Hands up if you thought we would be fourth at year’s end « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Tony Attwood

I will make this quick.  As I have mentioned in passing before, I live in the Midlands, and have a season ticket in the North Bank, so going to Arsenal is something of a day trip for me.

I am just back, and need to change for the evening’s celebrations with the neighbours, but I couldn’t really go straight into the Dec 31 thing without a word about today.

On 17 September we were beaten at Blackburn and were 16th with some awful results around us – not least at home to what we now know is an institutionally racist club (I’ll explain in a moment) and a horrific defeat in Manchester.

On 31 December we are fourth, a position which although not as good as we would all like is not bad considering that around us are two teams that will spend billions and trillions to buy success, and some very dubious referee decisions, plus losing our three world-class midfielders all at once (Cesc and Nasri going and Jack being long term injured).

Yes 1-1 v Wolverhampton and just 1-0 v QPR is not that wonderful, and of course I would have liked more, but tonight I just want to reflect on the turn around.  I hoped for it, I had faith in it, but in all honesty did I really think we would be fourth by now?

Well…

And we have a striker up there with the best we have ever seen.  I need to double check with my colleagues from the Arsenal History Society exactly how many goals various top players in the 1930s got, but I do know Robin Van Persie got 35 league goals from 36 appearances this year.  I feel an “Arsenal Uncovered” piece for the programme in these statistics.   I write them a few weeks ahead, so you’ll have to wait, but I am sure there are some fun figures to be found.

Yes Robin was just one short of that silly little boy Shearer got with Blackburn but he had 42 games.

As for today, it was not a wonderful match, but it was a nice day.  Tony Adams got a reception that just went on and on and on – he looked like he couldn’t believe it, but we all just stood there and clapped and clapped and clapped such a wonderful player who had come back to see us.  And he looked a trifle sheepish at one point I felt.  How very un-Tony!

And Thierry was there too.

We had 59% of the possession and 12 goal attempts.  Theo missed what looked to be a sitter near the end, but still, we made it.

And this Liverpool thing with racism.  I have been boiling for days and days over their decision, and Chelsea’s come to that, to “stand by their man” in the light of the racism findings, “no matter what”.

Which raises the question, when one of your employees is accused and convicted of a serious crime, when do you not “stand by your man”?   I mean, if he caused a death through drunk driving would you all put on supportive t-shirts?  If he murdered his mum?  If not, then why do it with the awful crime of racism?

If the answer is no, with those crimes you would not support your member of staff, why do you support your man when he is accused of and found guilty of racism?

It has been annoying me and upsetting me and frustrating me deeply, and I have to say I suddenly felt uplifted today when Radio 5 commentators said much the same thing – you can’t as a company support someone who is found guilty of such an awful crime.  It is simply unacceptable for any employer to support an employee with t-shirts and the like when that player is accused of racism.  Even more so when found guilty.

Yes, of course, when the player is facing an enquiry, you do not condemn, you hold back, you support in terms of saying what a nice fellow he is and how you have never ever heard him say anything racist, but then you wait the outcome of the hearing.  But Liverpool and Chelsea are congenitally unable to do that.

But that’s my rant.  This evening, having said it, I will set it aside, and go and have a drink with friends to celebrate the new year, happy in the knowledge that at least for the moment we are fourth, and those funny little people who wrote to this site in September saying we would be lucky to escape relegation are, well, funny little people who write to sites saying we will be relegated.

Hey ho – it was a nice day out, and now a nice evening.  Sadly Liverpool and Chelsea will still be there doing their racist stuff tomorrow, but for this evening, I will stay calm.

Happy new year, thank you for reading, that you for your support, thank you for the many kind and constructive emails, thank you to everyone who has come up to me at the games and said, “Ere you’re that Tony Attwood aren’t you?” and who have just shaken hands, said thanks for the site, and walked on.  Thank you to everyone who has written for this site and made it what it is – and a special thank you to Walter for his endless work and articles – all written in a foreign tongue too.

Thanks also to everyone who helped get the AISA Arsenal History Society really moving this year.  So much has been achieved on that front, and there is so much more about to happen – including our next book “Woolwich Arsenal; the club that changed football”.  That will be out early next year.

It’s been fun.  Some days were a bit dark, and the racism still imbedded in our society is still awful in the extreme, but still, it has been fun.

Let’s do it again next year – although without any 8-2 defeats.