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RVP – Guard of Honour?

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Apr 252013

On May 6^th 1991, Arsenal secured their second league title in two years. Our opposition that day was Manchester United, who finished 25 points behind Arsenal that season, and who, grudgingly I’m sure, provided a guard of honour. Arsenal went on to beat the northerners 3-1. In actual fact, nine days after providing the guard of honour at Highbury, Manchester United beat Barcelona to win the Cup Winners Cup.

So surely there is a bigger question about Arsenal providing a guard of honour for the league winners? I think the question that needs to be asked is why Arsenal’s next game is the first of three desperate battles to get sufficient points to finish 3^rd or 4^th in a league we used to win regularly. If we were preparing for a semi final in the Champions League or looking forward to appearing in an FA Cup Final, would be as bothered about Robin Van Persie smirking his way through two lines of his ex-colleagues?

I don’t like Van Persie, he lacks something in my book. I remember him addressing the manager as “Wenger” when he’d been at the club for ten minutes and when he was unveiled to the Highbury crowd, he was wearing the same stupid trousers as the bass player from Iron Maiden; there were also those unfortunate allegations in Holland and he missed huge chunks of successive seasons. Did he owe Arsenal a greater degree of loyalty? Too flipping right he did!

However, last season his goals were the most significant contributory factor that enabled us to qualify for the Champions League. No Champions League, probably no Santi Cazorla and for those of you who still think Walcott is a footballer, no contract extension for young Theo either. But let’s be frank, if you are a highly skilled professional in your own field and someone offers you the chance of significant advancement and triple the salary and critically, your current employer has been in the wilderness for a few years, what would you do? Van Persie’s “crime” was to run the clock down in the same way Nasri did, but doesn’t the club have a case to answer here, by not negotiating earlier?

Van Persie underlines the fundamental difference between Arsenal and Manchester United. They are the type of club that spends £24 million on a 29 year old with dodgy knees, but we are the type of club that sells him. Over the last eight years we have sold Vieira, Henry, Adebayor, Nasri, Fabregas and RVP for a profit of £106 million (the basic difference between purchase and sale price). Good business, but how much did your season ticket cost in 2005 and what does it cost now? Do we really look like challenging for silverware?

These are better questions than whether or not we should give them a guard of honour. If you can’t make it to the game on Sunday and you’re stood next to a group of glory hunters at the pub, just remind them Arsenal always do the right thing, because our club has genuine class, if you are there, polite applause or stay on the concourses until the first whistle and then give the greedy opportunist turncoat hell.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to follow me on twitter @CMJIanB

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Nov 302012

Many years ago my friends and I were standing in a hallway at work, chatting about weekend results when a guy barged past us, bumped into us and caused a minor coffee spill. The guy kept walking. ‘Jerk’ was the immediate response, followed by ‘well, look at his jacket – what do you expect?’ He was wearing a Manchester United top.

One of my friends who only has a passing interest in football took offence at this characterisation of someone we had never met. My Arsenal supporting friend said, ‘well, if you saw someone wearing a t shirt with a swastika you wouldn’t need much more to know what they are like would you?’. Harsh? Of course. But it got me thinking about whether it’s fair to characterise people based on the football club they support. Firstly, I know it’s not. One of my best friends supports Manchester United -although our friendship is partially sustained by an unspoken agreement that we never discuss football. I was visiting her in London last year and the game at Old Trafford was going on as I was making my way to the airport. She didn’t say a word and supplied me with double vodkas. I will always be grateful for that.

Some other Manchester United fans I know are less decent – my uncle for one. He gloats when they win, and if they lose, there is no pleasure winding him up because he will stick the knife into his own team worse than any rival fan. My mother’s saying for this is ‘they eat their young’. My cousin ‘supports’ United in the text book ‘glory hunting’ way. He’s got a Barcelona shirt to break out for spare occasions. I know there are plenty Arsenal fans (and fans of many other clubs) who behave in the exact same way, but I do (naturally) have bias towards the Gooners.

One of my favourite Arsenal supporting friends is laid back, witty, and the best person you could imagine to watch a game with. I remember watching United tear a weakened Arsenal team apart (we hadn’t strengthened but Arsene had reassured us there was great spirit in the squad). The game was punctuated by shouts at Nasri, a la Star wars to ‘USE YOUR TEAM SPIRIT!’ If you don’t laugh you cry etc. Another Arsenal supporting friend is more like me, the type of fan who, if we are three goals up with five minutes to go could easily conceive of us conceding four.
With twitter, I have access to a much wider variety of Arsenal fan. And for the last few weeks I’ve been considering unfollowing all but about three of them. This isn’t a fingers in the ears reaction to poor performances– it’s more utter disappointment that so many fans of our club seem to have turned on one another, the manager, and most sickeningly, some of the players – the 21 year old Aaron Ramsey for one.
I will always support Arsene Wenger, because I believe he has earned it. That’s my stance – I don’t expect everyone to share it. I have a realistic sense of his faults, but I honestly believe that we would be in a much, much worse state without him. I also know that if he left most of the top clubs in Europe would want him, and it upsets me to see rival fans laughing at Arsenal fans questioning one of the greatest managers of the modern era. Does anyone seriously think he was happy to sell Van Persie to United? If it was me I’d have sat him on the bench for the year. But then he’d have just gone for free and we’d have been worse off financially. And does anyone think he’s happy looking for players between 8-10 million when our rivals are routinely paying upwards of 20? I don’t think that fans should blindly and unquestioningly support teams, regardless of results. And I don’t like that it’s ‘good enough’ to finish in third or fourth place, but I do understand it.

But there’s a reason Arsene Wenger is still in his job. There’s a reason he is asking us to trust that he is planning for the long term. And yes, I worry that we’ll get left behind while we are waiting. And I worry that players will feel they can’t wait either. But I honestly don’t see the point of fans turning on each other, turning on him, and turning on the club. I don’t know where Arsenal will be five years from now. I know I’ll be supporting them wherever they are. I just hope we aren’t in a situation where we have to accept that we never realised how good we had it under Arsene Wenger.

By Mary O’Connel