Gee golly it’s cold here in London. The deceptive cold. The cold that when you look outside from your windows you see beautiful sunshine and crisp white powder on the ground and think “how beautiful” but when you step outside and try to avoid the ice you think “how treacherous”.
That, plus the fact that Arsenal were terrible at the weekend, is seeing people I know drop round robin texts about not going to the game tomorrow night and following a quick check on the official site, tickets still remain available for what is deemed a ‘Category A’ game and one in which in seasons gone by you’d never properly be able to get a ticket. Not unless you used a back channel.
But I think that speaks volumes to where we’re at right now. Apathy has now started to well and truly seep in and whilst on social media you find plenty of extreme views on either side of the Wenger divide, even the silent majority who go to games and aren’t on social media, don’t want to be part of the farce any more.
That’s why Sky Sports have rearranged all of their fixtures for Arsenal too, because they want to be able to capture the fan ire and certainly pass comment on it. They will undoubtedly talk about how poor Arsenal are, how Arsène doesn’t seem to be able to do it, yet they also fuel the fire with their own narrative and you only have to look at the Gary Neville comments to see that Sky want to be front and centre about telling the world of Arsenal’s decline. There’s no news like bad news as they say and at Arsenal things are looking pretty bleak right now.
So we have Sunday games, Monday games, games in which everyone will have played and therefore putting more pressure on us and I tell you what, if we lose tomorrow night and are ten points off the pace in the league for the top four, there will be plenty of empty seats and fan anger to feel. I think we’re definitely getting to the stage where people will start voting with their feet.
The club know this too and that will have had a massive impact on the decision to leak the stories about a ‘new manager shortlist’ that we’re doing the rounds in the abomination that was the cup final performance. We all know it’s the club doing the briefing on that but whether or not the eventual split becomes acrimonious or not I’m not so sure. It certainly feels like Wenger will cling to power as long as possible and that’s why I kind of see why the club are doing these briefings. They need to show the manager that the balance of power has shifted away from him. He is the coach. He is the man who sets the players up and motivates them for games only (although under those requirements he’s failing miserably right now) and now he’s been shown that through back door briefings.
He’ll take to the press conference briefing room this morning to talk about the game tomorrow night and whilst he’ll no doubt talk up the importance of a reaction from the players in the adverse weather conditions, I’d be stunned if somebody doesn’t mention his position, ask about whether he’ll stay beyond this season, as well as why the team isn’t performing.
He’ll give standard responses but within an age of media over analysis (we are all guilty of it too) there will be plenty of people looking at the way he says things rather than what he actually says.
I think it might get a bit tetchy today. I think we might see Arsène get a little irate. But do you know what? I don’t care. For too long we’ve been in decline and for too long he has appeared to be ignorant to it. It’s time people started asking him more uncomfortable questions again and again. Arsenal haven’t been good for some time and it is he who has overseen the decline.
Right, I think that’s probably all the doom and gloom I can take for one day, because so much more of my life doesn’t involve Arsenal and right now that feels like a massive blessing.
Cheerio people.
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