Being there… a night to remember and an insight into what the Anti-Arsenal movement is really about « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Tony Attwood

As those of us with long journeys ahead trooped out of the ground on Tuesday night on the final whistle the noise was still reverberating from inside the Emirates.  A wall of noise, an outpouring of thanks from the the fans to the players.

And it made me think, as we drove back to the Midlands, were these the same people who were booing Theo in the first 20 minutes of the Tottenham game?  The people who poured scorn on the whole Arsenal set up.  The people who accuse the manager of gross incompetence.  The people who complained all last season that the club was run by money grabbing idiots who failed to see the need to buy a goalkeeper for £15m or £20m.  The ones who endlessly said we needed five players to make this team competitive.  The ones who said that last summer’s transfer window proved the grotesque incompetence that is inherent in the club?

I have long been puzzled by the this issue.  Some rows behind where I sit there are or were some people who have in the past spent the games deriding the Arsenal team, laughing at the players’ efforts, sneering at those of us who want to support the club.   These last few games they have been quiet.  Or maybe they have gone – I don’t know – I have never turned round to address them – but their negativity was getting to the point that Stefan on my right was seriously contemplating giving up his season ticket, because the atmosphere was so poisonous.

But last night against Milan the noise and support was there from the very start.  I have been to European matches at the Emirates where the whole Arsenal crowd has been outshouted by the 5,000 or so supporters of the away club.  This season Dortmund did that, endlessly supporting their team despite the fact that they were clearly going out of the Champions League.  But last night the Milan fans didn’t get a look in.   Not from the very first moment to the very last.

So what is going on?  Are these fans the same fans who have called for players to leave and the manager to resign, suddenly jumping on the bandwagon of a few matches’ success?  Or was the Anti-Arsenal movement never in the ground anyway – just a little bunch of people writing notes to blogs under a variety of aliases?  Were the rest of us just too lazy to support our club?

Certainly the fact – made so clearly by Dogface in his preview of the Tottenham game – that there are people who seem to spend all day debating anti-Arsenal arguments with themselves in a strange deluded and often paranoid manner, is one that is itself utterly puzzling.   These are the people who even in the face of a display such as we saw last night, and against Tottenham, will sneer and say, “so everything is all right now is it?  A couple of wins and you think it is fine?”

But why waste a lifetime behaving like that?  Why write in saying “I have been supporting this club since the 1960s and this is the worst Arsenal team ever,” while carefully forgetting 1974/5 when we came 16th and went 10 games without a win, or 1975/6 when we came 17th – and those were not the only rotten seasons.

I gave up trying to debate with these strange people long ago, and only mention them today because what the crowd did – what we did I might say – last night in the stadium, was incredible.  Just as it was against Tottenham.

The issue is, can we do it more often?  Can we do it again on Monday against Newcastle?  It is possible, but it will take some effort!

But what we have learned is that the stadium is more or less filled by Arsenal fans who will support their team when they feel like it.  The anti-Arsenal people, if they are in the stadium at all, are very fickle, only revealing their true anti-Arsenal feelings when it is a poor match or the team is not playing so well.  They are in fact changelings using poor performances to pour scorn on the club rather than doing what many supporters want to do, and support the club no matter what.

I think this was another element in the growing argument that the anti-Arsenal movement is in fact quite small, but appears much larger because

a) they are adept at using digital technology to appear to be more than they are

b) they seemingly don’t have anything else to do and keep up their barrage every day

c) they have the unmitigated support of the media who love the negative much more than the positive.  (When did you last hear someone on radio or TV mention how many years it is since Tottenham won the league?)

I know it is not possible to keep up that volume and intensity of support for the club in every match, but at least we have now seen what can be done.

There’s just one final postscript.  I am sure it would not have come across on TV but in the upper level at the clock end there were a lot of empty seats.  (There may have been in the upper level of the north bank where I sit, but I couldn’t see from my seat).   Yet on the weekend before the match I went on line and tried to use my silver membership to buy a ticket for Anne.  The web site said the game was sold out.

Now these empty seats were not those where the tickets were sold and the purchasers did not turn up.  Yes there are empty seats in the ground for every match, but they are one’s and two’s – generally (from my experience of talking to those around me who occasionally don’t make it to games) season ticket holders who simply can’t make it to specific matches – as I couldn’t when in Australia recently, and Stefan couldn’t while in China and Ian can’t when his wife is working an evening shift in the hospital and he has to look after the children.   No, this was a large area with very few people in it, in the centre block high up towards the back.

So what happened?  Why could I not buy a ticket, and yet there were empty seats?  I’m going to ask my colleagues on the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association committee if they know what is going on.  What I can tell Arsenal is they could have sold one of those seats, if only the web site had let me.

But that’s a minor blip.  It was a great night, and it proves finally that we can fill the stadium with noise and passion, and not just when we hammer the Tiny Totts 5-2.  And it gives me a clearer vision of what the Anti-Arsenal movement really is all about.

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The almost impossible; almost a miracle; a wonderful night despite going out

Achieving the impossible: Arsenal v Milan

International games, abusing our players, remembering Lansbury