november 23rd
Imagine you’re a professional footballer. Your team has won the league without losing a game the previous season and your lengthy unbeaten run comes to an end in controversial circumstances at the home of your biggest rivals. After that your form dips, but you don’t lose another game. Still, you just can’t seem to click back into the kind of gear that had people drooling about the football you played and using words like ‘invincible’.
Then imagine you’re playing at home, you know you’re under pressure to start performing again and once again things just don’t go right. You draw with a team you’d be expected to beat under normal circumstances. Then, as the final whistle blows you hear sections of the booing. Even though your cofidence is low you’ve still only lost one league game in 52 and you’re being booed off at home. How do you think you’d feel?
I was told yesterday that the Arsenal players were very surprised to hear the reaction at the final whistle on Saturday. Surprised and a bit hurt. And can you blame them?
Now, before I get accused of being a blind optimist, I’m not. I can see that there are areas of the team that could do with some work. I’m all for constructive criticism when it’s needed, but at a time when the lads are struggling to recapture their form after playing so well for so long what do the mindless idiots (and that’s being kind to them) who boo think they’re going to achieve? Are the players going to think “Oh, we’d better try harder because we’re obviously slacking off and resting on our laurels”, or are they more likely to think “What a bunch of ungrateful cunts?”
I know what I’d be thinking in their position. I think in some ways the team is a victim of its own success now. They’ve raised the standards so high that now drawing games provokes intensely negative reactions from some fans. That’s drawing games, not losing. As fans I think we owe a bit to the team, especially when they’re going through a difficult patch. Maybe more noise from the stands would encourage them, let Highbury be the 12th man to inspire them, not the unused substitute who boos at the end.
Maybe the problem is that there are lots of Arsenal fans and not enough Arsenal supporters. I don’t want to piss anyone off with this because I know everyone has their own way of following the team but try and remember that the supporters can make a difference. They can show appreciation for the team has achieved and not castigate players and the manager when our form takes an inevitable dip. And it was always going to happen. Maybe some people thought it wouldn’t but it has and now it’s time to get right behind the boys. It’s November for God’s sake. There’s still a long long way to go before the end of the season and having the crowd on their side will do so much for players. Certainly more than knowing that there are sections of the crowd who are unforgiving and expect perfection every single week. You don’t need to have much of a brain to realise that isn’t possible. Just because you pay £x for a ticket doesn’t mean you have the right to boo our players. It doesn’t mean we have 11 robots out there set to ‘decimate opposition.’
You have to take the rough with the smooth. Maybe that’s a cliché, but it’s true. It’s easy to follow a team when things are going well. You arrive, they score some goals, they win, you go home happy. You don’t have to do anything. This is a rough patch. Now you have to give something back. Do your bit to smooth it out. That’s all.
Ahead of tomorrow night’s game it does seem more and more likely that Sol Campbell will return in defence to help us achieve the win which will see us through to the knock-out stages. There’s a very thorough piece on the qualification permutations here.
More workman fun this morning as they’re due to turn off our electricity for most of the morning in order to improve the service or some such. It’s working fine at the moment. Why can’t they just leave me in peace? Till later…
