I don’t know if this is the case with the majority of fans, though? I see a lot more fans laughing about stuff now and making jokes about it to each other. At the Emirates I hear people around me expecting Arsenal to “Arsenal it up”, but they say it in a jokey way - as if that is the norm nowadays.
I was only annoyed about Saturday’s result because of the amount of chances we had. But in general Arsenal’s losses don’t affect me as much as they used to. They used to ruin my weekend but now i’m more like “meh, 18 months to go”.
I think our supporters have been more patient than most other clubs.
Since we moved to the Emirates we have inevitably gone backwards with regard to having any chance of winning the PL.
Imagine the supporters of Man U waiting that long before starting to show their dissatisfaction with the club and manager who are responsible for the position…
I have noticed this season that the expectation levels have dropped, which I think was the plan by the board and Wenger, and if we do get a top four place, it will be greeted as some sort of achievement by the people running the club.
When Wenger was interviewed he used to say we will challenge for the PL title and we can afford the best players, now when he is asked about what his opinion is on the same subjects he either pleads poverty or says we can’t compete with the big money teams.
I think this acceptance of fourth place, and never competing for much more, is taking over, and it’s exactly what Wenger and the board want.
The pressure is off them, and they won’t have to spend much more than the bare minimum, while making massive profits every season.
This is what Kroenke wanted, and that is what he is going to get.
Arsenal football club, or as it’s otherwise known, Kroenke’s money making machine.
It’s not about patience. There’s just a massive cohort of Arsenal fans at this stage who want him to leave the club and we want that no matter what happens. It’s quite natural to have a bit of a moan when we lose and that’s all it is, a vocalisation of that desire to see him go. I could literally post every day here about how I want him to leave but I don’t, not even in defeat mostly. Lots of other fans are the same.
For me its knowing we havent got the high profile humiliation of champions League defeat coming our way this season. This and accepting no matter how deluded ive been in the past that theres no chance of a title shot. Im quite happy to know we have a decent shot in the 3 cups.
I said before the spurs game the real difrence between our 2 clubs at the moment is how their/our fan base would react to loosing that game, If we had lost it would still be world war 3 right now, not so much with spurs fans, despite the fact we have won much more thhan them even since the have become an actual good team
No point getting annoyed till Wenger goes to be honest. Every man and his dog knows he reached his ceiling ages ago. It’s all about steadying the ship now for the next manager which is what Gazidis is doing with the recent staff appointments.
I’m not sure because most managers are simply gone before it gets to the point that the fans are as fed up with them as many of us are with Wenger.
I really don’t know any club that have done the whole booing, banners, protests, fighting in the stand thing and then had that manager given a new contract and then them basically giving up being mad because it’s pointless.
we have been more sucsessful in recent times and look just as likely of achieving sucsess any time soon as say Liverpool and spurs IMO, Both of those clubs fan bases should be just as quick to react to every bad result as ours do but they don’t for some reason
Should we really put much weight on what fans perceive?
It is only in last couple of season one can understand the anger towards Wenger. Before that there was obvious financial restrictions and uphill task to compete against rich clubs.
With 3 FA cups to show for, one can even argue a good case for contract renewal.
Fans have themselves to blame since they are the ones that had expectations far beyond Arsenal’s capabilities during the Emirates debt period. They carried this frustration to this new stage and have now become so toxic that even a defeat in non sense match against Cologne means meltdown by some faction.
Wenger underachieved only in last 2 seasons, yet the fan base have treated him like a Villan for a decade.
Spurs are currently better than they have been in at least the last twenty years, and have zero history of sustained success. There’s no reason for then to whinge or complain because they have no expectation of being better than they currently are.
The idea that their fans should have the same expectations and react similarly to us is laughable, the two situations are entirely different.
I didn’t say it was impossible to explain why it is the case that even though we have been more sucsessful in recent times and look just ask likely to be sucsessful again any time soon as Liverpool and spurs their fans are a lot more forgiving than ours, Just pointing out that that is actually the case
Spurs and Liverpool fans are currently a lot less likely to boo their own team even though that have won a lot less than us in he past few years and are just as likely as us to end the season without wining anything
They have owners and managers that change if things aren’t going right, or they see they are stagnating.
We have and owner and manager that couldn’t care less what supporters think, and are quite happy to do the bare minimum.
I have no problem finishing fifth but finishing in that position and just accepting it just shows the arrogance by the club towards the supporters.
I don’t see how you can say spurs and Liverpool supporters are more forgiving, when we have gone so long without challenging for the PL, and putting up with selling all our good players without replacing them.
The fact we were below both of them last season shows that perhaps we have every right to criticise the club, because there is no way, with our resources, that should be happening.
Both of them are playing in the CL, while we are in the Europa League, the very competition we used to deride them for.
I can guarantee that putting up with this situation and not criticising the club, and just saying nothing, is what the board and Wenger want, because they can carry on on dragging us down, and the Europa League will become the norm rather than a blip for the supporters.
It’s going to be so interesting to see what happens to our fan base once Wenger is gone. It’s a very real possibility we could appoint a terrible manager and he could take us even further back than Wenger, it will be interesting to see the reaction if that were to happen. Conversely we could appoint a great manager and maybe he’ll be better but we will still lose matches and very likely not be a force in the CL regardless, I guess the reaction to that will be different than when Wenger loses, but I’ll be here to remind everyone and call for the managers head asap because that’s the type of environment it seems like the Arsenal fanatics want.
All we want is something different.
Something less predictable.
Some exciting signings.
Not persisting with the same players every season even though they aren’t good enough.
If Wenger did this then I would support him, but he keeps doing the same thing expecting different results, like losing to Mourinho when they play each other.
If your happy watching the same boring, predictable season, that’s fine, but some of us have seen enough and aren’t convinced that stagnating is the best way forward for a top European club.
The thing is Liverpool have regularly outspent us and Spurs have spent on parity with us. And in the last 3 decades Liverpool have finished above us 3 times and Spurs once. While we’ve finished above United 4 times, City 4 times and Chelsea 2 times.
If anything we’ve overperformed in the last decade. If we want to do better we need to invest year on year or become defensive counter attacking specialists.
There’s Liverpoolesque delusions of grandeur in our fan base assuming we should be competing because of our history while we invest very little.
The only way we compete for the big prizes is with 200m per year investment for several seasons before fruit is beared or with a defensive specialist like Simeone. Most managers won’t do as well as Wenger has with the little investment he has had.
