In the eternal struggle of man versus club..over to you Stan
Choke on your caviar
By Celine Dion
August 3 2011
First of all I make no apology for previewing the season a week before the first Premier League fixture, because the season started last Sunday when the crescendo of booing broke out at the end of the Red Bulls game. Never has there been such an outpouring of debate and soul searching about a mild crescendo of dissatisfaction at the end of an irrelevant pre-season game.
I believe that this little event tells us all we need to know about this season, this season is about the fans, and their relationship with the club. The paying fans, largely. Battle lines were drawn up at the end of last season, in the run up to the Villa game. The battleground is a three way confrontation between the dissatisfied, the satisfied, and the club itself. The Villa game was the day the Emperors’ new clothes finally fell off, and by my estimation about 30,000 punters finally accepted that they could see the Emperor standing naked. The club has had three months to put them back on again, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t done it.
That failure to obtain new clothes for the emperor has seen war break out. The causes and effects can be debated endlessly and without resolution, they can no longer be done in an article. I have watched Tweeters and bloggers and forum contributors and even fairly established journalists scrape around to get a perspective on the situation at Arsenal FC, and to my mind none have satisfactorily achieved it.
Because the time has come to finally admit, that nobody knows what the current custodians of the clubs wish to accomplish, and how they hope to do it. We live in an era of politics, economics, spin and counter spin, smoke and mirrors, and sadly that has extended to our favourite football team.
Wars are fought when diplomacy fails, and diplomacy has failed on all sides. The agitators, some who have been bankrolling Arsenal since the 1960s, are pompously told that their role, as privileged spectators, is to ‘support the club, nothing more’. Those desperately protecting the status quo, are dismissed as ‘AKBs’, or worse. For the clubs part, any kind of diplomacy or even public statement is peculiarly absent. An absent chairman, an absent captain, and for now, an absence of significant transfers.
We live in an era of collapsing businesses, collapsing governments, and collapsing economies. To this end, the club has made a miscalculation in my opinion. When the local supermarket monopolises all the other competitive local businesses and cranks up the price of cashew nuts, I have no option but to purchase the nuts, or shuffle silently, and nut-less, out of the supermarket.
When my employer marginalises the workforce with tight contracts and erosion of our employment rights, I have little choice but to shuffle into work and continue in my role. But football is still one of the only remaining environments where, if I feel that the all-encompassing super-corporate monolith is betraying me, I can drink a load of beer and do and say something about it.
Frankly, I don’t give a monkeys if it upsets little Jack Wilshere or poor old Benik Afobe. This isn’t about them, and anyway, they’re getting thirty grand a week to make them feel better about it. Wrongly or rightly, people aren’t happy about the spin, the captain on strike, the 6.5% price increase, the twenty pound they bunged onto the silver membership, the year upon year of unfulfilled promises about ‘money in the bank’ , the pointless kit reissues, the pathetic collapses against Spurs, Stoke, and Birmingham City. In the 1970s, if people felt angry about something, they used to spill onto the pitch and dismantle the goalposts. But today, in our sanitised society, a mild grumble meets with a torrent of self righteous internet abuse.
I can hear and predict the outraged responses here and now; ‘Your job is to support’, ‘you’re spoiled’ and of course the old chestnut ‘If you don’t like it, don’t go’
Oh, no my friends, we are very much going to carry on going. We were here before the £60 seats and these preened superstars getting twice my yearly salary every week who can’t even be bothered to come over and clap the away support after they’ve spent eight hours travelling up to Sunderland.
We are going to do what we fe*king like, booing, chanting, standing on our heads. In the same way that the anti-capitalist demonstrations in Central London blossom into absurdity because they are not given the vehicle for proper debate. In the same way that I know I’ve been had when I buy a box of strawberries with all the rotten ones hidden at the bottom, I know I’ve been had when I’ve paid £60 to watch Squillaci struggling like headless chicken against Rafael Van Der Vaart.
That’s my view and that of, day upon day, a growing number amounting to thousands of people. Take it or leave it. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. And when the clubs product feels ‘honest ‘ again, I am sure we will get back into our little boxes. Perhaps you should be grateful. Because when the Arsenal are great again, and other fans stop taking the urine out of us (and mark my words, they ARE taking the urine out of us), it will have had a lot more to do with days like the Villa home game, than convoluted and ill-informed economic arguments and pointless pro-club platitudes written in internet forums.
Over to you, Stan.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:08:13:09:11:22 by Padre Pio.
or if everyone doesnt turn up to watch liverpool and go on strike outside the ground while the game goes on!!!
also i asked this earlier in the week on a similar thread, yourself and padre and others who are season ticket holders all stated that you and/or any other season ticket holder you know would not be at the emirates cup, in fact would not touch it with a barge pole, and the tv pics clearly showed there was an abundance of younger fans, maybe even the kipling cake eating day trippers, so as these are not being fleeced for season tickets then surely they did not boo over this, maybe they have more unity with those that are being fleeced, but I doubt it, also if its about ticket prices and lack of transfer incomings, why not the "spend some fecking money chant", booing highlighted nothing of the sort.
and on the same theme if they are so annoyed at the price of tickets, why go to an extra game that as you say was only an "irrelevant pre-seaon game"
They also failed to convince fans that squad had improved.
Celine is right we will have to make ourselves heard to get this lot to shift
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
And so what if the johnny come latelys and kipling munchers felt unimpressed by the Carlos Velas and Tomas Rosickys running round in circles in an unsuccesful attempt to break down an American league side. Shows that the movement of dissatisfaction is increasingly universal and that there is no hiding place for the complacent board.
one organised boycott - even one third of the fans - of one game, would achieve more than boos at each and every game
this is about the reawakening of the fan voice. If we dont like what we see, we will say so. If we do, we will say so. this is about the breaking free from the corporate-sponsored veil of self-congratulation that has hampered the club for the last 5 years.
That is the way football has always been , and should continue to be.
if they werent actual lies, they might as well have been, because the end result is the same.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
I understand every sensible business person is in it for the profits and the way premier league ownership was going. However it can be little wonder if match-goers are venting their anger at every opportunity when their status as suppoters has been whittled away to that of consumers of a continually inferior product.
But its a very unusual business where supporters stump up for a poor product and to be insulted by the owner.
Now that doesnt work in the world of business does it?
Take Ratners (Jewellers) a poor product that was overpriced. The owner took the pi$$ out of his customers and went bankrupt overnight.
Hill Wood does the same to us and still we pay? Why because we dont believe its a business - which is lucku for him. Now if we saw reality and treated it just like a business it would be bad news for PHW.
So those AKBs who tell us that we should realise it is a business better be careful - because once fans wise up clubs could start collapsing.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Quote:hmmm..good read..booing..no no..
Quote:Re: In the eternal struggle of man versus club..over to you Stan new
Posted by: celine dion (IP Logged)
Date: 03/08/2011 15:51
i dont boo either as it goes. But my point is, its football, you can do what you like. The board certainly do.
Mine was a sarcastic post..definitely I'm not among one of the guys who would like to see a football match in Wimbledon spirit..so to me there isn't any issue with booing..probably that's the most gentle way to show your dissatisfaction be it to players or to club.
I don't really care what you say after your despicable comment on Amy Winehouse's demise. I notice you weren't so vocal on that subject after many were outraged.
Why do you believe everything AFC come out with? Do you ever consider they're full of sh*t? Or do you believe everything they spout?
You seem to think that if anyone abuses the sainted board or Wenger they are naive, it won't change anything. Perhaps you're the naive one. Perhaps the club has plenty of money but they don't like to spend it. That might be the truth. Or can't you entertain that possibility?
on the subject of this thread, and my post on it, I have critised the board and wenger many times, but as some have decided I am an AKB, then they ignore this fact. My post merely pointed out that fans ignored or misunderstood the whole "building the stadium so we can compete" thing, and some are so far up their own asses with their complaining and moaning that they continue to ignore the facts about it and the actual statements made by the board and its memebers on the subject and come out with the sort of drivel you just have at anyone who trys to inform them of their misguided understanding of such.
And yes hippo I think the club now has a good deal of money and have stated this time and again this summer, and also have said if its not spent then heads should roll, be it wenger or gazidis or both, and even stan, but don't let the fact that I have stated this many times alter your view that I'm an AKB etc, as it might confuse you more.
And yes I did criticize others about there attitude to the Winehouse affair. They decided to defend their viewpoint and all credit to them for doing so. Still find their stance inhuman and ill-informed.
As for the club having money, you seem to agree with me so I'm not really sure why you're so incensed.
And did I ever claim that building the stadium was not necessary to compete? Read my post properly and you'll see it was never mentioned. Obviously reading a post confuses you.
I have become wary with the regime and particularly the manager,I am dissatisfied and will say so you dont like that Im sorry,as I say I applaud your optimism.
I am not happy with the state of things at Arsenal presently either but the confidence is so fragile and they don't need this sort of@#$%&when they play the Italians at home in the first leg.
I don't want to watch us in The Uefa vase this season so would you all shut the feck up for one game at least unless you are getting behind Arsenal.