Sat 11th September 2010; 15:00, Emirates Stadium
Watch The Grave Digging Pundits Squirm About Arsenal’s Title Challenge
ByIf there’s one thing the football punditry establishment is good at, it’s the ability to constantly show breath-taking incompetence when it comes to learning lessons on humility and reasoned arguments. Let me give you an example that illustrates my point.
In 2002, Arsene Wenger was laughed out of TV and radio studios and scorned in the back pages for suggesting that his Arsenal team can go a whole season without losing a single game.
Arsenal Manager, Arsene Wenger
Granted, it took the old man another year to achieve that monumental and historic feat, but there in lay a very big lesson about the folly of jumping band wagons, lazy journalism and frankly speaking, the innate prejudice that has riddled the punditry establishment from top to bottom.
Even before a ball was kicked this season, Arsenal were completely written off by pretty much everyone in the establishment, save for a handful of brave souls who were prepared to be ridiculed through the season. The intransigence shown by the hard core of pundits and hacks in cementing their hardline positions on Arsenal’s fall from grace was so tangible, that it choked anyone who would say otherwise.
One of the interesting features of the internet though, is it’s uncanny ability to retain what pundits and hacks put on record in black and white, and also on video and audio. The pre-season predictions about Arsenal’s chances of winning the EPL as so shockingly off base, if they weren’t funny, they’d be tragic.
Some of the authors of such predictions need to pray that their editors don’t review their work if and when their employer has to make job cuts, because they’d have to go. And we’re only half way through the season.
Just for the record, I’ll get off the fence here and publicly declare that I am confident Arsenal can win the title. I’ve even put my reasons on record in the weekly column I write on ACLF, where I outlined the 8 reasons why Arsenal can win the title this season.
The funny thing about human nature is that many are not wired to climb down from hardline positions. It’s not that these hardline positions against Arsenal’s chances to win the title were based on considered reason – my belief is that there’s more to this.
Arsenal defies convention and stereotype in more than one way. The clubs vision, ethos and ambition, as well as it’s defiance and determination to win with beautiful football, however long it takes, is a path that many pundits and hacks find hard to fathom. It’s almost easier to dismiss it with lazy cliché’s and baseless sweeping statements about the club and it’s performances.
The thing is this though – the league table doesn’t lie. It’s not that there’s an expectation now that the hardliners who wrote Arsenal off at the beginning of the season will eat humble pie. Far from that, the humble pie is still being baked at London Colney and when the time comes, it will be appropriately dished out.
What’s more funny and enjoyable right now is watching the plethora of pundits and hacks try to undig the graves that they dug for themselves. You’d think that they would start by not digging any further than they already are – but clearly, the situation Arsenal find themselves in is not one any of them were prepared for.
There are those who talk in ’3rd person speak’. They’d come up with statements like ”Many pundits wrote Arsenal off but the Gunners are really showing a lot of character”. I like the ’many pundits’ label – as if they weren’t one of those.
Others use a twisted form of defensive pessimism by constantly looking for perceived holes and flaws to point out. ”Arsenal don’t have enough strength and depth”, or ”Arsenal still need an out and out goal scorer” not withstanding that Arsenal is still the most lethal team in the league, or ”Arsenal still need one or two new signings to make it”, or ”When it comes to the crunch, Arsenal won’t make it” You get the picture.
Then there are those who are seriously shifting positions in readiness for them to stake their claim as reasonable pundits. This lot totally ignore their hardline stance even as recently as a few weeks ago, and come up with tactics that are designed to deflect people away from their previous positions. On radio and in newspaper columns, they’ve started asking questions like ”Is this Arsenal’s year? Can they do it? What will it take for them to do it?”. You’ll also find them starting debates as to whether now Wenger needs to stop being ’stubborn’ and buy a striker in order to give Arsenal the best chance to win the league.
I think the most insulting pundits and hacks are the ones who now pretend that they have always believed in Arsenal and the promise of this young team is now showing. They’re pretending to praise Arsene Wenger’s vision and praising the young Arsenal side that has shown maturity and is now coming to fruition.
They claim that they always knew this team would deliver and maybe this is their year. They claim that there’s no justice in football if Arsenal’s scintillating and sexy brand of football is not rewarded with trophies. They feign frustration as if to empathise with frustrated Arsenal fans that the team seems so near and yet Wenger refuses (allegedly I might add) to ’buy’ that additional player that will make Arsenal the finished article.
My point is simple. The league table is undisputable and it doesn’t lie. The assumption and position taken by the punditry establishment is that Arsenal will fall off the cliff and Moneybags City from Middle Eastlands will ride into town and take over from Arsenal as the 4th force of English football.
Sky Sports even had the audacity to front a branding and marketing campaign of their ’Sky 4’ – Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City. These were going to be their Big 4 for the season.
The montage and imagery for this campaign was painfully obvious in illustrating the fact that they’d written off Arsenal even to make the top 4 in the EPL. They even had a specific advert for Sky Sports shown regularly with a clip of Manchester United’s 3rd goal in the Champions League semi-final last year at the Emirates stadium, as if to remind folks why Arsenal should be written off.
That humble pie being baked will be a mouthful for sure when it’s ready to serve. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the squirming as they try to undig their graves.
That humble pie, with fiscal prudence and a purist footballing aesthetic for ingredients, will be a mouthful indeed.
Arrigo Sacchi’s views on Ibrahimovic: “Strong against the weak; Weak against the strong”, would fit Football media like a glove: No guts to ask, say, a Fergie, the tough questions; no context, or fairness, in savaging those suffering “dressing room revolt”, “title droughts”, or other manufactured ailments from their ready reckoner pharmacopeia.
Oops, Correction: The last line should read “ready reckoner medical dictionary” and not pharmacopeia, which, in a nod to pedantry, is actually a compilation of drug descriptions and preparation methods.
Darius i’d like to say I enjoyed reading that, however I am now livid. It was as ever well written and truthful. But aaaargh, it all make syou sick doesn’t it.
I had the misfortune of watching Sky Sports Centre on Saturday, with the Panel including Merson, Thompson and of course Jeff Stelling, they discussed how devastating it was for Man U and Liverpool to be in such financial crisis. They went straight on Campbell’s signing and criticised the fact that we should be spending money on a young defender! And that we should be forking out more money, Merson stated that we always have 30m and should splash out to win a title.
The fact that they couldn’t see the reason why we don’t splash out, is because of the predicament that the other ‘big clubs’ find themselves in was a travesty. I was screaming at the telly. To tell you the truth it was Thompson that actually stuck up for campbell and his attributes, but nobody mentioned our shrewd financial tactics as a positive.
Also have you notices the reference of the ‘big two’ being used more frequently, that must mean we are classed as the 3rd best club and they don’t want to acknowledge us. You can guarantee that if any of Liverpool, Man City, Aston Villa, Everton were in our position it would be the big three!
LOL Saloner. You had me looking for a thesaurus right there. I like it…
ELS – I actually think that there should be a standard – don’t care whether its ISO 2000 or whatever is in fashion at the moment – but there should be a standard that every single person vying to be a pundit must pass.
The criteria should include:
The sad thing is that when Arsenal win a trophy and when they continue to win, the pundits will suggest that it’s only because the other teams were weak.
As for Phil “The Twat – there’s only a big 3″ Thompson, someone should have fired him by now for the disregard he showed all other teams with his bias of Liverpool. It’s a shame Liverpool haven’t made it easy for him…LOL!
On the issue of money in football – with Sky and many pundits, there’s misguided glamour and ‘Hollywood’ blockbuster feel with profligacy and spending big money. None of these pundits are capable of understanding the macro economics that drives football. You’d here such ignorant statements like:
“If he buys the club, wil he have money?”, “If they don’t spend, they won’t challenge”.
It’s almost like developing players and working with the current squad you have is a crime against association football and buying “off the shelf” solutions is a must.
Good article.
The ‘professional’ football pundits in the UK – or “iZombies” as I like to call them – have proved beyond all reasonable doubt over many many years just how incompetent they are, particularly when it comes to all things Arsenal.
Unfortunately, the ‘professional’ football punditry industry in the UK is one of the few spheres of employment where, no matter how incompetent you are, you’ll never be short of offers of work.
Such is life.
“iZombies”, ehnn? I like it; like it; like it! No more P(l)undits for me. iZombies it is. I hope you don’t mind me using it, Magneto. You are not going to pull no copyright laws on me now, are you? Ok, that’s settled.
The ‘iZombies’ (Uhn! I sure like the sound of that.) are mediocres, who do not even know the rules of football (FIFA, UEFA et al, rules). They have no proper understanding of Football tactics. So how do we expect them to have proper perspective on anything football related?
LRV – I didn’t invent the phrase or term “iZombies”.
I only came across it earlier this year when reading an article about an entirely different subject, and group of people, in the Guardian.
But it instantly appealed to me, and I’ve been using it in a football context ever since to describe ‘professional’ pundits…it seemed so appropriate for them.
On Phil “The Twat – there’s only a big 3″ Thompson I must admit a sense of wicked delight seeing him despair at the current state of affairs at his beloved ‘pool.
P.S Until today I’d have sworn there was a contact link in my footer.
Fed up with obtaining low amounts of useless visitors for your website? Well i want to let you know about a brand new underground tactic that makes me personally $900 every day on 100% AUTOPILOT. I could truthfully be here all day and going into detail but why dont you just check their site out? There is really a excellent video that explains everything. So if your serious about producing simple money this is the website for you. Auto Traffic Avalanche