TODAY IS A good day to channel your anti-Arsenal sentiment. There’s a lot of it going around.
Every time the Gunners experience a setback, there seems to be a wave of schadenfreude that ripples across social media. Given that only two clubs have won the Premier League title in the past eight seasons, one might expect there to be an appetite for change. Nope.
An unreasonable amount of people I talk to – in real life, rather than online – are desperate to see Mikel Arteta’s side fail again. A fourth successive second-place finish in the league would cause hilarity across the game.
Are Arsenal annoying? Yes. What’s wrong with them? Plenty. It depends how far back you want to go. Football’s folk memory knows there’s something rum about the Gunners. Their theme song The Angel (North London Forever) throws up obvious issues.
Forever? I don’t think so. Arsenal were economic migrants from south of the river, possibly arriving on the other side of the Thames on small boats (the Woolwich ferry). They were certainly improvised and second-class citizens when they pitched up at Highbury in 1913. They had just been relegated and were trying to build a new fanbase. You could say the first world war and the suspension of the game came along at a good time for them.
Little more than a decade later, they were nicknamed ‘The Bank of England’ club. How? Why? The days of oligarchs and middle-eastern despots were almost a century away but football has always had more than its fair share of sugar daddies and men on the make.
William Norris was definitely in the latter group. When the sport resumed after the Great War, he managed to parlay a fifth place finish in the second tier into promotion to an expanded top flight. Norris either politicked, bribed or bullied his way into the first division over clubs with more fitting credentials. The losers were Tottenham Hotspur, Barnsley and Wolverhampton Wanderers (Birmingham City, too, who were placed above Arsenal in the 1914-15 table until an error in goal difference calculation was discovered sixty years later).
However Norris did it, dodginess was at the heart of 10-minutes-in-north-London team’s elevation to the top flight. Arsenal fans boast that their club is the only one that has not been relegated since the first world war. That’s true. The problem is they were never promoted – at least not on merit.
So, yes, Arsenal are historically annoying. Their “promotion” still enrages Spurs fans. And that was just the start. All the Marble Halls guff about Highbury and their subsequent projection as a patrician club jarred with anyone who understood Arsenal’s history. The club developed an aristocratic air but forged that identity by behaving like a robber baron. Just another episode in the story of Britain’s ruling class.
But all this ancient history has little impact on the Tik-Tok generation. Most non-Arsenal supporters I’ve spoken to cite their online fanbase as annoying, suggesting they are entitled and hysterical (as if you couldn’t say this about any set of big-club fans).
Arteta, with his Linkedin office-bonding approach to training and motivation (lightbulbs, pickpockets and, most recently pens – no, not penalties, biros) irritates a lot of people. Anger at Arsenal’s physical, set-piece-based style of play has grown with every week of the season. That’s the most ridiculous criticism of all. The Gunners are not “ruining the game.” They are making the most of their assets and taking advantage of the weaknesses of opponents. Those who want points for style should get a season-ticket to figure skating.
Yet it would be easy to get on board the anti-Arsenal bandwagon if it wasn’t for Manchester City. City are the single reason every neutral should be wishing Arteta luck – at least in the league.
Look, all the superclubs are an existential threat to competitiveness in the game. Arsenal’s Stan Kroenke is about as good an example of carpetbagging owner as you’ll find. He’s the sort of person who, with his peers at Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Spurs and City, would form a closed-circuit European Super League in a heartbeat.
But you have to take sides somewhere. In the Arsenal-City title shootout, it’s not good guys and bad guys.
It’s bad against worse. And the worse is very, very bad.
Two years ago, I wrote a piece about how Pep Guardiola’s City had skewed the competitiveness of English football. Just challenging them is an achievement in itself – even for other superclubs. During Liverpool’s dominant era in the 1970s and 80s, the Merseyside club won 41 per cent of domestic trophies. Alex Ferguson’s United managed to claim 33 per cent in their most glorious phase.
Even after a fallow campaign last year, since Guardiola started winning in 2017-18, City have claimed 48 per cent of the three domestic prizes available annually. If they go on to secure another treble by the end of May, that figure will rise to 55 per cent.
That is mindboggling and was unimaginable even a decade ago. Back then, before any suggestions of impropriety at the Etihad, I had a conversation with a City executive. I was increasingly impressed with their set-up. “You’ll be the first team to win the title five times in a row,” I said. The reply, in retrospect, is chilling. “We’re building for 10 in a row,” they said.
Which leads to other numbers that you’re all too familiar with: 115 Premier League charges. City, of course, claim their innocence but the evidence presented to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Uefa’s case against the club would have been damning had it not been time barred. Guardiola’s golden era has been built on the wealth of Abu Dhabi, the dominant political force of the United Arab Emirates. In ownership terms, Sheikh Mansour is on a different planet to Kroenke. The former is using a club as a sportswashing vehicle and money is no object, the latter is a capitalist who sees football as a cash cow.
No wonder City and Arsenal feel like they’ve been playing a different game during the Guardiola years.
Yes, City are prettier than Arteta’s team. The beauty is superficial. Style of play comes and goes. Football is cyclical. Arsenal won’t ruin the game. Opponents will work out how to counter their physicality, at first by being equally robust but then with skill. Kroenke will never spend the money you need for total domination. You can compete with Arsenal. You may never be able to compete with City.
I’ve been shocked by the number of Liverpool supporters who would rather see City win the title. Spurs I can understand. Kopites? No. Have they forgotten so quickly?
So tonight let’s cheer on Atletico Madrid. It’s a good time to release any natural antipathy towards the Gunners. When they come home, though, it’s north London forever. Even if forever doesn’t quite mean for ever. It means just while they are facing down City.