There’s nothing quite like nothing to make something out of nothing. That’s not a wise old saying, merely a fact of life as a football fan in the summer.
The hysteria that greeted some comments by Laurent Koscielny was absolutely typical of very little being blown out of all proportion, of people choosing to read only the bits which will allow them become outraged, enraged, inraged or any other kind of raged you can think of.
Koscielny spoke to Eurosport, and said:
I feel good at Arsenal. I’ve just come to the end of a complicated season, especially the first six months, but it’s over now. I do not want to go anywhere.
So, that’s fairly all right, right? Nothing to get too bent out of shape about. But then, he spoke about leaving if the club didn’t win things, saying:
I want to win titles and I hope the club has the means. It deserves it. If the club has the means to compete with the best, I have no reason to leave. But if it fights every year for Champions League [qualification] it’s hard psychologically to be under such constant pressure.
Again, he wants to win things with Arsenal but if we don’t he might think about going somewhere else. Hardly a unique point of view. And isn’t it a good thing that he wants the club to be competitive rather than just drifting along? Haven’t we had enough of players content to amble through their careers?
I want to lift trophies and to have a winning record. I hope the club will give me the means. If this weren’t the case, I’d look elsewhere. Paris [Saint Germain]? I don’t know. I’ve not heard anything.
Same thing. He’s saying if we don’t win something he’d think about leaving. But we’re unlikely to win anything this summer, are we? At the very earliest it’d be some time next year (usually around February, haha) before it became apparent we weren’t going to lift a trophy, but my hope, and one I’m sure is shared by many of you, is that we’re a more competitive team and will be in hunt for silverware much closer to the end of the season.
I’ve seen people criticising him for mentioning PSG, as if it’s some hint. I’ve seen people criticise him for talking at all, but players talk to the media all the time and I think this was part of being away with the French squad. The media love nuggets like this, especially when it’s quiet. Some of the headlines have been ludicrously overblown, and when you realise Koscielny didn’t just call a press conference and proffer those quotes to all and sundry, then it’s even less of an issue.
He was asked fairly leading questions (thanks, Ollie):
– ‘Regarding your future, where will you play next season?’
– ‘Isn’t it gruelling to go through season after season without winning trophies? What could incite you to leave?’
– ‘PSG are on your case, have they been in touch?’
So it’s not as if he just went off on a diatribe about our lack of trophies, he was asked directly about that situation, asked if he’d been contacted by PSG, and asked about his future. He answered those questions fairly honestly, and in the end I come back to ‘I feel good at Arsenal. I do not want to go anywhere.’
Yet, ‘I feel good at Arsenal. I do not want to go anywhere’, doesn’t make for good copy. It goes back to what I said yesterday about websites and clicks and hits. Even if Koscielny was a touch injudicious and silence would have been better than anything for that lot to get their rotten teeth into, he’s not making absurd demands or suggesting he wants to be sold RIGHT NOW. He simply wants a team which can win things in the future. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s exactly what all of us want too.
Yet we shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction from some quarters. Let us not forget that there were people losing their shit over the fact that Jack Wilshere posted a picture of his 2 year old child wearing a Barcelona kit. There’s a very real need for people like to reassess their lives. Perhaps they could reassess it straight off a cliff. It’d be best for all concerned.
Still, at least it gave folk something to talk about for a few hours, and that’s the important thing. First there was nothing, then there was something, now there’s nothing again. And so the summer keeps on turning.
Finally, five reasons why Aaron Ramsey is better than a scorpion. Till tomorrow.
