We play Watford in some hours and I was meant to write a preview today. Instead, for a long time, I just sat and watched my cursor blink patiently at me, waiting for me to type something I was satisfied with. I tried predicting the team, I tried adding some semblance of importance to this clash, but for obvious reasons, I just couldn’t.
How odd is it to think that 2015/16 is barely two months away from termination, when it feels we haven’t really started the season at all? Well, that’s how my mood feels at the moment.
This is typical Arsenal endgame, isn’t it? Botch chances to win significant silverware and then stare at a load of nothing games to play in? At least we had carrots of FA Cups to satiate ourselves the past couple of years, but with that snatched away by the aforementioned Watford, the games to follow genuinely feel like dead rubbers and exhibitions.
There’s no point in trying to convince anyone that Arsenal will not win the Premier League. Everyone already knows that. The best we can hope for is to finish above Tottenham with a Laurent Koscielny scissor kick and horde our superiority over them. Express relief at not falling out of our top four perch, and hope to reach top one next time.
Hope. It’s the hope that kills, isn’t it? As May approaches, the Arsenal PR team will doubtless flood the Internet with exclusives of the club willing to spend over £490 gazillions on Paul Pogba, Isco and the planet Jupiter. The fans feel hopeful, journalists get their clicks and the Emirates Stadium get their season tickets renewed. Transfer ‘negotiations’ break down, other teams strengthen, we make a mess of it and over the course of next season, try keeping our heads above water.
Arsenal are probably definitely the only club in world football who, at a very basic level, refuse to perform at optima. To fathom that we generate more revenue than Barcelona and Real Madrid, yet keep them in our bank accounts is maddening. There are so many areas where this club needs investment. I’m not even thinking players. We need to look at our injury records. We need to rectify our scouting network. We have to fix our academy. We need to reduce prices and get a crackling stadium atmosphere. It’s unreal that we absolutely have the capacity to do that, but seem unwilling to do so. Whether it’s not knowing how to solve it, or a refusal to acknowledge there is a problem altogether (which would be on different levels of worrying), I don’t know for sure.
I’m a huge fan of how we make our revenue. We didn’t rely on a sugar daddy like Manchester City, Chelsea or PSG did. We worked hard and minted our own money. We made a blueprint for a new stadium in 1996 and made the move into a 60,000-seater ten years later. We invested in Africa and reaped rewards. We’ve honed a good enough brand for players like Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez to be tempted by. We did it, as they say, the Arsenal way.
But what then? At least City invest their money. They pay attention to the backroom staff and the nitty-gritties. The Football Ramble claimed that almost all talented youth players in Manchester go to Man City and not Man United. Considering United’s pedigree in the past, that’s outrageous. Everyone knew Pep Guardiola was their utopian dream back in 2014, and they got him. Don’t let their current form bowl you over. They have the ambition to build a legacy. What they do is not all down to having money. It’s the result of careful planning and bold investment, something we refuse to do.
Why would we? The Board of Directors are too scared of distorting the equilibrium. They’re more afraid of failure than hungry for success. They know that Arsenal are two inches away from being a European powerhouse, but aren’t half-arsed enough to go that extra mile. For a year is bad enough, but ten?! All we’ve been doing since 2006 is horde cash. In the beginning it was necessary, but certainly not now. Ivan Gazidis poached Andries Jonker and Shad Forsythe two years ago, but instead of revolutionizing the system, they became part of it.
That’s the worst part. I reckon I’d be blogging much more enthusiastically if I had a Liverpool blog. Not because I prefer them to Arsenal, but because there’s obviously so much more hope there. Even though their worse off than us, they aspire to be better. Names like Mario Gotze and Jurgen Klopp flood that area. They fail, but at least they try to succeed.
What about us? I was engrossed in reading a superb debate on Compare It Versus on which footballer was better, Messi or Ronaldo. Halfway through reading it, I realized Arsenal don’t have enough of those players. Not only that, we don’t try to get such players. Mesut Ozil was a panic-purchase from a manager trying to save his job. Petr Cech was an opportunity buy more than an unreal statement of intent.
Whenever have we actually big great money for great players, like Liverpool are doing for Gotze? We bid embarrassingly low for Luis Suarez. We dallied over Gonzalo Higuain. We took a pass on Morgan Schneiderlin. It’s not that we don’t have the ability to buy these superstars. We do. We just don’t have the willingness.
When I see Arseblog post every single day, I wonder where he gets the motivation from. Sure, one might say money is a powerful factor, but that’s not all of it. I can’t handle writing the same story in a hundred different ways, especially with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. Reporting collapses and dead-ends a million times over, with no signs of them being fixed is excruciating.
For the moment, that’s what being an Arsenal fan is. It’s not magical, seismic and exhilarating anymore. It’s diluted to a painful journey of false hope and failure – of frustrations compounded by myths of opportunity. It’s energy-sucking, soul-sapping and cash-draining. It’s a traumatic marriage where divorce is not an option.
Is there an end in sight for this?
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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