Morning all,
still lots of Eboue related madness going on, as you might imagine. Yesterday’s blog sparked plenty of debate, lots of people didn’t agree with what I wrote and that’s absolutely fine. There’s always a platform here for people who disagree with me.
The main complaint was that I failed to label the fans who cheered Eboue’s substitution as some kind of ‘disgrace’. As I wasn’t at the game, so who am I to call any Arsenal fan who has paid his or her money a disgrace?
This wasn’t an orchestrated campaign, it was a spontaneous reaction from thousands of people. As I said it wasn’t nice to hear but we’d be stupid if we chose to ignore the reasons why it happened. It’s worth discussing without just calling those who participated a ‘disgrace’ or any other name. Players have got stick at Arsenal all down the years, Eboue’s not the first and he won’t be the last. Did he get the collective frustration of fans who have watched their team struggle and under-perform this season? Possibly. Was he blameless and the victim of a witch-hunt? No.
There’s been a lot said about Saturday’s events. I particularly liked the pieces in the Online Gooner, Arsenal Times and Goodplaya. In the Gooner Kevin makes the point that Eboue’s constant theatrics have made him unpopular with the fans and that Wenger must take some of the blame for it. He then says:
You won’t find many descriptions of the player as an honest pro and that is why Wenger’s own comparison of Eboue’s contribution as being akin to that of Ray Parlour was regarded as an insult of the highest order to the Romford Pele.
Ray Parlour was not technically gifted, but he was an honest trier. And that kept many fans onside when he played in a midfield quite obviously surrounded by better technical players. He played bad balls and lost possession, but he worked hard for the team. And he was never booed.
It’s a good piece which tries to look at the deeper malaise, something that certainly influenced what happened against Wigan.
Kolo Toure, as you might expect, has come to the defence of Eboue, saying:
The fans gave him a hard time and that is not usual at Arsenal. He has all our support because we know he is a great player. He tries his best for the team even if he is not 100 per cent. I was surprised because normally our fans are nice always.
I just want to tell them that he is a great lad, he loves the club and wants to do his best for the club. We hope that next time they will help him to come back. That is the only way to behave.
While Arsene Wenger said:
He is a good boy and you could see when he lost confidence it was very difficult for him. Cesc Fabregas will have a word with him. They will all help him. I am not worried about that.
Football at the top level is a ruthless game. You have to perform or you get found out. Expectations are high, from fans and from everyone else. When you play badly you’re going to hear moans and groans. When you play as badly as Eboue did in the final part of the game on Saturday it’s inevitable that fans will let you know what they think. It happens at Arsenal and every other football ground in the country.
Granted it doesn’t normally happen as loudly as it did for Eboue but that’s something he’s got to deal with. If he wants to play football at the highest level then he’s got to be able to cope with this. Get his head down, work hard, give 100% on the pitch every minute of every game and the fans will be onside with him. It’s that simple. It’s the same for any player at any club.
The bottom line, for me, is that the jeering of Eboue was a message to the player and the manager. To Eboue it was that when you wear the Arsenal shirt the very least fans expect is that you put in the effort, no matter how poorly you’re playing. To the manager it was a cumulative thing, I think, after 5 league defeats already and many people’s concerns that the squad we have is just not competitive enough to win the title.
If there was a more civilised way for those points to be made then I’m sure it would have been taken but there isn’t. Many people have come on and criticised the fans who jeered and it’s easy to do that. It’s easy to say ‘I would never do that’ but football is passionate, fans are passionate and what happened happened in the heat of the moment. It’s easy to say ‘When things are going badly you should get behind the team more’ but that’s almost utopian in its outlook. It completely and utterly disregards human nature. The natural reaction to a player tackling one of his own players then passing it to the opposition is not ‘Hard luck, old chap, try a bit harder next time, would you?’, it’s ‘Oh for fuck’s sake! What was that?!’.
Anyway, I’m not trying to do anything but talk this through in a sensible way. Sniping and calling each other names without trying to understand why all this happened is just pointless, in my opinion. And no doubt there’ll be plenty who’ll tell me I’m a cunt again for what I think but there you go.
In other news the Mirror says we’re after Xabi Alonso in January. There’s nothing really new in the article but as January draws ever closer the speculation about who we might buy is going to increase by the day, I reckon.
And that’s about it. A busy day for comments ahead, I think. Have at it.
