Arsene to "rise above" fan nonsense

[Tipsychubbs]

Did you ever think to ask yourself why people keep turning up regardless? Is it because they feel the team requires their presence or is it because they desperately desire to continually be plugged in to a hyperreality centred around a sports club in order to find some manner of fulfillment/entertainment? Why do Stoke and other pub teams have fans? They obviously lack ambition and have been mired in a near century of dismal failure. Why do those silly feckers who support them keep showing up? Is it for the quality of their football or is it to be a part of something, however shitty and pathetic, which offers an interlude from normal reality. You should consider yourself lucky to at least get to watch half-decent football on occassion in these interludes from your own personal reality.

I think the problem is one of complacency. If you're a club with few resources and you're not very good, at least if you put the effort in to be all that you can be, then the fans will appreciate that.

If you're a club with good resources and you don't use them effectively to be all that you can be, then fans will be frustrated. We're a big club in a good position, but have allowed ourselves to be complacent, ever since those champions league places started increasing. Suddenly the bare minimum became all that was necessary, as long as the money kept rolling in. The finances have been managed in a way that sidelines success on the pitch, or at least puts It on the back burner. With a balanced point of view, of course the club needs and does well to be well run, self-sustaining and financially responsible. But we've gone too far in this direction without putting enough back onto the pitch; the same fans that are turning up each week with their hard earned dosh are being simply treated as consumers with no say in how they want the club to move forward. Being in a good position and being complacent is worse than being in a bad position and giving it your all.

Someone recently on this board made the comparison of AW to brain surgeon who was an alcoholic, and that applies to the club in general as well. In a great position, with superb potential to do great things, but instead of making the most of that position, sabotages itself with a weakness that destabilises itself from reaching its full potential.

This club with judicious, shrewd investment could be challenging for the league, aiming higher but it does not strive to at the moment. The fans want of course want to be entertained and to escape reality, but they do turn up to support a football team and a football manager, not to support a bank and a bank manager. If you're not giving back to the fans in striving to be all that you can be football wise, then understandably a good proportion of those fans will get jaded, and roll their eyes at the marketed “brand” of beautiful football and Champions League football (without the necessary investment to aim to win it), as having seen it all before but with no end product, in trying to be the best that you can be. If it was clear that serious effort was being made then I'm sure less people would complain, but rather, support those efforts.