By Don Don McMahon
WHAT IS THE ARSENAL…AND WHAT DOES ARSENAL REPRESENT?
This essay on our Arsenal is neither intended to be exhaustive nor definitive. It is my best effort at trying (probably in vain) to paint a faint but pragmatic image of what the Arsenal is for us Gooners. It is a vision of what has been, is and will be.
As a Club it represents an open and tolerant society of members and its history, Footballers, managers, caretakers and fans dedicated to positive and constructive involvement and improvement to the Game we all adore.
As a Football Team it represents principles of fairplay, beautiful Football, restrained ambition, benevolent paternalism, as well as a familial, unique team spirit based on a democratic and egalitarian model. The team is finely tuned, sometimes overly delicate and certainly injury-prone but valiant, amazingly resilient and capable of regularly beating the best as well as losing to the worst.
As a business it espouses a model of benevolent private ownership structured and managed by caretakers and familial interests. This is based on share values rather than dividends, an emphasis on profitability, sustainable growth and progress, frugality and discipline, and planned reinvestment in facilities such as the Emirates, London Colney and the Medical Centre.
We also do property development and marketing of our image and goods, albeit barely adequately according to some and certainly able to be increased significantly by all measures.
In its human relations it prefers discretion, unconditional support for its players and staff, an arms-length but responsive relationship with fans and supporters, a firmness about maintaining a positive team attitude and spirit even at the cost of losing some players, a willingness to respect players needs and wishes, despite the consequences that entails.
The Arsenal is NOT racist, xenophobic or sectarian,nor does it endorse or encourage partisanship beyond the accepted limits of civilized behaviour.
We do NOT throw bananas, bagels or baguettes at our players nor do we chant ill-mannered, ghoulish and ignorant ditties, except at our manager or a particularly petrified morsel of deadwood and then only occasionally.
Apparently this is acceptable because we pay the ¨highest¨ticket prices in the EPL according to the ignorant and ill-informed pundits and media so this awards some followers the dubious ¨privilege¨ of denigrating and demeaning our team and its components before the entire world, thus proving what great supporters they are.
It is managed and coached by a group of men who, together, have more expertise, certifications and experience in top-flight professional football in their greying hair than the entire mob of moaning, groaning, whiners who try and tell them how to run the Club based on these people’s marginal Fantasy Football Manager successes.
The manager is the figurehead and icon of the Arsenal and even has a first name that seems taken from the AFC dictionary. His class, elegance, wit, savoir-faire and overall intelligence represents perfectly what the Arsenal is all about. He is tolerant of others, protective of his charges and noble in his treatment of them, to the point of seeming insanity.
When AFC do transfers and negotiations, they are perhaps at their most discrete and secretive. Unlike clubs, whose bottomless resources permit them to announce their targets far and wide, Arsene, Gazidis, the Board and the scouting team rarely if ever offer any solid or specific hints, heads-up or possibilities.
For whatever reason Wenger likes to surprise the supporters and the media and some negotiations have been so protracted, clouded in mystery and confusion and obfuscated that teams wishing to sell to us, even if we don’t want to buy, have taken to making outrageous claims about our supposed intent.
This allows the yellow media and Wenger haters (often one and the same) to latch onto such claims as gospel. We are always in a lose-lose situation with some of our so-called supporters, almost the entire media and certainly other clubs. This, in fact aids and abets Wenger’s approach to all things financial – mystery is good, uncertainty is positive and transparency is for the other guys.
Our future seems more positive than our recent past, with better financial resources, stricter restraints on our competitors financial shenanigans and rapidly improving youth talents, combined with greater access to top class transfers. As well, our world fanbase is growing exponentially and our business management, while still struggling to keep up, seems to be getting the gist of it.
In summary, our club is like an extraordinary collection of miscreants in an extended family. We have the wayward black sheep (whiny supporters), the spoilt siblings, the noble and patient pater familias, the die-hard travellers (away fans), the distant rich uncle (Stan), the creepy ultra-rich uncle (Alisher, who himself recently claimed to have been misquoted in L’Equipe), the faithful clan member (Ivan) , the child prodigies (Walkcott, Ox, Wilshere) and everything in between. That is both the joy and sorrow of the Arsenal and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
- Others miss, we get one. But still the press moan
- With or without cheese: welcome Nacho
- Comparing points and goals with this moment last season
- A game of slips and bounces
- Arsenal ticket prices; a response from the fans
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The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
The sites…
- Referee Decisions - just what are the refs up to this season?
- Parent News - what is going on in schools these days?
- The weight loss programme: The only guaranteed way to stay fit
- The Arsenal History Blog from the AISA Arsenal History Society
Seniors’ humour since you guys started it !
During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?”
“Well,” he said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup..”
“No” he said. “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”
Don, a very emotive expression of love for the club. There is much that you’ve written that evokes the values and the DNA of the club that I adore too, that intangible quality and aura that endures through both the years of glory and the years of failure.
As much as I love the club however , I believe Arsenal could be a greater club than it is. I have witnessed the club being a greater club than it is now and I will not settle for a diminished Arsenal. And the defining aspect that I think of when I think of us at our best is when we do everything we can to win. For me its less about “winning” and more about “doing everything we can” and when, even if we fail to win, we can still hold our heads high because we know there was nothing left to give.
Football, like any sport, is inherently competitive. If a team or sportsman enters a competition, yes there is the right way to play and act, the right way to pursue victory but in sport, pursuing victory is the primary purpose. To win. Or to lose trying very very hard. Ideally, proud to have won. Prouder still to have won the right way. But in defeat too to walk away proud. A great club is one that does everything it can to pursue victory, whether it does so successively or not.
So when a club exhibits all the signs of not trying enough, of not doing everything it can , on and off the pitch, in pursuit of attainable victories and attainable trophies, it is a club that is either not great at all, or has forgotten how to be great or is not living up to the greatness it was known for. It is letting itself down.
I don’t assume or expect that Arsenal will win things. There are other great clubs, as great as ours, a few greater, that will also have realistic ambitions to win things but if they try harder than we do to fulfill their ambitions, then we don’t deserve to be victorious.
And that’s where Arsenal has been for a few years now. Not doing everything it could be doing to pursue victory: not doing everything it could be doing to create for instance a defensive unit that is capable of preventing unnecessarily lost points and games; not doing everything it could be doing to ensure the team has the right work ethic and up for it attitude that would also prevent unnecessarily lost points and games; not doing everything it could be doing to ensure there is accountability between the board and the manager; and yes, not utilizing the available player budget either at all or well enough to keep or attain players who would improve the squad.
It is the timidity, the slipped standards and lack of determination to set and pursue goals that the club has attained before and is still capable of attaining that makes me feel less proud of my club.
So does that make me a lesser fan than you Don? I still support the team, I still encourage the players to give their all, but I believe I do it more than the people that actually run the club.
You may say but the club has had periods in the past when it appeared to be settling for less than what it once was and less than what it could be. Well just because it did that then didn’t make it right then.
All fans have to endure and support their team through hard times for sure but I don’t believe fans have to put up in silence with 8 years of self-created under-performance due to lack of effort and ambition from within the club .
The club I love at its best is full of driven men, giving everything in the pursuit of victory. People who run the club, manage the team and play on the pitch have to hold this dear or they are not true to the heritage of the club and the great managers and players that went before.
Personally, as a true fan who wants Arsenal to be the best it can be, I think its my duty to point out to the club when key individuals are not of that mentality and especially if those traits have lasted eight fruitless years.
Not all who criticize the club do it mindlessly or recklessly. With a positive predisposition towards what the club does, Untold Arsenal is a breath of much needed fresh air in the bloggersphere. I read it to keep a balance. But please, on behalf of those fans who feel that striving for success is a defining Arsenal value deep in its DNA, allow them to voice their justified worries that the club has somehow altered the code.
@fishpie,
Couldnt have said it any better. I only disagree with the part wher u said untold was a needed breadth of fresh air. Other than that, absolutely spot on.