“Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”

Occam’s Razor.

And so we have the Arsenal Uncivil War. The Arsenal way is no more.

Whatever the reasoning for two expected bombs landing in two sites occupied by the public, the inner workings or malfunctions of our football club have conspired to make summer yet again, the most foul of seasons for its fans.

I am all-too-often a person who likes to complicate and pick apart notions and ideas for that which looks worth explaining. But in this instance, the simplest approach seems the most appropriate.

Let’s break this down:

• The best players want to leave year on year.

• The manager confides in no one and practises the art of damage limitation to no great success (unless we include his marriage).

• The board want to make money – huge money, out of the club by completing a 5 year plan and selling at around a 75% profit per share. Debt free, Arsenal is an amazing proposition to a billionaire looking for a Man City toy in a prime area of London. (Inevitable if the current financial base incurs a further economic demise – relative to our competition)

• The fans pay the most in the world for their tickets.

• If it is to be believed, the fanfare surrounding the appointment of our CEO and our Commercial Director culminates in a cold-call exploring sponsorship links with a company owned by our 2nd biggest investor.

The club is a mess. The Arsenal way is an organised, yet minimalist mess. Wenger’s overgrown teenage affection for all things Japanese – (eg no obvious acts of rebellion, no aggression to one another, take your shoes off before trying to burgle my house and so on), is the only thing that disguises the torrents and rumblings that continue to affect our planning and consistency.

Now it is not all doom and gloom. But right now the 8-2 defeat feels far more resonant in my mind, than any decent result as I remember how the disaffected Wenger and his shell-shocked troops were dismantled and imploded last September.

What appears to be the case is that it is not all the managers’ fault. He has made the club in his image and the board have allowed this to happen. Wenger is a better PR, commercial director, product in himself, manager, CEO and economist than most people working in football. All this for £6 million a year is a bargain. But only if you work on the board of Arsenal FC.

So what of the rumours of Wenger’s and Gazides’ relationship? What has the Chairman done in his Prince Phillip role? What do the chairmen of clubs like Tottenham, Dortmund and Porto do that is so relatively successful, yet continually have to contend with the higher achieving clubs around them, (or conditions such as Spurs minimal pay scale)????

These questions cannot be answered by us and need more than speculation by ourselves. However, as I started this with Occam’s Razor, I might as well continue it. The simplest way is to conclude that many errors have been made in many areas. Some are directly attributed to judgement and capability issues from employees at the club. Others are down to the irregular and unpredictable nature of cash and cache. We don’t know when a player is going to ask for more, or claim to want success – but we sure as hell know it will happen. What prompts them to do it is usually a mixture of agents, media, personal glory and stagnation.

Theo for example is another player in a similar situation as Robin. However he won’t be offered what R$VP wants because his demands don’t mirror his erratic cache. But in terms of what the club stand to lose, it will be viewed and take a similar effect (though in differing amounts/impact) to the R$VP case. This will contribute to the detriment of the club (and have a variable impact on the performance on the team), it will have a similar effect on the issues that affect the management of the club and team. This might sound like waffle but it is critical as it suggests the need of a rather large change to the contracts of our players.

Parity in pay can only be merited once players have proved themselves. Parity that Wenger espouses is contradicted by the policy to sell tickets at different values depending on the opposition. These are largely part of the same value system and therefore need to be further addressed.

EG: R$VP is paid £100k per week. Theo £60k. Denilson £60k and so on. Now is Theo a top tier player? Is Denilson a middle tier? We know Wenger pays (and it is Wenger, not the club) players based on the idea that they will come good and wish to remain loyal. Nope. He knows but is he willing to accept this? Arteta took a pay cut to come to Arsenal and is now the fans’ favourite to be made captain. A captain that will not leave next year. Sounds like a pay-plan to me.

If dead wood gets shipped out and frees up a load of money, that shift can change the current pay policy without costing the club more. Then again, we can also purchase and pay more without costing the club too much more. We need to make the decision based on the supposed pledge that 75% of all revenues must be spent on player acquisition and/or retention. Is it? Is it really? Have we spend all that we amassed with Adebayor, Toure, Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy and so on? Or do those sums offset the heavy price we pay for Diaby, Denilson, Chamakh, Bendtner, Almunia (RIP), Squilacci, etc? In which case, we need to take a hit and start again with a new pay structure. Future players need it, we as fans need it. We are like Status Quo complaining when Radio 1 decided not to play them again. Who cares? We were once important and within our own fan base we are important but the difference is that Arsenal FC doesn’t have to age, even if the Arsenal way seems a bit old and stuffy.

Now the claims and counter claims, rumours and so on will try to kill our summer. They will try to destroy all that the club foolishly prides itself on by sending out a PR message dressed like Miss Jean Brodie in a Playboy beauty pageant. Does it even matter how good-looking she is, if the myth and allure are killed by the ‘surface’ presentation? Or what if Brad Pitt enters a body building competition? Is Arsenal the embodiment of Feminism or metro-sexuality in a world of hardcore banking porn?

It says so much about how football is viewed by the players, agents and fans alike that an attractive and decent club with an amazing infrastructure, can be mocked and pilloried because they decided to adhere to an ever-growing, utilitarian view of football. Ticket = pleasure.

Do me a favour!

Usmanov has taken a chance to destabilise, as has R$VP. Wenger has hidden behind the board and CEO for the first time in a while. The financial damage to the brand increases every hour that nothing is said or done. But this cannot be properly felt in the ‘bubble’ that has been created for the players and the management. Occasionally, the businessmen of the board have to step out of the bubble and take a look around, because in the original Adam Smith ethos of economics, the ‘market’ exists for the people. But the ‘football people’ don’t seem to see this and choose not to cater for it at Arsenal. Not beyond doorsteps of stale bread with morsels of fois gras. Meanwhile, the rest of the league are bankrupting themselves to gorge themselves to a slow, medium or rapid death.

So my patience is a thin as Usmanov is fat. My reticence is fragile and my faith in those who control and steer this ship is more Costa Concordia than Victoria Concordia Crescit.

We can come out fighting. We can do damage limitation PR. We are not the royal family. Nor are we cream and will not ‘float’ to the fecking top. Our class may be as permanent as the damage done by our own staff, the media and the economies of scale. If we think big and pay little, we will end up hosting concerts and X Factor auditions to more people than football matches.

We do not need sea change, we need some change. We do not need billions, but we need hundreds of millions. We do not need more fans, we need loyal and appeased fans. We do not need to be in the know, but we need to know some truths. We put our faith and hope in the most ungodlike of people.

Our football will not be saved by two signings and a couple of loan deals. Nor will a farcical cancelled trip to Nigeria, which no doubt will still result in the website showing photos of ‘our’ Frank Stubbs posing next to an urban open gasoline pipe, a couple of Muslim-targeted churches and him hitching his way round the country blindfolded and gagged.

This is the time for political and financial change. But not revolution. Make the moves Arsenal but stop being so bloody British about it.

Written by fergalburger

There is a strong current of opinion among some Arsenal supporters that our seven year winless streak is a disgrace.

The argument goes like this: “Arsenal are a big club. Big clubs win things. We haven’t won anything for seven years. Therefore… our manager isn’t good enough; our Board of Directors lack ambition; they’re only interested in money. Let’s change everything.”

The flaws in the reasoning are obvious and you really don’t need me to reiterate them.

But what is not often mentioned is that this type of thinking is recognisable to psychologists and is described as “Childlike Behaviour in Adults”.

The symptoms of childlike behaviour in adults are reflective of emotional immaturity and can be grouped under five headings:

• Egocentrism
• Uncontrolled Emotion
• Gratification
• Attitude
• Magical Thinking

If you go on some of the more negative Arsenal blogs you will find these symptoms displayed in abundance by both the authors and the commenters. The most important symptom, in the context of Arsenal’s recent history, is gratification, but the others play their part too.

Egocentricism:

“Emotionally immature individuals are self centred and selfish. They have little regard for others and are preoccupied with their own ideas and feelings. They deeply believe that they are somehow special therefore demand constant attention, respect and sympathy.”

Well, that certainly describes some Arsenal blog authors. People who are so preoccupied with their own “ideas and feelings” that they are unable to take on board the views and feelings of others. And they acquire an unfounded estimation of their own importance (believing they are “somehow special”). There is no doubt that some Arsenal sites, because they have attracted a modest following of like-minded delusionals, believe they speak for the greater Arsenal community. Further, they believe they are fighting a good fight (against the Triple Threat of Wenger, Kroenke and Gazidis) on behalf of that larger Arsenal community. Let me tell you chaps: you don’t speak for the rest of us and the fight you have embarked on is no more than Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Uncontrolled Emotion:

“Immaturity expresses itself in temper tantrums, prolonged pouts and rapidly changing moods. Emotionally immature individuals get frustrated easily and over-react to perceived criticism. They are unwilling to forgive and are prone to jealousy pangs.”

Ring any bells? Over-reacting to perceived criticism? Like banning perfectly reasonable and well-mannered contributors who post comments at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy? As for the temper tantrums and pouts… well, you can visit any Arsenal blog after a bad result and see evidence of them in their droves.

Gratification:

“Children and childish adults often want everything now, and avoid enduring any thing they do not like. Their behaviour is superficial, thoughtless and impulsive.”

This hits straight at the heart of the “no trophies for seven years” issue. People who take that fact as a personal affront (and conveniently ignore the compelling reasons why Arsenal have been unable to win silverware in that period) are behaving like children: “I want twophies now and if I don’t get them I’ll scweam and scweam and scweam.” No matter how many times old stagers pop up to describe periods in our history when we went way more than seven years as Potless Percies, the childlike adults among our fan base just scream louder that they want it, and they want it NOW. If you have had children and remember the toddler phase, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. The idea of “deferred gratification” (seeing the big picture and accepting short term pain for long term gain) is anathema to the childlike adult.

Attitude:

“Immature individuals have a hard time with integrity. They avoid and deny money and relationship problems which demand integrity and seek to pass the blame. They avoid reality and attack people when frustrated.”

Attacking people when frustrated – like making up silly names and acronyms for those who have a different viewpoint to your own. Lacking integrity – like never feeling ashamed or embarrassed when your dire predictions and made-up stories turn out to be nonsense.  There are Arsenal commentators and bloggers out there who (apparently) joyfully predicted that we would be in a relegation fight in the season that’s just finished. You won’t see them referring to that now. Instead, as childlike adults, they have simply shifted the goal posts and now predict doom and gloom for next season instead.

Magical Thinking:

“The interpreting of two closely occurring events as though one caused the other, without any concern for the causal link. For example, if you believe that crossing your fingers brought you good fortune, you have associated the act of finger-crossing with the subsequent welcome event and imputed a causal link between the two. Magical thinking invests special powers and forces in many things that are seen as symbols.”

Among the staunchest opponents of Arsene Wenger, magical thinking, indeed, takes the form of “interpreting two closely occurring events as though one caused the other.” For example, believing that because Arsene looks to achieve the best value when buying players, he must be on a “bonus” to spend less on transfers. There is, of course, not one shred of evidence for this ridiculous notion, but it has not stopped certain authors from repeating it endlessly as fact. Another example of spurious causal connection is the fact that we didn’t sign Xabi Alonso from Liverpool. The childlike adults, with their simple but deeply held world view of all things Arsenal, can only conceive of the idea that Alonso did not come because we were too cheap to pay the asking price. They, and we, have no evidence that that was truly the case.

“Magical thinking invests special powers and forces in many things that are seen as symbols,” which, in the case of Arsenal, takes the form of an irrational belief that some flavour-of-the-month player from some other team is the answer to all our problems. Be it Cahill, Samba, Hazard, Mata, M’Vila (even, ludicrously, Joe Cole once upon a time). It doesn’t occur to the childlike adults who champion these causes that it might be the slightest bit inappropriate for them – with their day-jobs as IT workers, local government officials, Post Office sorters, or Sainsburys shelf stackers – to think they know better than a man like Arsene Wenger about which players are needed for Arsenal.

One important caveat: of course I am not suggesting that all criticism of Arsene Wenger and the current running of the club is a manifestation of psychological delusionality.

If you think Arsène should be removed as manager and can present cogent reasons for your opinion – fine, let’s have a debate. We may not change each other’s minds but we can at least respect each other and, through going back and forth, offer each other new perspectives on the issues.

Furthermore we can do so without playground abuse.

If you believe Ivan Gazidis is nothing more than a spin merchant who has overseen repeated failure in our transfer dealings – again, let’s go at it.

It’s not the argument itself that matters, but the way in which it is conducted. This is what separates the emotionally mature adult from the childlike adult and the emotionally mature Arsenal blog site from the childlike sites, of which, sadly, there are several.

That doesn’t mean that the emotionally mature adult is immune from occasional lapses of temper or good manners.

Many regular blog contributors go over the top at times (whether through frustration, a perception that they are being personally attacked or, as in my case, too much Scotch whisky) but if you examine the totality of their contributions you can soon judge their prevailing psychological state.

So what am I saying?

That some Arsenal blog sites and some of the people who contribute to them are psychologically not fully developed? They are, in effect, a bit mad?

Absolutely.

And thank goodness for the organisers of this site for keeping its standards high and emotionally mature and allowing wafflers like me to have our thoughts aired in an environment that (most of the time) is 100% sane.

RockyLives