Week Nine – Stop your pissin’ an’ your dissin’ – you don’t know what you’re missin’
As you read this, I will be busy sunning myself in Lanzarote, most likely with a beer in close vicinity. Due to that fact, and as we have just entered an international break, I’m taking a week off from writing, and there will be no blog from me next week.
I will include the number for The Samaritans at the end of this week’s piece for those of you who may struggle to cope with this news.
Wet, Wet, Wet….
Now the dust has settled after the disastrous 1-1 draw with West Brom, the international break has brought on enough pissing contests to make Twitter smell like a tramps gusset.
There are even pissing contests over the pissing contests, as everyone has to put their tuppence worth in.
There are even people involved in pissing contests they don’t realise they are involved in!
Piss. Everywhere.
Like the annual get together of the Watersports Society.
I wasn’t going to go into it at all, as I honestly didn’t see the point in bringing it into what, once again, is supposed to be a positive piece. (Honestly, this is a positive piece once you wade through all the negativity).
I will sum up my feelings on what I see going on though.
Why not, every other fucker is.
The Circle of Strife
Firstly, I don’t see every single person who criticises anything as in the wrong, far from it. Anyone has the right to criticise, and no player, manager, coach or tea lady is beyond criticism.
(I am starting to feel a bit sorry for old Gladys though, she seems to be brought into everything these days, bless her.)
It is part and parcel of football, always has been.
I recall one bloke sitting in front of me as a kid that had obviously bought a shed load of hookie word of the day bog roll that displayed only the word “disarray” on it.
Some will always want to moan, that’s just the way it is.
Neither do I have a problem with looking for something positive in almost everything, I do it myself all the time, and I have often criticised those who are negative about everything because of this.
However, this is where the waters get a bit muddied. There are people who criticise and complain with the sole intention of stirring up shit, of that I have no doubt. There are then people who go overboard with their sensitivity, jumping on any criticism whatsoever, and end up looking as bad as the other side, simply due to the fact they see it as an attack on the club. I understand this to a degree, and I believe that the way things are now have been largely brought about by the extreme levels of certain people’s negative agendas.
It pains me to see anyone who is genuinely “positive” about the club to be seen in the same light. You can be “positive” and have the clubs best interests at heart without stooping to the levels that some have. Let them get on with it, enjoy the feeling you get from your passion for the club instead. Don’t; give these people, who have spent the last few years doing their best to put everything and anything the club, or manager does, in a bad light any reason to feel superior to you. Don’t end up becoming positively negative.
On the flip side, if you spend day after day looking for anything you can to moan about, then please don’t expect nobody to call you out on it.
And, on the flip side to that (fuck off pedants, this is a three sided coin), let’s accept that people are allowed to change their opinion on things over time, if they hold their hands up to it, then great, we can all move on. (Not you, Piers, you’re just a dick).
I can’t tell you that I haven’t been guilty of this myself, it probably wouldn’t be true, and no doubt someone could dig out a tweet of mine from a year ago to prove that fact.
But hey, I am not saying I got all the answers, I’m just passing time until I get on the plane really…
Then those who moan about people moaning cause people to moan about those who moan about those who are moaning (keep up).
This of course goes on and on and on and on, like looking into a mirror on a wall that is opposite another mirror. (Have you ever done that? It is fucking cool!)
This is what I will from now on be calling The Circle of Strife.
The Lion King would have been a lot less child friendly if it had been set in Twitterland, that’s for sure.
I would love to think one day we might find a happy medium, but that would probably take the Internet to stop working for a couple of months.
If I knew where the Internet was, I would sneak in and take the fuse out of the plug.
Probably not an ideal move for someone who works as a freelance web developer in their spare time though. (Available for work by the way…)
Anyway, fuck all that for now, here we go with the positivity.
I was going to give you re-cap of the season so far, week by week, but it seems a bit early in the season for that, plus it looked a bit shit when I wrote it really.
Instead, I just want to show how much better things are looking since the opening day of the season.
From Aston Villa Buzz Killer to happily beating Napoli
Despite the frustration of the summer I went into the Villa game as optimistic for the season as I have been any other. I can’t do it any other way, personally.
There’s obviously the fact that we are starved of any Arsenal over those long summer months that is the overriding factor in our hunger to just to get the season started.
It’s also a chance to forget about all the trouble and strife of the silly season and concentrate on what happens on the pitch. 90 minutes later and I felt drained, the optimism I was feeling in the build-up to the game, temporarily boosted by Olivier Giroud giving us the lead early in the first half, had drained from me as much as the colour drained from Gareth Bale’s face when he first walked in the Real Madrid dressing room to find walls covered in Mesut Özil posters, a tub of Vaseline and an angry looking Sergio Ramos. My reaction was one of knee-jerk frustration. My patience, which had been tested to the limit over the summer, had seemingly run out. I slumped in my seat as Villa’s third goal went in, and couldn’t escape the feelings of deja vu, that this is going to be a long difficult season. Again.
On the way out of the ground, the mood was so low that I heard someone mention Paolo Di Canio as a viable replacement for Arsene Wenger.
I went to the pub…..
If you are concerned that we “still haven’t played anyone yet”, or are currently developing a complex algorithm to calculate how many points we will finish with, based on the amount of points amassed so far compared to last year, based on opponents played, after the disastrous draw at West Brom, then stop for a minute, take a step back and remember how you felt after the Villa game.
Look at just last week (well a fortnight ago tomorrow once you read this), when the mood hit an all-time high for the season with one of the best performances from Arsenal in a long time with the 2-0 defeat of Napoli at the Emirates.
Let’s try and get a bit of perspective instead, eh?
The 1-1 draw at West Brom, bringing an end to our fantastic winning run since that opening day defeat, to me was a decent point. We didn’t play well and we went a goal behind, and I’m sure I’m not alone on thinking this is a game we may well have lost in the recent past.
If you asked me, after the shattering feeling the Villa game left me with, if I would take us right now being top of the league, top of our Champions League group, with Mesut. Fucking. Özil at the club, I would have bitten your fucking hand off. I would like to think I’m not the only one.
Lastly, a word about the fans…
I talk a lot about what is said on Twitter and what not from day to day, it is sad but true that there are idiots out there, and sometimes that overshadows some of the top, top people we have as Arsenal supporters.
Whatever you read on Twitter or wherever, is in no way representative of what the matchday experience is. After emotions understandably boiled over on the opening day, I think our support has been great. The adversity we faced early on seems to have brought out the best in us on matchdays. We have the best away support in the country as far as I’m concerned, epitomised by the non-stop singing in the rain at Swansea for me. This was matched at the Emirates at the Spurs and Napoli games too. It’s not just supporters who attend games either, not at all. I have spoken to many overseas supporters have an amazing passion for this club. There are also many fans who can’t attend matches for whatever reason that follow matches any way possible. You are not better than anyone else because you go to matches, and the vast majority of people I know who go to matches don’t think that they are.
So, there you have it, I told you this was a positive piece.
- Top of the league.
- Top of our Champions League group.
- Soaked in piss.
Speak to you in a couple of weeks.
Up The Arsenal
Darren Berry
P.S. Jack said something this week as well, not sure what it was though as it hasn’t been reported much, so I haven’t bothered with it…
Islington born and bred, Arsenal through and through.
Published author.
Is Yours Gold? The Arsenal Invincibles Twentieth Anniversary – available now,
Over Land and Sea (and Lockdown), Arsenal 20/21 – The Corona Diaires – released 2021.
Clickbait: Life as a Modern Football Fan – released 2019
No comments yet.