People tend to remember bad things for longer than good things since negative events continue to provoke a strong emotional response long after they’re finished. Today, the happiness you feel remembering the Invincible season will likely seem less strong than the sadness you feel about losing the Champion’s League final. Indeed, you may even find that remembering the Invincible season makes

The thousand or so people who follow me on Twitter – or, more accurately, the ten or so people who actually read my tweets – may have noticed a trend in my output. Superhero that I am, I appear (almost) whenever there is injustice to swoop down and defend those in need without any that much thought for my personal safety.

And who exactly I am defending? Well…er…it seems defenders, mostly.

There are two in particular whose corner I have most steadfastly remained in, always on hand to rub Vaseline on their wounds (careful), stitch them up and keep them rehydrated with water from that funny hamster bottle. When they’ve been reeling from the blows I’ve been there to tell them that they’re going to be ok and shout “Hit the one in the middle!” in a slow-motion voice, while they struggle through blurry eyes to determine if I really am Wenger Boy or just their mother come back to tell ‘em she’s proud.

In case you didn’t guess from the ridiculously clear and in no way unnecessarily long-winded boxing analogy above, the two I have been defending recently are (80’s detective combo) Koscielny and Jenkinson. 

What these two have in common is simple: they have both made high-profile mistakes in the past and were subsequently written off by large sections of the population as – to use common football parlance – shit.

Now, no-one can deny that both have made mistakes. All players do. Even great players. Cesc Fabregas stuck his hand in the air to a) ask a really important question (I’m guessing), but more importantly to b) give away a penalty against Sp*rs last year which basically handed them a goal for free. Now that was a real mistake.

But no-one considers Cesc Fabregas to be shit, do they? No, because he was already considered a great player before he did possibly the most stupid thing I have seen anyone do in an Arsenal shirt in recent times. In fact, Fabregas has already built up such a reputation for quality that it would in take an incredible and sustained loss of form, or string of errors, to convince people that he was anything but world class.

The problem usually comes when a player is yet to cement their reputation as a great player, or even a good one, or if the number of good performances has been so few as to be easily forgettable. Which is what has happened with Messrs Koscielny and Jenkinson.

People tend to remember bad things for longer than good things since negative events continue to provoke a strong emotional response long after they’re finished. Today, the happiness you feel remembering the Invincible season will likely seem less strong than the sadness you feel about losing the Champion’s League final. Indeed, you may even find that remembering the Invincible season makes you sad because of our subsequent close-but-not-close-enough, trophyless period. Regret is a very strong emotion indeed. 

Another factor lies in first impressions, which studies suggest people use as a benchmark by which they judge all future actions. If the initial opinion is positive then you are likely to be more understanding when it comes to the negatives. Likewise the converse is also true.

The more positive and sustained the initial impression is, the more negatives it will take to relinquish that viewpoint and vice versa. Arshavin is one beneficiary of this since his hugely impressive first half-season created such a positive impression that it took a relatively high number of mediocre or poor performances for us begin to lose faith. Had he begun with three years of mediocrity and then played exceptionally well for six months you can bet that people would still be waiting for him to slip back into poor form rather than believing he’d rediscovered his best. And since he occasionally tops up his reputation with moments of magic, most of us remain endeared to him.

Koscielny’s start at Arsenal was quite mixed. A red card in your first game is no way to create a good impression and a few early mistakes led to a general feeling of uncertainty around his talent. His performances improved however and his excellent partnership with Djourou was, for a period, one of the best we’ve seen in recent times. 

But this period was relatively short-lived, and immediately following what was arguably his finest performance in an Arsenal shirt (Barca) his mistake cost us a last-minute goal in a cup final – a high-profile error which provoked an incredibly strong negative emotional response.

The overwhelming effect of this negative response was, unfortunately, enough to overwrite the steadily improving performances in many a mind. The fact that he hadn’t wowed upon arrival – as Arshavin and Vermaelen did – also counted against him (no real positive benchmark), and although the Barca performance was in fact a massive plus it seemed nowhere near as important as the Birmingham mistake and, especially because of their close proximity, became eclipsed almost entirely.

Had he been a striker it might also have been different. Scoring a goal usually makes a stronger impression, mentally, than preventing one and so his pivotal display against Barca, whilst widely noted, was of course partly overshadowed by the excellent goals we scored that night. It was also rendered insignificant – in the long term – by our exit from the competition in the return leg, which contributed to a general collective forgetfulness.

Our collapse post-final will also have been subconsciously attributed to him in part, following as it did that memorable mistake. Consciously too – further mistakes may well have been made but it’s also all too easy to blame poor team performances, defensively, on that those ‘shit’ defenders who are known for making mistakes. 

But in spite of all this negativity there was underneath a young defender, not even two years out of Ligue 2, who, in his first season in the Premiership, showed signs of his ability to form a very solid partnership alongside another in-form CB and who, in his first season in the Champion’s League, stopped possibly the best player ever from impacting the game. Who now, despite his high-profile mistake, has picked himself up to the point where respected observers are wondering whether our vice captain will even be able to dislodge him. Where we see him winning man of the match awards in difficult European away ties and hear RvP and Wenger citing his ability to become one of the best around.

Think about how positive his performances have had to be to raise himself to this level of appreciation from such a low point. And yet we still to this day hear people – even and, in fact, especially Arsenal fans – calling him shit. It’s amazing. I think you would just probably be within your rights to consider him unfinished or even, perhaps, inconsistent (although increasingly less so) but to label him outright poor is an insult to someone who has worked so hard for Arsenal and saved us more than a handful of times in the process. 

Which brings me onto Carl Jenkinson – a player who was literally plucked from League 1 in the summer and within months asked to perform against Man U, at Old Trafford, at probably our lowest point this year and as part of a considerably weakened team. His naivety (unsurprisingly) was exposed and
a red card and a humiliating score line later he was – despite his youth, inexperience and some encouraging pre-season performances – labelled a failure by the masses, and his short Arsenal career came grinding to a halt.

Only it didn’t. Despite such a potential mental scar of an event occurring so soon after a dream, but high-pressure, move to his boyhood club he, like Koscielny, picked himself straight up and just got on with it. Got on with it so well in fact that when our most consistent player got injured against Sp*rs it was young CJ who was asked to take over, keeping his place ahead of the more experienced Johann ‘also written off former saviour’ Djourou, putting in some of the best crosses Arsenal have seen for years, making a crucial block against Remy after he so easily dispatched Per ‘yet to be written off German international’ Mertesacker and generally working his fucking arse off for the team.

And yet despite the promise and no fuss approach that this still-developing, nineteen year old Arsenal player – and lifelong fan, I might add – has shown people are still complaining that he is ‘shit’, lacking in ‘technical ability’ and even, sadly, ‘not fit to wear the shirt’. Yes, his positioning may need work, and at his age he of course needs to develop, but there have been plenty of promising signs also – which if you’ve watched him play carefully I really should have no need to list. 

And regardless of the above, it is more than obvious that without the Man U game – a freak game really – the comments he receives would be nowhere near as cutting. To think that the effects of one game, so early on in a career, can rain down so much fire on a young talent is heartbreaking.

Just imagine yourself, as an Arsenal fan, in his position. 

Unfortunately Koscielny and Jenkinson are just two examples among many. Even recent MOTM Gervinho was heading dangerously towards being written off after his miss at Sp*rs – had we not scored afterwards or had it been last minute it probably would have had even more of a negative impact. Fabianski is of course ‘shit’, despite showing some excellent form prior to his incredibly unlucky injury, making match-winning saves against Wolves and City. And we all remember vividly how Song was written off.

Even four appearances, Arsenal Carling Cup debut goal scoring, Champion’s League debut goal scoring, eighteen year old newcomer Oxlade-Chamberlain was labelled shit by some last night after a mediocre performance against a decent Premiership team. And others still are written off for different reasons –a certain club captain and current best player because of his injury record, for example.

What history tells us is that one must be wary when writing players off – for any reason really, but especially due to a few errors. High-profile mistakes are not insignificant, the ability to maintain level in important matches in crucial, but to focus on a few incidents at the expense of general performance is to miss the bigger picture.

It’s a shame for our players that those who are so quick to jump to conclusions are just as slow to relinquish them, but it’s fantastic that those same players are not so quick to draw conclusions about themselves. Koscielny is fast becoming a necessary component of this resurgent Arsenal team – and is slowly being recognised as such – and I believe that if Carl Jenkinson continues to work as he has then he will have a very bright future ahead of him.

But I’m sure that as those two work to cement their reputation as valued members of the Arsenal squad there will be plenty more who work their way up only to face the same ridicule and contempt. I just hope, for our club’s sake as much as theirs, that they possess the same level of determination and persistence that Laurent Koscielny and Carl Jenkinson have shown so far.

WB

@WengerBoy1