Two weeks of positivity

Hear me out on this one, what if.. what if I tried to be positive for the next two weeks? I mean, we have plenty of negative things out there in the world and just this morning I saw that Talksport and AFTV held a debate in which they both accused each other of clickbait negativity.

And lately I’ve been feeling very down about Arsenal. About the prospects of the team for ever winning the league again. It weighs on me.

It’s been a pretty rough ride the last 18 months. I think I’d like to just take a vacation from the gallows humor and non-stop frustration with the players and the club hierarchy. Surely the point of following sports is to have fun, to escape from the negativity of the world.

So, I’m going to try to be positive for the next 14 days.

And to do that I have made up some rules:

1. I don’t have to be a cheerleader

Positivity doesn’t mean that I have to sell out or trade in my core values. So, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that everything is fine. You all already know that things are not fine, that the club is really struggling to adjust to the post-Wenger era. And if you want those stories, there are a ton of sites out there that can fill that need, give you what you crave!

I don’t want to be the guy telling you that the bombs are not falling on Baghdad when they definitely are but is it necessary for me to report on every bomb? Especially since this is a sports team and those aren’t really bombs and this isn’t anywhere near as dire as some of the actually dire things that we are facing?

I don’t want to be a cheerleader, nor a doom monger. It’s more that I want to shift away from the negative stories and toward the positive stories. That’s it.

I have to admit that this is difficult. I’m not even sure what I’m going to write about tomorrow. I don’t have any clue what positive things are happening. I guess I’ve been swaddled in negative thoughts for so long that I don’t even know what’s good anymore.

I may just have to write about some bird (like an actual creature) I saw on my morning walk or some other positive thing that just happened. I don’t know. But I want to try.

2. I don’t talk about other fans

I detest the whole “these fans suck” thing that people are doing right now. It is literally just everyone trying to score points on each other and it’s a holdover from the Wenger days, which is a holdover from the Graham days, which is a holdover from the Don Howe, and the Terry Neill, and Bertie Mee days.

This isn’t unique to the Arsenal scene. When I was a skater, the other skaters made fun of skaters who were either new to the scene or weren’t as good as the other guys. When I was a punk, the cred was about how many concerts you’ve been to, which bands you listened to, and how long you had been in the scene (also your politics). At work, there was a similar thing with how liberal you are.

All scenes struggle to define themselves. Who and what they are is almost always defined against an other: I am a USA American because I am not Mexican or Canadian, we are Arsenal supporters because we don’t support any other club (except that we often do) or we don’t support other clubs as much as we support Arsenal, and so on. Some folks like to take a more narrow approach to defining their scene within the scene, thus we have the people who define themselves as “real” Gooners who go to every away game – or they live in the area. Others like a broad brush. I think I like the broad brush.

For me anyone can be a Gooner who wants to be a Gooner. Not everyone can afford a season ticket (which allows them to purchase away tickets). Not everyone can be born in Islington and have a family that supported the club since 1888. And if that’s how you choose to define “true” fandom, feel free. But know that there will always be someone “punker than you”.

My reading of the history of the Arsenal is that we have always been a club of iconoclasts. There’s always been a right way, a wrong way, and the Arsenal way. That could be me projecting my values onto the club – my punk rock values – but if someone else gets to define true Arsenal supportership in a very narrow way, then am I not allowed to do the same, but in the opposite direction? Arsenal are not a place, they are a people.

Do you know one song? Do you watch the team on telly? Did you like Alex Song? You’re a Gooner to me.

3. I’m not a preacher

People hate a proselytiser! I don’t want to convert anyone to “True Positivity”. I just want to test myself. I started this blog to test myself. To see if I could write every day. I can write every day, test successful.

But can I write positive stuff every day? I don’t know. I want to see if I can even be positive for 14 days leading up to Christmas. Two weeks. Can I? I doubt it! Damn, I’m negative already.

I’m not going to tell you what to write in the comments below. You do you. If you feel like you need to get it off your chest how much you hate (insert player) or how angry (insert thing) made you, go right ahead. I’m not telling anyone else what to do. I’m telling myself (and you) what I’m going to try to do.

Also, please, feel free to criticize my positions. I almost always welcome debate. Debate and discussion is good. As always the rule is that I don’t want any personal attacks. Go after my ideas, not me personally.

4. The club are going to make a lot of mistakes and this is completely out of my control.

One criticism that “the bloggers” often get is that “we think that we can control the club”. I don’t know about other people but for me there is nothing further from the truth. I harbor no grand delusions that the club hierarchy or players listen to me.

I did sign the We Care Do You petition because I was asked to and I believe in the content of that petition. I am especially a proponent of safe standing and making it easier for people to obtain tickets. But I didn’t think that they would even respond to the petition. Arsenal is a billion dollar multinational corporation. Who am I?

But the more important thing here is not my ego, or it is my ego just not in the way that we traditionally think of it; the important thing here is that I accept that the club are on the road to repair, that they are going to make mistakes (probably a lot of them) and that there is nothing I can do to stop that. Have you ever tried to change yourself? Now imagine trying to change someone else. And imagine trying to change a multinational corporation with 20 people in the hierarchy. My complaining about the mistakes doesn’t do anything other than stroke my ego.

The big example is the next manager. Maybe I can be sanguine about this appointment because I already predicted that they would fire Emery before Christmas and that you would like it (you owe me ice cream!) and that they would appoint Freddie (I’ll take two ice-creams!). I don’t know if that’s it, exactly, though.

I guess I adjusted my expectations downward three or four years ago. I don’t think the team is well constructed and the managerial appointments haven’t been great. I look at Manchester United and see how much they have put into rebuilding and I guess that I just feel like with the Kroenke business model, we are going to need some pretty special appointments in key areas to get back into the top four.

Freed from that expectation, I should be able to just enjoy whatever happens. Quick question though, is that negative or positive? I honestly don’t know.

5. No bragging!

Ok, after the thing above where I brag about my forecasting skills, I will not brag at the end of this. Nor in the middle.

Qq

19 comments

  1. Arsenal Ladies are about to kickoff against London Bees. I’m feeling pretty positive about that.

  2. Given the injuries and fixture list, I sense we’ll be treated to more “bird I saw” posts than Arsenal ones. I look forward to it!

    Ice cream cone has been delivered, Tim. Check your email.

  3. Tim, you’re impatient and a bit of a perfectionist. You’re also smart and can see some of the mind numbingly dense decisions the club often makes. You are also use to Arsenal delivering a standard of football so why compromise now? So I say two things. 1) Accept who you are and 2) You’ll be bitching within a week 🙂

  4. This is a sentiment I can get behind. Seasons Greetings, Tim.

    Point 2 resonates with me. I am an LA Lakers fan, because when I came to NBA consciousness as a Caribbean youth I saw Magic Johnson playing the Point, Kareem sky-hooking, and there will not be another team for me. I’ve been to LA once, and never watched a Lakers game in person anywhere. Yet I feel no inferiority to complex to people who have. I am a real fan, whatever that is. It is the globalisation of sport.

    Similarly for Arsenal supporters who have never been to an Arsenal game, and they reside not just in the US… but in Singapore, Lagos, Freetown, Mumbai, Kingston, Tehran, Yerevan, Port of Spain and Soweto. It’s why those pre-season jaunts matter. Globalisation is not just a reality of trade and commerce (although that IS a big part of those tours). I don’t spend time on any other football blog but this one, because I consider it the best Arsenal blog, irrespective of where Tim Todd was born and how many games he attended in person.

    But here’s the thing (and Im staying totally away from the characterisation of the remarks of a certain British/Londoner about a certain Arsenal defender, and talking more widely about the fan community of which he is a part). If you live in Texas and smear/disdain all of AFTV as idiots who are somewhat lesser than you as a fan, you deserve the “who the f*** are you” pushback, and yes, under those circumstances, a guy who has been going to games since he could barely walk is justified in flexing that bit of street cred.

    Fan-judging cuts more than one way. And I find the whole thing to be ugly. Stop judging other fans, and regarding them as being lesser fans than you. I say that the smug Londoner season ticket holder, and to the upscale American who came to the club because of Wenger and Wengerism. Don’t judge me because I haven’t been to Staples. I still have strong opinions about Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

  5. Tim, Please don’t.
    The cognitive dissonance of trying to polish the turd that was our first 60 minutes against West Ham will break you, if they repeat anything similar in our next few battles.
    Only way you succeed is if you don’t watch any arsenal in the next 14 days!

      1. Tacoma is in Washington, right? I remember from my very dim and distant past sitting through a physics lesson, where the teacher was trying to explain the concept of resonant frequency. To illustrate the point he showed us an old film clip of the Tacoma Bridge Disaster. As you probably know the bridge was designed in such a way that when the wind whistled down in a certain direction it produced a vibration at the exact resonant frequency of the bridge itself. I remember quite distinctly watching the entire bridge twisting and buckling and abandoned cars being thrown off. Little did I know that in years to come, the entire Arsenal back line would be built exactly the same way. This explains everything.

  6. From one of my favorite albums and groups– the lyrics from a track on the album:

    King Crimson | Discipline | Elephant Talk

    Talk, it’s only talk
    Arguments, agreements, advice, answers,
    Articulate announcements
    It’s only talk

    Talk, it’s only talk
    Babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker
    Brouhaha, boulderdash, ballyhoo
    It’s only talk
    Back talk

    Talk talk talk, it’s only talk
    Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
    Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat,
    Conversation, contradiction, criticism
    It’s only talk
    Cheap talk

    Talk, talk, it’s only talk
    Debates, discussions
    These are words with a D this time
    Dialogue, dualogue, diatribe,
    Dissention, declamation
    Double talk, double talk

    Talk, talk, it’s all talk
    Too much talk
    Small talk
    Talk that trash
    Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, enfadulations
    It’s all talk
    Elephant talk, elephant talk, elephant talk

    ≈≈≈≈

    All about how you choose to communicate. Takes two.
    Discipline is a brilliant collection of work.
    If you find it online– think you’ll agree it’s worth your time.

  7. Great post Tim

    I don’t think it’s being negative or overly pessimistic if you are accurate which you usually are. The point of having a discussion on a sports blog is to try and get the correct answer even if that answer is not always the one we want to believe.

    Your points about not being a cheerleader and not talking crap about other fans who have a different opinion is spot on.

    Great stuff as always.

  8. Moan as much as you like, Tim. That’s what being a football fan is all about. It’s never been any different.
    Great website.
    Seasons greetings from Palm Springs.

  9. Tim has seen the light! What good is football if you can’t enjoy it, eh? What good is anything when it becomes more about appearances than the actual experience?

    I went through this for the first time with trance music. I was and still am to a much lesser extent a massive fan of electronic dance music, in particular, uplifting trance and (now) old school dream dance. I lived in Kentucky so to say I stuck out like a sore something is not giving it justice. I was too clean to go to “raves” and clubs didn’t play this music, so I had to find a community online. At first it was great. The Napster/Audiogalaxy days meant unlimited downloads. I buzzed on all the best and latest from Holland, Germany and the UK with likeminded folk from Toronto and all over the world. The internet seemed wonderful. Then, it changed. The music became bigger and the website warped into a competition between people to see who was more knowledgeable, who’s fandom was more pure and who had access to the “real” trance. Naming obscure DJ’s like you knew them personally was the ticket to credibility. It got even worse with the rise of the progressive trance movement which was a backlash against all the uplifting, vocal, in other words, cheesy tunes of the late 1990’s. There was good prog trance out there too but that wasn’t the focus anymore, it was to tell other people how to be a better, more cultured and more discerning trance consumer. It was stupid and it sucked but I got sucked in for a few years there and gave as good as I got. I told myself that I enjoyed it but really I just went out of habit and because there is a masochistic part of me that enjoys that sort of thing. I got into trance because I loved Oakenfold’s Tranceport and Armin’s Boundaries of Imagination and Tiesto’s Summerbreeze. A few years later, I succumbed to peer pressure to such an extent that I was listening to Scumfrog, Trentemoeller and Deep Dish. Now I just want to be happy.

    1. What an utterly superb comment.

      One of the best Ive ever read here.

      It was as unexpected as it was vivid.

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