10 Things You Will Never Hear an Arsenal Fan Say

If you were lucky enough to watch Arsenal's match against Chelsea last October, you undoubtedly saw this Gooner (pictured above) at some point during the proceedings.

After Robin van Persie had scored his hat trick and Arsenal had performed the improbable feat of defeating Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (then again, they also did that in November of 2008), the Dutchman headed to the section of the stands which housed the traveling band of Arsenal supporters and threw his jersey into the melee.

A scrum ensued, but this be-noseringed supporter won out in the end.

As this bandanna-ed colleague exemplifies, Arsenal fans are a resilient bunch. They've kept supporting through thick and thin over the past six trophy-less seasons (running dangerously close to seven).

Do they have the right to voice their discontent at that fact?

Absolutely. A club of such pedigree, which boasted perhaps the best XI to ever grace the Premier League (the 2003-04 Invincibles), demands success. Its supporters demand nothing less in turn.

Still, they will never throw their team under the bus. While nostalgia aches every now and then when one thinks back to better times at the start of the last decade, there are certain things you'll never hear a Gooner say.

While a Gooner loves a fluid match of football, he is not, as Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl—self-professed guru of world football—once wrote, a "hipster."

That would be a discredit to the millions of fans worldwide who throw on an Arsenal shirt on match day without deeming it necessary to spend 30 more minutes moussing their hair, finding the perfect scarf, trimming their artsy-fartsy beard to perfection, picking out a pair of thick-rimmed glasses they don't actually require, all the while listening to the sound of some hack's acoustic guitar strumming discordantly from their vintage record player.

But enough about hipsters. As you can probably tell, I'm not the biggest fan of them. But I am of Arsenal.

Here are 10 things you'll never hear an Arsenal fan say.

'I Hope Our New Signing Pans out as Well as Francis Jeffers!'

Andrei Arshavin before Andrei Arshavin ever came to London, Francis Jeffers was brought in from Everton in 2001 at the age of 20 for £8 million, or about half of what Arshavin was purported to have cost Arsene Wenger in the winter of '09.

The man was an English youth legend. He'd made his full team debut for Everton at 16, scored 13 goals for the England U-21's in just 16 appearances, and been tipped for stardom all before the age of 20. By all accounts, he was the type of cagey support striker who could make Arsenal's prodigious engine purr.

Yet he never got going at Highbury. Over the course of three seasons, he made just 22 league appearances, netting four goals. While that may be suitable production for some (cough, cough Marouane Chamakh), it is not what is expected from a prodigy.

The lowest ebb for Jeffers came in the 2001-02 season, where he made only six league appearances for Arsenal and was thus deprived of receiving a winner's medal from their Premier League title.

He is the (ignominious) standard by which all other ill-fated transfers for the Gunners are judged.

'Up 4-0 at the Half? Excellent, This Match Is in the Bag. I'll Head on Home.'

Ah, yes. The sizable lead. That rare occasion when we want so badly to feel safe when Arsenal are enjoying a four-goal cushion, but because of past precedent, realize that it would behoove us to keep whittling our fingernails to bits instead.

Whether it be the Newcastle match from a season ago, when Arsenal slumped to a 4-4 draw after going up 4-0 at the half at St. James Park (since renamed Sports Direct Arena), or the Tottenham debacle from several seasons ago—curse you, David Bentley!—there's simply no calming of the nerves during an Arsenal match.

In fact, as David Hirshey, renowned for being both an excellent writer and fan of the Gunners, often quips: Arsenal games force you to down pints with the same frequency with which they concede goals. By the end of a match, you're usually tanked.

'Pipe Down, I Want to Hear Piers Morgan's Thoughts on the First Half!'

Bluster personified.

Piers Morgan, another of the rank-and-file celebrity Arsenal fans, might well be the most obnoxious.

The CNN pundit seems to have taken it upon himself to act as the voice of Arsenal fans around the world—their elected representative, as it were.

Except in the world according to Piers, there's only one vote for that designation, and the box he checks off is nearly rendered illegible thanks to the schmaltz leaking from his ego onto the page.

While I will never understand how he scored his current gig with FoxSoccer, where Morgan joins Eric Wynalda and some anchoring tool on the network's Sunday Match of the Day telecasts, I do know this:

Arsenal fans aren't seduced by his "charm." As Emmanuel Frimpong once said:

DEEENCH.

And after that, in somewhat less epic terms:

"U (Piers) should be ashamed to call urself an arsenal fan all u do is moan about ur team y don't u do ur job and i will do mine."

'While I Might Not Like Tottenham, I Do Applaud Their Performance This Season.'

With Arsenal's hated north London rivals currently ahead of them in the Premier League table, tensions are beginning to run a little high.

Sportsmanship is all well and good, but it runs into a steel wall where rivalries are concerned. Like two brothers playing in a heated game of one-on-one, rules of decency are abandoned. The result is what matters.

So while I'd like to praise Spurs for their form this season, I simply won't. To do so would run counter to my beliefs. Plus, I don't like Emmanuel Adebayor.

Or Scott Parker.

Or Aaron Lennon.

Or Rafael van der Vaart.

Or Harry "Sir-Twich-a-Lot" Redknapp.

I'd like to, but I just can't.

'Do You Think They Should've Waited a While Longer Before Giving Henry a Statue?'

When you've scored 226 goals (well, 229 now) for a club, I'd say you accelerate the amount of time one must usually wait to have a statue in your likeness unveiled outside your club's stadium.

I mean, if Fulham made one of Michael Jackson within a year of his death, then Henry has every right to see a bronzed version of himself standing watch over the Emirates promenade some four years removed from the first time he left Arsenal.

The man is a legend—three goals in his six-week loan spell that saw him reunited with the club only bolstered his reputation—and the statue is a fitting testament.

'Y'know, I Really Like the New Crest Better.'

Call me old-fashioned (I did just turn 23 yesterday, so I feel I can officially label myself an old-timer), but I'll always prefer Arsenal's pre-2002 crest to the current edition.

No, I'm not talking about the abomination that is this season's 125th anniversary, screenprinted, blanched fiasco.

I'm talking about the one the club adopted before the 2002-03 season, where "streamlined" was apparently all the rage.

While simpler is better at times, when it comes to posterity, some things should be left alone. Namely, excellent crests.

There was a splendor and a regal nature to the badge Arsenal used from 1949 to 2002 that spoke to the club's wonderful history.

I just don't see it in the new one. Thankfully, I can still wear my jersey from the 1999-2000 season when I feel a twinge of nostalgia.

'If I'm Being Perfectly Honest, I Don't Really Miss Eboue.'

I will never forgive those who booed Emmanuel Eboue during that fateful match where he was subbed on, only to be subbed off amidst a raucous peal of boos descending down upon him as he made his way off the pitch. He'd been poor that day, but c'mon—this was Eboue.

The man who became a cult legend just because he was so cool.

Thankfully, the Ivorian found a way to endear himself to Gunners fans once more, and by the time he left last summer for Galatasaray, he had become one of the fan favorites.

He never fulfilled the potential that once saw him touted as one of the top wing-backs in world football during his first several seasons with Arsenal—then again, seeing him shifted from defense, to midfield, to winger, back to defense once more—couldn't have done wonders for consistency.

'Yeah, Bergkamp's Goal Against Newcastle Was OK, I Guess.'

The man simply made the impossible seem ordinary.

What other way to describe his unprecedented brilliance as a striker? For more than 10 seasons with the club, Bergkamp scored bags of goals (120 in total), but he also piled up assists like they were going out of fashion. By the time he retired in 2006, he had 111 to his name during his time wearing the red and white shirt.

It's too bad Ray Hudson didn't get to cover more of Bergkamp's games—or at least, it's too bad there's no evidence on YouTube that he ever did—you get the feeling the quirky and hyperbolic announcer would've found Bergkamp to his liking.

In the case of Bergkamp, any Arsenal fan is forgiven for using flights of verbal fancy that would make Hudson blush.

A Templar knight, Bergkamp was.

'I Wish Refs Would Grant Us Fewer Penalties When We Play at Old Trafford.'

Aug. 30, 2009: Arsenal head to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United. Manchester United are awarded a penalty.

Dec. 13, 2010: Arsenal head to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United. Manchester United are awarded a penalty.

Aug. 28, 2011: Arsenal head to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United. Manchester United are awarded a penalty.

I'd keep going, but my hands are getting more tired than Arsenal keepers tasked with making saves from the spot.

'I Give Up on This Side. They're Hopeless.'

Maybe I find myself feeling too much like what the band Adventure Galley describes in their song "Addict."

No matter how frustrating—how infuriating—Arsenal can be at times (and this season, they've constantly put me in a bucolic mood), I will never quit them. I just can't.

Simply put, they're my club, and I believe they have yet to showcase their best this season. There is a reserve of fortitude within this side that will be unleashed in the run-in to May.

There have been some fantastic fight backs this season. And while the drubbing at Old Trafford, the embarrassments at Ewood Park, Craven Cottage and Liberty Stadium, not to mention the shellacking in Milan seen on Wednesday were the height of embarrassing, and will take time to heal, those scars are forgotten—if only for a moment—amidst the ecstasy of the 5-3 win over Chelsea in October, or the 2-1 victory over Sunderland just one weekend ago.

We haven't seen the last of this side, and I am counting on a response this weekend against Sunderland in the fifth round of the FA Cup. Let's see the good times start rolling again. (As long as the pitch is in better shape than the San Siro's, I think there's a good chance we could see it happen.)