November 6, 2014 9:30:55 AM PST
By Iain Macintosh
Moments after Arsenal's extraordinary collapse this
week, I tweeted my long held view that they must be the
most frustrating team in the world to support. Gunners'
fans were quick to agree, but others weren't so sure. A
stream of Tottenham and Newcastle fans begged to
differ, while supporters of smaller clubs, including my
own Southend United, were just as dismissive. But
while those clubs and others have problems far more
serious than anything ever suffered by Arsenal, the
point still stands.
Supporting Southend is not really that frustrating.
Though they sit in an entirely respectable seventh
position in League Two, generally they're not very good
at football. Expectations are low and are only
occasionally met.
Newcastle are frustrating in that they keep finding ever
more inventive ways to shoot their own feet off, but no-
one really expects anything different. That's just what
they do.
Tottenham's extraordinary habit of investing heavily in
one ideology only to scrap it all at great expense and do
the opposite two years later is certainly frustrating, but
only one person has ever thought they were going to
win the Premier League title and that, bafflingly, was
chairman Daniel Levy shortly after the sale of Gareth
Bale.
Arsenal exist on a different plane of frustration
because, unlike those other clubs, great success is
always possible. Indeed, great success for Arsenal,
given all they have, is actually more probable than
possible.
And yet they are so keen to squander their ambitions,
and in increasingly ludicrous fashion. They were like
the Wet Bandits this week. Bigger, stronger, more
experienced than their pint sized opponent, Anderlecht
in the Champions League, they seemed certain to win
out, but instead they found themselves being creatively
and repeatedly assaulted in the last 20 minutes as they
let a 3-0 lead slip away.
What separates Arsenal from the likes of Tottenham,
Newcastle, Southend and all the other names that
streamed onto my timeline on Tuesday night is that
they have absolutely no excuses for this. Arsenal have
everything in place to be the most successful, trophy-
laden club on the planet and their failure to reach their
potential is extraordinary.
Newcastle have outstanding support and a wonderful
stadium, but in the era of FFP when clubs can only
spend what they earn, they're hamstrung by the
financial chasm between London and the north of the
country. They can get over 50,000 fans through the
gates, but they can't charge Arsenal's prices. Nor can
they hope to attract the sort of deep-pocketed,
international corporate sponsors who have such a
presence in the capital.
Tottenham could, hypothetically, match Arsenal in the
match day revenue stakes, but they haven't yet got a
stadium to facilitate it. They're held back by White Hart
Lane, its 36,000 capacity and its lack of a whopping
great business and conference centre attached to the
side of the pitch. Such are the sad realities of modern
football.
Arsenal have the prime London location and they have
their giant stadium. It's almost paid for too. Thanks to
Arsene Wenger, they also have an advanced training
complex, an excellent academy, a wide scouting
network, experienced and qualified staff and a
philosophy that will always attract new supporters.
Perpetual Champions League qualification enables
them, when they choose to do so, to attract all but the
biggest names in the game and, most importantly, to
pay them high wages without risking the future of the
club. All of which explains why so many people took
umbrage at the idea of this being a frustrating
existence. Most clubs in the world would love to be that
frustrated.
But for all that they have, they still cannot make the
leap to the top billing, a place they haven't occupied in
the last 10 years and it doesn't look likely to change any
time soon. The only teams they've beaten in the league
this season are Burnley, Sunderland, Aston Villa and
Crystal Palace.
What makes it all so fist-gnashingly ridiculous, so grind-
your-teeth-into-dust annoying is that Arsenal seem to
make the same mistakes again and again and again and
again until you start to think they're doing it deliberately
as some kind of vindictive performance art.
They surge forwards when they don't need to, they lack
a defensive midfielder to protect them when it
invariably goes wrong, they waste set-pieces at one end
and then wobble precariously at the other. They over-
complicate, they prevaricate and they do it so often that
any rational individual would just give up on them and
go and watch something less stressful. Unfortunately,
very few supporters are rational.
All of our teams frustrate us, all of them make us feel
as if we're cursed, but very few of them are as close to
greatness as Arsenal. That's what makes the difference.
They should have everything, they should sit astride
global football like a King, clutching all of the trophies
and laughing their heads off. Instead, it's the rest of the
world that can't stop laughing at them.

*yimu* na today?
Where is the source dude? Dont you know how serious the offence called plagiarism is, huh?