Looking back and looking forward, our job as fans is to tell the right story of OUR club.
A modern mega football club such as Arsenal is so much more than just a squad of players, it is a vast infrastructure of elements, a plethora of teams of people working within the organisation as well as those working outside and in relation to it, PLUS millions of fans all over the world. Evidently, for all to be in good order then the players must do their job – play football well.
And then everyone else employed by the club from top to bottom must also do their jobs. Well, we too as fans have an obligation to do our job properly – when led by the performances of our team last season, we showed just how good we can be as supporters in our stadium.
Being a fan, however, is not just shouting and singing on matchday, it is also about the way you feel and talk about your football club on a daily basis. We all contribute to the collective atmosphere and psychology surrounding the club we support. The quality of the football played dictates much about the state of things, but the whole feeling surrounding the club is in large part OUR responsibility.
For some years now there has been a mismatch between the expectation that our team compete for all the top trophies available and the reality of under par performances and a lack of clear direction. Uncertainty has hurt the team and the atmosphere at the Emirates has suffered too – until very recently few fans would argue that the eleven men on the pitch were up to the standards expected, but the crucial “twelfth man” that some clubs benefit from, no matter what the circumstances, was also missing.
We needed to be convinced and my goodness did our boys convince us, producing thrilling performances on a regular basis. The Emirates woke up, stood up and roared as one. The giant that has been sleeping since the move from Highbury back in 2006 has finally reared its fearsome head. Our job as fans is to make sure that this state of affairs continues, that the excellent positive atmosphere surrounding our massive club persists from now and on into the distant future.
For this to happen, every little helps – everyone must chip in. As such, those of us who pretend to be writers on the subject of Arsenal must also attempt to do what we do best – write well. For writers, words should matter. They do matter. We need to find the right words to understand and put into context what we have just lived through, and it is important that we do it well so that we know how to then interpret what will come next season.
Concerning our experience of the season just gone by – any Arsenal fan could not help but feel disappointed at the finale. Our team led the league for the great majority of the campaign only to be overtaken at the end as they ran out of steam. Some fans went as far as accusing the manager and players of “bottling it”, of not having the nerve to get over the line and hold off the challenge from Man City.
Others still went even further, claiming that such a collapse was indicative of an inevitable flaw in head coach Arteta’s character, and that we would not be able to take the next necessary steps to becoming a successful club in this new era under his leadership. While those fans that remained on a more positive bent wished to lay emphasis on the excellent and unexpected progress of the team, not one could honestly say they did not feel a little let down by the manner in which the scintillating football our lads were playing fizzled out into a series of scrappy performances, watched more with hope than confidence that we would get a result.
Whatever one’s position, it has become all too easily acceptable for Arsenal fans to describe 22/23 as a “disappointing season”. This appears to me as a bad case of idle talk, of writer’s and fan’s laziness but also lack of perspective. The season was far from disappointing, it was absolutely thrilling, but didn’t end how we would have hoped given the standards set in the first half of the campaign. To get a clearer perspective and avoid such misguided talk, we need to understand what the sentiments and forces are behind such utterances. That is why I don’t think the worst accusations should be fully accepted nor entirely rejected, but thoughtfully analysed.
Did we “bottle it”? Various factors played into our team losing momentum towards the final crucial stages: fatigue, most likely, yes; injuries, certainly; lack of squad depth, true, mentality, yes, that too. However one wants to describe it, we were mentally lacking (players and fans) when it came to jumping the final hurdle and we must find the necessary solutions to ensure that it does not happen again.
Anyone who knows anything about sport knows that physical attributes will only get you so far and that one requires, in addition, great reserves of mental strength to succeed at the highest level. In individual sports that is difficult enough, you need to work terribly hard to be the best in body and mind. In team sports, however, it is an entirely different phenomenon for there is a whole complex group psychology that must be taken care of. As a leader, setting out to define the mentality of the group and uphold morale, requires energy, intelligence, invention, tenacity, charisma, discipline, determination, a fine understanding of each player’s mental state, and a great many other traits only those that have taken teams to great heights will fully understand.
Though I have some familiarity with top-level sportsmen, I cannot claim to know the intricacies of what goes on at the highest levels of competition. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that Mikel Arteta does have what it takes to take his team to that rarefied strata.
Despite the criticism of many, Arteta has found the way to impose himself on this team and has given it, through his signings and his work day in day out, a distinct sense of character and cohesion. Even the harshest critics would be hard-pressed to deny that this current group has now a togetherness and group solidarity the likes of which few other teams can boast. This new forged steel character of the team surprised us and everyone else, and is strong evidence that all the right work has gone on behind the scene to make sure the players are at the best they can be mentally.
Nevertheless, when push came to shove there was still that certain ineffable something that was lacking. The very best champions and winning teams have that certain “je ne sais quoi” that means that they can see out games all the way until the end, even under the extreme pressure at toward the close of the season because they have the one thing that you cannot buy – belief. To believe that you are the best, that you can win, or even that you should or must win is the end result of a lot of hard work.
Back at the end of our time at Highbury we had that belief and we had the team to go with it, now it looks like we are well on our way to having the team and the belief is very almost there too.
The end of last season felt almost like those moments in a cartoon where the character runs off the edge of a cliff and keeps going, running on thin air until the moment when they finally look down and realise that there is nothing beneath them. So long as they believe they are still running on solid ground they keep going, it is only when they see nothing but thin air below that they lose faith and plummet to the ground. To continue the metaphor, we collectively as The Arsenal must no longer look down, fearing the fall, but rather get accustomed to flying. We are destined to fly like a mighty cannonball obliterating all opponents on the way.
The move to the Emirates all those years ago was designed to allow us to compete in the new era of mega clubs, now is the time when all the sweat, tears, disappointment and hardship finally pay off.
Arsenal fans, we are the key to making sure that our club gets back to the status it historically merits in this new era. Don’t talk about disappointment or get downtrodden for long, banish all talk of unavoidable “bottling” and failure -that is not our destiny!
Get behind the team and cheer, scream, sing and roar them on to INEVITABLE GREATNESS!!!!
Yours,
Mr. Munday
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