This web site is not intended to be unbiased « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

A moment’s reflection on life, politics, bias, blogs, commentary, motoring, tackling, football and the Daily Mail

By Tony Attwood

Every now and then Arsène Wenger speaks out on the tackles that Arsenal players suffer, and saying they should not be allowed in the game.   Diaby, Eduardo, Ramsey are examples that we all know.

What then happens is that various lesser managers around the league express outrage, claiming that Arsenal do much the same. Followers of these managers then come in with similar comments.

It is an interesting bit of illogic: the notion that one cannot comment on bad tackling if the club you are involved in is never involved in a bad tackle.

If this approach were to be replicated in life in general we would never see anyone comment on anything – apart perhaps from the occasional saint suggesting that we should not tell fibs.

So we have the bizarre notion that issues pertaining to truth are secondary to the person making the comment.  It is a reversal of the idea that there is no truth, only interpretation, and rather says that there is a truth (that illegal tackles are made) and that this truth can only be commented upon by those who are not in any way involved in an organisation that is guilty of doing anything amiss.  Ever.

Put this way, I can never comment on roads and traffic in the UK because last month I was caught on a speed camera doing 34 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour limit.  (But please have no fear fellow drivers – I went on the driving rehabilitation course two weeks ago, and was truly impressed.  I am now annoying everyone else on the road by actually going at 30mph in urban areas).

I must admit that those following this route of illogic (fans, managers, journalists etc) do cause much amusement in Untold Land.  And yet discussion does need to happen.   The criticism by Mr Wenger of evil tackling from players in the lesser clubs has first of all raised the profile of the issue – and this is obviously good.  No one in their right mind would feel that career threatening tackles can be ok in football.  Less we forget, it is a game, not a way to mutilate others.

So that’s good, but it leads on to another problem: one might hope that all the publicity will alert the  EPL and referees to the issue and that will be to the benefit of the game.

But here we have another problem.  Untold Arsenal has run a long campaign to analyse the ups and downs of refereeing technique in  the Premier League, and in passing the relationship between the League, the FA and Fifa.  What we said was that there were clearly issues that needed answering, and the fact that those involved in the game refuse to answer them suggests that something is seriously wrong with the game.   This was not to say that just because Untold raises issues about refereeing that everyone should jump; of course not.  Rather it was to say that ignoring the subject just adds to the weight of evidence that something is wrong.

In response we had a number of correspondents who claimed that we had no proof, and that until we actually had a recording or film of a ref being bribed we should shut up.   Again, if we were to take such an objection into the world beyond football, then it would be rather likely that the police would never close in on any criminal.

True, to bring a prosecution you need hard evidence.  But to start an investigation you need strong suspicions and passing evidence that things are not as they should be.  That is what we have.

So what we have had in both cases are people writing to Untold saying that we can’t speak on a certain subject because we are not whiter than white, and we cannot point out what is wrong with refereeing because we don’t have absolute total golden proof.

And during this dull celebration of nationalism this week I have been wondering why these people really want us to shut up.

There’s another thread that comes up out of this: that we shouldn’t discuss the issue of referees or indeed other teams, but rather focus on our club only.  I must say that this is  rather odd as well.  The league has changed completely in recent years because of the amount of money that has be poured into various teams, and the way that some clubs have run up huge debts.  This changes the way in which clubs can operate, and so affects the players Arsenal can buy, and how much it costs to keep them on the books.   To try to discuss football without discussing the world around football, is rather like trying to discuss a game of tennis without taking account of the fact that one end of the court has a huge puddle in it, while the other does not.

My argument therefore is that the endless comments that we get in about the nature of the arguments that we are having (you can’t comment on this because your club does it too, you can’t comment on refs because you don’t have concrete evidence, you should only focus on Arsenal’s game, and not the world of football in which it is played) are more than simple distractions.  They represent a world in which discussion is to be limited – an attempt to say, “you must not talk about this”.  Not a very pleasant point of view.

But then the forces of silence say, “you can’t talk about this – you don’t allow people to criticise Mr Wenger on your site.  Why doesn’t Untold develop a more “balanced” view – to the effect that Mr Wenger is right some times and wrong others?

I would argue that Untold is fairly unusual in that we proclaim our bias at the top of each page – we support Mr Wenger – that is what this site is about.  Why then would anyone expect us to be unbiased?  Would such people also expect us to be even handed when it came to commentaries on Manchester United or Tottenham?

All commentary starts from some biased point of view (otherwise there is no context for the comment), and at least we spell out what our position is.  And yet because of this we get criticised for being biased!

Would these self-same people who criticise Untold for its bias write to the Daily Mail in England in support of the European Union and advocating British adoption of the Euro as the currency (if that were their point of view)?  Of course not.  The Mail is a right wing anti-European organisation, which, as my dear pal Roger used to point out, still thinks that Oswald Mosley and the Black Shirts got an unfair press.  (Which I know means nothing unless you know your history of pre-war UK politics, but Untold is nothing without its occasional meander into other worlds).

Let’s consider this for a moment.  You come across a web site that you think is tripe.  What’s the most obvious thing to do?  The answer must be, go somewhere else.

It is a bit like watching a rubbish TV programme – you can turn it off, you can keep watching it while shouting at the screen, you can fire off emails saying “this is crap”, and “you should give up showing programmes like this.”

Turning off seems fairly sensible, the approach of most reasonable people.   You are not going to have much effect on the programme, or the channel, and so it is best to expand your energy elsewhere.   And this is especially so if you bother to look around and see that the TV programme actually gets an audience.  (It is why I never buy the Daily Mail; I don’t want to give them any of my money and I have better things to do with my time.)

Untold exists to explore a point of view, using specific approaches to argument which have their own internal logic.  I am very sorry if you don’t like it, but at least you know that there are several hundred, if not thousand, Arsenal blogs that propagate a different point of view.

But I do believe that the areas we explore are important, and to those jolly chaps who think it is a good idea to write in and say, “if you think Denilson is a decent player you are blind” I would say, yes, ok, that’s your point of view, but it is hardly an argument or debating point.  Throwing statements at me doesn’t really have much effect.  It is a bit like me sitting next to someone reading the Mail on the Underground and saying to them, “if you can’t see that what is in that paper is a load of crap, you are an idiot.”

It might be what I think, but I am not really sure that saying it makes much difference.