The British Media: How It Loves to Hate Arsenal

When it comes to the Arsenal there are only two extremes in the eyes of the British media.

Take the last couple of seasons: The moment the team produced one of its silky passing performances, Arsenal were instantly pronounced as the new Barcelona, breaking new ground in terms of EPL performance. Then, just as soon as the team suffered setbacks (such as the Carling Cup defeat to Birmingham) the team was written off as being “mentally fragile” and a reflection of the failure of Arsene Wenger’s “project”.

Anybody who lets his or her opinions be decided for them by the media will now view Arsenal as a fast declining feeder club, led by a Basil Fawlty figure who has lost all touch with reality. They will see a team that is owned by a disinterested absentee American and run by an incompetent Board of Directors whose only interest is increasing the value of their shares. The club’s supporters are portrayed as ungrateful and sullen corporate types who turn on their team at the slightest opportunity and the players are treated as if they have no heart, spirit or desire to remain at Arsenal for a second longer than is necessary to earn them their dream move to the glamour of el Manchesteros or La Liga.

Put another way, when it comes to Arsenal, anything other than all conquering success is treated as an abject failure and that failure is regarded as being the direct consequence of some blatant incompetence on the part of the club’s management.

Consider, for example, the question of Arsenal’s defensive “woes” last season. As far as the media were concerned—and I include the coiffured armchair generals in the TV studios here—Arsenal’s defence was truly appalling. Not only was it routinely written off as being useless, but it was particularly unfavorably compared with teams like Bolton Wanderers. Yet when one looks at the actual statistics they make an interesting read. In the 2010-2011 EPL season Arsenal conceded, in total, 43 goals. Bolton conceded 56. Even Manchester United, whom the media appears to hold out as the example of all that is right in British Football, conceded 37—only six less goals than Arsenal in the whole season. And this came in the season when Arsenal’s best defender missed the entire season through injury.

Statistics are however irrelevant to the fact that Arsenal under Arsene Wenger cannot defend. This had been declared to be the case by the media and fans have been bombarded with it. It doesn’t matter if Arsenal’s defence is actually better than Bolton’s or not much worse than United’s, the truth is not allowed to get in the way of the story.

 The same can be said to apply to Arsenal’s dealings in the transfer market. There was an almost hysterical campaign in the press to force Arsenal to spend the money it had accumulated in the sales of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. Once money had been spent, the club was criticized for spending it in a “trolley dash,” as if Arsenal were to be prevented from using the closing transfer window as a means of securing better deals—as is often the case—and should have paid higher prices simply to appease the media’s craving for newsworthy transfer gossip.

Wenger is portrayed as a tight fisted obsessive who fiddles while Arsenal collapses around his ears. Yet no account is taken of the fact that Wenger has to operate on the basis that Arsenal need to sell in order to buy and that Arsenal, unlike clubs in Manchester and west London, does not have massive amounts of money at his disposal that have nothing to do with the club’s real earnings. Wenger cannot afford to pay a large sum for a player without a resale value, and has to buy promising youngsters, develop them and sell them on as a means to generating the money that is simply handed to managers at the clubs that are intent on buying their way to success.

For Wenger to operate as the media demands, there would be a real risk of insolvency at Arsenal-, which if it were to happen would no doubt delight sections of the media and lead to astonishingly censorious lectures about the importance of operating prudently and how unsustainable soccer is becoming. In the meantime, we are treated to a snearing campaign for Wenger’s head for doing no worse than trying to steer the club to success at a time when the playing field is becoming less even by the season, through no fault of Arsenal’s.

Take the 8-2 debacle at Old Trafford this season. Yes that was indeed a disastrous result. However, it represents no more than the loss of three points. The events leading to that defeat were, in effect, a perfect storm caused by the need to rebuild the team following the loss of two influential players, suspensions, injuries and illness. Some years ago Arsenal lost 6-2 at Highbury in the Carling Cup. There were few thundering doom mongering pronouncements from the media and sage references to the importance of depths of squads. That freak 8-2 result was just what the media wanted to aid its crucifixion of Wenger and not a word has been allowed to suggest the possibility that it really cannot be said to represent the true gulf between the clubs.

And so we turn to the Champions League. This season the story is that Arsenal are no longer Wenger’s Arsenal at all: The team is a patchwork of bargain basement recruits of the lame and the old. The skill has gone, to be replaced by performances in which results are ground out.

Watching the match on Sky sports I could not reconcile the words of the commentating team or that in the studio with what was unraveling on the pitch. Here was Arsenal, a new team bedding in three players recruited only two weeks ago, playing the champions of Germany. Every Dortmund attack was described in  portentous terms of disastrous Arsenal defending. Yet what I saw was a team learning to play together for the first time in the most difficult circumstances imaginable—and doing extremely well, getting better all the time—to the point where it came within a few minutes of scoring a truly historic victory. And the team still is without its best defender and best midfield player. What we witnessed last night was a clear sign that Arsenal, at full strength, will be a formidable force in the EPL and Europe this season.

EPL fans have been brainwashed into thinking that Arsenal have declined to the point where they are simply mediocre and  that it is  all Wenger’s fault. The British media love nothing better than to preside over a perceived fall from grace- and the added spice of having a blame figure will not let the mere fact that this is abject nonsense from keeping that story going for as long as it possibly can. Don’t be fooled by it…