Arsenal’s Week: The choice is simple- you can join the media in moaning about Arsenal, or join the grown ups

Arsenal’s Week: The choice is simple- you can join the media in moaning about Arsenal, or join the grown ups

In you consider the winners and losers in English football in the last two years, an interesting statistic occurs. Three teams, have each won two of the six domestic trophies contested over these two years: Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City.

So that’s it: the six available domestic trophies have gone to three teams, and those teams have each won two. Chelsea and Man City have won the League and the League Cup, and Arsenal have won the FA Cup twice. No one else is in sight, although Tottenham came runners’ up in the League Cup and Liverpool runners’ up in the league.


Trophy Wins

In these two years the same three teams were the only three to qualify for the Champions League on both occasions.

Now if you never read the papers or the blogs, or listen to the ravings of pundits on the radio or TV you might think that this achievement of winning two of the six available titles across two seasons is not bad.

But no, not at all, because although Man C and Chelsea are the absolute success stories, and Man U is always “there or there abouts” (assuming that there abouts means 7th and 4th in the league) and Liverpool are always challenging (usually for 6th place), Arsenal, FA Cup winners for the last two seasons, are useless.

I know this because I attended the match this week in the Champions League and was told this very clearly.

Actually I also attended the league cup victory over Tottenham with their utterly brilliant manager and tough-guy negotiator, and the league victory over previously unbeaten Leicester, and there was quite a different tale expressed those days. The difference being that these days the only thing that matters is now.

And now Arsenal are useless, rubbish, pointless, awful, because although they are there with Manchester City and Chelsea in terms of success they lost their Champions League game.

Now when I have pointed this idea out to a few Wenger haters they have told me I am talking nonsense because the problem with Arsenal is that we have lost both our Champions League games this season.

Yes, but I thought we were only arguing about the last game, I protest. No, I am told, the broader picture is what matters.

Ah, so the broader package. That would include Man City having suffered consecutive defeats in the league would it? Or maybe we should think back to Chelsea’s exit from the FA Cup last year to… oh I forget who.

Or maybe we should look at Chelsea’s current league position.

But no, nor should we consider the extraordinary feat of Theo Walcott in scoring 11 goals in 12 starts, and the fact that he is playing alongside Alexis (four in the last two). Or that Ozil has created more goalscoring chances in 2015 than any other player.

No, apparently Walcott is useless because he missed a shot, Ospina is useless because he let in a goal he shouldn’t, Wenger is useless for playing Ospina and should have realised that the great form he showed last season was a blip and this is his real form and Ozil is just useless.

And besides Wenger didn’t spend big in the transfer window. A view which refuses to recognise that Bellerin and Coquelin have any value, because they didn’t cost us anything in the first place.

In the end my point is so simple it hardly needs saying. You can create any story you want by being selective.

You can ignore the FA Cup and the fact that Wenger is the most successful FA Cup manager in this or the last century, and the fact that he has made Arsenal the most successful FA Cup team of all time. You can laugh at the continuity of ending up in the Champions League each year, and the fact that helped pay for the stadium sooner rather than later, and allow the money to flow again much sooner than if we had not been there.

You can ignore the fact that Man City, with all the money in the world, and access to players from around the world because of the other clubs its owners also control.

You can ignore all the facts you want. But the reality is that Arsenal is poised on the edge of absolute history, for we have the chance of becoming the first team to win the FA Cup three times running since the earliest days of the competition.

True we are unlikely to win the Champions League or even qualify for the group stages but maybe we’ll win the Europa League. Chelsea did it, and their supporters didn’t deride the competition that year.

So what is going on? How can Chelsea, Man C and Man U all be successes, but when we have a bad night at the Ems, it is the end of the world?

I’ve pondered this long and hard and the answer I think is that Arsenal supporters are the most prone to negativity of all. The British press have caught onto this, and so they feed it.

They suggest that Wenger keeps on suggesting that players like Emmanuel Frimpong, Carlos Vela, Fran Merida are the new great find and will make the club world champions. Of course he doesn’t. Did you hear Wenger wax lyrical about Coquelin or Bellerin before they emerged?

Of course not – it is all a media fantasy. What is going on is that the fans moan, the papers pick it up and amplify the tales of woe, and the fans say, “Look I told you Arsenal are rubbish – it says so in the papers.”

Of course the grown ups are living somewhere else, mostly in a place in which people look at Chelsea and Man City and their ability to buy established players, and youngsters (don’t forget Chelsea’s 35 out on loan) and spend as much as they want each summer, and do anything else they want. And what do we see?

Each club has two trophies in the past two years. In the league at present Arsenal are two points behind Man City with all its cash and five points ahead of Chelsea with all their cash.

I can’t do anything about all this nonsense about Arsenal being useless. In the end the only thing I can do is stay with the grown ups.