\n<\/p>\n
Two questions are bobbing around our head this morning.<\/p>\n
Are Arsenal actually going to bottle the lot<\/strong>? And should you actually care or be invested if you are not in fact yourself an Arsenal fan?<\/p>\n Oh, and a third one: Is Arne Slot actually going to resign<\/strong>?<\/p>\n The third one is good because the answer is straightforward. No. Managers almost never actually resign<\/strong>. They might engineer a sacking by going on a wild rant after a draw at Southampton, but almost never actually resign. A key plank of any good destroy-and-exit is safeguarding the payout.<\/p>\n The answers to the first two questions are much more complicated. The first? Dunno, but probably not. An entirely plausible set of results over the next week sees them with one foot in the Champions League semi-finals and 12 points clear in the Premier League<\/strong>.<\/p>\n But the second question is the most difficult and interesting. The three-word version we\u2019ve settled on is \u2018Up to you\u2019. But we\u2019ve checked with the boss, and apparently neither they nor more importantly the Google Overlords are big fans of three-word features.<\/p>\n So we\u2019ll go with a longer version.<\/p>\n Johnny Nic, who is in every way the best of us, doesn\u2019t really get the schadenfreude of revelling in Arsenal\u2019s current woes and potentially far greater despair to come<\/strong>.<\/p>\n We, a much pettier and hollowed-out individual, absolutely do get it. And will happily endorse it.<\/p>\n Johnny makes the reasonable point that it\u2019s not really about Arsenal. It\u2019s just that right now they are the team in position to be sniped at. It\u2019s obviously true up to a point, but we\u2019re not sure it\u2019s quite so simple.<\/p>\n Yes, if it were Liverpool or Man United or even Chelsea or even Man City in Arsenal\u2019s position there would still be mockery and second-hand enjoyment of their current agonies.<\/p>\n But it definitely is also a little bit an Arsenal issue. It is definitely louder and more gleeful because it\u2019s Arsenal, and it seems necessary to acknowledge that.<\/p>\n Something fascinating has happened with Arsenal over the last couple of years. A combination of factors including hubris, self-satisfaction, assorted gobshitery, Mikel Arteta being so very and relentlessly Mikel Arteta and above all Arsenal\u2019s ongoing schtick of nearly winning everything while actually winning nothing has proved a heady brew.<\/p>\n Everything is definitely heightened and tilted slightly to the absurd now when it\u2019s Arsenal. It\u2019s not entirely their fault, obviously, but they\u2019re not blameless either.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve spoken before about the apparent disconnect between real-life Arsenal fans, who in our experience are no better or worse than any other large fanbase, and the now caricatured-into-oblivion idea of the Online Arsenal Fan.<\/p>\n Whenever we think about Arsenal fans, we often come back to an unnecessarily wise line in an unnecessarily silly film: \u2018A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.\u2019 Really, this applies to all fanbases, but \u2013 as with everything else right now \u2013 especially Arsenal.<\/p>\n Unfair as it almost certainly is, the Terminally Online Arsenal Fan is an instantly recognisable and relatable character. If you\u2019ve ever said anything online about Arsenal yourself, then you will have met them.<\/p>\n The idea of them far outweighs their actual number, but they do exist. There is a reason why they have become clich\u00e9. There is truth here, even if an exaggerated one. Not all Arsenal fans are Piers Morgans, but all Piers Morgans are Arsenal fans.<\/p>\n The result is that Arsenal discourse is, in all directions, over the top. Their tendency to over-react to both triumph and tragedy triggers an equal and opposite reaction from everyone else.<\/p>\n You know this to be true, because when you look at the things that have become very specifically associated with Arsenal in the last couple of years you quickly realise just how utterly generic and endemic they actually are.<\/p>\n There must also be acknowledgement of how much responsibility the media bears here. We all love a narrative, we all love a hook, we all love a long story arc with heroes and villains.<\/p>\n Based on the last couple of years, you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking Arsenal had invented: playing boring but effective football, scoring goals from set-pieces, not always winning every single game they play, not winning the quadruple, celebrating too much, getting ahead of themselves, believing referees are out to get them, having a manager who\u2019s quite odd and, now, pulling players out of meaningless international friendlies for reasons that are small and twatty.<\/p>\n Absolutely none of this is remotely new or in any way unique to Arsenal. Absolutely all of it is now associated entirely or predominantly with them. Almost 30 years since Arsene Wenger invented pasta and maybe not having eight pints the night before a game, Arsenal continue to break new ground.<\/p>\n And the real if overplayed Online Arsenal tendency for self-aggrandisement makes the idea of \u2018The Arsenal\u2019 falling flat on their face a delicious one. That\u2019s just human nature.<\/p>\n This crystallised in a specific moment a couple of weeks ago, in a social media video of Spurs fans celebrating Arsenal\u2019s defeat in the Carabao Cup final.<\/p>\n City 2 arsenal nil bricklayers Tottenham reaction pic.twitter.com\/Qa8FY857Sq<\/a><\/p>\n\n