Monday, February 27th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Tony Attwood

I think I can start in no other way than by quoting just a couple of the comments that appeared before the game on Sunday against, oh, who was it, you know, those guys with the manager with the dog…

Here’s one, which appeared after what I consider the most insightful piece of analysis I have ever seen on Untold – (I refer of course to the monster post by Dogface as a prelude to the game against the Tinies.)

“Pathetic your constant stream of match fixing articles, and whining about referees, you’d think this is a blog written by Arsene. If it goes on well have you considers 19 other clubs have to deal with it too? What you’re doing is taking away attention from the fact that the team isn’t good enough, and the manager is stale. So perhaps some relevant articles then?”

Here’s another one…

“Nowadays they [Tottenham] are better, simple as that, we have just been beaten by Milan and Sunderland comfortbaly, we are off form, spurs are on form, how are we suppose to win this game I just cant see it happening”

Or even this one

“Petit. “I even fear that some [players] have lost their trust in Arsene” “

This is the view that everything is awful, we are going to be relegated, this is the worst football I have ever seen (not forgetting that I have been a supporter at Arsenal since 1964) and look here’s a quote (maybe) from a player who hasn’t been at the club for many, many years, and although a brilliant player in his time, really hasn’t got much of a history as an insightful commentator.

One might also call it “No Argument Syndrome” in that there is rarely any attempt to reply to the detail in the pieces on this and other sites, just the few lines of rant, and telling us we are stupid.  (Actually some of the words I am called are a little worse than that, but I excuse the writers since I know their vocabulary is limited).

In the car on the way to the game we were debating exactly what seasons were worse than this one – especially for the History Deniers who claim that this is the worst season since…

We came up with quite a few possible contenders for the worst season we have seen: 1965/6, 14th in the league, knocked out in the 3rd round of the cup, 1974/5, 16th in the first division and knocked out of the cup final by West Ham.  Beaten perhaps by 1975/6 – 17th in the league, and knocked out of both cups in the first round in which we played.   I could go on with such figures, but there’s no much point.  (And I am excusing the season Graham was sacked because some people always say that one doesn’t count).

If you have No Argument Syndrome or are a History Denier, such arguments don’t matter – it is all a case of just shouting louder to drown out the reasoned argument and pouring out more and more abuse.

As it was, those of us who kept the faith knew that in our last two league matches we had knocked in nine, and could do it again – if we could just overcome the ref.  All of Dogface’s predictions about the ref were there to be seen – although watching the re-run on Match of the Day they were not since they carefully edited a lot of them out.  And now in this worst season of all time, with players having lost their faith in the manager, and there being no chance of us winning, we win 5-2 – one of the great Arsenal victories over the Middlesex Boys.

(Incidentally I was rather pleased that the programme editor did marry up the Arsenal Uncovered piece on Tottenham with this game – they too are deniers, denying that their club was promoted to the Football League after coming 8th in the Southern League, and then complaining that Arsenal fixed it by being promoted from the second division to the first after coming 5th, when there was an expansion of the league.  But that’s of interest to me because I wrote the piece.  Sorry, I’ll get back to the plot).

I can’t really describe what it was like to be there – the nervousness amidst all the usual jokes and fun, the talk about past seasons, the discussions about which of the 15 or so loanees will make it into the first team, discussion of the youth team now miles ahead of the rest in their league… all the usual.

And then the gloom on going two down – not just that the first was clearly a fluke and the second quite obviously, from the viewpoint of the North Bank upper, right hand side, where I sit, was a dive not a foul.

But there was also a feeling – Tottenham had got two freaky goals and we were peppering their goal with shots that were getting closer by the second.  And quite simply the feeling that despite the awful scoreline we were dominating play.

And beyond that a real feeling that the players were thinking, we are not going to be beaten by a bunch of cheats aided by a referee who is either serially mistaken, or worse….

So the figures turn out:  We had 57% of the possession.  We had 23 goal attempts – more than twice the Tottenham number.

In short, we ran the game.

Now, Monday morning, my voice has gone, and I had to take throat pastels last night to try and help me get to sleep.  Of course I wake up to the fact that Liverpuddle are the top story of the day, having beaten a second division team on penalties – yes of course a much bigger story, because the only story the press and their blog followers want is Arsenal Lose It, Wenger Loses It, and Untold Writers Are Deluded.  That’s the agenda.  I’m rather glad we couldn’t oblige.

The reality is we present evidence upon evidence about the extremely dubious way refereeing is run in the Premier League, and there are few people able even to put up a decent debate against our arguments.  We are, simply, “deluded”.  Of course we would all love to be top of the league, easily into the next round in Europe, and still in the FA Cup.  Of course we would.

But we are fourth, 14 goals in the last three league games and playing some rather attractive football, having just had one of our best victories over Tottenham.   For something like 14 years we have been higher up the league than they have at the end of the season, and yes, maybe they will for once be higher up than us, as they celebrate 51 years since winning the league.  Of course they would love more than anything to have Arsenal’s record of 14 odd years in the top 4, of having won the league a few times since 1961, of having a nice new stadium rather than having to get money off Boris in order to build one – sometime.

And of course I don’t know where we will end up this season.  If Tottenham play like they did for the rest of the season and we play like we did, we’ll end up above them, without a doubt.  But there could be more injuries, more match fixing, or we could just lose form – it happens.

But unlike so many, my friends and I will be shouting, cheering and supporting the team.  Not sniping at them with non-arguments and mindless abuse.  We support without condition – whatever, whenever.

If you have been supporting Arsenal all the way through – thank you.  My heart is with you.

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Exclusive interview with Harry’s Dog

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Arsenal v M Dean.  Tottenham will also appear

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Football finance: the AST’s report on Arsenal’s finances analysed:

Part one: The Summer that was: transfer fees, wages and the “best” approach to the market.

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From the Arsenal History Society web site

Iconic Moments 10: When Arsenal finally lost patience with a make-believe media

More extraordinary revelations about Arsenal’s past and the rivalry with Tottenham