Are The Days You Couldn’t Call An AFC vs MUFC Result Gone For Good?

Today at ’North London Is Red’ I am delighted to welcome Marc Baterman as a guest blogger to North London Is Red Follow Marc! Marc is a lifelong gooner and ex-season ticket holder. My heart broke for Marc a little when he told me he had to give up his season ticket the year before Wenger joined. Marc has an excellent blog called Added Minutes that I have recently become a fan of. I’ve enjoyed reading Marc’s stuff recently and am sure you will love the quality of his writing. Take it away Marc…..

Before I say what I’m about to say, I think it’s best to clarify a few things. Firstly, I am a ‘glass half-full’ kind of guy and generally have a pretty positive outlook on all things, especially The Arsenal. I am a lifelong Gooner, having gone to Highbury for the first time at the tender age of four and been in love with the club ever since. I watch pretty much every game in full, probably to my girlfriend’s annoyance, and hate it whenever I miss a match. Finally, and most importantly, I am one of the biggest Wenger apologists you will ever meet. I revere the man and will defend him all the way.

Always a special place but the Wenger years were something else

Considering all of the above, I did not expect my first guest post on the excellent North London is Red to have negative undertones, especially not of this nature. When I initially thought about what I would write, various positive ideas raced through my mind as that is what naturally comes to me. Yet as I sit here, tapping away on my laptop, the negative side of my brain seems to have waged a war with the positive side and won.

I should also probably explain that I’m writing this in the aftermath of the defeat at Old Trafford, so I’m still hurting. Yet I don’t think these negative thoughts are a simple reaction to one defeat, but an accumulation over time that manifested itself with a particularly crushing feeling throughout the game.

For me, this was worse than the 8-2 last year. That was embarrassing, humiliating even, but there were a hell of a lot of extenuating circumstances. We were coming off the back of one of the most turbulent summers in the club’s modern history. The transfer sagas of both Cesc Fabregas (who I still have good feelings towards) and Samir Nasri (who I very much don’t) had been allowed to run on far too long, before they ultimately left as we all knew they would.

The club was left in a state of turmoil and this was before the mad rush around transfer deadline day when we brought in the likes of Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker. We were further depleted by injuries and the fact that only Aaron Ramsey featured last year and started this time around tells its own story. When we saw the team sheet that day we all feared the worst, although admittedly nobody thought it would be that awful.

This, however, was very different. There were no extenuating circumstances and the team that lined up on the Old Trafford pitch was our team. Some players were unavailable but the squad was not depleted by any means, and besides everyone has injuries and you should be able to deal with them. The team was as good as we had to offer and it wasn’t even close to being enough. It was a toothless display in a series of toothless displays, in which we did not trouble a rickety Manchester United defence and David de Gea until the 91st minute. It was, for want of a better phrase, piss-poor.

Untroubled

Remember when we used to play them and the two teams were pretty much even? Some years we were better than them, in others the opposite was true. But the games themselves would often be too close to call, either side were capable of beating the other. We used to look at the so-called lesser teams when they played at Old Trafford and think they could nick a result, providing they played to their best and rode their luck a little, but it was quite unlikely. Depressingly, that is what we have become. From the moment the game kicked-off we were second best, the gulf in class all too evident. The final score may have been 2-1, thanks to a sublime consolation goal from Santi Cazorla, but in truth the gap was far bigger than that.

In 2007/08 I’m convinced we would have won the league had it not been for two unfortunately timed injuries to Eduardo and the man whose name we shall not say (I thought I was getting over it but seeing him score against us today brought it all rushing back). Since then, however, we have observed a steady decline until what felt like a new low with this defeat at Old Trafford.

Like I mentioned at the start, I am a vocal Wenger apologist and accordingly have felt sorry for him over the last few years. When the move was planned to the Emirates, he genuinely believed that he could continue to compete for trophies without a big transfer war chest (why is it always a war chest, why not a bag full of money with a dollar sign on it?). He thought that he could grow a young team together on limited funds and still maintain Arsenal’s place at the top table.

But then the billionaires rolled in, first at Chelsea and then at Manchester City, completely changing the nature of the game. Nobody could have foreseen it but their arrival rendered Wenger’s long-term vision meaningless. Had they not arrived, the last eight years would have been entirely different and I’m convinced we would have had far more success. But they did, so there is little point in moaning about it.

Still the man?

I revere our leader, I genuinely do. When fans booed his decision to substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in the home game against United last year, I was filled with rage. People forget all too easily what this man has done for our club. He gave us two domestic doubles and a team which will be remembered in history forever as the Invincibles. Thanks to him we’ve had the opportunity to watch players like Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires in their pomp. Of course we can be frustrated but those who howled at him in anger were an embarrassment.

However, for all the great things he has done, there is this nagging feeling which is slowly building inside me that those days under Wenger may be behind us. I’m still not ready to declare that I want him to leave because I want him to fix everything with his magic touch. I want it to go back to the time when I expected us to win every week, no matter who we played against. I still harbour hopes that it will.

But then even me, a staunch Wenger disciple, is beginning to wonder whether we will ever return to the glory days under the great man. I hope we do but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that we are moving towards an unhappy ending.

Fantastic stuff Marc. I really hope that your nagging feeling is wrong because I too am not willing to give up on Wenger and am desperate for him to bring silverware to The Emirates.

Thanks for reading guys and helping me support my fellow Gooner bloggers. Please do leave your comments and don’t forget to click that follow button!