There was something brilliantly provocative about the conjoining of two Arsenal related news items this week. The first was a familiar swell of pained and wincing why-oh-whying as it became clear that the Premier League's most consistently infuriating club would not win a trophy this season: talk of callowness, foreign-accented surrenderism and a crucial absence of Anglophone chest-thump. Then, on the same day, came the news that the club had signed, not a tattooed enforcer, or Brian Blessed dressed as Beowulf, but a highly promising eight-year-old boy. In the current mood this seemed like the final insult, not to mention a matter of some concern as though this might be too young to be subjected to full-blown Arsenal-ism, and that perhaps the entire Arsenal lifestyle ought to be ringfenced, available only to consenting foreign cowards.
This is the thing with Arsenal now. They arouse a deeply personal fury. Gutless, spineless, headless – not to mention lacking in heart, balls and biceps – it is a miracle there is anything left of them at all beyond a single slightly fey pair of yellow ballet pumps. It is a gloating, righteous kind of outrage; and no doubt entirely unrelated to the fact Arsène Wenger and his team are still seen as the most prancingly Euro-fied in the Premier League. This isn't anti-Frenchie-ism. We're past all that now. So what is it then?
There is a kind of intolerance at play here. Specifically, Wenger is being denied the opportunity to fall short in the way everyone else falls short – bad signings, muddled tactics, players not good enough. Instead, Wenger's Arsenal lose for one reason: because they lack "heart" and "leadership". They lack "that little bit of spirit", some vital gurning imprint of what a man on the radio described this week with tearful solemnity as "the Tony Adamses, the John Terrys".
It is amazing that this fallacy still exists: the notion that only British players have heart, or have heart as a matter of course whatever their deficiencies elsewhere – and that heart itself can be disassociated from talent and skill, as though one were not a function of the other. On the same radio show an ex-pro described Peter Osgood as "a continental player with a British heart" – a leap of logic that suggests the past 11 World Cups have all been won, miraculously, by players fundamentally lacking in basic courage.
The question remains, though: why is everybody so cross? How do Arsenal inspire this level of jeering moral censure by almost, but not quite, winning several trophies with a young and inexpensive team? The notion that they are guilty of a kind of high-end decadence, a preference for showing off ahead of the rousing, grubby-fingered victory snatch, is a familiar cultural misunderstanding. By now it should be clear that even the most rousing display of "passion" – the sleeve rolling, the finger wagging – is as much about showboating as any prancing triple stepover. Stuart Pearce, for example, is still hoist like a totem of un-arm-wrestlable Anglo-Saxon spirit for his famously gruesome display of passion-showboating after scoring a penalty against Spain at Euro 96. But England, like Arsenal, also fell short that summer. These are just different forms of display, albeit Arsenal's showing off is deemed the wrong kind of showing off, a symptom of some basic cowardice or laziness (never mind the extreme dedication needed to attain these skills in the first place).
Wenger has brought some of this on himself. Nobody likes being told off and Wenger is still the man who made English football feel so chasteningly juvenile when he emerged 15 years ago, single-handedly inventing pasta and stretching, and exposing decisively the myth that drinking lager and jumping up and down in a circle inside a night club called Starzz actually improve performance. After some reflex hostility he was embraced, too, his new age boffin template energetically adopted. This week it emerged that Liverpool's promising academy team have taken to shouting "Build!" at one another during matches, which is very encouraging, albeit perhaps only a step away from shouting "score a stylish continental-style goal!" or "be a bit like Barcelona!". And while it may be more useful for Arsenal's own youngsters to shout things like "maybe hoof it this time!" or "OK, stop building now!" it is possible to detect Wenger's influence even here, the original overseas advocate of the sinuous all-star youth team.
Positions have solidified recently. The Premier League has grown into cosmopolitan adolescence. And Wenger looks vulnerable suddenly. The temptation is there to gloat, to revel in momentary weakness, to swipe the spectacles from his nose. In a way it is heartening that he can still arouse this agitation, that there is space in our game for cultural differences, even imaginary ones (Wenger is after all not really a hoity-toity Frenchman: he is a hoity‑toity economist – coming over here, taking our jobs, failing to bankrupt our football clubs).
So Wenger should be allowed to lose in his own way: neatly, profitably, perhaps a little airlessly, polishing in private his own fiscally calibrated triumphs, parading his balance sheet around the deserted streets on his one‑man open top bus.
Source: Barney Ronay, The Guardian on 23 Apr 11
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