Mails: Arsenal fans close to mutiny over Wenger

Mails: Arsenal fans close to mutiny over Wenger

Oh boy. Keep your mails coming (and on other subjects too) to theeditor@football365.com…

*Flames emoji*
Oh my, morning mailbox will be lit.
Olaotan

…Does anyone else ever see a football result and just think: “I can’t wait for the mailbox.”
Mike, LFC, Dubai

Who f**king knows anymore
Is this peak Arsenal? Or is that when Wenger signs his contract extension?
Oisín, MUFC, Kildare

This made us laugh
If you’re going to show up to Big Sam’s house at 8 o’clock on a Monday evening looking for bother, best not do it in a clown suit.
Brian M

‘Mental strength’
Dear Mr Wenger and his squad… Palace had eleven players out injured today and you produce that pile of s**t.

Well done Palace for showing what real ‘mental strength’ is all about and I think, even with your tough run in, you might just have saved yourselves! You might just have made Wenger’s mind up too!

I love Palace because they’re my local side and I’m ready for the stick from my mates… as an Arsenal fan I deserve it. However, it is time for a change Arsenal AFC from top to bottom!
Chris, Croydon

Arsenal frustrate me more than my own club
I don’t even support Arsenal and they frustrate me more than my own club does. Can only imagine how it’d be to be a Gooner at this point of time. To be subjected to this level of incompetence and embarrassment every year and still rub it off as if it’s nothing. It’s sickening, to say the least.

Strength to Arsenal fans. It’s not like I love them or anything, but I feel bad as a fellow human being.

By the way, Arsenal FanTv can go f**k itself. They’re only monetizing the fans’ anguish and that’s borderline blasphemy if you ask me.
Abhinav, Chicago, LFC

That away end got really toxic
I don’t know how it came across on TV, if it even did, but that away end got toxic tonight. Not long after that Cabaye goal (superb, might I add), fans turned on each other pretty quickly. Some are screaming Wenger Out, some Kroenke Out, many sung a chorus of You’re Not Fit To Wear The Shirt and then some screamed at others to back the team. The lad in front of me turned on one of the Arsenal Fan TV mob that was nearby, though I wasn’t convinced he’s to blame.

For the longest time, it felt like Arsene Wenger had the club and the fans’ best interests at heart. He was, and is, one of us. But the selfishness of this “decision” is so unhelpful to the fanbase. We don’t know what’s going on and we’re scared. The owner doesn’t care, the manager is way past his sell by date and the players are like little rabbits in headlights.

It got so ugly near the end I had to leave early. First time in my life but I don’t blame my fellow fans. I didn’t particularly want to sing that at Bellerin when he’s five yards away but it was unfortunately justified, and that’s not to single him out either.

There’s no leadership at the club, from Stan at the the top to tonight’s armband competition winner Theo Walcott.

I think we need to prepare for dark few years coming up because the only way we’re going at the moment is down.
Joe, AFC, East Sussex

Help yourself, Arsene
“You either die a hero, or live enough to see yourself become the villain”

Everyone let the fans down yesterday, the players and the manager. It was awful. This has been a pattern for some weeks and the toxic atmosphere at the Emirates from the fans probably hasn’t helped. But Wenger has become the pantomime villain.

You can’t change a whole team, you can’t change the board and management, but you can change a manager.

There are two ways this goes. He announces leaving, which gets rid of the fan and player anxiety and galvanises them to an FA Cup win. Wenger is rightly celebrated and lauded, regaining the respect he deserves as he leaves with his head held high.

Or he announces a two-year deal. The toxic environment continues. Each defeat creates a cauldron of hate in the Emirates and it gets too much and he gets the sack as we slip further and further down the table.

It doesn’t matter who you support, I think everyone knows that Arsene is too much of a football legend to be remembered for option 2. Sadly it is in his stubborn hands and he will become his own worst enemy.

“Careful what you wish for! Look at United!”. People never say look at Conte at Chelsea, Poch at Tottenham or even Ranieri at Leicester.

I have only known Wenger and I love him and what he’s done for the club. For me, and many Arsenal fans I know, please don’t ruin that.
Rob A (if we keep players and get a new manager, money’s on Arsenal to win league) AFC

A scene repeated up and down the country
I watched the Crystal Palace vs Arsenal game at home tonight, and, being a good egg, was informing a Palace supporting mate who was working of the score. I magnanimously informed him early doors that Palace were by far the better side and would cruise to a deserved win. Quel surprise.

So, with low expectations, as a battered down Arsenal fan, I settled down relatively sedately to watch the stagnant mess that has become our approach to football. The only two real moments of any passion which erupted in my living were as follows:

1. My girlfriend walked in to watch. As a QPR season ticket holder she knows a thing or two about dross on the football pitch. Ten minutes later she left the room in a genuine spluttering rage, unable to comprehend the banality of Arsenal’s football. Shouting at the TV about the incessant sideways passing and attempt to play intricate passes when (a) there were three million Crystal Palace players in the box, and (b) we had nowhere near the requisite technical quality and/or composure to make the pass.

2. When Theo Walcott, captain for the night and leader extraordinaire, stated in the post match interview that “they just wanted it more, you could tell right from the kick off” my phone rang to a furious, non-football supporting mate. He was aggrieved (at me it seemed) that any professional sportsman could utter such a crassly unprofessional statement on national television. Went so far as to suggest it should be a criminal act in fact.

So there you have it, Arsenal are now so bad, and so consistently so, that the only people it upsets in my Arsenal-supporting flat are a QPR fan and a man who’s all about the egg chasing.
Thom, London

Those f**king substitutions
Of the many things that made me despair during that game, I think the substitutions might be at the top of the list

At half-time, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen, I hoped, desperately, that changes would be made, to the personnel and the system. Because the latter clearly wasn’t working, and at least five of the players were, if I am being generous, playing below their level. (Alexis, Ozil, Xhaka, Mustafi, Bellerin). We have a decent bench. Mix it up. Surprise them. Try.

Nothing happened, obviously, and the game carried on in much the same way – if anything, slightly worse than before. When Giroud and Ramsey subsequently appeared on the touchline around the 60-minute mark, Alan Smith commented, with a note of surprise in his voice, on how this was “a little early for Arsene”, as though something radical was afoot. And again, as I waited for the numbers to go up, I hoped against hope that it wasn’t just like for like, a central midfielder for a central midfielder, a striker for a striker, that something different was going to be attempted. Because, and this bears repeating, what we had seen up until this point – this match, this season, this decade – was fundamentally not working.

But no. Elneny off, Ramsey on. Welbeck off, Giroud on. Nothing else, at least to my eye, was changed. Two more goals are conceded. After the third, so quietly that it scarcely warranted a mention, Oxlade-Chamberlain came on for Theo Walcott – captain, my captain – and trudged over to the right wing, alongside Hector Bellerin in front of what was by now a pretty rabid group of Arsenal fans.

I’m am not Jonathan Wilson, but then again neither am I Paul Merson, and although I recognise that Ramsey has different qualities to Elneny, and Giroud to Welbeck, what I do not understand, and what I wish Geoff Shreeves had actually asked Arsene after the game – instead of the tedious needling he subjected him to – was what he was hoping these changes would achieve. What did he expect to happen? Were we to go more direct? Were the full backs instructed to cross it earlier? Was Ramsey to play further forward than Elneny? What, in short, was the plan?

Jamie Carragher’s withering assessment after the game was correct. This is Arsenal. This is what we do and this is how we play and nothing ever changes. We are 4th place trophies. We are Wenger In. We are Wenger Out. We are Arsenal Fan TV. We are an absent owner. We are summer war chests. We are players running out of contract. We are Theo Walcott’s post-match “honesty” .

We are No Plan B. We are, at the minute, no Plan A. We are the-gaffer-told-us-to-sit-back-and-keep-it-tight-and-hit-them-on-the-counter. And we are the same substitutions, in the same system, every fucking game. Maybe, maybe, it’s worth trying something else?
Matt Hennessey

Yeah, Andros did do a dive
He got a really easy ride from the commentary team there didn’t he? Can you imagine the reaction if Townsend were a foreign?

But English players don’t dive, do they?
Wubblepig, York

Some Palace thoughts from Ed
A few thoughts on last night’s game.

*Monday afternoon’s mailbox suggested we should watch the Arsenal and then write in this morning. This would have been easier if the Arsenal had shown up.

*For the second time in ten days, I’m left staggered. What a result, what a fantastic result. Given how often it seems like all floundering teams need to do to end a poor run is face Crystal Palace, it was good to be able to put an out of sorts Arsenal side properly to the sword.

*Wilfried Zaha was again absolutely incredible. He notched two assists, taking him to nine for the season. This ties him with Alexis Sanchez, and leaves him behind only Christian Eriksen, Gylffi Sigurdsson and Kevin de Bruyne (all 11). That’s some nice company.

That said, what really helped Zaha was that Andros Townsend was also a threat on the other side. Townsend of course benefitted directly for the first goal, but in general it felt like the team had good balance, similar to when Zaha and Yannick Bolasie used to tear up defences.

The BBC made Townsend their man of the match, which was a fair shout. He is less consistent than Zaha, but when he’s on top form he’s a nightmare to defend against.

*Sam Allardyce deserves credit for the way he has got his team organised defensively. The Arsenal were restricted to just three shots on target, all of which came in the first half. Arsene Wenger’s side will rightly be castigated for the way they failed to get themselves back into the game, but credit must also go to the Eagles for the way they defended, restricting the Gunners to low percentage chances. This starts in midfield, where Luka Milivojevic is establishing himself as the best defensive midfielder many of us hadn’t heard of last year.

What makes this defensive performance all the more impressive is that Martin Kelly played at centre-back. He was preferred to Damien Delaney, most likely for being better able to cope with pace, but he would ordinarily have been lower in the depth chart – clearly Mamadou Sakho is a genius of a centre-back who can get a tune out of almost anyone.

*“Expected points” isn’t a real metric, but before they were played the last three games looked like they would yield one point (against Southampton); instead, they have reaped six points, coincidentally the distance between Palace and the bottom three. We’ve also got a game in hand, which is against Hotspur on 26 April. Could go either way, although it’s fairly certain if Milivojevic and Dele Alli fly into the same tackle they’ll likely cause a minor earthquake.

*I was wearing my new Zweigen Kanazawa t-shirt last night too. Just throwing that out there.
Ed Quoththeraven

Oh wow. Praise for the Hall of Shame
Well done Mr Storey, That was an excellent read. I got a particular kick out of the idea that anyone would be rushing around the office carrying a Liverpool briefcase!

Two things to comment on:

1) In all my time going to Anfield, I’ve never come across that mascot. Thank Christ. It’s terrifying. Who thought that was a good idea? Imagine being the poor bastard having to do that job..

2) How is Paul Konchesky not listed as the worst player your club has signed? Aquilani and Keane both showed signs of promise (albeit briefly) but my God Konchesky was woeful. I’d make a stand and say worse than Sean Dundee because at least the fans didn’t have to see him play.

Terrific piece. Well done. Keep up the good work.
Miguel Sanchez, LFC, Eire

More thoughts on women’s football
I am glad John Nich called out the broader topic of sexism in football. Especially where David Moyes referred to Vicki as ‘the girl’, twice, which I would take to be a deliberate attempt at being condescending towards her. Even though it wasn’t even Vicki that raised the issue…but, you know, if ‘girls’ weren’t allowed to be football reporters this would never have happened.

Even worse, though, have been all the PFM commentators who have taken it upon themselves to ‘lad up’ the whole situation. “Not that kind of man”, “bit of banter”, “it was all said in jest as they were all laughing about it.” One of the worst examples being Alan Brazil and Ray Wilkins on Brazil’s podcast. Just listening to them saddened and embarrassed me. Truly, Ray Wilkins sounds like he would have trouble trying to work out how to cross a road and yet thinks he has right to say this wasn’t sexist because he once played football.

Clearly labelling any league with a moniker of Ladies or Girls is sexist, well the latter if they are over 16. But who is choosing to call it those names? Is it the women themselves or male overlords. If the former, they should be looking to create something totally new. Perhaps they should look at tennis. In the 1970s they created the Virginia Slims tournament, the forerunner of the WTA and ultimately leading to getting equal pay in major tournaments. While the idea of a cigarette brand being the name is abhorrent, the idea was right.

And I will leave you with this, possibly misogynist thought. On a few occasions I have heard female team sport players complain that men were not watching their games enough. One was about football and one about rugby. The idea being that if more men watched them play, then ratings would increase, as would advertising and increased income would follow. While we can get into the relative merits of women’s football, shouldn’t the onus be placed on women watching first? Clearly it is a challenge as women are traditionally not sports fans but perhaps that is the opportunity to find out how to get them on board. I hear a lot of complaining but few solutions being offered. If men are in the way, then do something about it. When women have grabbed the bull by the horns, as in tennis, they can go far. They need to to that with football.

The notion that women’s football is somehow dependent or indebted to someone like David “Everton Ladies” Moyes is ironic and abhorrent all at the same time.
Paul McDevitt