Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » 2010 » June » 23
By Emperor Tony Attwood
It’s now coming up to three years since Untold started its message of peace, joy, economic sanity and devotion to the philosophy and methodology of Arsène Wenger.
During that same time one or two people living in that dark and evil backwater of London known as Grub Street have gathered occasionally within their district to mutter meandering minutious mittle about Our Lord Wenger. I would not personally go into such a place for fear of catching something loathsome, but with nothing much to do except watch the growing number of FICK FUFA flags emerge in South Africa, I paused to give thought.
What these jolly little inhabitants of their local tavern (Le Grub I believe it is called) have done recently is to warn us that our club is falling apart. Season ticket renewals are next to zero, it seems. Relegation is staring us in the face next season. All the best players are leaving, no one wants to join us. The place is in a mess and about to go bankrupt.
Who, I wondered, do these rants this remind me of? What person from history has behaved in this manner before? How do I get the measure of people like this?
It has taken me a while to realise – but of course now I see. The leaders of the Grub Street Brigade each day look to me a little more like Lord Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup.
Lord Spode is at one point described by his creator PG Wodehouse as being built, “as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment”. His chosen career is dictator, and he favours organisation and logic as the way of running things. The current economic system is not working, he says, and so we must change it. He suggests that potatoes should be produced only in Norfolk, leeks in Somerset, rhubarb in Shropshire, while the whole of Cornwall should be given over to the production of the motor car.
He is also concerned that his followers (the Black Shorts – all the shirts having been sold out by the time he set up his movement) should always wear shorts to show off the British Knee, on the basis that a British knee is worth 10000 foreign knees.
Now the link between the Lord Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, with Grub Street can, I believe, be seen in this extract from the book, the Code of the Woosters… Here Bertram is speaking to the said Earl…
The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”
Now my point (and you will be thrilled to know there is a point) is that Spode, like the residents of Grub street, have put about the message of doom so often that they start to see incontrovertible signs everywhere.
Those in Grub Street, you may recall, suggest that 30,000 have been removed from the season ticket waiting list this year, and that by implication getting on for 30,000 holders won’t renew this summer – so the club will go bust. All because of Arsène Wenger.
And this is said just at the moment when my application to change my season ticket seats for this coming season has failed! The club’s official letter told me that 4,000 applications to move seats had been received, and that only 2,000 season tickets had been given up this year, so most people could not be granted their wish.
“Ah,” scream the Grubbers, “its all lies!!!”
So I checked with the people I know around me with season tickets. None of them is giving up – and under the Grub Street figures around 80% would be leaving. (Of course that is a sample of around 25 – not that many – but actually 24 more than Le Grub’s total survey.
Now returning to Lord Spode, he once said, “You can’t be a successful Dictator and designer of women’s underclothing. One or the other, not both.” How true I hear you say, for we might also suggest of our pals from Grub Street, “you can’t be a successful critic of Arsene Wenger’s revolution, and get all your facts wrong. One or the other, not both.”
So with £65m matchday income in the bag, and Highbury Square now debt free, it seems that Le Grub is a little amiss on this one, and that rather does rock its credibility. One thinks perhaps of potatoes in Norfolk.
Or not, as the case may be.
But I don’t want to be uncharitable. I think Le Grub and the Grub Street Gang should show us how much they are loved and admired by following the lead not only of the 7th Earl of Sidcup but also their friends in the north – specifically the supporters of Manchester IOU.
As part of the campaign at Man IOU to get the owners out they have asked all their supporters not to buy any official Man IOU merchandise but instead buy MUST merchandise and wear it.
MUST in Manchester sell scarves etc in the supposed colours of Newton Heath FC. The Grub Street Gang, since it follows the approach of Lord Spode (as I have shown), should, I suggest, adopt the black shorts. If you hate the work of Wenger, and you support Le Grub, turn up to the first home match of the season wearing black shorts while shouting “Heil Grub”. That will show us how many supporters they really have.
Meanwhile while they are busy getting their movement on the road they could also have some banners, like their pals have at MUST. Maybe things like….
- “Le youth system est un failure.”
- “L’Administration est no good”
- “Le Programme Editor est un drongo.”
- “Les Ball Boys sont slow”
- “Les Stewards took my flag away”
- “L’homme qui does things we don’t even know about est un nasty homme”.
- “Les Silly Sarcastic Buggers qui write les blogs should shut up”
Few of them should be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks, in my opinion.
So, and meanwhile, FICK FUFA while you are at it.