Tot supporters chant “Pedophile” as they get their first victory in ten years. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

They had to wait until Arsenal put out a team with six first team regulars missing, and a team for most of the game including our 4th and 5th choice centre backs, but it had to happen one day.

After 10 years of waiting, after the endless defeats and humiliations, Tottenham finally managed to beat a desperately weakened Arsenal team in the league.

They will undoubtedly bring out a celebratory cup, video, dvd, bus tour, signed shirts, and silver chalice to celebrate what for ten years we have taken to be everyday – the beating of the local rivals.

But it is worth noting something else.  Ten years ago Arsenal FC went to enormous lengths to get rid of any remaining anti-Semitic chanting, and they did it with great success.  At the Ems one does not hear those chants at all.  I am sure that someone there are a few who still indulge, but you do not get hundreds joining in.  And before anyone contradicts me let me add that until this season I was a silver member and sat in different parts of the ground for each game.

Ten years on, what do we have at Tottenham?

Remorceless chanting of “Sit Down You Pedophile” at Arsene Wenger.  And what did the club do?  Not a thing.

It is the usual trick: they looked at Manchester U and did not see a warning about utterly unacceptable behaviour, they saw a blueprint, which they have mindlessly copied.

Such abuse is not  racist or homophobic, and so is not illegal.  It is just utterly unacceptable in even a semi-civilised society.  And clearly Tottenham is not a semi-civilised society.

About four years ago I started calling Tottenham Hotspur “The Tiny Totts”, as it seemed a bit of a laugh, it was not abusive, and it seemed part of the banter of football.  What should they be called now?  To throw the pedophile chant back in their faces seems to reduce ourselves to their level which is now several hundred feet below the gutter.

Of course the defeat hurts terribly, but then I think, they have had ten years of success.  And if, when Wenger came along anyone had said to me, “you’ll now get 10 years without Tottenham beating you in the league, I’d not have believed it.

So, what positives can we take from this?

• Van Persie was wonderful – oh how much we have missed him.  Let us pray for a safe time in South Africa, and if only we could have him all season, surely we would be top of the league.
• Bendtner has scored nine in 11 games. I noticed someone saying on this site how crap he is.  Basically I will accept crap at that level in the Arsenal team.
• And absent was such a collection of talent... Cesc, Song and Arshavin stand out among them.   No wonder we scored so many goals early on with that team out there.

How do we stop these injuries that have so destroyed our chances of winning these last three years?

We can’t – the only thing we can do is to bring in yet more players, in the full and certain knowledge that we will always have half our first team injured.  Wilshere, Djourou and Emmanuel Thomas will help, and I am hoping Eastmond is ready to step up.   This last summer Wenger pulled Vermaelen out of the hat – let us hope he has something else like that up his sleeve.

As for the catastrophists (I am fed up calling them doom and gloomers) I am going to do something I haven’t done before and reprint an email just arrived.

I want to give it extra publicity, because it is so stupid, so inept, so silly, so utterly lacking in any perspective or sense, that the only reaction one can have is to laugh at it.

And that is what I think those of us who share a positive vision of Arsenal should do. (Of course this is just my opinion – I would never for a moment want to tell anyone want to do – I just make a suggestion).

For the past two years we, no sorry, I (I am the guilty one here ) I have been patiently replying to the catastophists and pointing out the errors in their arguments.  And yet there is no argument.  It is just a set of mindlessly childish statements which have no relationship with the truth.

Actually I don’t know who I despair of the most, those who seemingly live in or below the sewers of Tottenham with their chants of “Sit down you pedophile” or people who write this sort of stuff.

I know that the many tens of thousands of Arsenal fans who do Phil, Walter and I the honour of reading this site on a regular basis will be back tomorrow and the next day and the next endlessly supporting Wenger and Arsenal because it is our club and because as a club we have had such wonderful times in the last ten years.  And because we believe that we or on the edge of something even better.

But I think it is time (for me at least) to stop arguing with people who write stuff like that which follows, and just have a laugh.  Because although Billy The Dog sometimes enters another universe, I don’t think he ever gets as far removed from the real world as the person who wrote this.

Tony Attwood

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This is really the worst Arsenal team I ever have the absolute honor to witness. I absolutely hate Bendtner. I can’t describe how angry I am for us to have him as striker. Can’t play his teammate can’t play himself. Everytime he runs it makes me fuming mad. I don’t see how the goals are coming from this absolute shambles of a team. If this match is not the absolute testament that Wenger’s lost it and should be go back to Japan, I don’t know what is. Absolute joke. Did I mention I hate Bendtner? Oh and freaking Aluminia. My god, I can’t believe I’m stuck with so many muppets in this team. UNBELIEVABLE. Seriously, can’t Arsenal give me something to be happy about?

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