Arsenal
Falling Down Arsenal Fan Bids Farewell to the Emirates
Highbury Burgers
By Celine Dion
November 11 2012
You will all be familiar with those illuminated fast food adverts you get which show glistening succulent burgers surrounded by glossy red tomatoes and crisp green lettuce, sitting in a plump floury bun. Then when you buy one and open the polystyrene box you’ve got a flaccid, sweaty slice of greying meat on a single, wilted lettuce leaf. Michael Douglas highlighted the problem rather well, I thought, in the film ‘Falling Down’, whilst holding the entire burger restaurant at gun point. You can’t do anything about it, because by the time you realise, you are half way down the road, and anyway, it’s a situation you pretty much take for granted nowadays.
We live in an era where the little man gets ripped off, from the minute he gets up; to the minute he goes to bed again. Just about the only thing you can do, is not buy the burger. Or buy the burger, and have a moan about it. Neither solution is particularly satisfying.
My Arsenal supporting life can be split fairly evenly into two parts. The first was during what I now recognise as the golden era of watching football live, the late eighties. This was a largely happy little period, just after the time where some people tended to attack each other with Stanley knives in the tube station, but before the all-seater, Sky era, which left football ripe for large scale commercial exploitation. I don’t remember the board of directors being particularly important to any football fan at the time.
Arsenal had a good team of local heroes, with character and identity, and a very good manager, and if the team was good enough, it won things. It was easy to get into the ground; you only had to think about it a couple of hours in advance. I racked up a great many home games and quite a few aways as well. Five quid on the train to Arsenal station, and a tenner to get in (if that). There was a happy anarchy about football crowds, and great humour. The crowd was very predominantly working class, plasterers, taxi drivers, great big groups of youngsters who all turned up together.
Then, even after George Graham left, and Arsenal became a bit rubbish, nobody could really complain. It was a swings and roundabouts, it still didn’t cost that much to get in the ground, even when the North Bank was seated. So if John Jensen and Eddie McGoldrick were playing like they’d been injected with barbiturates, you could all have a good laugh about it. Or shout rude things at them, which some people used to do. The thing about the mid 1990’s was, Arsenal themselves could see things weren’t right, so they used to replace managers, and release money to buy new players, like Platt and Bergkamp. They certainly didn’t tell you everything was brilliant, and nobody would have listened if they had.
Then I went to University in the North of England, so apart from some away games and the odd home game, when I could get a ticket, football fell away a little. Then of course, I met Mrs Celine Dion, and was far too busy walking round Regents Park holding hands, or going to Ikea, to go to very much football. During Arsenals most successful, Henry and Bergkamp era, I shouldn’t think I saw more than two live games a year.
So when they built the Emirates, I thought, ‘Fantastic, I can get RIGHT back into football again’. And get back into it I did. For the last 5 years it has been very unusual for me to miss a home league game. Mind you, the Arsenal match day experience has changed, and not for the better. We are all familiar with the clichés around the Emirates crowd, but they are pretty much true. People weighed down with Arsenal shopping bags, feverishly recording Arsenal taking a corner on their Sony Hand Camera while 5000 Chelsea fans sit ten feet away taking the p*ss out of them. Waiting in line for a pint of warm lager that mysteriously rises 50p in price every season, cringing while the stadium announcer makes a last, desperate attempt to generate atmosphere by shouting ‘DenilSONNNNNNN’ through the loud speaker system. Getting to your seat and realising that there won’t be much swearing this afternoon, or indeed any singing, or in fact, anything at all, because your neighbours for the day are a party of Scandinavian school children, all tucking into individually wrapped Mr Kipling cakes. Yes, the Emirates experience is cr*p, no doubt about it. But I persevered, and had some good times, although I did start to notice that these good times were more and more occurring mainly OUTSIDE the ground, in the pubs around Highbury. It got to the point, where going to the game started to become an unwanted distraction, if I am honest.
One match that sticks out, early on, was the 1-1 draw with Liverpool. I remember buying very expensive upstairs seats, for what I thought would be a title showdown. This was the Flamini/HHleHlAdebayor /Hleb season, where we only finished 4 points off the top, so the idea of a title showdown isn’t as daft as it sounds. Except that the game ended up sandwiched between two Champions League games against the same club, and Wenger fielded half the reserves. Thinking back, that should have told me all I needed to know about the modern Arsenal, and its unseemly obsession with the Champions league, together with an almost pathological disinterest in winning trophies, and I should have walked away then. I didn’t, however...
As Wengers’ teams fell further and further into a state of disrepair, so did my house, concurrently. As Fabregas and Nasri departed, so did the water pressure on my kitchen taps. As large holes started to appear in our defence, large holes also started to appear in my landing floorboards. As Wenger and Gazidis placated their critics with nonsensical bullsh*t promises, I now realise that I was doing the same with Mrs Celine Dion. Everything was fine on the surface as long as I was getting my twice monthly heroin fix of football. As Gazidis jacked the prices up and sold all our best players, I just stopped spending so much money on clothes and meals out. Or ANY money in fact.
Well, I have seen the light. No more can I justify spending these absurd prices and feathering the nest of nefarious American venture capitalists. Yesterdays match was my last, certainly as a regular spectator. I might go back for the odd p*ss up, or to catch up with my friends, but gone will be the days where I stick my money down two months in advance, every single time, regardless of price.
So it was with a heavy heart that I attended the game yesterday, knowing it would be my last for a while. It was a shambles of an Arsenal team of course, but I’ve never really gone to football expecting or feeling entitled to a Rolls Royce team performance. If anything , a gut wrenching 3-3 draw with Fulham with half our team playing like they’d only met in the car park before the game, is just as much fun as Nasri and Fabregas dismantling Wigan 4-0 without breaking a sweat. I’ve spent passages of my life watching a truly hopeless Exeter City team lose more or less every home game. I even spent one year attending French League two matches. Football is what you make of it.
Without taking you through the detail of the match, there were a few positives. Giroud attacked the ball nicely for the first goal, in a way no Arsenal player has for about 5 years, and linked well for the second. Generally speaking however, the game was negative, because we let Fulham score three goals, something which would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. The Arsenal midfield in its current guise is clearly the poorest since the days of the aforementioned McGoldrick and Jensen. And a special mention must go to our keeper for failing to stop a 15 yard bouncing header.
I must admit I also get a perverse sense of amusement watching at first hand the board becoming unstuck, right there in their temple of mammon. Things are coming to a head, make no mistake about that, and I have great respect for the Black Scarf Movement and wish them every success with their growing and important role.
I am sure people will read this and trot out the ‘glory hunter ‘ line. I don’t really care. The essential problem and the inescapable fact in all this is that Arsenal don’t pitch themselves in the ‘let’s all turn up for a laugh and have a 3-3 draw with Fulham’ bracket. They stopped doing that when they started charging £80 a seat and over a tenner for fish and chips. If I want to stand around watching our defence get p*ssed all over by a couple of players supposedly vastly inferior to our own, time and time again, against the backdrop of a disgruntled, silent crowd, I can go down the lower league for about £18.
I’m tired of opening the box, time and time again, and finding a flaccid, grey burger instead of the one in the picture. Sooner or later, you have to stop buying the burger, if only for your own self respect. Perhaps the essential problem is, I have stopped supporting Arsenal. Not the players themselves. I find them identical and strangely irrelevant. They would, invariably, all be quite happy playing for Marseille or Lazio, or somewhere else instead. They are a pleasant bunch of elite European professionals going about their business. But I don’t actually support the ethos of the club. In fact I find it cynical and repulsive. I identify with the current brand no more than I do British Gas, or Tesco’s. I identify with the pubs, the fans, the tradition, but to continue shovelling money down Kroenkes’ throat when I can’t even afford a new fridge, wouldn’t make me loyal, it would make me insane.
After the game I went to the pub with our esteemed editor and talked to some other very knowledgeable and long standing Arsenal fans. It is the conversation and the camaraderie that I will miss, the sense of tradition and history around the famous backstreets of Highbury. Football gives you a sense of identity and belonging which is very hard to find anywhere else, and it is a social enabler that I will greatly miss.
But will I miss paying £40 to sit in soulless plastic ground and getting continually out sung and taunted by West Ham or Villa whilst watching a team of overpaid hairdressers prance around the pitch protected by a manager who becomes more and more bonkers every week?
No, if I am honest I won’t. And if that doesn’t make me an Arsenal supporter, so be it. Perhaps I’m not any more. What I do know, is that there are now a very large number of exiles like me. The club had better be sure there is a never ending supply of trusting, placid, and affluent persons to replace us with.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:11:17:20:31:36 by Padre Pio.
*Signing Ozil is a signing Bergkamp type moment for Arsenal. It changes things utterly.*
Quote:all tucking into individually wrapped Mr Kipling cakes
You just had to do it.
You had to drag Mr Kipling's name through the mud.
*Signing Ozil is a signing Bergkamp type moment for Arsenal. It changes things utterly.*
Quote:Celine
Then of course, I met Mrs Celine Dion, and was far too busy walking round Regents Park holding hands, or going to Ikea, to go to very much football.
Great article as always, Celine.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
- Albert Einstein
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Quote:Padre Pio
Somebody has to ask, what is the fridge for?
Um, keeping food chilled?
A replacement for insert players name here
So to rephrase why does he think Arsene should , buy us a fridge?
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Quote:Celine
I identify with the pubs, the fans, the tradition, but to continue shovelling money down Kroenkesโ throat when I canโt even afford a new fridge, wouldnโt make me loyal, it would make me insane.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
am I f**k
Theodore roosevelt - In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
They will only let you down.
"๐๐ณ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฟ๐๐. ๐๐ณ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐ฑ, ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ป๐ผ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด."
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
- Albert Einstein
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
- Albert Einstein
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
- Albert Einstein
Quote:BootyDaddy
We should put that fridge in goal. I bet it would save more than Mannone.
Knowing us, we wouldn't be able to get a work permit and we'd have to send it on loan to the Spanish second division for 2 years, by which time the warranty will be up and we would realise it doesn't keep our drinks chilled properly anyway (due to the glass just above its feet) and it'll end up in a skip in Birmingham (but with us still paying for it).
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012:11:13:23:53:23 by SuperRob.
But at least Mrs Dion is getting her husband back.
I think we should put it on the bench, it would be more animated than Wenger and Bould looked on saturday
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
but if it indeed seems to have the hand brake on, then please know that it probably lacks character and will ask for an improved contract next season.
But don't kid yourself - you are and will always be a Gooner. It's a shame the Club chose to spit on you and those like you who love the Club so deeply and unconditionally simply because making more more money for themsleves means more than being the great football Club that they inherioted and even helped make even greater when they wanted to and the Club Arsenal will always be in spite of their greed and in spite of those more eager among us to defend that greed than our great Club.
Fear not Celine you will always be a Gooner. They will be shown to be what they are. And best of luck with Mrs. Celine
You sir are Arsenal and always will be.
Quote:Celine so your real life is more important than Arsenal FC...say it ain't so..fake gooner of the highest order!!
"Arsene Arsene buy him a fridge"
If I had your bottle I too would give up my AFC drug, football is now a poor shadow of what we used to enjoy and Arsenal have come to epitomise this.
Great write up and bang on the money, never thought I could agree with a scathing attack on the gunners on a day we beat the spuds 5-2
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Some two seasons ago we had this team:
--------szczesny
sagna-Kos-verm-clichy
----song--wilshere
walcott-fabregas-nasri
------vanpersei
.
That team played some of the best football i've ever seen in my entire life, i even said they were less boring than the current barca team. They only needed abit of maturing and a few additions to see them through injuries for them to challenge for major titles. But still, the moaners mocked at that team and said alot of rubbish against it.
In the last seven years, we've had alot of wonderful moments, countless wonderful memories actually. And that's why i don't really like moaners who tend to claim it's all been doom and gloom simply because we couldnt lift a shiny little metal. In this period we've been the third best team in england playing the best football.
Any article that doesnt include all that is actually rubbish in my opinion, no matter how beautifully written it is.
"A club is a union between players, supporters and directors". - Wenger.
Arsene wenger has done an absolutely masterful job within the constraints he has... Every single year, he has outperformed our spending every single year he has been manager. It is extraordinary. -Gazides.
Some two seasons ago we had this team:
--------szczesny
sagna-Kos-verm-clichy
----song--wilshere
walcott-fabregas-nasri
------vanpersei
.
That team played some of the best football i've ever seen in my entire life, i even said they were less boring than the current barca team. They only needed abit of maturing and a few additions to see them through injuries for them to challenge for major titles. But still, the moaners mocked at that team and said alot of rubbish against it.
In the last seven years, we've had alot of wonderful moments, countless wonderful memories actually. And that's why i don't really like moaners who tend to claim it's all been doom and gloom simply because we couldnt lift a shiny little metal. In this period we've been the third best team in england playing the best football.
Any article that doesnt include all that is actually rubbish in my opinion, no matter how beautifully written it is.
"A club is a union between players, supporters and directors". - Wenger.
Arsene wenger has done an absolutely masterful job within the constraints he has... Every single year, he has outperformed our spending every single year he has been manager. It is extraordinary. -Gazides.
*Signing Ozil is a signing Bergkamp type moment for Arsenal. It changes things utterly.*
Wibble.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:11:17:22:02:29 by Philly the kid.
*Signing Ozil is a signing Bergkamp type moment for Arsenal. It changes things utterly.*
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
"A club is a union between players, supporters and directors". - Wenger.
Arsene wenger has done an absolutely masterful job within the constraints he has... Every single year, he has outperformed our spending every single year he has been manager. It is extraordinary. -Gazides.
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