Blogger: #14
We usually start off with an apology for posting infrequently and promise to increase our output in the future. But what with #18 deciding that a George Best lifestyle was for him and yours truly enrolling in B-school, things aren't looking too sunny. Think of our occasional ramblings as those sporadic appearances the Undertaker makes. Minus the fan frenzy, media coverage and all that. But the similarity is striking. Time has become tight - almost as tight as Arsene Wenger used to be with his cash. There you go, stupid joke. You were waiting, weren't you? You missed us, don't deny it. Anyway, that's what I shall be spewing poisonous gas about today: Arsene Wenger. Or should I say 'whom'? Never mind.
The start of the 2014-15 season was when I publicly declared for the first time that I felt Wenger ought to step down. His refusal/inability to buy a centre-back struck me as gross negligence/incompetence. I could rationalize my stance, and I still do: he can take us to a 3rd place finish, but not the title; he dithers in the transfer market when it comes to making that one extra transfer; we haven't won in a while, the list goes on. A combination of finally running out of patience and the evolution of a more pragmatic, result-oriented mindset are the most likely explanations for my joining the WOB (Wenger Out Brigade, keep up). But almost immediately after taking said stance, I was uneasy. Here was a man whose victory would be the ultimate triumph of the romance of sport. Here I was, on the other hand, succumbing to dry, yeastless factuality as Pi Patel would say. If this were a cartoon, you'd see a devil #14 and an angel #14 having a heated debate over this. Except that it's businessman #14 vs daydreaming teenage #14. The businessman #14 - chappie wearing a business suit with a hideous checked tie - had opined that Wenger needed to step down. But the loose T-shirt wearing, junk-food guzzling teenage wastrel wasn't quite dead yet. He was snoring peacefully in the corner, his jeans slipping off his bottom. With a grunt or two, he gets up and sees the business chappie. He doesn't quite recognize him, what with him having shaved to the bone and kept a neat, short crop on his coconut.
"Oye, who're you? Why do you look like me trying to dress up like my dad?", says the teenage dreamer.
"I'm what #14 should embrace now. Your ideals and idle dreams are all very nice for interviews and SOPs, but once you're out in the real world, you perform or perish."
"But why'd you shave? Couldn't you have kept a French?"
"Doesn't quite grow yet, but I'm getting close."
"Crikey, you have to wear a suit and you can't grow a French. Want some chips?"
"No, thanks. And speaking of French, Wenger out."
"Eh, what? He's retiring, you mean?"
"No, that's #14's stance now. He believes Wenger must go."
"You're having a laugh!"
"No, he's tweeted about it."
"But, but, it's Wenger! The ideal, the way the man talks, the belief, the whole team cohesion thing. We're so close now, why turn on Wenger now? This is it, it's our year. You can't tell me you're prepared to look like a clown once we win the league!"
"He didn't buy a centre-back last season, we don't have a decent back-up for Coquelin this season. This happens every year. We do well for a while, everyone believes, then we have a collapse and we're back to the drawing board and learning lessons. Wenger is good for the top 4, but no more!"
"But we still have Tomas Rosicky!"
"That's true. What a player!"
"So Wenger in!"
"No, out. We're not winning the title this year!"
At this point, the dreamer sort of shrugs his shoulders because Wenger wasn't about logic to him. The suited chappie made sense, but Wenger's never been about sense. Wenger, much like V for Vendetta (which I never really liked, FYI), is about the ideal. Arsene Wenger has and always will - at the risk of appearing naive - stand by what he believes in. And what he believes in is that there is more to sport than winning. Sport for Arsene Wenger is about expression. Sport is about giving joy. Arsene Wenger's interpretation of sport is something I could liken to that feeling you get when you stand on a cliff and look at the countryside. You don't think, you feel.You feel serenity, you feel enlightened. At that point, even the most rational of beings would acknowledge that it is their soul that is thriving. If he gets a few golden Premier League trophies along the way, he's not complaining. But we've all seen it, haven't we? Arsene Wenger never really likes parking the bus. For Wenger, a football team is a Ferrari. And a man who buys a Ferrari to park it, well, he probably has another Ferrari to drive around. I'll just let the man himself speak about what he does. As in, it's not Arsene Wenger typing the next few lines, I'm just copying his quotes.
"The philosophical definition of happiness is a match between what you want and what you have. And what you want changes as soon as you’ve got it. Always more. Always better. Hence the difficulty to satisfy. An Arsenal fan, when you finish fourth, will say, “Hey, we’ve been in the top four for twenty years. We want to win the league!”. They don’t care that Manchester City or Chelsea have spent 300 or 400 million euros. They just want to beat them. But if you finish fifteenth two years running, they will be happy if you finish fourth after that."
"For me, the beauty of sport is that everyone wants to win, but there will only be one winner. If you put 20 billionaires at the end of the twenty English clubs, there will only be one champion and nineteen disappointments. My grandfather used to say “I don’t understand, at the 100 metres, one runs in 10.1 seconds and the other one in 10.2 seconds, both are very fast. What’s the point?”
Today, we glorify the one that ran in 10.1 seconds, and say the one that ran 10.2 seconds. But both of them are very fast. That’s dangerous for sports. We have reached an era in which we glorify the winner, without looking at the means or the method. And ten years later we realise the guy was a cheat. And during that time, the one that came second suffered. He didn’t get recognition. And with all that’s been said about them…they can be very unhappy."
"I’ve been called naïf on that level. In any case, there’s only one way to live your life. You have to conform to the values you believe to be important. If I don’t respect them, I would be unhappy. And in any case, I’ve always been a man who was completely committed to the cause. With my good and my bad sides."
"I don’t want the will to educate to be opposed to the will to win. That makes the educator sound like an idiot. Any manager’s approach must be to educate. One of the beauties of our job is the power to influence the course of a man’s life in a positive way. You and me have been lucky enough to meet people who believed in us and led us forward. The streets are full of talented people but who didn’t have the luck of finding someone who placed their faith in them. I can be the one that facilitates life, that give an opportunity."
An Arsene Wenger triumph is the triumph of the kid who plays in a mud ground with abandon even if he's utter garbage. It's the triumph of the guy who decided he'll drop out of Engineering and start a band even if he had no musical bone in his body. It's the triumph of the spirit even if it were substandard, cheap, factory-made spirit that tastes like paint. It's a raspberry blown at your Victorian headmaster. Or the finger shown (to your Victorian headmaster). Or the uniform torn (of your Victorian headmaster...wait, scratch that, this song isn't burning up the charts after all).
But I digress. The point is, as I've grown older, I've looked at Wenger with a critical eye. My rational side subscribed to the Mourinho school - win at all costs. Results became the Holy Grail. The be all and the end all. But I've said this before and I'll say it again: sport is both art and science. A football club is both a business and a community. It wasn't too long ago that I believed in the same ideals Wenger holds dear. Like he said, we live in a world that glorifies the winner. To win is great, but whatever happened to that thrilling pursuit of perfection? The better story that Wenger always tried to give us. To describe an Arsenal game in full flow is to tell a beautiful tale. One of wonder, amazement, pathos and comedy. Not a blasted match report. It's a pity that I've neglected what was always so important to me: the romance of football. And who better than Arsene Wenger for a fancy dinner and a spot of ballroom dancing before a tender kiss to end the night? I mean footballistically (there you go, a Wengerism), of course.
People who want Wenger to stay would point to results this season, but old hands ought to know that we get to this point every season. Every season is "different because x, y, z" before we shoot ourselves in both feet and tie ourselves up for good measure. I waver. I'm not sure I believe in Arsenal. But where there is life, there is hope. I have hope. As much hope as Alexis has energy. As much hope as Ozil has vision, as Cazorla has ambipedality, as Cech has helmet hair, as Mertesacker has vertigo, as Koscielny has strikers in his pocket, as Bellerin has pace, as Giroud has oomph..you get the picture. The rational side is still sitting on the Iron Throne, but that dreaming starry-eyed teenager is awake now. He's well rested and he doesn't have exams coming up for a while, so he's sure to put up a fight. I still believe that Wenger ought to step down if we don't finish in the top 2 this season but it's with a heavy, heavy heart that I say so.
Prove me wrong, Arsene. Remind me of the dream again. Win us a title. The suit doesn't fit me well anyway. Go on. Please. Give me another story.
Want Wenger to prove you right or wrong? Want to complain about the poor stuff on show at the Four Man Wall? Want to talk about the weather? Well, drop in a comment already.
Thanking You,
Sincerely,
#14
P.S. This brilliant interview is what made me revisit my stance and think about Arsene Wenger. The quotes are from the same interview. I did not interview Arsene Wenger for the same. This is me giving credit to the source.
ARSENE WENGER’S FULL INTERVIEW WITH L’EQUIPE SPORT AND STYLE
We usually start off with an apology for posting infrequently and promise to increase our output in the future. But what with #18 deciding that a George Best lifestyle was for him and yours truly enrolling in B-school, things aren't looking too sunny. Think of our occasional ramblings as those sporadic appearances the Undertaker makes. Minus the fan frenzy, media coverage and all that. But the similarity is striking. Time has become tight - almost as tight as Arsene Wenger used to be with his cash. There you go, stupid joke. You were waiting, weren't you? You missed us, don't deny it. Anyway, that's what I shall be spewing poisonous gas about today: Arsene Wenger. Or should I say 'whom'? Never mind.
The start of the 2014-15 season was when I publicly declared for the first time that I felt Wenger ought to step down. His refusal/inability to buy a centre-back struck me as gross negligence/incompetence. I could rationalize my stance, and I still do: he can take us to a 3rd place finish, but not the title; he dithers in the transfer market when it comes to making that one extra transfer; we haven't won in a while, the list goes on. A combination of finally running out of patience and the evolution of a more pragmatic, result-oriented mindset are the most likely explanations for my joining the WOB (Wenger Out Brigade, keep up). But almost immediately after taking said stance, I was uneasy. Here was a man whose victory would be the ultimate triumph of the romance of sport. Here I was, on the other hand, succumbing to dry, yeastless factuality as Pi Patel would say. If this were a cartoon, you'd see a devil #14 and an angel #14 having a heated debate over this. Except that it's businessman #14 vs daydreaming teenage #14. The businessman #14 - chappie wearing a business suit with a hideous checked tie - had opined that Wenger needed to step down. But the loose T-shirt wearing, junk-food guzzling teenage wastrel wasn't quite dead yet. He was snoring peacefully in the corner, his jeans slipping off his bottom. With a grunt or two, he gets up and sees the business chappie. He doesn't quite recognize him, what with him having shaved to the bone and kept a neat, short crop on his coconut.
"Oye, who're you? Why do you look like me trying to dress up like my dad?", says the teenage dreamer.
"I'm what #14 should embrace now. Your ideals and idle dreams are all very nice for interviews and SOPs, but once you're out in the real world, you perform or perish."
"But why'd you shave? Couldn't you have kept a French?"
"Doesn't quite grow yet, but I'm getting close."
"Crikey, you have to wear a suit and you can't grow a French. Want some chips?"
"No, thanks. And speaking of French, Wenger out."
"Eh, what? He's retiring, you mean?"
"No, that's #14's stance now. He believes Wenger must go."
"You're having a laugh!"
"No, he's tweeted about it."
"But, but, it's Wenger! The ideal, the way the man talks, the belief, the whole team cohesion thing. We're so close now, why turn on Wenger now? This is it, it's our year. You can't tell me you're prepared to look like a clown once we win the league!"
"He didn't buy a centre-back last season, we don't have a decent back-up for Coquelin this season. This happens every year. We do well for a while, everyone believes, then we have a collapse and we're back to the drawing board and learning lessons. Wenger is good for the top 4, but no more!"
"But we still have Tomas Rosicky!"
"That's true. What a player!"
"So Wenger in!"
"No, out. We're not winning the title this year!"
At this point, the dreamer sort of shrugs his shoulders because Wenger wasn't about logic to him. The suited chappie made sense, but Wenger's never been about sense. Wenger, much like V for Vendetta (which I never really liked, FYI), is about the ideal. Arsene Wenger has and always will - at the risk of appearing naive - stand by what he believes in. And what he believes in is that there is more to sport than winning. Sport for Arsene Wenger is about expression. Sport is about giving joy. Arsene Wenger's interpretation of sport is something I could liken to that feeling you get when you stand on a cliff and look at the countryside. You don't think, you feel.You feel serenity, you feel enlightened. At that point, even the most rational of beings would acknowledge that it is their soul that is thriving. If he gets a few golden Premier League trophies along the way, he's not complaining. But we've all seen it, haven't we? Arsene Wenger never really likes parking the bus. For Wenger, a football team is a Ferrari. And a man who buys a Ferrari to park it, well, he probably has another Ferrari to drive around. I'll just let the man himself speak about what he does. As in, it's not Arsene Wenger typing the next few lines, I'm just copying his quotes.
"The philosophical definition of happiness is a match between what you want and what you have. And what you want changes as soon as you’ve got it. Always more. Always better. Hence the difficulty to satisfy. An Arsenal fan, when you finish fourth, will say, “Hey, we’ve been in the top four for twenty years. We want to win the league!”. They don’t care that Manchester City or Chelsea have spent 300 or 400 million euros. They just want to beat them. But if you finish fifteenth two years running, they will be happy if you finish fourth after that."
"For me, the beauty of sport is that everyone wants to win, but there will only be one winner. If you put 20 billionaires at the end of the twenty English clubs, there will only be one champion and nineteen disappointments. My grandfather used to say “I don’t understand, at the 100 metres, one runs in 10.1 seconds and the other one in 10.2 seconds, both are very fast. What’s the point?”
Today, we glorify the one that ran in 10.1 seconds, and say the one that ran 10.2 seconds. But both of them are very fast. That’s dangerous for sports. We have reached an era in which we glorify the winner, without looking at the means or the method. And ten years later we realise the guy was a cheat. And during that time, the one that came second suffered. He didn’t get recognition. And with all that’s been said about them…they can be very unhappy."
"I’ve been called naïf on that level. In any case, there’s only one way to live your life. You have to conform to the values you believe to be important. If I don’t respect them, I would be unhappy. And in any case, I’ve always been a man who was completely committed to the cause. With my good and my bad sides."
"I don’t want the will to educate to be opposed to the will to win. That makes the educator sound like an idiot. Any manager’s approach must be to educate. One of the beauties of our job is the power to influence the course of a man’s life in a positive way. You and me have been lucky enough to meet people who believed in us and led us forward. The streets are full of talented people but who didn’t have the luck of finding someone who placed their faith in them. I can be the one that facilitates life, that give an opportunity."
An Arsene Wenger triumph is the triumph of the kid who plays in a mud ground with abandon even if he's utter garbage. It's the triumph of the guy who decided he'll drop out of Engineering and start a band even if he had no musical bone in his body. It's the triumph of the spirit even if it were substandard, cheap, factory-made spirit that tastes like paint. It's a raspberry blown at your Victorian headmaster. Or the finger shown (to your Victorian headmaster). Or the uniform torn (of your Victorian headmaster...wait, scratch that, this song isn't burning up the charts after all).
But I digress. The point is, as I've grown older, I've looked at Wenger with a critical eye. My rational side subscribed to the Mourinho school - win at all costs. Results became the Holy Grail. The be all and the end all. But I've said this before and I'll say it again: sport is both art and science. A football club is both a business and a community. It wasn't too long ago that I believed in the same ideals Wenger holds dear. Like he said, we live in a world that glorifies the winner. To win is great, but whatever happened to that thrilling pursuit of perfection? The better story that Wenger always tried to give us. To describe an Arsenal game in full flow is to tell a beautiful tale. One of wonder, amazement, pathos and comedy. Not a blasted match report. It's a pity that I've neglected what was always so important to me: the romance of football. And who better than Arsene Wenger for a fancy dinner and a spot of ballroom dancing before a tender kiss to end the night? I mean footballistically (there you go, a Wengerism), of course.
People who want Wenger to stay would point to results this season, but old hands ought to know that we get to this point every season. Every season is "different because x, y, z" before we shoot ourselves in both feet and tie ourselves up for good measure. I waver. I'm not sure I believe in Arsenal. But where there is life, there is hope. I have hope. As much hope as Alexis has energy. As much hope as Ozil has vision, as Cazorla has ambipedality, as Cech has helmet hair, as Mertesacker has vertigo, as Koscielny has strikers in his pocket, as Bellerin has pace, as Giroud has oomph..you get the picture. The rational side is still sitting on the Iron Throne, but that dreaming starry-eyed teenager is awake now. He's well rested and he doesn't have exams coming up for a while, so he's sure to put up a fight. I still believe that Wenger ought to step down if we don't finish in the top 2 this season but it's with a heavy, heavy heart that I say so.
Prove me wrong, Arsene. Remind me of the dream again. Win us a title. The suit doesn't fit me well anyway. Go on. Please. Give me another story.
Want Wenger to prove you right or wrong? Want to complain about the poor stuff on show at the Four Man Wall? Want to talk about the weather? Well, drop in a comment already.
Thanking You,
Sincerely,
#14
P.S. This brilliant interview is what made me revisit my stance and think about Arsene Wenger. The quotes are from the same interview. I did not interview Arsene Wenger for the same. This is me giving credit to the source.
ARSENE WENGER’S FULL INTERVIEW WITH L’EQUIPE SPORT AND STYLE
