Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Want to comment? Please read this

Commentary notes: If you want to comment please have a quick read of this, to make sure you comment is published.

1: Please comment on the subject matter of the article, not something else.  The only exception is if something amazing is just happening (Emirates Stadium to be rebuilt on Mars).  Rumours don’t count.

2: If you wish to post an anti-Wenger piece there are special rules.  Please see this article first.

3: If you disagree with someone, do so with courtesy, otherwise your post might be removed.  Announcing that I am on drugs doesn’t help.

4: Don’t post within a few moments from different email addresses, or your post might well be removed and you will be banned.  Don’t copy someone else’s post

Why do we have these rules?

a): It is the view of those running the site that there are hundreds of places where you can read and post anti-Wengerian articles.  But very few where one can discuss pro-Wenger issues without being hacked down and called a moron.  Anti-Wenger posts are allowed but we feel justified in laying down some guidelines (see point 2 above)

b): Virtually every anti-Wenger post that has been put here has simply picked on one or two simplistic points, rather than covered the complexities that we perceive to be part of modern football.  Trying to hold the debate becomes a bit like arguing with a child who says, “I want a helicopter” and a parent who says, “OK, but we have to talk about the costs of buying one, where we can store it, getting a licence…” to which the child replies, “fuck you I want a helicopter.”   In other words, we are trying to introduce a multiplicity of arguments, and find ourselves up against mono-dimensional replies.   Even that in itself is not an impossibility, but when the self-same argument has been had 500 times, it just seems a pointless waste of time.

c): There have been several deliberate attacks on the site, which is sad, since all we’re trying to do is have a little debate of our own.   The attacks were written up in this article
So why exactly have I done this, three years after we started?

What follows is by no means essential reading, but in case you are interested in the background, or in case you are interested in setting up your own blog and you want to know the ins and outs, here is a comment I posted on this site to one of the many people who were critical of the fact that I was changing the rules….

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This site is set up as a site for people who are pro-Wenger. To me there’s nothing wrong with that. Just as there are many many sites that are anti-Wenger, so I thought it a good idea for there to be one that is pro-Wenger.

Over time we have debated at great length the issues surrounding Wenger, with those who are against Wenger, and then two things happened.

First, we found that a lot of emails were purporting to be from different anti-Wenger people, and they turned out to be the same person under different names. We, the pro-Wengerians, had been tricked and had wasted a lot of time trying to answer what we thought was a crowd, but was actually one person.

Second, when we were debating with real people we found we were debating the same issues again and again and putting forward the same arguments again and again.

In essence these arguments are that the issue is incredibly complex and involves numerous matters, and cannot be debated on the grounds of (and here of course I paraphrase) “Wenger is a prat because he plays Almunia in goal”. For those who disagree and think that we can have a debate like that, so be it, but that’s that. They’ve said their bit, and I’ve said mine. The debate can’t really proceed.

So, to try and stop what is supposed to be a site debating Wenger’s incredibly complex approach to football becoming a simplistic debate, I (and it was just me as the guy who set up the site, and who devotes hours each day to keeping it running) decided to set up some ground rules.

My thought is this. I live in a rural county, and sometimes people put on village parties on the village green. Villagers, the morris men and others turn up and partake of the food and drink. There’s no charge, and no one is turned away. But if someone turned up from another village or beyond the county and started criticising the food, the drink, the dress, the morris men’s music and dance, and so on, that would be dreadful. Better that they either go away, or before saying a word, they get a clear vision of what is going on, why it is going on and what the “house rules” are. And then they abide by them.

I don’t offer you wine and sandwiches, but I do hope you can be respectful of our house rules.

Tony Attwood