Don't let the bastards grind you down

As I prepare to go to the Emirates I am reminded that it's a week today since Shawcross did a Peral harbour on Aaron.

This week has been a hard week for any Arsenal fan. Opinions from everyone no debate and no sense from most.

Pundits like Brazil, Cascarino, Parker, Collymore, and Macari lead the criticism of Arsenal. Former players who get paid to give an opinion on the basis that they may or may not have been a decent player not whether they have any journalistic skills, insight or ability to rationalise. Talk sport, a radio station so morally redundant they allow its highest earner to miss work through drunken binges, has always had an anti Arsenal stance (the main culprit being Adrian Durham) but things are getting ridiculous. Sky sports pays top dollar to Andy Gray who is still stuck in the Jurassic era of football analysis. His insight and use of a hi-tech gadget, which he has still not mastered after 10 years, casts no light on any matter that requires sensible debate.
The most viewed football programme is MOTD and the daytime chat show feel is hardly conducive to intelligent analysis.
In the press it is fair to say that there are writers, Barclay and Samuels for example who have a view based on years of actually thinking about the game and using an inbuilt need for truth that all good journalists need. But there are the columnists like Venables and yes, Collymore again, who’s brief seems to be to wilfully cause controversy.
It’s not about constructive criticism and pointing out negatives about Arsenal. That’s fine it’s called debate. It’s about the old established views still being maintained and fostered that can only be counter productive for the growth of understanding the modern game. When Arsenal perform poorly and behave badly then it is more than fair to criticise, but when Arsenal players are victims of recklessness the spin put on it is very hard to take.

The only positive that may result from this barrage of stupidity is that Arsenal adopt a ‘world against us’ mentality as happened at Anfield in 89, and after The Club had points deducted in ‘91, also when the red card stat kept being trotted out, and no one thought a team could go through a season undefeated. Look what happened then.

Without recourse to repetition, I would say to those players at the club who want to overcome the negativity and stupidity, who want to counter the inequity within the squad, who want to step forward and be counted; The time is now.
The time to fight them on the pitches, fight them on in the stands and fight them in our support.
Sol Campbell is the return of the Invincible to Cesc's young gun, that combo on and off the pitch can possibly define the rest of the season. Winning things is what they have experience of and every Arsenal fan should have felt proud last saturday in those final minutes against Stoke when we saw the real Victoria Concordia Crescit attitude!
In other words "it's up for grabs" cue the music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaWo7Rq76Ms

*an excellent viewpoint on the events of the week can be found on the Arsecast -05/03/10 –link on this page