, and their fans will still buy the future and the dream that they might just do it again one day.
It is absolute madness, but that\’s what it’s all about.
Hopefully next time for Pompey, it won’t be with a manager who once managed Southampton, and who through his lack of tactical awareness and dodgy dealings is a disgrace to football.
We are the Arsenal, and we are lucky. The truth is that no matter why you ended up as a supporter, you could just as easily have ended up with anything.
Personally, I can\’t wait for next season.
Watching the team come out of that tunnel. The crowd, the colour, the clock, the cause, and the hatred of the fools up the road.
I reckon we might just win something, but whatever happens we belong, so let\’s enjoy it and congratulate the others if we don\’t! Unless its Spurs!!!