1-0 to the Arsenal
In his latest column for The Times, Simon Barnes asks a question I’ve been meaning to explore for some time: what does it mean when your football club’s philosophy does a 180 degree turn?
Comparing the eras of George Graham and Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, Barnes wonders “How do long-term Arsenal fans cope? Are their heads spinning from the requirement to hold so many contradictory ideas in their heads? For years, during the times of George Graham, they believed that beauty is in the scoreline, that 1-0 represented a glorious minimalism, that to devote even an instant of time to any notion other than pure victory was a betrayal of the players, of supporters, of sport itself.”
As Barnes goes on to explain, this has been buried in the dustbin of history, replaced by Wenger’s supposed 100% commitment to the beauty of the game:
“Now they must play the part of Leonard Cohen’s beautiful losers,” Barnes continues, “claiming that the destination is less important than the journey, that sport has an aesthetic; that it is more glorious to lose with Arsenal than to win with anyone else. Both of these are tenable positions, but to hold such extreme views in such quick succession requires an extraordinary philosophical agility.”
Of course, most Arsenal fans outside of North London are not yet dealing with this contradiction. Many seem to be under the impression that Arsenal invented the beautiful game, with the footballing dirge produced by Graham’s Arsenal airbrushed out in Soviet style fashion. But for the old-timers who sat through Arsenal’s dogged defensive days under Graham, the change in mindset must be confusing.
Perhaps one way to deal with it is to continue to edit history. The below video of Arsenal since 1989 is typical of how the era of brief video highlights distorts our understanding of the past.
Despite being called a “Tale of Two Eras”, it is in fact a collection of greatest goals interspersed with trophy celebrations that suggests some kind of symmetry between the two eras, rather than the actual disconnect that Barnes comments on.
The great goals might seem to parallel each other, but that ignores everything else that went on minute after minute, day after day, that deeply differentiates the two Arsenals, and leaves Barnes’ question unanswered.
About the Author
Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
Email this author | All posts by Tom Dunmore
You might also like:
|
|
|
|
|
I would think that your view of Arsenal’s 180 degree turn would depend on why you follow the club; certainly converts to Arsene Wenger’s attacking futebol del arte would be surprised to learn of George Graham’s approach in the eighties, just as Graham’s followers would be surprised to learn of Herbert Chapman’s sustained success back in the twenties. If you had been ‘born into’ Arsenal or any club, I think a certain tolerance of radical differences in style is always in order…
‘Style’ or ‘ethos’ isn’t the real question; fans loyalties become tested with commercialisation and the feeling of abandonment by club owners who seem hell-bent on turning a football club into a corporate machine. I would think Emirates Stadium would frighten a Graham era supporter more than Wenger’s approach to diet, fitness and youthful attacking sides.
Far be it from me to defend the Gooners, but isn’t it a question of just how far back one’s support goes? The Liam Brady and Charlie George teams may have been evil (at least from a Tottenham perspective), but they weren’t awful to watch. And people who are even older than I am still wax lyrical about the likes of Dennis Compton and the Herbert Chapman teams.
It’s much harder for me to try to justify Graham ever having been manager of Spurs.
I didn’t see those Brady or George teams play, ursus, but I don’t get the sense the change of philosophy from the pre-Graham era to the Graham era was as stark as comparing Graham to Wenger. But I could be wrong.
And though I’m picking on Arsenal above, the point about a Graham-managed Spurs is certainly just as disorientating.
I think a lot of that sense is the result of the ridiculous media hype surrounding the Premier League in the last five years and the over-the-top gushing of the Islingtonite media about Wenger’s current team in particular. Neither he nor Arsenal invented the beautiful game.
I think another problem for the “beautiful losers” philosophy is that I was brought up to laugh at Spurs for this very reason. How then to cope with adopting it for oneself?
SpanglyPrincess, I find it easy enough to say that we’re “better” beautiful losers than Spurs.
There’s a moment somewhere in Fever Pitch (which was written during the George Graham era) in which Nick Hornby implies that Graham has revitalized attacking football at Arsenal and made the team more fun to watch. I remember being shocked when I read that because of the way those Graham teams are remembered today. But actually, over 460 games, Graham’s Arsenal averaged 1.55 goals/game, whereas the previous long-term manager, Terry Neill, averaged just 1.35 over 414 games. So maybe at the time Graham felt like a breath of fresh air.
Obviously goals don’t tell the whole story when it comes to “beautiful football,” but it’s interesting to note that Wenger’s teams have averaged 1.8 goals/game since 1996, considerably less than Herbert Chapman’s in the 1920s (2.14).
Probably the most relevant statistic for Arsenal supporters is Wenger’s 57% win ratio, by far the best for a long-term manager in the history of the club and the first even to top 50% since the nineteenth century. It’s probably easier both to see the football your team is playing as “beautiful” and to endure a spell as “beautiful losers” when you’re winning as reliably as that.
It’s hard to compare eras, though. Chapman’s teams were scoring at that rate at a time when everyone was scoring a lot more goals. We’d need some baseball-style sabermetric analysis to really get at a serious historical comparison of relative goalscoring.
Of course, teams can score plenty of goals and still be dull (paging Chelsea).
Do Manchester United have the same philosophy as they did when Fergie took over? No way. These things are always fluid, it is just more remarkable at Arsenal because of the change in manager. Wenger still stuck to the fable back four for a few years.
http://blogs.reuters.com/soccer
Everything has to change. This same question could be put to many teams. The changes Arsenal have been through are not black and white and also haven’t happened overnight.
This is a good write up, for me I did’nt have the chance to watch Graham’s Era, so I will prefer the beatiful football and winning of trophies.
http://www.arseguns.blogspot.com
SpanglyPrincess, I find it easy enough to say that we’re “better” beautiful losers than Spurs.