Tag Archives: She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

We need to reclaim our Arsenal back

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Football fans generally have two emotions, elation or agony.  Those are certainly the two I remember from being a young girl standing on the terraces.

If someone had said to me 30 years ago, ‘one day you won’t  feel as though you belong or you will despise the club’ I would have argued with them all day long. How could I not love everything Arsenal??

The Arsenal were my love. It’s where I belonged and where I made my best friends and memories.

The football didn’t really matter. If we lost we felt disappointment, I don’t remember coming away feeling angry. Maybe some anger at a referee, or anger at opposing fans, but not anger at my club. We looked forward to the next game. Someone would get it if we had lost.

Half time we might sing ‘Georgie, sort em out’, we knew he would, George knew.

Fast forward to 2018.

Blue shirt, Cannon facing the wrong way, inept performances, a chairman who treats us with disdain and excuses that run out of every pore of the club.

Fans who treat us a hobby not as a cause, and the fever pitch fans who got involved when football became fashionable.  None of us wanted it to be fashionable.  We liked it that no one liked football. We were looked down upon by the rest of society.

Now we sing to our manager ‘Spend some fu**ing money’ or ‘Get out of our club’.

We now stand where we’ve been told to sit down, hoping the stewards won’t tell us to sit.

We have no idea who will be sitting next to us from week to week, we don’t know the stewards name, we boycott the shop, we’ve stopped buying programmes and when we concede we accept it. We are becoming as passive as those who run our club. I’ve not seen much anger this year.

It’s been like watching a social experiment, how to silence the masses.

We clap poor performances and have been brainwashed to ‘get behind the boys’ at all costs.

We hear more and more ‘there is no point in protesting, there is no point in making a noise’. We buy tickets to games we have no intention of going to…… and we all just wait. We wait for the day it’s going to change.

Earlier on this season I wrote a blog about when anger turns to apathy…..the signs were all there.

Friends whose lives revolve around their job of following the club, started to talk about giving it all up.

So, why do we bother? We bother because we remember. We remember what it was. We bother because without bothering, we wouldn’t ever sit in a pub again and talk about those great days we’ve had with the only people in the world that understand.   Choosing not to go is a huge decision, only a few will really understand that. We are scared of not being part of the new dawn that can’t be far away. We are scared of throwing away a huge chunk of our lives.

The club have become unrecognisable to me. We write and they ignore us, we protest and they wash over it in press conferences. But, we did start to get to them, we were being heard even if they wouldn’t admit it.

I’m not sure those great days will ever come back, but to a certain extent that is up to us.  We have to continue to force change. We mustn’t mirror the apathy on the pitch.  We need to reclaim our place as football fans…. followers of The Arsenal.

It’s our club, it’s still our name on the badge. Anyone who is thinking about bowing out, do so with knowing you have made as much noise as possible before you say goodbye.

JD

It could be worse, you could be a Spurs fan

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Yesterday I wrote a blog about how I was struggling to find any positives with Arsenal at the minute. It was hard work and the only big positive I could find was at least we are not Spurs fans.

And it is true, it is a positive that I do not support Spurs.

Spurs might be “on the away up” and showing “progression”. They might have finished above Arsenal last season. But that was the first time in 22 years. 22 YEARS.

Arsenal are awful at the moment, but the fact that Arsenal are so poor, and Spurs so (allegedly, according to the media) brilliant, and only one of the clubs is winning trophies sums up the whole situation.

Whilst Arsenal fans are celebrating FA Cup wins, 3 in the last 4 years (soon to be 3 in 5), Spurs are reduced to celebrating made up success. Like “most Premier League goals in a calendar year” (Harry Kane) and “most Premier League MOTM awards” (Harry Kane) and “most Premier League goals for Tottenham” (Harry Kane) and most points over the last two seasons.

The reality is:

  • Spurs have not won the league for 57 years
  • Not won the FA Cup for 26 years
  • Won 1 trophy (League Cup) in the last 18 years
  • Won 2 trophies (2x League Cups) in the last 26 years
  • Not won a trophy in 9 years

Arsenal have been awful, but you look at the last 5 years, we have finished above Spurs 4 out of 5 times, and won 3 FA Cups (to Spurs 0 trophies).

On the right hand side on Sky Sports, they put up as part of their rolling news clubs recent successes. Arsenal’s is trophies. Spurs is Harry Kane.

Spurs may well make it 2 years in a row finishing above Arsenal. That will be two years in the last 23 years. If they finish trophyless again, that takes it to a decade without a trophy.

Their fans might be excited about moving to their new stadium, but lets see how excited they are when they realise it is a soulless bowl designed for the NFL that has cost £1bn to build – sending the club into a crippling debt much worse than Arsenal suffered in the mid 00’s.

The truth is, no matter how bad you might think things are for Arsenal, Spurs fans have been much longer suffering, and have had such little success to cling to over the last 30 years that they are having to make up success.

So Arsenal fans, it could be worse, you could be a Spurs fan.

Keenos

Formation more important than spending big for Arsenal

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I have read a lot over recent days that Arsenal need to buy this player, or that player. But a bigger problem that needs to be sorted out within the side before we sign anyone is what formation we set out to play.

There is no point going out and spending millions of pounds on players, if we do not play a system that utilising them best.

For about a year, we have played 3 at the back.

Moving forward through the pitch, we have then played a narrow 2 (or 2 Number 10s) behind a single striker. The theory being that this would then get the best out of Alexis Sanchez.

However, in recent games we have returned to 4 at the back. This then affects what happens further up the field, as it results in us playing with two wider forwards, with a single Number 10.

Until Arsene Wenger decides on which formation we play, there really is no point us signing someone.

Formation more important than spending big for Arsenal

Take Thomas Lemar, for example.

He was brilliant for Monaco playing wide left. But Arsenal do not currently play with wide men, so what is the point of spending £90million on him, if we do not play the formation to accommodate him.

The same go’s for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He has been heavily linked with Arsenal this week, but he is a centre forward and just 6 months ago, we spent nearly £50m on Alexandre Lacazette.

What is the point then paying a similar amount for another striker, when we only play one up front?

Or Anthony Martial, who we have been linked in a swap deal for Alexis Sanchez.

His best performances for Manchester United have been playing wide. He is not a Number 10. Therefore swapping Sanchez for Martial and keeping with 3 at the back and two behind Lacazette would not get the best from him.

Another Manchester United star we have been linked with his Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

Mkhitaryan is a talented Number 10, and could work alongside Mesut Ozil. But what if Wenger decides to drop the 3 at the back? Mkhitaryan is then forced to play out wide – where he has struggled for Manchester United.

We are likely to sell Theo Walcott in this transfer window as he does not suit the current system. It is easy to forget he scored 19 goals last season on the right hand side of a front 3.

Coming in could be Bordeaux star Malcolm. A right winger. It would be odd to let go of Walcott because he can not play in the current system, to then sign Malcolm, who is also a right sided midfielder.

An option could be to go for the likes of Leon Goretzka or Julian Draxler, who both have the ability to play both at Number 10 and out wide – meaning that they are interchangeable when it comes formation changes. But both seem to have got off the Arsenal Speculation Train in recent weeks.

We need to buy players. That is clear. The first XI is not good enough, neither is the squad.

But there is no point buying players until Wenger makes it certain what formation he wants to play. And we all know the dithering Frenchman will probably not make that decision until April.

There is no point spending big money on players, then not playing that system that gets the best out of them.

Keenos