Nicosia Gooner
04-05-2014, 08:51 PM
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/apr/05/arsenal -tottenham-hotspur-spurs-losing-streak?CMP=twt_gu (http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/apr/05/arsenal-tottenham-hotspur-spurs-losing-streak?CMP=twt_gu)
Putting faith in Arsenal's losing streak helps ease Tottenham pain
With Arsenal having gone nine years without silverware, as a Spurs fan there's pleasure in willing the streak to reach a decade
Tom Lamont
The Observer, Saturday 5 April 2014 20.00 BST
Arsenal, it gets mentioned, have gone some while without lifting a trophy. The club's nine-year losing run includes appearances in major finals, credible title tilts, giants toppled, but nothing tangible won – no cups with ribbons, no oversized Euro tin, not a shield. And I admit that, as a non-fan, some sympathy has welled up in me as Arsenal's long, unaccountable streak has run on and on. I've taken a stake in the matter. Fringe interest has turned into genuine concern. I care.
Come on you streak!
Design Arsenal's losing streak a kit, I often think, and I'll wear it during pivotal matches. Let's write it a Latin motto. This is a big time for us: Arsène Wenger's side have an FA Cup semi-final against Wigan of the Championship on Saturday. Win that, and low-flyers Hull or Sheffield United will be waiting. If they make it to the final I really think the streak is worth its own charity pop song. April and May are going to be absolutely huge, make or break. Streak! Streak! Streak!
Plenty of fans tend a quiet loyalty to a second team. A different-division side in the UK, if not Barcelona, one of the Milans, a Madrid. Celtic and Liverpool fans share a mutual fancy that dates back decades and West Ham, by obscure tradition, are meant to be everyone's backup if they haven't already got one. Arsenal themselves, reliably slick, command a lot of incidental affection … For me it's the streak, has been for nine excellent years, and I follow its ups and downs with the same keen, brittle concern I allow my real club.
There have been near-run things. This allegiance hasn't always been easy. There was that Champions League turnaround, against Frank Rijkaard's Barça, the streak still very much in its infancy and only hinting at its glorious future. In the Carling Cup final, three seasons ago, Laurent Koscielny almost didn't muff a back-pass, allowing Birmingham their winning goal. And I won't forget the rocky run-in, shortly afterwards, when Aaron Ramsey's strike against Manchester United blew the title race wide open ... Again and again the streak prevailed. Good old streak. Oh when the streak! Goes marching in! I'll be gutted to see it go.
My first club are Spurs. Sad, striving Spurs – so inventive, year after on year, in their method of distressing the fans. Seven managers sacked in a decade, awesome talent let go, and a single Champions League campaign when there might have been three or four had we a drip of extra luck. Is it any wonder that my affections have divided? That I've drifted towards the glamour?
Arsenal's streak gets to pit itself against the best in Europe, year after year. Treacherous departures (Cesc Fàbregas to Barcelona, Robin van Persie to United) only strengthens it. Meanwhile my mental highlight reel is magnificent, an unforgettable hat-trick by Lionel Messi, strikes by Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, not to mention cheeky prod-ins by Colin Kazim-Richards, Ricardo Fuller ... Who can claim an attacking history like it?
I'm always amazed to discover there are football fans who don't care much, one way or the other, about the fortunes of their rivals. Yeah, they'll muster up some cartoon ill-will for derby matches, and diligently stand uuuup if they hate so-and-so. But the majority of supporters, from what I can tell, prefer to support rather than wallow in schadenfreude. I feel they're missing out.
There's an extra richness when you loathe a rival team as much as you like your own. The season goes twice as long as each weekend brings two results to root for. Losses can be hedged against losses. A draw doesn't seem so bad. Victories might get double-distilled. Oh, those rare Match of the Days, when on the same day Spurs have done well and Arsenal been disgraced – heaven.
For the particular potency of my feelings towards Arsenal (this therapy-worthy venom) I claim special allowance. The school I went to was majority Gooner, and seven years of corridor chat there coincided with the early, ultra-successful phase of Wenger's reign, when Arsenal turned flash and won the double; meanwhile Spurs pinned their hopes on Christian Gross, a manager whose principal innovation was to deny captain Gary Mabbutt his pre-match omelette. Mondays at school, August through May, were rarely hilarious.
As an adult, somehow, I've tended to end up in houses and flats within Arsenal-supporting territory (an area that, in my defence, now seems to cover all of London above Euston, excepting a thin strip around the A10 and certain loyal Tottenham outposts at the Essex end of the District Line). Where I live all the bookmakers, knowing their market, put up teasing signs telling you how much you can win if Spurs get thumped to nil by Cardiff City, or by Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk ... "We exist!" I want to tell these bookies. "We're allowed to live in north London, too."
Currently, ridiculously, I'm so close to the Emirates I can hear goal cheers, even the loudspeaker confirmation of scorers, through my lounge window. Red and white scarves everywhere. Kids too young to know with "INVINCIBLES" written on their backs. When the stadium empties into the neighbourhood I reckon I can tell how thoroughly Arsenal have battered some relegatee by how briskly the 20-somethings with Olivier Giroud haircuts rub their hands together. By how many teeth they bare.
That lofty, our-pitch-is-our-canvas superiority, the one Arsenal fans practically stagger about under the weight of – has flavoured half my life. They've placed above us, now, for 18 seasons in a row. They won the league at White Hart Lane (2004). They took Sol Campbell (2001). The FA Cup parade, if Arsenal go all the way, will very likely plough within metres of my front door.
So one more season, streak, give me that. Let's make it a round decade.
Come. On. You. Streak.
Putting faith in Arsenal's losing streak helps ease Tottenham pain
With Arsenal having gone nine years without silverware, as a Spurs fan there's pleasure in willing the streak to reach a decade
Tom Lamont
The Observer, Saturday 5 April 2014 20.00 BST
Arsenal, it gets mentioned, have gone some while without lifting a trophy. The club's nine-year losing run includes appearances in major finals, credible title tilts, giants toppled, but nothing tangible won – no cups with ribbons, no oversized Euro tin, not a shield. And I admit that, as a non-fan, some sympathy has welled up in me as Arsenal's long, unaccountable streak has run on and on. I've taken a stake in the matter. Fringe interest has turned into genuine concern. I care.
Come on you streak!
Design Arsenal's losing streak a kit, I often think, and I'll wear it during pivotal matches. Let's write it a Latin motto. This is a big time for us: Arsène Wenger's side have an FA Cup semi-final against Wigan of the Championship on Saturday. Win that, and low-flyers Hull or Sheffield United will be waiting. If they make it to the final I really think the streak is worth its own charity pop song. April and May are going to be absolutely huge, make or break. Streak! Streak! Streak!
Plenty of fans tend a quiet loyalty to a second team. A different-division side in the UK, if not Barcelona, one of the Milans, a Madrid. Celtic and Liverpool fans share a mutual fancy that dates back decades and West Ham, by obscure tradition, are meant to be everyone's backup if they haven't already got one. Arsenal themselves, reliably slick, command a lot of incidental affection … For me it's the streak, has been for nine excellent years, and I follow its ups and downs with the same keen, brittle concern I allow my real club.
There have been near-run things. This allegiance hasn't always been easy. There was that Champions League turnaround, against Frank Rijkaard's Barça, the streak still very much in its infancy and only hinting at its glorious future. In the Carling Cup final, three seasons ago, Laurent Koscielny almost didn't muff a back-pass, allowing Birmingham their winning goal. And I won't forget the rocky run-in, shortly afterwards, when Aaron Ramsey's strike against Manchester United blew the title race wide open ... Again and again the streak prevailed. Good old streak. Oh when the streak! Goes marching in! I'll be gutted to see it go.
My first club are Spurs. Sad, striving Spurs – so inventive, year after on year, in their method of distressing the fans. Seven managers sacked in a decade, awesome talent let go, and a single Champions League campaign when there might have been three or four had we a drip of extra luck. Is it any wonder that my affections have divided? That I've drifted towards the glamour?
Arsenal's streak gets to pit itself against the best in Europe, year after year. Treacherous departures (Cesc Fàbregas to Barcelona, Robin van Persie to United) only strengthens it. Meanwhile my mental highlight reel is magnificent, an unforgettable hat-trick by Lionel Messi, strikes by Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, not to mention cheeky prod-ins by Colin Kazim-Richards, Ricardo Fuller ... Who can claim an attacking history like it?
I'm always amazed to discover there are football fans who don't care much, one way or the other, about the fortunes of their rivals. Yeah, they'll muster up some cartoon ill-will for derby matches, and diligently stand uuuup if they hate so-and-so. But the majority of supporters, from what I can tell, prefer to support rather than wallow in schadenfreude. I feel they're missing out.
There's an extra richness when you loathe a rival team as much as you like your own. The season goes twice as long as each weekend brings two results to root for. Losses can be hedged against losses. A draw doesn't seem so bad. Victories might get double-distilled. Oh, those rare Match of the Days, when on the same day Spurs have done well and Arsenal been disgraced – heaven.
For the particular potency of my feelings towards Arsenal (this therapy-worthy venom) I claim special allowance. The school I went to was majority Gooner, and seven years of corridor chat there coincided with the early, ultra-successful phase of Wenger's reign, when Arsenal turned flash and won the double; meanwhile Spurs pinned their hopes on Christian Gross, a manager whose principal innovation was to deny captain Gary Mabbutt his pre-match omelette. Mondays at school, August through May, were rarely hilarious.
As an adult, somehow, I've tended to end up in houses and flats within Arsenal-supporting territory (an area that, in my defence, now seems to cover all of London above Euston, excepting a thin strip around the A10 and certain loyal Tottenham outposts at the Essex end of the District Line). Where I live all the bookmakers, knowing their market, put up teasing signs telling you how much you can win if Spurs get thumped to nil by Cardiff City, or by Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk ... "We exist!" I want to tell these bookies. "We're allowed to live in north London, too."
Currently, ridiculously, I'm so close to the Emirates I can hear goal cheers, even the loudspeaker confirmation of scorers, through my lounge window. Red and white scarves everywhere. Kids too young to know with "INVINCIBLES" written on their backs. When the stadium empties into the neighbourhood I reckon I can tell how thoroughly Arsenal have battered some relegatee by how briskly the 20-somethings with Olivier Giroud haircuts rub their hands together. By how many teeth they bare.
That lofty, our-pitch-is-our-canvas superiority, the one Arsenal fans practically stagger about under the weight of – has flavoured half my life. They've placed above us, now, for 18 seasons in a row. They won the league at White Hart Lane (2004). They took Sol Campbell (2001). The FA Cup parade, if Arsenal go all the way, will very likely plough within metres of my front door.
So one more season, streak, give me that. Let's make it a round decade.
Come. On. You. Streak.