A Pain in the Arsenal!

Ken Barkway absolutely nails the reasons for Arsenal fans bitter envy of Chelsea…

So the dust settles on another Chelsea versus Arsenal game. Yet again Chelsea walk away with the desired result and yet again Jose has the Indian sign over the hapless “professeur”, who really only deviated from script by not falling on his arse, wrestling with his anorak or barging into Jose in the Chelsea technical area.

Job done, the Chelsea cheers at the final whistle were momentarily subdued by a spirited “Boring, boring Chelsea” from those brave enough to defy the annual fire drill.

Furthermore some 24 hours later there remains an avalanche of opprobrium directed at Chelsea’s unsporting style of play.

A game plan that prevented the double champions of 2015 from waltzing though a wide open prairie and rolling the ball past a prostrate Thibault and into the onion bag. Well that was never going to happen, Wenger can’t beat Jose, hell since the Special One’s return he can’t even muster a goal. Not one. None. In seven and a half hours of unilaterally exciting Arsenal football. To count functional, efficient, boring, Chelsea’s goals in those games you’d need to take your socks off, that’s all I’m saying. As a footnote, even ‘Dave Azpi’ has scored against Arsenal.

Irrelevant Spurs

Contemporary Arsenal supporters hate Chelsea more than anyone, even the keystone cops from N17. How so?

Well in short Spurs haven’t contended for anything seriously in most people’s living memory, they used to win a cup once a decade, usually at the very beginning, and release a god awful Cup Final song with Chas and Dave.

In Chelsea’s case, it’s simple, Jose broke Arsenal and their foolish Frenchman, in much the same way as Taggart lookalike and knight of the realm Sir Alex Fergie similarly neutered Liverpool and reduced their fans to weeping over sepia tinted dreams of beating Scandinavian pub teams in European Cups past.

Prior to Jose kicking the saloon doors open and announcing the arrival of the new sheriff in town, Arsenal and Manchester United had enjoyed a duopoly tussling for the title for the first decade since the invention of football (or the Premier League anyway). Neither clubs fans have really enjoyed our nouveau riche interloping, but Arsenal bore the brunt of Chelsea’s rise, and also have the ignominy of residing in the same city.

Gratuitous trophy count.

Over the past decade Man Utd and Chelsea have harvested broadly similar hauls of silverware. In Chelsea’s case 3 (soon to be 4) Premier League crowns, 4 FA cups. 3 League cups, a Europa League and a Champions League.

By comparison Arsenal have won an FA cup.

Financial shenanigans

Arsenal mortgaged their future on their glass and concrete mini-Wembley, they were going to rule when FFP came into force. At the time this did look the smart move, but the finances of the game have changed in their composition, TV and commercial revenues now overshadowing match revenue a little more with each passing TV deal. Chelsea tarted up their one and only home, built a bigger stand than the previous big stand that damn near broke the club.

To illustrate the changed complexion of football finances Chelsea head Arsenal in the Deloittes money league whilst conspicuously having the smallest stadium in the top 10.

The fact that the stadium hasn’t propelled Arsenal into financial domination sticks in the Arsenal craw.

To further rub salt in the wounds every deal where Chelsea command a mind boggling fee for moving unwanted players spawns a slew of risibly potty conspiracy theories.

Whilst on the subject of filthy lucre Arsenal fans like to point at our owners “ill gotten gains”, conveniently forgetting the murky purchase of their place in the top league by top shyster Henry Norris a little under a century ago. A place they have never relinquished. Even in the modern day they seem to forget that they too have an oligarch as their major shareholder, one prevented from spending, one with a similarly shadily harvested fortune.

And finally……………….

Jose has metaphorically tweaked Wenger’s nose, pulled his ears and hilariously given him any number of press conference soubriquets, most memorably “voyeur” or more recently “specialist in failure”. He has broken him psychologically. Wenger has stopped even trying to strike back, being reduced to a mumbling wreck.

The fans have enjoyed a similarly lop sided domination of the fixture in recent years, out stickering, out singing and making a sufficient nuisance of themselves ensuring that we’ll never get an allocation of 9,000 at the Emirates again.

That is why the pristine scarved, hipster, latte sippers hate us more than any other.

Long May it continue!

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