FanPost

Why Arsenal are the best team to support

Seeing all the "jokes" today about the fourth place trophy has made me realise, some people simply don’t get it.

The Spuds think ‘to dare is to do’ but they live in permanent disappointment, constantly falling short because they were stupid enough to aim for the stars. The nouveau riche fans have instantly become entitled; upset over every loss they find comfort only in silverware or conspiracy theories. At Arsenal we need neither. At Arsenal we understand that real joy comes from having both ups and downs.

Supporting a sports team is supposed to be a roller-coaster of emotions. Without lows you can’t enjoy the highs but at the same time, in this modern age, who really has time for that? Attention spans get shorter every year. If I were to offer you the title in 17/18 in exchange for finishing below Spurs this season and next, would you take it? Nah, right? We might win the title in the next three years anyway (or that’s what we like to tell ourselves) and St Totteringham’s Day has become like a cup for us too.

The solution is to pull in the extremes, give us the highs and lows, but minimize the risk in doing so. And in Arsene Wenger, we have the world expert in doing this.

Sure, we could go out and buy a defensive midfielder, but that would increase expectation. Yes, a world class striker would be nice, hell even a first choice international could help, but the thrill of instead seeing how long Walcott can go uninjured adds a tangible edge of your seat air to every home match. And this is a deliberate strategy, tailored to give us the ultimate fan experience. Let me explain.

Walking the tightrope

Remember when we went that whole season unbeaten? Barely, I know. I’ll jog your memory, it was also the last time we won the league. Still not ringing any bells? Well, take it from an old dog then, it wasn’t all that fun. Yes it’s great to have done it. In hindsight it was wonderful, a fantastic achievement that may never again be matched, but at the time it was intense. Every game carried that extra weight of potentially being the one to deny us the record. People joked about Highbury being quiet, well we were all terrified of a loss! Wenger himself aged about 10 years in that single season and that’s when it struck him: winning games results in more pressure, not less, and the fans (and our players) don’t like pressure, we all just want to get drunk at the end and sing songs about Tottenham being shit.

That was the watershed moment. The next season we finished twelve points from the top, it could barely be called a title defence but we were happy. Our forward thinking manager was only just getting started. We won the FA Cup that year, maybe we could do without them for a while too he thought.

The key was all about expectations. Lower your sights and the target becomes easier to hit. Winning the league is difficult. There are after all a couple of other teams with at least as much money as us. If you call fourth place a trophy however, there will always be reason to celebrate.

Except it’s not true. And this is where Wenger really sets himself out as an innovator. If you rush out of the blocks and the media talk you up for the title, then fourth place, a perfectly admirable league position, will feel like defeat. Now we as fans do need the lows to appreciate the highs, I know I already spelt that out, but they’ve got to come in the right order. So if instead the team coasts along until Christmas, saving energy for the second half of the season and then breaks off from the peloton just after the right moment, the surge to a Champion’s League spot looks entirely heroic.

European Difficulties

Of course being in the Champions League creates a very similar problem, and so Arsene developed a very similar solution – lose first, win later. We’re the team that beat Barcelona, that smashed Milan, that won at the Allianz Arena, that could potentially be the best in Europe… it’ll just have to be next season now. And while we’re at it we’ll win the Premier League too, just so long as our form holds up over summer.

Like any tactical system, it needs tweaking with time and like any great tactician Wenger knows to introduce these changes gradually. Last year’s defictory against Monaco looked like more of the same but examine it closer and you’ll see it was actually a new technique that he’d been trying out in the domestic cups: Underestimating the Underdog.

You may not always get a European giant to valiantly fall to and so the loss in the Principality segued into what we see now. This year we’re boldly aiming lower still, we might not even make it out of the group stage. Before we can be eliminated though we’ll have to beat the mighty Bayern - to go back to Munich and prove once more that we could potentially be the best team in Europe… if only we hadn’t lost to that Greek team early on.

And so

This dear friends is why Arsenal is the best team in the world to support. Why the fourth place trophy matters. We experience all the joys sport can bring, and with all the heartbreak to set that off against, just in the right order, and on a smaller scale. We’ve traded occasional euphoria for certain satisfaction, and you’d be a fool to want it any other way.

The game is not about glory, it is about celebrating whatever it is you happen to achieve each year. And we are being led by the world’s best at ensuring that. #InWengerWeTrust