I'd say Wilshere and Jenkinson are 2 Arsenal players you can bond with, you can see that they're Arsenal through and through, even Vermaelen and Mertesacker are players that are very committed, especially Merte, who always comes to applaud the fans after each game, win, lose, or draw.
Arsenal87 you are capable of turning anything that is supposed to be positive into more negativity, thus i shall not bother with you It must be depressing to be so negative all the time.
I soundly refuted you, you said it's rubbish to say Arsenal go around saying 4th place is like a trophy, and I gave the actual quotes where Wenger called it a trophy. So who's talking rubbish? Answer: YOU. As for your 'positivity', that propaganda you put out there is the same RUBBISH we have been being fed for several years, so those silly points ring very very hollow now, to a lot of fans. . What's depressing is Arsenal Football Club, and the nonsense that is parroted by AFC about our depressing situation, trying to put a positive spin to it. Arsenal Football Club should change their name actually, to Arsenal Feeder Club, and Arsenal Business Club, because that's all we are, sell our best players, to balance the books for our financial situation, , that's the reality of AFC and all we as fans have to look forward to.
What you did Arsenal87 and what lots of people who are incapable of holding a decent debate do, is to take a single line from my post and reply to that as opposed to taking into consideration the entire post. You chose to take the last line of my post which was the only point where i actually said Arsenal as a club don't see it as a trophy. So you ignored the post full of valid points and well thought out reasoning and chose to attack what you deemed the weakest spot in my reply to you. You then give a load of quotes where Wenger uses the word trophy to describe top 4 and think that completely undoes my post, which if you read it, clearly doesn't. Since i have bothered to reply i may as well answer the single point you did reply to. I think if you take Wengers words literally then your a very pedantic person. The quotes are very clearly Wenger trying to reiterate the importance of CL qualification. To get people to stop just worrying about no trophies and realise what else is going on at the club and just how important CL qualification is to us. He is not literally saying it s a trophy and i'm also sure he would get more excited by silverware. Also, what was not positive about my reply to you? I was pointing out that i actually think that our top 4 position is something to be proud of as opposed to something to moan at teh club about. Some tiems critisism is needed and at other times credit is due. Keepign us in the top 4 for 16 years deserves credit, not critisism,.
Well sorry, unlike you, I currently don't think that fighting for top 4 position is something to be proud of, it's only the bare minimum, and something we've recently been having to scrap for, and I take ZERO pride in that. Something I'd much prefer to take pride in, is actually seeing progress, rather than regress. Something I'd prefer to take pride in is having a quality team that's capable of wining things, and that's also capable of challenging for top honours, something Arsenal are not, and fighting for 4th spot as a consolation to that is something I have no pride or satisfaction in. Manunited have been in the top 4 for 16 years as well, and not only have they been in the top 4 for 16 years, during that period, they've regularly been winning things, and challenging for honours, THAT'S something to take pride in, you don't hear SAF going on about oh hey look how great we are that we've been a top 4 club for 16 years, they have a goal, to become the most dominant and successful club in English history, that's something to take pride in. As for Arsenal, according to you, our pride should simply be on being a top 4 side, that's our aim and holy grail at the moment, LOL, yeah, REALLY REALLY PRIDEFUL EH. Forget about challenging, forget about trophies, forget about having a high ambition to the best, nahhhhhh, let's just settle for 4th spot, fighting the likes of Spuds, Everton, West Brom, and Newcastle.
Your just going off on one, read through what i've written. At no point do i say forget about winning trophies or having ambition. I infact have said that CL is the minimum. The club have basically said CL is the minimum. We are all agreed on that. We are also agreed that we need to move forward and try to win something. It's just that i recognise how important CL qualification is to the long term success of the club and appreciate the fact that every year we get to compete at the top level of competition, sometimes we have fallen well short and other times we have gone very close, but not many clubs have had the luxury of being at that level for the period of time we have. And we also hold the record for consecutive times out of the group stages so have more consistently been able to watch knock-out CL games with our team than any other club. This is because of Wenger and also the importance the club have put on CL qualification. I want us to be winning things, i want us to be moving forward as a team and so does everyone affiliated with the club but the base for that success and progress lies with maintaining our top 4 spot. And to be honest up until the transfer window where we lost Fabregas/Nasri/Clichy i think we had on several occasions been close to winning trophies, we continued to play very attractive football and we where always genuinely in with a chance at the title as well as other siverware. We have seen some very good non-winning Arsenal teams since our last trophy. Last season we where not quite there with our style of play and it's the first time we have not been in the title race at any point in a season since we've had Wenger. That is easily forgiven under the circumstances and ultimately we finished 3rd and had some really good moments including the return of Henry. This season we have had another slow start but ultimately it's far too early to see if this current team will do us proud. We are still in the League Cup as one of two favourites and are still in all other competitions. If you look at the fixtures of ourselves and other teams around us in the league all of theeams above us are likely to drop points over the next handful of games and we play both Everton and Tottenham in that time, we could easily be back in the top 4 and closing the gap on the top 3 befoe Christmas - like i said it's early enough for plenty to change.
For Arsenal fans talking about how important the CL is: Important for who? The CL money obviously isn't getting invested in the playing squad as you make a proift almost every window. And it isn't being used to lower your ticket prices. So is it important for the club or is it important for the money men behind the club who don't give two ****s sbout Arsenal?
@Lucaaaas Go back and read through some of my posts on this thread, or browse about some info on Arsenal. It is important from a financial point of view of course, the clubs financial model is built around the income from being in the CL. Arsenal have a large amount of cash in reserves and should we not qualify for the CL it comes out of that reserve. If that reserve is lowered we will tighten even further the money we spend on transfers and wages. Qualifying for the CL helps us to continue to flourish on the monetary side of things which is important to ensure both stability, future investment and a healthy position come FFP regulations being implimented. It is also important from a footballing perspective. Being in the CL allows us to target a higher quality of player and thus maintain our lead over clubs like Tottenham, Liverpool, Everton, Newcastle etc... It helps keep us in the bracket above them and if we want to be competing with the top clubs it is very important we still have the attraction of CL football. Another footballing reason it is good is the fact we get to watch our team every season playing in europes top competition, we get to see our team playing against some of the best teams in the world every year and fans of other clubs would love to have that. We have got through the group stages more consistently than any other team (currently holding the record for any club in europe for consecutively getting to the knock out stages) and so we get the excitement of the competition every year. Sometimes we have fallen well short and yet on other occasions narrowly missed out on the trophy. Hope that clears up that it is important to the board, players and fans for both financial and footballing reason. So no, qualifying for the CL is not just about making money for the board. It benefits everyone who is part of the club.
Your philosophy of being happy with just participating in the CL is strange for a supporter of a club that's seen his team qualify for the competition on a yearly basis, surely you would want to actually win it?, your answer will obviously be yes of course you want your club to win it but where are the marquee signings to make it happen?, Arsenal have the money and the bait of the CL to entice top players to the Emirates but AW seems to think the annual top 4 'trophy' is acceptable to the Arsenal faithful. The OP slated us and placed us alongside Leedsin his attempt to highlight what could possibly happen to Arsenal, but looking at the LFC/AFC situations individually you'll see that during the last 3 seasons we've been a week from going into administration, endured having two conmen saddling our club with massive debt, change of owners, 4 different managers, overspending on players and wages etc etc. Arsenal by contrast have been consistantly in the top 4, had an almost 60k average home attendance, been almost debt free, a manager with money to spend if and when required. While excuses can be made for our demise there can be no excuses for Arsenal should it happen, ok Fabregas, Nasri and RVP have gone but your manager is at fault for trying to replace them on the cheap. In fact your manager is your problem, he done brilliantly when he first arrived but of late hes gone stale but he knows he has a free reign at Arsenal due to his cosy relationship with your owners.
Haven't read the first four pages but surely part of being a supporter by definition is to support the club through bad times as well as good. No sense really If everything is always going well. I don't go to games as frequently as I used to but that's because of other reasons. I would love to support the team through bad times if others aren't interested!
A very good comparison IMO. Two once major English clubs, one now struggling to finish in the top half of the top and the other who has spent some time in the 3rd Tier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doing_a_Leeds
I think what Arsenal87 is trying to say is that although the Champions league is the bare minimum that must be achieved (which the board themselves have stated), Arsene (let it be known right now that I'm a firm supporter of him) consistently rolls out the line that our failure to win a proper trophy is excusable by the fact that we achieved CL qualification, and the fact of the matter is that a club like Arsenal, which charges the prices that it does, should not be merely reaching the bare minimum for 7 consecutive years (at the end of the day, runner up medals don't count) I'm not saying I agree with this viewpoint, for me, if the team tried hard every game I'd be happy, but I can understand where he's coming from
No offense, but when even the fans start talking about financial points of view and financial models, I start to wonder what football has become..
Arsenal should hire you for PR, once again, in the midst of your propaganda, you try to hoodwink fans when you write: "Sometimes we have fallen well short and yet on other occasions narrowly missed out on the trophy." So you write occasionS, plural, when in reality, we only narrowly missed out on the trophy ONCE in 2006, when we lost late in the final, other than that, we have never narrowly missed the trophy but were well beaten away from it, I mean seriously, do you just make things up as you go along to try and make yourself feel better?
Call me old fashioned, but being a supporter means supporting your club through the ups and downs. It's when things aren't all rosy that our players need our support the most. Not turning our backs on them. As far as I'm concerned, the OP and anybody who wants to desert the team just because we're not winning can go and do one. Hopefully they don't renew their season ticket and somebody who actually wants to go and support the team can have it instead
I've just read the article again and I'm horrified that somebody who used to go to Highbury in the 8O's - as I did, would consider turning their back on the club. If it were one of the Johnny come lately's who only started supporting us because Thierry Henry played for us, then I might see why they would think like that - although I wouldn't agree with it. But for anybody who stood on the North Bank or Clock End and sang and celebrated with their fellow Gooners it's unforgivable. Perhaps he's forgotten how rubbish we were at times, how we nearly got relegated in the early 8O's, how we had to watch players like Gus Ceaser and Igor Stepanovs and STILL cheered them on. If he thinks we're bad now, then I think he's got it totally out of perspective. He's right that the atmosphere at Emirates can be staid at times, but that for me comes down to the fact that some people want to moan and whinge rather than try and get behind the players. Some people feel that they should be entertained before they start to cheer and sing, they've paid x amount for their ticket and they're not going to cheer until they've got their money's worth For me it's the other way around, I think fans should be getting behind the team and trying to help the players, give them confidence and show them that we're urging them on. Ultimately it's probably a good thing that people like him aren't going to the games, like I said hopefully he won't renew his ST and then somebody who does want to get behind the team and support the lads can go instead. Some of these whingers need to realise that it's THEM who are creating the crap atmosphere that they are moaning about.
To be honest I'm just living game to game these days. I can enjoy winning games and celebrating goals without thinking of long term success, I think with the current regime at the club,this is the best attitude to have
