“Arsenal don’t like it oop norf.”

“Arsenal don’t like it up ‘em.”

“You need to get in their faces.”

The above represents “conventional” wisdom about taking on Arsenal. It is widely believed that to attempt to play football against Arsenal amounts to little more than sporting suicide, with the result that teams utilize anti-football when facing the Arsenal. Anti-football involves rotational fouling, kicking the shit out of Arsenal’s players, and, where the opposition go up a goal, instant time-wasting.

Anti-football enjoys the full-blooded approval of the media who constantly harp on about Arsenal’s “foreignness” and “lack of an English spine” and Arsenal being a “French team in England” amongst other gems. Arsene Wenger was labeled a “whinger” for complaining about how opponents are allowed to brutalise Arsenal week in, week out and his boys get demonized for every tackle. A few years ago, Man Utd’s players were given carte blanche by Mike Riley and they proceeded to kick Jose Reyes out of a game at Old Trafford. In the same match, Wayne Rooney flopped to the ground without any contact, and was awarded a penalty which helped end Arsenal’s unbeaten run.

The English press like to go on and on about “grit” and “steel” and “manliness” and such other attributes. It is all well and good to possess these qualities but in England, sheer physicality is prized over technical ability. The result is that you only very rarely get an English player who’s got flair. But when rough play is hailed as the right thing to do, I begin to wonder about the sanity of the English pundit. It is no surprise that British teams tend to pick up loads more bookings when they participate in continental competition. This is because the continental refs don’t stand for that “getting in their faces” bullshit. So many times you watch a qualifier on the telly, a British lad gets booked for a wild lunge, and the commentator says, “That’s not even a foul in the Premier League.”

Last Sunday, Arsenal travelled to Bolton Wanderers or, as Tony Atwood of Untold Arsenal calls them, Notlob Srerednaw, and picked up a hard fought 2-0 win. In that game, after Cesc Fabregas had been denied a second clear penalty, Matthew Taylor of Notlob knelt on the Arsenal Captain’s neck for a few seconds, tried to drag his foot across his face, then pulled his hair. These actions, in the full view of the assistant ref, were not punished or remarked on by the commentators. Sky Sports went ahead to edit them out of the match highlights so, in the media’s world, nothing untoward happened during the game. Fabregas didn’t react violently, as I would have, but let his football do the talking.

A few days later, Arsenal entertained Notlob at the Emirates, and while down 1-2, an incident occurred. In full view of the ref, William Gallas and Mark Davies went for the same ball. Davies got there first and poked the ball away, Gallas arrived a second later, and caught Davies’s ankle. Davies stayed down, Gallas got the ball and sparked the move which led to Arsenal’s equalizer. Was it a foul? Certainly. Did the ref rule otherwise? Certainly. Was the goal valid? You bet your ass.

Immediately after the game, an irate Owen Coyle labeled the tackle “akin to assault” and accused Gallas of trying to murder his player and the entire Notlob bench. Davies was said to have had his ankle ligaments surgically separated by Willy’s boot, and his bones were said to have been transformed into sharp splints headed for his heart. So, apart from needing a new ankle, Davies also had need of Tony Stark’s mini arc reactor to keep the bone splinters out of his heart.

The media went absolutely crazy. Gallas was labeled the worst serial killer since Jack the Ripper. The tackle was shown over and over and over. Comparisons to the other Taylor’s wild lunge on Eduardo were made. The media called on the FA to censure Gallas. When this failed, the media responded with headlines declaring that Gallas had “escaped punishment” for his heinous crime.

The sheer hilarity of Notlob whimpering about getting a kicking from an opponent was just about lost in all this. Notlob are the archetypal “kick him” team. They almost single-handedly invented the tale about Arsenal not being up to it physically. When I was a wee lad, I had a sports coach tell me, “If you miss the ball, don’t miss the leg.” With Kevin “Elbows” Davies as their spearhead, Notlob team elevated that philosophy to its zenith. Just a few days before the games, Elbows gave an interview in which he said Arsenal’s players “screamed like little girls” if you tackled them. Shocking then, to see the entire Notlob playing and coaching staff whining about a tackle like a bunch of Beverly Hills bimbos.

Arsene Wenger has staunchly defended his player, and took on the media yesterday when he pointed out that the hair pulling went unmentioned, while a mistimed 50/50 has gotten so much airtime. He asked why teams are allowed to declare before games that they intend to kick Arsenal, and then after they have carried out their plan, he has to deal with some smarmy reporter going “Well, you didn’t like that did you?” which sparks the whole “Arsenal can’t handle the physical stuff” bullshit again.

This season, as a result of an alleged dive by Eduardo in a Champions League qualifier, Arsenal no longer get penalties in England. This season, Arsenal have been awarded 1 penalty, while 4 penalties have been awarded against us. Chelsea have been awarded 7 penalties, Man Utd have been awarded 5, and Notlob have 3.

Any incident in which an Arsenal player can be portrayed in a negative light is repeated over and over again to drum into the consciousness of the viewer that Arsenal are a dirty team of cheating foreigners. That the wild lunges of Robinson on Fabregas at the weekend also went unremarked and unnoticed simply reinforces this issue.

Basically, Arsenal have been made the media’s fall guys for every problem in the game. It’s pathetic, lazy “journalism” if one can even call it that. Looks more like a witch hunt to me.

“For us, there is no land beyond the Volga!” – Vasily Zaystsev

The above was uttered during the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, and became a rallying cry for the desperate defenders of that city. Men and women who stood tall and fought to the last breath to defend their homes. They could have gone “Shoot! Let the Nazis have Stalingrad. We’ll just move on.” But that didn’t happen, and not only did they eventually turn that battle around, they reversed the direction of the entire war.

Ever since I was a little boy, the events of the Soviet Front of the war have had a particular fascination for me. Some argue that Soviet infrastructure was poor, which slowed down German offensives considerably, the Soviets simply kept throwing bodies at the Germans, and Hitler was a rather confused fellow whose insistence on controlling strategic decisions severely undermined the effectiveness of an otherwise superb war machine. What I gathered from numerous accounts of battles on both sides, is that beyond any of these issues, it took an unbelievably incredible spirit for the Soviets to win against all odds, against the most powerful military force in the world. That an army that steamrolled France spent weeks fighting to take a single Soviet outpost speaks volumes about that spirit. At Stalingrad, German troops joked about winning the living room, and still fighting for the kitchen. That, is my definition of commitment.

What, if anything, does this have to do with Arsenal, you may wonder.

We supporters have our backs to the wall, and it isn’t some foreign invader we’re fighting, it’s those who claim to be supporters like us but are actually doing all in their power to undermine and destroy our team that are the enemy. We are witnessing a replacement of supporter commitment by a feeling of entitlement. There is this growing attitude that it is only acceptable to have an atmosphere when we entertain Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool, or the Spuds. That cheering the team on when the players are fighting to break down a 10-man Stoke defence has somehow become optional. That it is ok to boo our own players. And the standard response to anyone who points out that such an attitude is not only plain wrong, but goes against the fundamental requirements of being a supporter, is to wave a ticket stub in the air. As far as these morons are concerned, paying to watch Arsenal is the same as buying a ticket to see a movie.

It doesn’t help that this attitude is fed by the lazy and indolent press. Each season, I wearily steel myself for another round of “Arsenal to fall out of Top 4!” and “Wenger must splash cash!” and “Honda F.C. to sign Fabregas!” headlines. That these stories are concocted with absolutely no regard for their veracity or truth simply escapes Doom Mongers or Mongs, and their negativity is amplified. I once told a friend that if Arsenal win the League and Champions League, the summer headlines would still say “Arsenal to drop out of Top 4!”

As far as the Mongs are concerned, Arsene Wenger has lost it, all his players are lightweight, and Arsenal need to sign X or Y player and get rid of Wenger. For the Mongs, if Arsenal wins a game, it’s because the opponents were, quite frankly, shit. If Arsenal lose, it’s because Arsenal’s players are shit. If Arsenal grind out a win, we gave away too many chances, and a better team would have hammered us. If we canter to a win, it’s because we played against crap defenders and a better team would have stifled us. Also, as far as the Mongs are concerned, anyone who doesn’t see things their way is not being realistic, or has his head too far up Arsene Wenger’s bottom to recognise the truth.

The day before our match at Anfield, a blog called “Arsenal Truth” had a post stating that Arsenal would lose, and the author went so far as to say he wasn’t interested in being a “good little supporter”. Now, the funny thing about that site is this: there is a little warning about the bottom of each post stating that you either respect the views of the site and respond in a “civilised” manner, or your IP will be banned and you will be prevented from ever accessing the site again. I had gone on there several times in the past, and read some amazingly negative views about the team, even for games we won, and it required all my restraint not to respond in a decidedly uncivilised manner, but, after reading this guy’s infantile ranting before the Liverpool game, I decided I’d had enough, wrote in and begged him to ban my IP. To my great amusement, he duly obliged.

I won’t sit here and say that I’ve never been angry at a loss, or that I’ve never felt really pissed off at a performance. In fact, that run of lousy performances early last season almost destroyed me. But I was eventually able to put things in perspective, because I reasoned that if you experienced only bright, hot sunlight every day of the year, the odds are pretty good that you’re living in some forsaken desert.

My first Arsenal game was the 1995 Cup Winners’ Cup Final, and just about everyone can remember how that ended. Since then, I have seen a league title delivered in a manner never to be forgotten by history. I have seen two FA Cup Finals which have been seared into my memory. I have witnessed Arsenal  playing football which made a Real Madrid supporter gush that the surest way to make anyone love football was to show them an Arsenal game. I have seen great players come and go, but Arsenal still stands. I have seen a new stadium built in a manner so totally fuss-free that the English FA must have been humiliated by any comparism with their comically inept handling of the Wembley project.

I have had my share of what ifs, why nots, and what the fuck was thats. I have seen that my manager does make his share of mistakes, but I have screamed at my computer enough times while playing Football Manager to know the job is beyond difficult. And, in life, you can’t click “Save” before every game.

Supporting Arsenal is not a chore, a task, or an assignment given to you by a difficult and hateful boss. Supporting Arsenal is a choice, and if you’re not ready for all that choice entails, I suggest you stay out of the damn kitchen!

Arsenal is my Stalingrad, and I’m not going anywhere.

Welcome to Pavlov’s House.