Arsenal: Is the Joy of Victory to Continue at the Grove After Sunderland?

Arsenal: Is the Joy of Victory to Continue at the Grove After Sunderland?

There's nothing like old-fashioned
victories to calm restive fans and keep
them happy.
Defeats are like withdrawal from
destructive habits. Without therapy,
the person enters a period of agony. To
hear disgruntled fans rant is to hear the
lament of a people denied their weekly
dosage of adrenalin or fix.
A great part of following a team is the
euphoria its successes bring.
Without this, it is like frosting skimmed
off the cake, the fat cut from the meat
to leave only stiff tendons, flesh and
bones. Those who stick around after
this cheer for reasons other than the
good feelings victories bring.
Some of my no-nonsense readers told
me this week that there's nothing like
winning when it comes to garnering
fans. That's common sense. That's
reality.
But here what another fan told me:
"There are two main ways that people
support in football," he wrote.
a. (applies mostly for people who live
in cities with professional clubs) People
support clubs. I, for example, spent my
early days in Islington, and my father's
an Arsenal fan, and my grandfather,
etc., so i've been a fan since before i was
really even conscious, and that sort of
support is pretty unconditional. You
don't even need to know who plays for
the club—you simply support the
club. you go to matches, you buy shirts
and you 'represent'.
b. When you don't have a professional
club in your area (I currently live in
Miami, Fla., USA, where this is the case),
your choice of support is very
different. You don't really support
clubs; rather, you support players.
People here have their favourite
players, and based on those, they have
their "allegiance," so to speak.
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Ever faithful even in the
storm.
Michael Regan/Getty Images
A great dose of common sense there.
I have wondered about how many of
the readers, who come after me
vehemently for daring to suggest we
should support the club's laudable
principles or stand behind the team
even when dark clouds overcast the
sky, are a product of the successful
years of Arsenal, when Arsene Wenger
burst on the scene like a hurricane, as
Piers Morgan has put it
somewhere .
I could bet that the older fans, the
ones with a little more perspective
behind them, would be more measured
in their reaction to our less than
satisfactory season.
Of course, not everyone who is calm is
older. You often find that rare specie of
young people labelled "older than their
years."
The opposite is often true, of course.
For example, the monkey noisemaker
at the Kop in the Liverpool-
Manchester United FA Cup match was
an older man. And a few self-
proclaimed older men have taken
strong exception to my views regarding
temperance and support for fiscal
responsibility.
To simply lambast fans who whine
when success proves temporarily
elusive is to miss one point of fanhood.
The very reason why teams are
constituted and made to compete is the
fundamental and psychological reason
why it is imperative that a team be
successful.
That is, despite our sophistication, we
are still tribal at the very core of our
being. We can't do but compete, and we
can't do but win. We must win. That's
how we are wired.
If, along the way, we can learn the
virtue of loyalty, then that's an
additional bonus. So when I write
the following, I assume that
loyalty comes with fanhood.
How can you say you love the club
when you care for nothing but the
goosebumps?
How can you claim to support a club
when you are unwilling to stick with it
in the difficult times?
How can you claim to have principle
when you want to throw under the bus
the person who has given you the
brightest part of your history?
And not because he is doing anything
wrong, but because he tries to guide
you into the next phase of your
development.
A few of my readers try to turn the
table on me by telling me it's not
loyalty if you don't demand for
change when things don't work.
True.
But the other side of the story is called
vision. You don't just discard it when
difficulties come. You persevere. You
become resilient.
Arsenal predicted the exact scenario
the team has undergone this past six
seasons when the move from Highbury
was proposed.
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Arsenal is our pride.
Paul Gilham/Getty Images
It was necessary to move if the club
hopes to remain competitive in decades
to come. A decade would be required to
service the loans taken to build the
stadium. After this, the team would be
able to compete again in the transfer
market.
Meanwhile, the minimum standard
would be to compete for the top four
spots on the Premiership table. The
team, of course, would seek to
continue to win. The minimum standard
has been achieved in the last six years,
and this is a great achievement.
But does this means fans shouldn't
grumble? No.
It means that when they do, they
should remember why the situation is
as it is.
Nobody starves in college or in the
university for the fun of it; there's
always a vision that calls the person to
steadfastness.
I should return to the question in the
title.
Is the joy of victory to continue at the
Grove after Sunderland?
Hope answers yes.
Sunderland (as will be Spurs) is simply a
hurdle that Arsenal must overcome. I
believe the team will scale it on
Saturday.
The players seem to have recovered
their confidence. They like their
manager and they want to please the
fans.
Going to Sunderland to win is not an
easy task, but I believe the team will
come through. Time of joys will return.
They are already here. Let's keep the
faith.