We’re only two days in to this particular Interlull and whilst I still haven’t decided if not having Arsenal play this weekend is a good thing or not – given the way we have been playing – I’m already feeling a bit drained with the Arsenal universe that you and I operate within.
It’s all the arguments, you see, it’s just wearing me down. Which is a little ironic from me because I’ve already decided on which side of the Arsène fence I sit. All I’m hearing and reading about these days is the exit of the manager and it’s already starting to get so tedious.
Just make an announcement Arsène, for christ’s sake, and let’s have some clarity.
I think we all know what will happen. He’ll cling on to power and things will get much worse. Every defeat for the next two years will be greeted by boos. Every bit of tactical inflexibility – or sometimes downright stupidity – will be poured over and re-analysed again and again. And the only people who seem to suffer will be us, the fans, who clearly can do nothing about it. Protests don’t work – apparently the completely arrogant and ignorant idiots running the club believe that it is just a small minority of fans who believe Arsène should go.
Look around you people. Conduct a frigging survey or something. Do a bit of market research but above all, just open your eyes and see what is happening. The walls are crumbling around you and unless you start rendering them again, a collapse is almost inevitably going to happen.
It happened to Bobby Robson’s Newcastle. He was a legend but stayed too long.
What often gets labelled at those that want change is ‘be careful what you wish for’ and ‘look at Man United’. Yep, well I also look at Aston Villa. They are a big club who spent god knows how many years in the Premier League, but when their board had no strategic vision or plans in place and their owner just looked like he couldn’t give a flying eff, what happened to them?
“That’d never happen to Arsenal, they’re too big” comes to war cry of the apologists. I’m sorry, but bollocks, because it could get a lot worse if these players keep sh*tting the bed. I mean, how bad does it have to get before the manager is given his marching orders? Mid table? Do we have the fourth highest wage bill in the league whilst finishing ninth? Is that what it takes before somebody acts?
Then when they do act, does anybody have an faith that they know what they are doing at board level?
I don’t. I believe it’ll be similar to what happened at Villa. They won’t pick an obvious choice of replacement. They don’t want anybody who will rock the boat. They like things how they are. Arsène as the grand dictator, who will fall on his own sword and is doing right now, before everybodies eyes. And because the board and the Cheir Executive have no idea what to look for in a head coach – they’ve never had to bother before – they are probably terrified that they’ll be forced in to a decision.
Oh how I bet they rejoiced when the second plane flew over the Hawthorns. The tiniest slither of justification to pull the covers over their own eyes will have been nectar to them. Now they can dismiss the naysayers as a ‘vocal minority’. They can dismiss what they see as a ‘few crazies’ and slide that bit of paper and Mont Blanc over to Arsène and ask him to keep on chuntering along as the commander in chief of this ageing and slowly sinking vessel called Arsenal.
The second banner was also followed up by the most sychophantic piece of clap-trap propaganda I’ve seen in a long time, thought up by a collective of fans who talk about people with agendas and not being real fans because they don’t support the manager. I read it and if it wasn’t all so depressing right now, I would have laughed myself in to next week. It was sugar-coated drivel from a collective of people who talk of agendas but if we’re honest, theirs is probably to see if they can secure the next money-spinning Arsenal Asia pre-season tour on their turf. There’s big bucks in seeing Arsenal in pre season, don’t you know?
They are as bad as the club. They don’t care about accountability. They don’t care about the fundamental purpose of a football club – to aim as high as possible to win things – they care about seeing ‘legends’ turn up on their own patch. They want the same warm feeling you get when you watch the Football five-a-side Masters and see Ray Parlour in an Arsenal shirt. Or an ‘All star XI’ when Marc Overmars rocks up wearing red and white. They want to feel warm and fuzzy by seeing Arsène as Arsenal manager in the summer. They are less fussed about Arsenal without Arsène. He’s a brand they buy in to because of its recent history.
They talk about agendas, these Hong Kong based supporters, but they are peddling their own propaganda. So who’s got the agenda now?
If you regularly read my stuff you know that I’m not somebody who has been calling out Arsène to go for years. It’s only been of recent times. But that’s because my faith in him has broken. And that breakage is because I see with my own eyes what is happening on the football pitch and that is enough for me. The man on the sideline in the suit isn’t the main attraction, it’s the players on the pitch who are and those Hong Kong supporters should be wary of that.
You can argue the same on the other side of the fence, but I don’t really talk to the most vociferous of anti-Wenger fans, I talk to moderates who all have the same opinion as me. Arsène Wenger needs to go because the team aren’t doing it for him on the pitch. If those players had been, almost all of the people who want him out would be behind the team and talking about possible silverware. But as it stands there doesn’t feel like there’s any chance of that.
I don’t care about Arsène’s legacy, I care about Arsenal’s history, which is why I just want my club to be the best that it can be. Nobody can argue that it is right now.
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