Good morning everyone.
Ready for another day of screaming into the void? That’s what it feels like. For all the debate and discussion, reasoned (and not so reasoned) argument, anger, dismay, disenchantment and everything else, the silence from the club remains conspicuous.
I don’t even know what I would expect them to say. On the one hand, anything they do come out with would feel almost trite, like a sop to keep people quiet. And beyond a statement addressing key issues and promising radical change do they have anything to say that we want to hear?
It’s the complete lack of courage in their convictions that’s most annoying. If they think Arsene Wenger is right man to take the club forward – something they must think as they’ve offered him a new contract – then have the stones to come out and say it and back that decision.
As I said to Gunnerblog last night, just announce it. If they think the decision is only going to upset a vocal minority on social media, why wait? Why not just go all in, get it over and done with, and let the furore die down a bit before our next game?
I think we know why not. Because they know, deep down, it’s not just some cranks who are unhappy with the way things are at the moment. They know that there people who want change who won’t join protest marches or fund planes flying banners.
Maybe that will become more clear to them when seats remain empty at matches, or as they struggle to renew season tickets, or when they have a hard time convincing people at Club Level that they should pay a 3% ticket price increase for a season without European football (perhaps), or when those corporate areas that provide so much revenue are harder to fill when we’re playing FC Tashkent Rovers of Tashkent on a Thursday night in the Europa League.
Still, I think they know more than they let on, even if I thought this point from Henry Winter in an interesting Times article yesterday was a very good one. Speaking about how this current majority shareholder and Chief Executive arrived at the club after the very best that Wenger provided – and let’s not forget how very, very good that was – he says:
… nailing the title at White Hart Lane, marching into their enemy’s back yard and having a party, alpha-male fantasy football made real. Almost a quarter of a million people poured on to the streets of Islington on May 16, 2004, to salute three open-top buses carrying Wenger and his entertainers, fighters and winners. Kroenke wasn’t at Arsenal then. Keswick wasn’t on the board. Gazidis was still working for Major League Soccer. They cannot understand the present low because they never experienced the highs.
It makes a lot of sense. How can they understand the yearning for days like that, for a team with that kind of quality and character, when they have never seen it. They probably look at things now and think that because we’ve come some distance from the times of Denilson, Song, Eboue, Almunia, Silvestre and the rest, that things have actually improved. And they have, within that context, but for all the promise and investment of and in this current squad, we’re no closer to winning the title, or even competing for it.
I think for us, looking back on a golden age like the Invincibles – a halcyon era which provided us with the best football and the best Arsenal teams many of us have ever seen – and hoping to relive that is almost a guarantee of disappointment. But it’s hard not to think of that Arsene Wenger quote from many years ago:
If you eat caviar every day it’s difficult to return to sausages.
That was 1998, by the way. Obvious jokes about the Director’s Box aside, this owner and this Chief Executive never ate the caviar. They started with a petrol station sandwich, and now experience moments of fine dining. But no caviar. Right now, we’re back to sausage and it’s a pretty unpleasant tasting one too.
And even if they know that the current situation is one that could backfire badly on them if they deign to stick their heads above the parapet, it makes sense as to why there’d be such a fundamental misunderstanding of why people are frustrated. It’s always been like this, this is the first time it’s been as bad as this, what are people so exercised about?!
We’ve given them Ozil and Sanchez and two FA Cups and frozen ticket prices for a few years and a banter-filled Twitter account that grows the fanbase across the globe and marketing events and tours around the world and the value of the club has increased and as a business it’s well run in many areas and the shop sells lots of shirts and property values have gone up and all the things you want from a modern club are there apart from the small matter of challenging properly for the league and in Europe but isn’t that just a 90 minute distraction from the rest of it?
This is what Liam Brady had to say about the situation yesterday:
The uncertainty surrounding Arsene has not been good for the team. I think it’s come to a point now, we’ve got the international break, we’ve got no game next week because of the international matches, I think the club, by the time we play Manchester City, could do with a statement saying whether Arsene’s going to stay or going to go.
I don’t it’s helping the team. Really, Arsene and the owner and Chief Executive have to make that decision to tell the fans what’s going to happen at the end of the season.
They should. Will they? I’d be hugely surprised, and we’ll go into a game after an Interlull against a big rival with the same air of uncertainty surrounding the manager and some of the players, and if it’s not reflected in the performance to an extent, I’d be very surprised about that too.
Till tomorrow.
