The Gooners are not unlike that either. Call me too much of a fan but I feel Gooners as a whole are relatively similar to the club and its current principles. This whole story is difficult to write without generalization so bear with me. I feel that clubs and their identities can be found in their fans too. The jokes we make about how current MCFC fans were Chelsea fans five years ago aren’t that far off the mark for me. Sure you can be a fan of any club and live anywhere in the world. But regional identities matter. In earlier an earlier article the great @thesquidboylike talked about how different

Warning: may contain massive generalisations.

Fans are like a massive person. Mobs can be given a personality just like people can. So can companies, even Arsenal. Whilst I am no psychologist there definitely are a few things to be observed about Gooners as people, as fans and as a mob, and about Arsenal as a team, and a club. In this article I hope to shed a light on the Arsenal condition.

Firstly the fans. Now historically Gooners come from an area in North London where people are relatively young, vibrant, multicultural and intellectual. For large parts of the history of the club that was not exactly the case for the club itself. Indeed the memory of the often dour football from the sixties or early nineties pales in comparison to some of the football being played now. Arsenal was always a big club but never particularly innovative, except of course under the two most legendary managers, Herbert Chapman and our current Le Boss. Under Le Boss the club and the community have often felt in sync. Arsenal were the leading club in training facilities, continental playing style and the building of a continental youth academy. We were the first to have a lineup without English players in a time when people spoke ill of doing so. Arsene Wenger has been one of the reasons English football is still the best in the world, just like people from Islington, Higbury and Hampstead play an important part in keeping London and England at the forefront of the world’s cultural, economic and political power. (and I hope that is not a controversial point to make)

The Gooners are not unlike that either. Call me too much of a fan but I feel Gooners as a whole are relatively similar to the club and its current principles. This whole story is difficult to write without generalization so bear with me. I feel that clubs and their identities can be found in their fans too. The jokes we make about how current MCFC fans were Chelsea fans five years ago aren’t that far off the mark for me. Sure you can be a fan of any club and live anywhere in the world. But regional identities matter. In earlier an earlier article the great @thesquidboylike talked about how different fans from different places and different ages felt differently about our rivals and enemies, for instance. The Gooners from North London, who are still the core of the fanbase, the people that go to the home games and who are involved in the community the most, felt strongly about Spurs and ManU. Other Gooners were more intent on hating Chelsea or Barcelona. And our local fanbase is quite similar to the way the club profiles itself.

Look around twitter or the infamous blogosphere. Now, again, I try to remain impartial, but for years the blogosphere was ruled by Gooners. In about 2009 I remember that of twenty of the most popular footballing websites in England, about eleven were Arsenal related blogs. Arsenal fans took to the internet with verve. Still to this day the Arsenal blogs are the most differentiated and the most interestingly diverse. Many tell news and stories every day. Some only publish articles. Some cover tactics. Others cover youth. No other club (and I did a little research) has nearly the same amount both in terms of quality and of quantity. And on twitter it is still quite the same. ManU tells the world that they have about 600m people following their club actively, and about 200m fans. But if you take to twitter (and I admit twitter is a limited tool only) it, again, is ruled by Gooners. Is this because of the influence of blogs? I think so. Is it because for nearly a decade now we have been the overlooked, unpopular club of the nation? I think so too. And, (and don’t take this as snooty) is it because our fans are relatively intelligent and have the ability to speak about these things? Yeah, I guess so.

Now this is not a generalization. There are a lot of idiots and trolls and wankers out there that are diehard Gooners, and I also have amazing admiration and respect for some tweeters and bloggers from others clubs. I still feel that it is fair to say other clubs are lagging. Then again, not all clubs are as stupid as Arsenal and as such have a media watch on their website. Whilst this may be a digression of my article, I fear that the classy, understated power of the club is lost when we publish the rumours the press use to undermine us. But that may just be me (and all other Gooners I have ever spoken to). It also is noticeable that most of our fans didn’t join on some bandwagon and left again when success dried out. The Invincibles were big just before the Premier League exploded and whilst names like Bergkamp and Henry still speak to the imagination, many fans who joined for their football stayed and supported the so called ‘Project Youth’ and the subsequent lack of trophies. Sure our fans can be fickle, but generally are loyal to the club.

To be fair there are some interesting things to be said about Gooners that are not so positive. For instance we can be a very split camp. Despite all he has done for Arsenal some still want Wenger out. Some want the owners out. Some harangue the boss all season long to ‘spend some effing money’. When the club is being profligate on the pitch, the fans hate it and voice their displeasure. So when the club are not profligate of the pitch, by being prudent and spending wisely, you would think they would concur. But no. Fans wanna see great football, and goals, on the pitch and big spending, on big names, off the pitch. Arsenal fans can be obsessive in that way. The great joke of ‘spend some effing money on a player’ – Wenger buys a player – ‘not that one, another player!’ shows just how fickle fans can be. I even think Arsenal fans are more fickle than others. When we sell a player he was always rubbish (case in point Alex Song) and when we buy a player with a small name we want Wenger out. Even if these small name players become club legends.

Arsenal fans, and I base this on twitter more than I base it on other things, are very unsettled about their club. I cannot always blame them but, especially during transfer windows, many, myself included, can’t hear news or read something without it being important or a sign a deal is on, or off, or whatever. We go into a continuous state of panic. We are also quite gullible. Again, myself included. We will believe anyone as long as the news is negative but if the news is positive we will scrutinise and do research until we know for sure we are right. This flakiness from fans, who are also capable of loving a player one moment and hating him the next seems to be mirrored in the way our team play. No club in the country can blow hot and cold as quickly as we can. Perhaps that is why we aren’t winning trophies. And like the fans, whose loyalties to the players and managers are in some cases fickle at best, the players seem to have their doubts about the required potential at the club and their loyalty wavers like the opinions of the fans.

In surveys that have been done Arsenal fans were generally amongst the most affluent and multicultural fans in the country. This is slightly contradictory but that same contrad
iction is what makes me love our fanbase so much, the diversity. Tickets and merchandise are expensive so having affluent fans is not a bad idea. Many fans also wanna be involved in the ownership and the running of the club. And whilst some don’t agree with the AST and some of their members, it is a good initiative, especially the fanshare idea. Our finances are constantly being scrutinised by fans, more than at any other club (with the current exception of the Glazers at United I have to add). I rarely see MCFC fans asking where the money is coming from or how it is being spent. Whilst the MCFC fans are not to blame for that (their club is hardly transparent) our current transparency and the push for openness is a result of years of diligence and association from our fans who want the club to them in everything. And if anything fits the philosophies that Arsene Wenger likes to espouse, it is that of a prudent club with an involved fanbase with transparent finances (and good football).

To end this article I think back to when I was telling myself that I got lucky, being a fan of Arsenal. You fall in love with a football club at a certain age, usually when young, for a certain reason, sometimes as simple as the colour of the shirt or the name of the manager. Or a geographical coincidence. I fell in love because I lived in London and saw my hero Dennis Bergkamp score against Argentina. But I sometimes wonder if I had been a fan of Chelsea, or Liverpool, or any other club, how much I would have stayed in love. This is a real thought, by the way, not some way of hyping up Arsenal: for every person has their own values. I love attractive football and appreciate that above winning trophies. I always liked and supported the idea of integrating young players and being self-sufficient in that way. I also think that financial prudency is important. I once got to a national final of an essay competition writing about how the 2008 financial crisis would help the world because of prudence. To me as a Gooner all these parts fit with the club I love. For that I am truly grateful. I still disagree with things the club and the manager and the players do. But I love the club. And we can thank Arsene Wenger for making this club one of the greatest in world history. I can imagine loving the club must have been a lot harder during the dour Graham years, or the wilderness years of the early eighties, when pretty much all clubs were relatively stable financially and the difference on the pitch was down to other things. I can only say that I realise this makes me sound like someone who won’t always be a fan, even though I will. But even when the going gets tough I find the positives. Respect must go out to all those Gooners from before Arsene Wenger’s time and their dogged determination. That is what being a fan is all about. It is what we do on twitter every day too. We convince ourselves that times are getting better, and even though I do believe it, we have been saying so for years. But even without success I can keep on loving the club. I hope we all can. For when we do something us Gooners are quite a special bunch of people.