Football, the ups and downs just like our every day live « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Walter Broeckx

Supporting a football team is not always fun. I think most of us will agree with that. Certainly  after two defeats in the league.  But in a way supporting a football team is like the everyday life of you, me and a few million others.

There are days in our live that from the moment we wake up till the moment we go to bed everything just works out for us.  We don’t burn our lips or tongue when we drink our morning cup of tea (or coffee but I’m a tea drinker). You step outside to go to work and your car has no frozen windows so you can start it right away and don’t have to defrost it in the ice cold morning. You have no traffic jams when you are on the road, you even don’t have to stop for a red light. You have a great day at work with your boss coming over to tell you what a great job you are doing a few times that day. You go home and your wife/friend/whoever cooks made your favourite meal and it tastes heavenly. There is a great movie on TV, you have a great conversation with your wife/friend/whoever is in your house in the evening and the you go to bed and then I leave it up to you to fill in the dots…..

So it may happen on occasions that you have such a day. Enjoy it to the maximum is my advice. Alas, not all days are like this. In fact I think you seldom will have such a day. I usually burn my tongue in the morning once in my hurry for that first hot drink. I don’t have the traffic jams that much but my boss is not singing my praise each day (although I cannot complain about him at all). I don’t eat my favourite meal each day (I would get overweight I think) and sometimes there is nothing really on TV that is worth watching. I don’t have a great conversation each day with my wife and about the rest well I will fill in my own dots if you don’t mind…..

Supporting a football club (or any other sport club in fact) is more the second version of life than the first I gave.
The first version would be winning each game. Well no club manages to do this. Not even Barcelona can do this. They come close but they also have their bad days.

At Arsenal we have the second version of life for the moment. That is for sure. We, and this goes for all those who have been supporting Arsenal from before the 2003-2004 season have been blessed with the invincible season. This was as close as any team in the modern era of football has been able to come to the first utopia version of live. Those who have had the honour and privilege to have seen it have been blessed.

And sometimes I wonder now why on earth didn’t we enjoyed it enough. After a while it became …dare I say it… maybe a bit boring. Because the hope/fear for the win/loss is just what makes it so exciting to be a supporter. If you know you will not lose the game because you seem to be invincible then it takes a bit of the joy away of the win itself. You kind of expected us to win our games in that period. After a while you took it for granted that you would not lose the game. So winning became a bit of a ‘oh yeah, sure just another good day at the office..”-feeling.

But those days are gone, even though we would love to see them back. Will the ever come back?  I doubt it to be honest. If you just look at the crazy amount of money that some teams have thrown around and still they are not able to come even close to what Arsenal have achieved in the unbeaten season.  So money cannot buy you an unbeaten season. Only building a team can achieve such a thing. But because of the money teams it is much harder to build a team to reach such a high level.  Certainly when important members of that team in the build up want to go home or want to earn more money. Last season I felt that if we could keep the team and add one more “unknown” person in each line we could have another invincible team. Things turned out differently because of money and DNA.

So we are fully in the second version of life like I described it in this article. Some good moments, followed by not that good moments.

And then comes the most important thing for people if you want to enjoy life completely.  You could moan and groan and say you will never be happy till we have another unbeaten season.  But why make yourself unhappy with something that has only happened twice in the last 150 years of football? Maybe it would be better to enjoy things more when we win.

Maybe we should take it one game at the time. Our team is down to the bare bones because of the injury situation. The full back crisis has literally cut our attacking and defending wings. We could have had more defenders one could say but how many full backs do you want us to have? 3 is clearly not enough. 4? Even at right back this isn’t enough. At left back just for the moment but playing a young central defender over there is not the ideal situation.

Buy? We only could buy English players because of the 25 squad rules. But are other clubs willing to let a player go to Arsenal? And do these players want to come over in the knowledge that as soon as our regular first, second choice players are recovered they would be on the bench at the best or in the stands as a more possible option.

So it will not be easy in the next weeks. That is something we can be sure. It will be hard for the players who are still standing to perform. But in a way isn’t this when a true supporter shows his real colours? Isn’t it now that a real supporter does what he should do?

The last defeat is what it was: a defeat. But the next game is the one that matters. And when you seem dead and buried you sometimes find some resources that make you  stronger and better. And to get the players to that level it is also up to us supporters to make them believe they can do it.

If we don’t make our players feel that we want them to do well and fight for the team, how do expect them to want to give that little extra that could make the difference between win or lose a game.
We know that we are up for a major battle, we know that our team is weakened in an incredible way because of injuries. But we must make sure that those players on the field feel the force coming from the stands. Let us fight for what we are worth. Let us try to overcome the weekly ref errors we have to overcome each week.

Let us just do our  best as supporters to lift the team and if we win this game then for God’s sake : just enjoy it! Don’t moan about something that could have been done better. Just enjoy it when we win.

And if we would lose? Remember that there is always another game coming our way. Another game to  play and to support the team. And if you can’t stand it anymore: nobody forces you to go along with it. Let the true supporters who will be there win or lose do their job: supporting the team. Supporting in good, but certainly supporting in bad times.