Sunday, January 13th, 2013 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Sir Hardly Anyone

In one sense it must be easy to write match previews of Arsenal games from an AAA perspective since one can by and large write pretty much the same stuff every time.

Better, there is no need to put in any evidence when giving an opinion, nor indeed back up any assertions with facts or citations.  Just saying, makes it true.

So one can thus say, in previewing the Man City game today that the Arsenal manager is too old to be doing his job.  The argument here is that you can more or less tell successful a manager is going to be by his age, and anyone over 60 is always likely to be less smart than some aged, 50.  Thus one predicts the result of the match by the age of the manager.

In this case Mr Wenger is 63 and Mr Mancini is 48, so Mr Mancini will win by 15 clear goals (although it might be that each year is only worth half a goal, so maybe 7 goals will be the difference).

Now quite why this might be so is never made clear.  Older people might be more tired than younger people – but not always (it depends to some degree on health and experience).  Older people might have more experience and be able to make more use of it (but here again it depends if experience is indeed a good way of making decisions – if the world changes all the time, age is no benefit).

It is an interesting argument, and it brings up a lot of issues to debate – but that is where the AAA often (not always but often) falls down.  Assertion is considered a better arguing tool rather than debate, analysis or complex re-evaluation of the whole situation.

One of the key elements however in current AAA thinking is that Mr Wenger must not be allowed to sign any more players, because his choices are always wrong.  Now it is not quite clear why our summer transfers last year are considered so bad, but since another part of the AAA philosophy is that if only Arsenal could stop ending up in the top four, then Arsenal would drop out of the Champions League and Mr Wenger would be sacked then clearly we have two contrary arguments here.   If Mr Wenger buys only bad players, then let him buy more players so that we sink out of the Champions League and he goes.  Or if he buys good players, then we must stop him buying so that we sink out of the Champions League because the current crop are not good enough.  Either way I imagine quite a few Tottenham supporters would go with either of these, but not both at once.

A further point in the argument against Arsenal buying anyone is that if anyone is bought he will be played on the wing, his talent will be destroyed and he will become useless.   (I don’t know if anyone in the AAA has ever debated that Henry started on the wing, and was made a centre forward by Mr Wenger at the age of 23, exactly the age of Theo now.  But perhaps that is a detail).  But again if the aim is to have Arsenal finish outside the top four, surely we should buy lots of players because they will be useless and will be played out of position.

Another approach is the use of the “I’m told” phrase as the opener to any suggestion of what might happen, or as the preface to any “joke” against Arsenal and Arsenal players.   So with Diaby playing as an over age player for the under 21 team there is a notion that it is somehow droll to suggest that he is the heralded January new signing who is going to play for Arsenal.

This is interesting in that “I’m told” is used both for jokes and for serious postings in which it is seriously suggested that inside information on Arsenal’s future has been obtained.   Also Untold is occasionally said by the AAA to be a part of the official Arsenal club, or that the authors are paid by Arsenal.   The AAA of course never claim this of themselves, but they do have sources (probably living in large houses in Surrey) who have the inside information.  “I’m told that….” and the man in the Big House speaks.

Thus all players who lose their way or never make it to the top at Arsenal are poor not because of their own problems with playing, but because of the manager.  Which leads to the interesting conclusion that Chamackh is therefore expected to do well for WHU, and Mr Wenger is expected then to claim the credit.

But just asking that we don’t sign anyone is never enough.  Players who we might sign are insulted (“he has the mental age of a 12 year old” was one recent comment), and I suspect that many an agent and many a player will have looked at this sort of thing and thought “I’m not going to Arsenal with insults like that around”.   These guys are most likely making it harder and harder for Arsenal to get their players.

So, Arsenal buy poor players (presumably like Podolski, Santi C etc) and the management of those players and the team selection are very poor.

Abuse is also part of the message – not only of the manager, the players and any players we might sign, but also of any supporters who don’t fully agree with the AAA message.   Requests (I use the word loosely) for those who have alternative views to meet outside the ground for a face to face exchange of views (I use the phrase loosely) also appear.

It is also sometimes claimed that not only do we have no tactics, but that we also have the wrong tactics (eg playing players out of position).  Along side this is the notion that players from by gone times were much better.

One who is cited on occasion as a player who gave his all for Arsenal, and who all Arsenal fans loved, is Ian Wright.  It is claimed that he would always work hard for the team, no matter what.    This would be the same Ian Wright then who on 13 December 1997, after the home defeat by Blackburn was warned by the police about his abusive behaviour towards a group of Arsenal fans after they had consistently booed him in the game and stood outside Highbury shouting anti-Wright chants.

And that is another problem with the AAA – it is the lack of historical knowledge and perspective.  In olden days we were great, now all our players are rubbish because they were signed by Mr Wenger.  Well, up to a point guys (as Lord Copper was always told).

Thus the prediction for today’s game: Arsenal 0 Manchester City 15.  The team was

Diaby

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Diaby Diaby

Diaby

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, simply because none of our players is any good, the manager’s tactics are non-existent, and of course because of the age difference.

Hardly worth watching really.