The painful realities of being an Arsenal Football Club Supporter
By: Sherine Abraham
Tags: Arsenal, Football, Fans, Mikel Arteta, Canada

Let me start by giving a little background. I call Canada home and for as long as I have followed football I have been an ardent supporter of the Arsenal football club. It started in the George Graham era when it was the red and white of Arsenal which appealed to me as a kid and then once Arsene Wenger took over, it was the football.

Since 2006 Arsenal has never really competed for the title in the true sense of the word, the 2006 champions league final was as close as we would get to a major trophy. There have been a multitude of FA cups and top four finishes but to say we were the best of the best in English/European football has been a near impossible dream.

It was also the year that the new stadium was completed and there was a considerable amount of debt on the club.

I have always admired Arsene Wenger for what he brought to the game, the way he carried himself and the way he was an ambassador for the club. He had all the values that the club itself embodied, talk to any professional footballer over the generations and there would be unanimity that Arsenal football club are a class act.

Financially the club were prudent and were run very well and again a lot of credit goes to Arsene Wenger for managing that on the footballing front. Fans grumbled as to a lack of investment and in some cases poor signings but that was part of the deal. Emphasis was put on youth which worked out in some cases and in some cases did not.

The biggest change at Arsenal came when the club was sold to American and Russian owners. Stan Kroenke and Family became majority shareholders and Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov was a minority shareholder. If the expectation was that there would be investment from the new owners that was quickly put to bed, the messaging was that Arsenal are run as a self sustainable model and that would not change.

Arsene Wenger was tasked with finding bargain deals and when he did splash the cash on players, in my opinion he over paid, I think part of it stemmed from the fact that the purse strings were so tight for so many years and suddenly when you do get some money you end up spending too much of it on things you do not really need in some cases. In the early years(pre-American/Russian ownership)there was David Dein who would and could convince Wenger if a wrong decision was being made to have a re-think but with Ivan Gazidis( CEO after Dein)that was never the case. Gazidis was happy to pocket his pay cheque and let the decision making be done by Wenger.

All the while the fans suffered, for a club of Arsenal’s stature a top 4 finish was not enough, there were protests and wenger bashing was a constant feature of most online forums. The fans did have a point and maybe Arsene Wenger was under achieving as a football manager, but he was also the lightning rod for the club, most fan unrest was directed at him while the owners and Gazidis took a back seat.

I think Arsene Wenger should have walked away in 2014 but that was not to be and when it finally came, it came in 2018. 4 years too late but to the large fan base who were calling for his head it was vindication.

The club’s PR Machinery got going and the spin was that it would be the dawn of a new ERA.

What came next is what made me write this post. I am not a writer or a columnist as it should have been evident from what you have read so far but when things get as bad as they are right now even the anonymous fans need to express themselves and hence the post.

2018 started off with Unai Emery in charge, Ivan Gazidis the principal architect of bringing in Unai Emery promptly left leaving Raul S. and Vinai V. in charge, one a black book agent friendly wheeler dealer and another an accountant.

2018 was an indifferent season with Arsenal finishing 5th and reaching the Europa league final, but things went from bad to worse under Unai Emery and he was sacked come the winter of 2019. The fan base was not happy with what they saw, the owners and the executives finally made the decision and in came Mikel Arteta.

A young dynamic coach who had worked under the tutelage of the great Pep Guardiola himself. A lot of the fans were excited, maybe 2018 was a false dawn, this was the real deal they said. I was one of those.

And Arteta delivered, an FA cup and a shield in the first season in charge is nothing short of exceptional. I was happy, maybe our saviour is finally here I thought, although the football we played was not very good we got results when it mattered. It was a pragmatic approach which worked because we had Pierre Emerick Aubameyang who scored goal after goal.

It was an incredible achievement because we were in the middle of a global pandemic but as arsenal fans we had a trophy to cheer about.

Arteta in press conferences would constantly stress that we needed to follow the “process” and we were a long way away from competing for the title but if we followed the “process” we would get there. I do not know what the “process” entailed, but as long as we were getting results I did not care.

All this while there were things happening in the background. Stan Kroenke and Family became majority shareholders by buying out the Russian’s stake.

We used the pandemic as an excuse and let 55 people go and go rid of our scouting team. This was a completely classless act and this was not My Arsenal. Fans were pacified by lame excuses such as cost cutting was needed and there would be meaningful investment on the football side of things.

To be fair there was some investment, we bought a CB, DM and and an aging Winger.

We started this season (20–21) with a win over Fulham, but from then on it was a steady decline, we won a few, drew a few and lost a lot more. (4–2–7) as it stands as of Dec 17,2020, that includes 4 losses and 1 draw in the last 5 home games.

I am starting to lose faith in Arteta and the more I think about it the cup win and the early good results seem like a red herring. A lot of the fanbase is divided on the question of Arteta, some even going back to blame wenger for his signings and are of the opinion that Arteta will not succeed with these players.

Here is my analysis of the situation, again this is not to say whether Arteta should stay or leave, I am inclined towards the latter but I hope he proves me wrong and takes the club to greater heights.

Pros:

Arteta seems to be a highly rated young coach.

He managed to deliver a trophy with less than a season under his belt.

He seems to be focused on changing the culture at the football club.

He looks at this as a long term project and rightly so.

Cons:

Arteta seems to be a highly rated young coach. The emphasis here is on the word young, with youth comes a lack of experience and when the club are in a bad spot there is nothing to fall back on.

The project: While I agree with the idea that this is a multi-year project, the backbone of any project should be tactics, recruitment and youth development. There is work being done on those but I think tactically we have been inept, recruitment has been flawed(Willian is a great example) and not enough has been done on youth development and integrating younger players into the fold(*note there have been bright spots such as Saka). Also we have handed contracts to aging players which does not bode well, it looks like we are in for a quick fix rather than a long term strategy.

I would have been a lot more forgiving if we had a young squad that Mikel Arteta was trying to mould into something rather than keeping the likes of Xhaka or signing the likes of Willian.

I take the example of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, Liverpool were going no where when he took over, but Klopp and his team brought a clear vision and they did not compromise on that, attractive attacking play was the hall-mark, then over time they recruited well and we have what we have now.

I wanted to see that at Arsenal but feel let down and that is not just on Arteta but on Edu, Vinai and the board.

In conclusion, I do not know what the answer to our current problems are, maybe and I hope this true, Mikel Arteta will find the answer, but he does not have a lot of time to do it. I have always believed that the hall mark of a truly great coach is to take bunch of non performing/ non committed players and get them to do something meaningful. You may not win the title but at least you will be competing.

Also to all those fans who still seem to blame Arsene Wenger for the predicament we are in right now, get over it, he left 2 years ago and while I agree that the ozil situation is a mess, the other issues could have been resolved with proper management decisions, so NO its not Arsene Wenger’s fault that we are in this mess.