The core of this piece deals with our mentality but before I begin I want to list some other positives which you are welcome to write out on flashcards, place face down on a table, mix up

In the midst of supreme negativity, ridiculous disappointment and outrageous injustice I feel it is somewhat necessary to offer up an alternative outlook to the events of last night. For while we can spend all day cursing our luck and wondering ‘What if?’ we are surely better off trying to take what positives we can from the game and moving forward into the next phase of the season. 

With this in mind I have decided to provide the Gooner population with a couple things to think about which will hopefully help us to focus our minds on the future and confine the Barcelona travesty to the history books where it now belongs.

The core of this piece deals with our mentality but before I begin I want to list some other positives which you are welcome to write out on flashcards, place face down on a table, mix up, and then turn over at random for your personal amusement:

We defended really, really well with eleven men at the Nou Camp (don’t forget this team beat Mourinho’s Real 5-0) – defending is as much an art as attacking and if had won the game we would have earned the result through organisation and hard work; Djourou and Koscielny make an excellent partnership and cover for each other superbly – I don’t know how many times one missed a tackle only for the other to mop up…fantastic; nineteen year old Wilshere was our best midfielder/attacker and he looks more committed than anyone and willing to bleed for Arsenal; our most deadly striker gained sixty minutes of match practice and came off uninjured; Almunia was, in my opinion, excellent against the best strike force in the world; there are now midweek breaks in place of Champion’s League games; we only lost by one goal overall, we won our home tie and with eleven men on the pitch we had the result to go through.

There are definitely more but I’m not sure how many flash cards you own so I’ll get on with the main argument which is essentially:

If we were going to lose it is better that we were cheated.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that with Van Persie on the pitch – or at least an 11th player since he would probably have been subbed at some time – we would have had a far greater chance of progressing. The red card was ridiculous, as fans of all teams agree, and significantly reduced our ability to hold Barcelona off, and had such an incorrect decision not have been made we might well have held on for the draw, fought back in the last twenty minutes or even taken the tie to extra time and penalties. That much is true.

But it is also true that Barcelona may have won the game, fairly and squarely. They might still have scored two and gone through; even three. Instead of fighting back in the last twenty minutes our defence may have crumbled and Messi might have got another hat-trick against us. If that had happened you could bet that all the talk today – even from the Arsenal players – would have been about the young Argentinean and the Barcelona team and not about the ludicrous dismissal of our best striker. And that would have been a hell of a lot more demoralising for our team 

As it happens, however, the Arsenal players are not feeling sad about the result. No. They are feeling angry. And anger can be an incredibly useful emotion when you are fighting for something, and boy are we fighting for something. 

When warriors like Wilshere, Nasri and Van Persie – who all spoke out against the ref on Twitter – walk out onto the pitch to train next do you think they will be dragging their heels and passing the ball half-heartedly across the turf with tears in their eyes? Or are they going to run that little bit harder? Focus that little bit more clearly? Want more than anything to show the world that they were cheated and that when the playing surface is level they can beat anyone, just like they already beat Barcelona? 

I think the answer is clear. 

While being cheated out of a game is never a nice experience being cheated as a team actually has its benefits. There is absolutely nothing like a joint sense of injustice to strengthen the bonds between team mates and create something like an ‘us and them’ mentality.

If you win a game then you are happy, and you can share that happiness with your team mates and you will all feel special and celebrate together. But you can also share that happiness with others, you like talking about it and gain satisfaction from telling other people what has happened.

If, however, you are cheated and you feel angry then there are only a select group of people that you really want to talk about that with – those who experienced the same injustice. And for all of the sympathy and understanding provided by others you don’t really get the same sense of release as you do when discussing it with people who were there and shared your exact thoughts and feelings throughout. 

Even as a fan, when Arsenal win I can talk to anyone about it and get excited but when they lose I don’t feel better unless I can talk to another Gooner who understands what I’m going through. I often spend a good ten or twenty minutes trying to get through to an Arsenal supporting friend because I know I can trust only them to be feeling what I’m feeling and that shared set of emotions is an important tribal bond.

The same goes for the players, they will be discussing this amongst themselves as we speak and the more they talk and share opinions the closer they will become emotionally. The more they will feel they are in the same fight and the more they will be willing to put themselves on the line for each other. 

Right now they will feel like they have had it hard – they don’t just have to play teams they have to play the referees as well – and they will feel like it is them against the world. And this is a very powerful concept.

Mourinho was the master of cultivating this mentality when he was at Chelsea and he would always scream and shout and cry foul play if even the slightest thing went against his team. In doing so he made them feel like everyone was against them which only brought them closer together as they sought to scrap against the forces without. Mourinho brought two titles to Chelsea using this method and it is something that we should harness now. 

Because we are in this together and it is us against them and we need to use this shared experience to push on as a team because it is only when we work as a team that we succeed. Our best performances have also been team performances and the more the players feel a part of that team the better their performances will be. 

There is still a long way to go this season and if there has been any criticism of the team this year it is that we don’t work hard as a team – like we did against Chelsea – as often as we should. Maybe now we will realise in our hearts that we cannot expect any favours from anyone and that if we are going to do it at all we will have to do it the hard way.

I cannot see into the future, but I know there is a strong chance that this collective experience might just be the galvanising force that we need to push us on to the title. 

But whatever we do, from now until the last game of our season, you can guarantee one thing – we’ll be doing it together.

COYG!

WB