But the sausages we’ve been eating haven’t actually been that bad, have they? Sure the quality has fluctuated but at times they have been pretty damn scrumptious and we’ve gobbled them up by the bucket load without a second thought. And let’s just say for one second that we did bring in a new chef and it was only after he started that we realised our kitchen didn’t even have the ingredients for sausages or caviar and we were forced to eat tripe for the foreseeable future. It was only because our previous chef had somehow managed to make tasty sausages out of old Fairy washing up liquid bottles that we had been eating as well as we had all these years. Imagine that. Then we’d be screwed, wouldn’t we?

Arsenal fans are a fickle bunch it must be said. The wave of optimism before the Carling Cup final has almost completely subsided now and this Arsenal team have, in the minds of many supporters, gone from being potential greats to actual flops. Where they were cheered yesterday they are booed today and where there were once songs sung there are now axes swung. While it’s understandable to a degree it’s all fairly predictable and I could have told you this would happen if we lost a long, long time before we actually did.

The most depressing facet of this fickleness is the whole ‘Wenger out’ nonsense. It’s been covered a fiznillion times (a number so big I had to invent it specifically for this sentence) but I just want to go over it once more to try and shed some light on why you might have arrived at this conclusion and why, when looking at this reason, it becomes evident that this viewpoint is fundamentally flawed and in need of some serious perspective.

People who come to this site may mistake my positivity for blind faith but let me tell you that I am not content with the situation as it is. I wouldn’t be a supporter of Arsenal Football Club if I didn’t think we should be winning things and as someone who is yet to see my beloved team win anything at all I am arguably more desperate than any of you to see our captain hoist a gleaming trophy high above his head. However, having said that I retain my right to be see things in the best light possible and while I believe fully in criticising Wenger or the players when they deserve it I also feel it is my duty as a blogger to instil some belief in a team that is still fighting for something this season. 

How can you expect the players to pick themselves up and fight for the title when you are already writing them off? Your mentality is more fragile than theirs and I certainly wouldn’t want you anywhere near the team during the run in. 

The ultimate problem is one I feel has already been expressed best by Mr Wenger himself. When fans booed the team after a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough in 1998 he uttered the now famous sentence: “If you eat caviar every day it’s difficult to return to sausages”, and that still rings true to this day. The situation back then was different of course – we’d recently completed a famous double – but what is interesting is that even at that point Arsenal supporters were showing a worrying tendency to turn on the team when things didn’t go their way. 

The trouble now of course is that we’ve been eating sausages for a hell of a long time and people are craving that caviar like never before. The taste of sturgeon eggs is slowly fading from their memory and every time they try to order it the waiter comes back with a couple of bangers instead. No matter how good the sausages taste they will never quite be caviar and as a result a whole lot of people want to get rid of the head chef in the hope that someone else might be able to cook up the tasty delicacies that they desire.

But the sausages we’ve been eating haven’t actually been that bad, have they? Sure the quality has fluctuated but at times they have been pretty damn scrumptious and we’ve gobbled them up by the bucket load without a second thought. And let’s just say for one second that we did bring in a new chef and it was only after he started that we realised our kitchen didn’t even have the ingredients for sausages or caviar and we were forced to eat tripe for the foreseeable future. It was only because our previous chef had somehow managed to make tasty sausages out of old Fairy washing up liquid bottles that we had been eating as well as we had all these years. Imagine that. Then we’d be screwed, wouldn’t we?

Having stretched out the analogy like a thief on a medieval rack let’s revisit the important points implicit in that jumble of culinary nonsense in order to make them a little clearer to all.

The main issue here is that Arsenal fans expect way, way too much. We’ve only recently emerged from our most successful period ever and on the back of that anything else is bound to seem like failure. When you win and win and then become a nearly team then it’s somewhat natural to feel like there’s something fundamentally wrong and it is this more than anything which leads so many supporters to call for Wenger’s head every time something bad happens. 

But how many of these same fans were critical of Newcastle for sacking Chris Hughton or West Brom for sacking Roberto Di Matteo part way through their first proper crack at the top division? These are managers who raised expectations and then when results didn’t go their way they were ruthlessly axed like so many unfortunates before them. They were victims of their own success and had both narrowly missed out on promotion through the play-offs they may well still be in their jobs today. 

Now you may say that these are completely different cases since these managers weren’t given time whereas Wenger has been given ages and ages and ages and ages. To that I just laugh and say “You, my friend, have been brainwashed”. Brainwashed by previous success and brainwashed by the media into thinking that six years without a trophy is a long time. It’s not, it’s six measly years. Six years, I might add, in which we’ve been to a Champion’s League final, beaten the best team of the last decade and consistently fought on four fronts with a wide range of exciting, quality players. Six years in which hundreds of other teams have also not won trophies or indeed even come close to winning trophies and in which smaller teams have become stronger and stronger teams have become weaker. We may not have won anything but we haven’t fallen off either and to be honest we can all afford to wait just a little longer in my book. 

Winning only one trophy and no titles between 1970-71 and 1986-87, that’s a pretty long time. Not winning the title at all since 1960-61, that’s a really, really long time. We’re not even close to that yet.

And while Wenger has been a victim of his own success in the long run he has also been a victim of his own success in the short run too. Back at the beginning of the season we were tipped – as we always are but never do – to fall out of the top four and begin our steady decline to mediocrity, even by some Arsenal supporters. Instead of that we have been to a final, been knocked out of one competition at the Nou Camp and of another, at the quarter-final stage, at Old Trafford – stadia in which losing is not considered by many to be a shameful act – and most importantly we are one of only two teams left in the whole of England with any realistic chance of winning the most prized domestic trophy of them all. It’s safe to say we’re doing a whole lot better than expected. 

To put that into perspective we have done better than Man U, Chelsea, Sp*rs, City and Liverpool in the Carling Cup, better than Chelsea, Sp*rs and Liverpool in the F.A. Cup, better than City and Liverpool in the Champion’s League and
better than Chelsea, City, Sp*rs and Liverpool in the league. We’ve done better than every big team in at least one competition and there is not one competition we haven’t done better than at least two of them.

But Wenger should have really been more careful. Instead of allowing us to fall off the radar he decided to put us directly in the public eye by actually doing his best to win something with the club. He really does like making a rod for his own back. 

Since it is because of our success and not because of our failure that we are all feeling quite so down right now. Had we gone out of the Carling Cup to Birmingham in September and lost to Man U in the F.A. Cup in January then second place in the league with a game in hand at this stage of the season would seem to be something to celebrate. The other cups would have been forgotten about by now and we would be focussing all of our efforts on winning the one thing left to win instead of spouting our mouths off about the three things we no longer can. And if our exits hadn’t been in such close proximity then it wouldn’t seem like a ‘collapse’, it’s only because they happened so soon after each other that everyone is talking like there’s a huge, unsolvable problem. But those were three very difficult, easy to lose games that in isolation wouldn’t seem so reflective of a wider issue.

Is there a problem? Yes. Is it unsolvable with Wenger in charge? No. Would we have even done as well as we have with someone else at the helm? No-one can know. But you can’t say we are doing badly and you can’t say we will never win. That we even came so close should be taken as a positive and not negative. And we’re not done yet. 

Did we do better than last season? Yes. Much better. So that’s already an improvement and this season isn’t over yet. If we finish fifth next season and go out of everything before February then you might be able say something fundamental has to change but as we’ve improved a lot I’m afraid you don’t really have a leg to stand on. And that’s forgetting that we’ve been in a similar position before (2008-09) and come back to where we are now so that just proves you can never write us off under Wenger. 

Remember that you’re as disappointed as you are now because we came so close and lost, not because we didn’t come close at all. One mistake, one mistaken red card and a lack of clinical finishing in one game is very possibly all that separate us from a victory over Barcelona, a semi-final and a trophy. That’s how tight it is at this level.

Fickle fans see everything in black and white when our situation is really the greyest it can be. If we win the league on goal difference we will be amazing and if we lose it on goal difference we will be a shambles. That such a fine line separates the two should serve to highlight the absurdity of that view. 

Yes, the Arsenal team of 2010-11 is not the Invincibles but if this was the 2005-06 season and we had won something the year before then no-one would be calling for Wenger’s head. It’s not this season that’s the problem, it’s the history. This season on its own has been pretty good but we are being unfairly weighed down by years of expectation without results.

But the Arsenal team of 2010-11 is also not the team that lost the Champion’s League final in 2006 or the one that threw away the league in 2007-08. This is a new team with new players and it’s doing pretty damn well in my book. The best thing we can do right is to give this team the backing it has earned by playing some wonderful football at times and staying competitive on four fronts against some of the best teams the world has to offer.

Please, please stop with the doom and gloom. It’s not that bad here. Really.

Earlier I talked about the unfair sackings of Hughton and Di Matteo but luckily for those clubs f you want to stay around mid-table there are a fair few journeyman, mediocre managers doing the rounds you can call on. But when you’re fighting on a budget for four trophies at a club with a certain ethic and philosophy it becomes a whole more difficult than just wedging in a successor.

With that in mind I have question for those that see replacing Wenger as the best option:

Would you risk your sausages for the sake of caviar, knowing that you might well end up with neither?

I wouldn’t. And I don’t think we’ll be eating sausages for much longer. 

WB