Tuesday, January 1st, 2013 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Tony Attwood
I was just contemplating if to write a piece this evening, and if so, how to encapsulate my feelings, when I saw a message come in, in response to the morning’s post previewing the game. In essence the writer said something along the lines of “Arsenal, what a team, always know how to disappoint”.
And it reminded me of something I have been meaning to write about for some time – that for many supporters of a negative frame of mind, there is a sort of inbuilt assumption that Arsenal are the only team that get things wrong, and that everyone else gets things right.
Because most Arsenal fans don’t read Man U blogs (and why should they?) they tend to ignore the fact that last season quite a few Man U fans were highly critical of some of their team’s performances. So were the Chelsea blogs – and although they managed to do something we haven’t done – as in winning the Champions League – their league performance was often poor compared to the standard of the recent past.
The fact is that not every team near the top always beats teams near the bottom. In fact I can remember early on in the Unbeaten Season a 2-2 draw with Bolton under the Allerdyce Manifestation in which the visitors used every technique legal and illegal to frustrate Arsenal. We got a point from a match at home against a very low grade team. It didn’t actually mean anything, but at the time, it caused a lot of teeth gnashing and worry about the rest of the season.
I wrote earlier about the fact that on the History Site there is a commemoration of the 5-0 thrashing of Tottenham at WHL in 1978, and how after that magnificent performance we went on to lose at home to WBA in the next game. Such things happen. Especially at this time of year.
It is doubly frustrating that a good run has come to an end, while our rivals crept further away from us, but matters will change again, and we’re a long way from deciding anything except the fact that we are not going to win the League Cup.
Indeed matters change in the short and the long term. Remember that season when Villa were heading for fourth and we were miles behind them. They went off to Russia in a Europa League match with a reserve side, and duly got knocked out. Clearly they were saving themselves for the push for a Champions League place.
O’Neils ploy failed, Arsenal surged, Villa dropped back. And today Villa are…
But there is one other point that struck me from the match, which I watched on Sky. I had the volume turned down low, but a couple of times I am sure I heard the commentator talk about the postponed WHU game and question why it was called off. There was a moment in the second half when there was talk of it being all right to call off games for acts of God* (such as rain) but not acts of striking underground workers.
If you heard this, and can recall exactly what was said, it would be interesting to know. The WHU match was called off because of the impossibility of getting officials, staff and supporters to the ground on a day when the overground was shut and the underground on strike. If you have ever been to the Ems you will know there are parking restrictions for miles around, and quite simply most of us would never have been able to get to the ground.
Now that is a concern, not just because I would have gone – but because I, like everyone else, had already paid for my ticket. My payment was through my season ticket purchase. Others will have done so through Silver and Red memberships.
So had the game been played, but most people not been able to attend, that would have been extremely annoying and could have resulted in many claims for a return of money given that Arsenal were playing on a day when most of us could not have got to the game for which we had already paid up.
I really can’t see what Sky were trying to argue, and it seems like another Sky attempt to suggest that all is not right within Arsenal’s administration. Let me know if you heard it
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* Since most of our climate is now a result of climate change as a result of human activities on the planet, calling rain or snow an Act of God seems inaccurate in itself.
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