by Unknown
So, does this signal a lack of ambition? Nasri has not been backwards in stating that this is so, criticising the board – not Wenger though – for failing to back the manager in the transfer market. With any media interview caution must be applied but if players believe the club lacks ambition, surely there is something in what Nasri says? Again context comes into play. The Frenchman’s last days at the club were rife with acrimony; many supporters maligned him as treacherous and greedy. Nasri hit back at his critics, feeding prejudices, while trying to portray himself in a more favourable light.
Losing key players, no matter the reason, suggests the club are not achieving their targets. Were Arsenal Champions of England, or Europe, on a regular basis, would Fabregas have been so eager to leave? It’s hard to prove but had Arsenal achieved silverware in the previous seasons it would certainly have made his decision more difficult. And therein lies the crux of the matter. For all of these reasons Arsenal can be considered a big club, a crucial one contradicts the argument: trophies; or to be more precise, the lack of them in recent seasons. Since winning the FA Cup in 2005, Arsenal lost in the Champions League final as well as two Carling Cup finals. Defeats have also come at the semi-final stage of the Champions League and both domestic cups. Always the bridesmaid: never the bride.
Does this matter in the context of Arsenal and the modern game? It does, simply because of the vicious circle that exists at the top level of professional football. To attract the best players, you must win silverware. If you don’t, the best players will be reluctant to join. It highlights the vacuous nature of many footballers that they leave clubs bemoaning the lack of silverware without the slightest hint of taking personal responsibility for their part in that failure. Arsenal remains one of the game’s biggest clubs but it is a position increasingly under threat. No matter what the finances might say, it is honours that matter more. There is little point in being rich and mediocre. The club’s challenge over the coming years will be building a winning squad, one that can compete with wealthier clubs on a regular basis, and one that can sustain its place amongst football’s elite.
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Stuart Stratford is the author of Arsenal blog, A Cultured Left Foot
15 – WEMBLEY. BASTARD WEMBLEY - Tim Clark
Wembley. Bastard Wembley. For some, it must be a Champagne-splashed coliseum of pleasure, forever ringing to the sound of ‘Campeones!’, fireworks, and Laura Wright lustily belting out the National Anthem. Not for me. For me it’s the kind of shithole that gives shitholes a bad name: an ugly, rain-blasted concrete mausoleum. It is the place where my Carling Cup dream crawled to die.
Yes, that’s right: dream.
Okay, look, I know. I really do know. IT WAS ONLY THE BLOODY CARLING CUP. The Mickey Mouse, none-of-the-big-boys-care Cup. Except, the thing was that in 2010-11 we did care. The manager did, ditching his kids-only policy for far stronger sides than he’s selected in previous seasons. And so did the players, desperate to finally see some, dammit, any kind of pot-shaped reward for their efforts. None more so than Cesc Fabregas, who cruelly ended up missing the final with hamstring twang from a (as it eventually transpired, heartbreakingly irrelevant) league game against Stoke’s travelling Orc army.
But perhaps most of all, it had come to mean something to the fans. Largely, what it meant was the chance to reset the miserable stopwatch that hangs around every pundit’s neck, detailing down to the last nanosecond how long it’s been since the Arsenal last won anything. At time of writing: 6 years, 3 months, 18 hours and 31 seconds. Ugh. All of us needed that monkey off our backs. In fact we needed that monkey off our backs and shot into space without so much as a Russian flag to wrap his tiny body in. “Fly, Dimitri, fly!” While I can’t really excuse the hyperbole of saying that winning the Carling was my dream, I can at least try to explain it. You see as a relatively late Arsenal starter, I’d never seen one of our captains lifting a trophy in the flesh. And although technically we were still stuttering along in four competitions at the time, in the wake of the debacle at St James Park, and several other spectacular capitulations, the season was already starting to feel like quite the bum-clencher.
Having limped past such luminaries as Ipswich, Huddersfield and Leeds, I’d come to see the Carling not exactly as a sure thing, but certainly as sure as things ever got. By the time February 27th rolled around, I’d mentally built it up to be some unlikely combination of the Jules Rimet trophy and getting my 500m swimming badge. It was to be the spark from which further glory would surely follow. No longer would our players resemble a small copse of haunted trees before big games. This. Was. It.
Or so we thought. The other half of ‘we’ being Arse2Mouse’s co-blogger Dave Meikleham. At the time, both of us were working in Bath, writing about videogames for pennies, and had bonded over a mutually destructive love of the Arsenal. When the chance to rent a season ticket appeared on the company noticeboard we jumped on it, paying £500 each to split home fixtures stood at the back of the North Bank. On the eve of the season we began our blog, Arse2Mouse.com, partly because having thought up the name it seemed too good to waste, but also to provide a cathartic outlet for what we’d already taken to calling ‘the madness’. Plus, every man needs a hobby, and blogging seems to be the 21st Century equivalent of fannying about in a shed.
If anything, though, Dave had built winning the Carling up to even more preposterous heights than I had. We were both exiles in the West Country, me from London, him from Edinburgh, but money matters had meant he’d decided to move back to Scotland before the end of the season. The final was to be his last match, and in our minds the glorious reward for months spent schlepping up and down to the Emirates. Little did I know at that point that his decision would mean seeing out the end of season Collapseo-rama© on my own, a sequence of games we now refer to simply as ‘the death run’. Emotionally, though, we’d bet everything on seeing Robin – beautiful Robin, who wore the JVC shirt in his bedroom as a boy – lifting a trophy, now matter how clownish.
“We’ve got to get final tickets, ye auld fanny.” This was how Dave invariably spoke to me. Every sentence finished with some flourish of Scotch invective. “Then, when Bowyer nets a last minute winner, we can noose ourselves fram the Wembley arch.” But there was a problem. Thanks to Arsenal’s Byzantine ticket allocation system, even though we’d racked up enough away games to qualify, they weren’t assigned to our borrowed season ticket. And even if they had been, we’d only have been able to get one. Of course we considered burning our meagre savings on a tout. “Frig a dee, hen!” (Dave also favours insults that imply I’m a woman.) “Some lad on Twitter says he paid a scalper £680 for a pair. We cannae afford that.” Hours were wasted on Google Chat, debating what we’d be willing to do to get tickets. Some of which involved unmentionable acts with tramps. “Wid ye let Harry Redknapp watch if it guaranteed we won?” I actually thought about that one. But as the game approached we’d all but resigned ourselves to going to a pub near the ground, when a call to a software contact finally came good. It’s in the game, and so were we. Dave’s reaction was as celebratory as I’d come to expect from him. “Nice work, neebur. We’re definitely noosing ourselves now.”
In the week before the match, whatever fragile confidence we had was washed out to sea by waves of self-inflicted doom. We were our own worst enemies; the low point being an hour spent pinging each other pictures via text of Birmingham players looking happy. Reading those conversations back now, we sound less like nervy fans and more like deranged cellmates. “I’ll be awful company on the day, hen, ye ken that reet?” said Dave, over Google Chat. He even typed in Scottish. “Pure shaking with fear.” And so we were. I think on some level, from almost as soon as I got out of bed on the big day, I knew something was going to go very badly wrong.
Part of the problem was that by this point we’d each come up with a bizarre suite of match-day superstitions. Some were fairly run of the mill: tapping wood after saying anything that might be jinxy about a pla
yer, wearing the same clothes to the game, that sort of thing. Others were weirder. When watching games on TV I’d taken to touching the ceiling whenever we were defending a set piece. I still don’t know why, and clearly it wasn’t very effective. Sandwiches had also become an issue after I’d cooked Dave a BLT at half-time during Braga away, which we went on to lose 2-0. “Nae more jinx sangers ye daftie!” On the morning of the final, my girlfriend, who remains astonishingly tolerant of this sort of bullshit, made us sausage sandwiches. Dave and I eyed them nervously; then dug in. With hindsight, that’s probably when it all started to go south.
From that point on it’s hard to remember a single thing going right. In their infinite idiocy, First Great Western had decided to put on a bus replacement service between Bath and Swindon in both directions. The same bus that habitually got us in at 2.00am on Champions League nights. “Imagine being on the bloody rattlebus back if we havenae won,” muttered Dave, as we filed aboard alongside Gooners young and old. Arsenal were, of course, stick-on favourites, which brought with it its own voodoo kind of pressure. I scanned the other fans’ faces for signs of confidence and didn’t feel especially reassured by what I saw. We knew this: win and we wouldn’t be given any credit. Lose and it’d be broken cannon logos in the papers again. I put my headphones on, hit play on the Arsecast, and wondered whether Gazidis and co had missed a trick in not selling club-branded brown paper bags to breathe into.
By the time we arrived in London it was pissing down. This was immediately identified as another dark omen. “Ye ken our team of dancing peacocks disnae perform well in the rain, fannybaws.” Fraying nerves meant that the mood between Dave and I was unusually tense. We’d already almost fallen out over whether to wear colours – too jinxy, obviously – settling instead on scarves, and whether it was acceptable to place an insurance bet on Birmingham winning. (Him: pro. Me: violently anti.) The air of joylessness was enhanced by my refusal to drink pre-match, on the basis that I just wanted to get to the ground and get on with it, partly because I was worried our tickets weren’t Kosher. They’d arrived as email attachments to be printed out, meaning we were walking up to (what felt like) the biggest game of our lives clutching two sheets of A4 with ‘This is your ticket’ written on them. “We’re never getting in with these fanny tickets, barrygadge.”
Before heading to Wembley we first met up with a half-Brazilian Gooner mate of mine from university, whose relentless positivity – “It’ll be fine! It’s only Birmingham! They’re awful!” – only made us more panicky. Next we stopped to listlessly eat burgers and say hi to TheSquidboyLike, a fellow worrier I’d become friends with through Twitter, but never actually met previously. “This is no time for a man-date, ye fanny.” Secretly, both Dave and I wished we could be with the old boys we’d got to know from the North Bank. Big Chris, Bald Steve and Toothless Dave. They’d all made us incredibly welcome over the course of the season, with their bleak humour and seen-it-all attitude. I felt less inclined to shit the bed with them around, but at that point they were somewhere in a proper boozer with tickets that had holograms on.
But it wasn’t until we actually reached the stadium that the sense of impending doom really kicked in. Following the instructions on the tickets, we found ourselves funnelled up Wembley Way and into a sea of blue shirts. “This disnae feel reet,” whispered Dave. But it was reet. We made our way to the Club Wembley entrance, flashed the homebrew tickets, and to our amazement were ushered inside into Wembley’s yawning, soulless cavern of seemingly unfinished corridors and stairwells. I sat down to watch the remainder of West Ham unbuttoning Liverpool while Dave wandered off to buy two lagers that were as weak as they were expensive.
By the time he made it back I’d seen the team sheet and immediately relayed the bad news. “Whit?!” asked Dave, incredulous. “Knack’s starting?!” That was our name for Tomas Rosicky, on account of his perma-banjaxed hamstrings. Nonetheless, even his presence hadn’t entirely eradicated the flicker of hope we had. The likes of RVP, The Russian and Nasri were also starting, as was ‘saucy’ Jack. Surely we’d have enough. And so we made our way out of the guts of the stadium and into the light.
“Oh my god,” hissed Dave.
“I know,” I replied, scanning the blue and white all around us.
“But we’re...”
“I fucking know, let’s just get to the seats.”
And so we stepped over seemingly endless Brummie legs, nodding and smiling sadly as we went, until we sat down with the enemy on either side. As far as I can tell Club Wembley is unsegregated due to the unlikelihood of anything worse than a few prawn sandwiches being thrown. But although there was the isolated pocket of Arsenal support, our side of Club Level was almost entirely blue-nosed. And the tiers above and below us were, of course, rammed with them. Some stripped to the waist, others bouncing beachballs; all making a right old racket. If we still had any doubts, they were gone now: this was going to be excruciating.
“I cannae dae it,” whined Dave. “Think whit it’ll be like if they score.”
I sat there, eyes fixed forward, silently watching Arsenal’s players warm up in a manner that couldn’t have said ‘casual’ more without smooth jazz being played on Pat Rice’s phone. As it was, we only had to wait 28 minutes to see exactly what a Birmingham goal was like. Always the entertainers, Arsenal had decided to run through a repertoire of the most hilarious moments from their travelling comedy revue. From a corner the ball was headed back into the box where Zigic – who’s more a mobile gallows than an actual footballer – nodded the ball easily over Wojciech Szceszny. Zigic. We’d always said it would be him. Our half of the stadium erupted. Dave looked at me in the way I imagine cows do when they finally realise what they’ve been queuing for. “Plenty of time,” I said, trying to sound reassuring as my stomach dissolved whatever was left of lunch instantly.
“Whit the fuck is wrong with Brum?” asked Dave, a few minutes later. “Why are they trying so hard?” And they were. Playing better than I can ever remember them doing before or after. Working hard all over the pitch, attacking with pace on the wings, limited players raising their game and fighting for each other. Every now and then Brum fans would turn to glance at us and smile. “They’ve been in turbo shat form and now they play like this. It’s a pisstake.”
Meanwhile, Arsenal shuffled and probed in the way we’ve come to know and not entirely love. Despite Birmingham’s efforts, we we’re still the better side, and the breakthrough came just before half-time – a neat, flowing move saw Wilshere crash a shot against the bar. The Russian collected the rebound, jinked his way to the byline and cut a chipped ball back to Robin Van Persie who hammered the volley in. We we’re out of our seats bouncing, hugging. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAB!” shouted Dave. “GET IN!” But when we finally looked back at the pitch we realised another quintessentially Arsenalish moment was occurring. The skipper had hurt himself while scoring.
Half time arrived and we didn’t move. I tried to check Twitter for news of the injury but couldn’t get a signal. When RVP returned it was soon clear he wasn’t quite right. The rest of the game passed in a blur, and although Birmingham seemed to be tiring, as the clock ticked down the realisation grew that one goal for either side would be enough. It came, inevitably, with a minute to go. Djourou missed his header, Koscielny shanked a clearance that should’ve been Szceszny’s to scoop up, and Obafemi Martins, 46-years young, slotted home unchallenged. Cue somersaults on the pitch and bedlam all around us in the stands. It was the apotheosis, the crowning glory, of Arsenalish fuck-ups. Dave was immediately on his feet. “I’m off.” I blocked his path with my leg. “Sit the fuck back down. There’s still injury time.” For a microsecond he cocked his fist back. I looked at him astonished. “You can leave if you want,” I said quietly. “I’m seeing it out.”
In Dave’s defence I should point out this isn’t the first time we’ve almost come to blows. When Sagna scored against Leeds I grabbed him so robustly that I jammed my thumb in his eye, sl
ightly blacking it. In any case he relented and went back to his seat. For what that was worth. In the remaining minutes Martins almost scored again as we we’re caught pressing for an equaliser. The final whistle blew and the Arsenal fans scattered in classic fire drill style. Outside, something strange happened. Obviously we weren’t happy, but neither was the despair quite as deep as expected. In amongst the pain there was a sliver of relief. We lost. It was undoubtedly an embarrassing shambles. And we knew we’d be hearing about it for a while to come. But at least it was over.
“I definitely felt worse after Spurs,” I said, trying to seem chirpy.
“Which one?” replies Dave.
“The 3-2 this year. That was awful. We were 2-0 up and I had to walk right past their fans at the end. Singing. Jesus. That was way worse.”
“Nah, the 4-4 with them in ’08 was the worst. We were two up with two minutes to go! I threw my program onto the pitch and got so drunk on the train I ended up in Cardiff.”
And so it went all the way back to Bath, on the bloody rattlebus from bastard Wembley, swapping calamitous stories, and laughing about how it was only the Carling Cup anyway. The Mickey Mouse, none-of-the-big-boys-care Cup. Plus, we still had the Premier League, FA Cup and, whisper it, even the Champions League to go for. We’d already beaten Barcelona once for Bergkamp’s sake!
Everything was going to be just fine.
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Tim Clark is a professional videogames writer, part-time panicker and founder of Arse2Mouse.com, which is usually written on train journeys back to Bath from his seat in the North lower. Careful when you type the URL.