Arsenal Season Preview: We Must Stop Being Miserable Sods

Have you ever had a live bat supersonic its way millimetres from your ear in the dead of night? I am not a boy easily prone to fear, I have sat through many-a defensive set-piece with mouth set and hand steady, but hearing a creepy chirrup and a sudden beating of wings next to my earlobe as I was peacefully taking a whizz in my college lavatory scared the bejesus out of me. The whizz went everywhere, and I raised my hands and completed a 400 metre relay race in the confines of the bathroom all by myself, squealing like a gutted pig. I slowly regained my composure though, holstered my whizz-machine and took stock of the surroundings.

It was indeed a bat, swirling dizzyingly, trying desperately to find a way out. I cringed as it banged against the window with a sickening thud. It lost a hint of altitude, but steadied itself and made a renewed dash for the windowpane with the same painful result. After staring transfixed at this thump-fly-thump routine for some time, a sleep-deprived me came to an epiphany in spite of it being four in the morning (or perhaps because of it)- the bat was Arsenal, and so were its supporters.

The club has been diligently following a set strategy for last six years, but have repeatedly come up short in their quest for anything remotely silver. Sure, there have been subtle changes in flight pattern- formation changes, player ousting, leg breaks, Eboue as a CM- but we have by and large laid our faith in tiki-taka football, and for whatever reason, tiki-taka football has failed us at the final hurdle. Chelsea brought an expensive helmet to smash through the window like a charging quarterback, United bribed someone to open the window a tad so they could crawl sneakily out, and Liverpool gave up and flushed themselves down the toilet. But Arsenal and Arsene Wenger have persisted in their inherently admirable but ultimately futile thump-fly-thump routine.

And it was a particularly thumpy last season, an almighty tumble into the ignominy of Champions League qualifying after being in the hunt for the title in April. As a result, this transfer window was perhaps the most important in recent years and the most closely scrutinised. Now, I think all of us agree that it could have gone much better. Samir Nasri has demanded wheelbarrows of the green stuff if he is to plonk his petite French self on the Emirates turf next season, the Cesc Fabregas saga continues to yawn away (I hear my fingers mumbling about a proposed mutiny the next time I type ‘Cesc Fabregas saga’), reinforcing much-needed positions has been left far later than what is deemed ideal, and we are finding it hard to offload players because of wage demands, lack of suitors or what have you.

But expressing doubts over some of the club’s more dubious decisions is one thing, and blindly questioning every single move they make is quite another. Many fans are currently surrounded by a cloud of thick, black hate; and have painted Wenger and the Board as villains, twirling their moustaches with virile enthusiasm as the frayed club crest is tied to train tracks. I’m not going to discuss the merits of this point of view or otherwise, (just for the record, I don’t think Arsene Knows Best, nor am I cozying up to the theory that Arsene Knows Fuckall). What I am going to do however is continue to build on my many-layered, useless bat analogy.

Cracking your cranium against a window is all well and good for some time, but there soon comes a tipping point beyond which it becomes fairly pointless and even counter-productive. I fully agree that Arsene has made mistakes, many of them this summer in fact, but using those mistakes as a stick to beat on him every time he opens his mouth is something I would expect rivals to do, not Arsenal fans. And the worst thing about this is that the open dissatisfaction is now shifting its aim towards the players, who are far removed from blame as far as transfer business is concerned. I won’t advise people who spend their hard-earned money to go and watch Arsenal matches on what they should do, but if I ever got the chance to visit the Emirates, the one thing I would NOT do is boo the team, much less in a pre-season friendly.

Football will start this weekend. And we can’t afford to be vocally negative anymore. It will get the players depressed before they even kick a ball, and a depressed Arshavin is an ineffective Arshavin. I’m not from the UK (Plastic fan! Fair-weather fucker! You’ll have your ‘ead kicked in on ‘em terraces!!), but football is very much a tribal sport in Asia too, as our pre-season tour must have told you. And all of us have to stop being miserable low-lives for the sake of our sanity and our team.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel genuinely optimistic about the season. Lord knows I don’t. I have never been this worried prior to the start of a new campaign. But I’m going to force optimism on myself this weekend and for many weekends after that. Because our primary responsibility as fans is to cheer the team on, whether we buy Sneijder or Scott Dann. This is a confidence trick we must play on ourselves, for the simple reason that the entire online and press community is filled to breaking point with negativity about Arsenal. If the fans join in the mindless negativity for much longer, that might just be the breaking point breached.

So I’m going to wake up on the weekend, two mile smile plastered on my face as I brush them teeth to a gleam (I’ll ignore the thumping sounds and creepy chirrups behind me) and scream myself hoarse at the television, the opposition, the referee  and any other thing I can for ninety minutes. Because it’s our team out there, and who else will scream themselves hoarse for our team other than, well, us?

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