Manny Road

I thought that was an excellent article and you’re spot on when when you mention realism, however I think it actually goes back to when West Ham was relegated instead of us, I remember the headlines at the time, saying it would be a travesty for the Premiership and for football if the Hammers went down and we stayed up…! The rest is history!

Cheers Mike.

I think you’re partly right about the West Ham thing, the other thing is that the press basically have a set number of narratives to attach to football clubs, and basically they’ve run out of narratives (or ways of making us seem interesting) for us so all they’re left with is bashing us.

One of those narratives is the plucky little club that’s just been promoted and is doing pretty well. The current darlings of this are Stoke and Burnley.

As soon as you stay too long though, or get ideas above your station (getting in to Europe) then they knock you down again.

In a nutshell, the press are bored of us and they wish we’d go away, mainly because most of them can’t be bothered to do any real research in to what’s going on, so they just re-hash each other’s arguments and ideas. It’s just churn, and ultimately it will be the death of most newspapers because most people aren’t interested in reading that crap.

Most of the muppets on the various TV sports channels are commentators and not journalists. They have no recognised qualification for their position. That said the copy produced by sports journalist regarding Bolton beggars belief. The latest being Owen Coyle, side way move, over achievers etc. Most lack basic research and an objective approach to their copy. Given the financial problems at Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, perhaps a move to a financially stable well run club is a step up for Owen!

I find that it’s not just the media that rely on outdated stereotypes and falsities to say anything about teams like Bolton, it’s fans too. This was typified for me by comments on an article I wrote about the Arsenal-Bolton game ( http://bolton.theoffside.com/results/arsenal-4-2-bolton-or-so-thats-why-they-call-them-the-gunners.html ) and an Arsenal-written article I found on the Bolton-Arsenal game the title of which was “Gunners outclass Bolton Thugs” or some such nonsense.

Bolton is not a dirty team and haven’t been for a while. People are still calling this a team constructed by Big Sam, when in reality the only players around from his days are Jaaskelainen, Super Kev, and Muamba. People want to see a thuggish, dirty Bolton because that’s more exciting than admitting they can actually play football.

I found the article I referred to above. http://arsenal-mania.com/articles/3107965/Arsenal-class-prevails-against-Bolton-thugs.html
The writer clearly relied on old stereotypes and media spin to write it and it is mostly rubbish. Also brilliant photo to go with the article, made me laugh out loud

I wouldn’t worry too much about Arsenal fans, Matilda. They’ve developed this sort of moral superiority in recent years to replace the actual superiority they used to get from winning trophies. Basically, they’ve convinced themselves that despite not winning anything for years, they’re still better than anyone else because they play much better football. It allows them to blame others (ie the Bolton thugs) for their own failings, ie their lack of fighting spirit in the heat of battle (as demonstrated yet again at Stoke yesterday). It’s similar to Newcastle in a way. They used the ‘our fans are so much more loyal than everyone else’s’ liner for years and it allowed them to ignore facing up to the real cause of their problems. I guess what I’m saying is that I thoroughly respect Arsenal for the quality of their football, their were monents in both the recent games where you just have to stand back, admire and say ‘that’s too good for us to live with’. But just because they’re good doesn’t mean they have a God-given right for other teams to just stand back and watch them play. If anything, their quality makes it even more likely that teams will try and rough them up. They need to deal with that, it is a man’s game after all. Until they do they will continue to fall short of what they’re potentially capable of in terms of winning trophies.

Two after-thoughts to my previous comment:

1. I meant there, not their

2. My criticism of Arsenal may just seem like jealousy or bitterness from someone who supports a team who have had a slightly difficult relationship with Arsenal in recent years, mainly because our styles of play have been such polar opposites of late. But I’d like to go on record and say that I’ve always quite liked Arsenal (partly because they’re not Man U, Liverpool or Chelsea) and partly because I grew up in a time when Bolton were not a Premier League club (so it was OK to have a Prem team as your second favourite). In fact I’d love Arsenal to grow some balls and go on to win the league this year. So it ain’t bitterness, I promise you…