Arsenal vs Man City - EPL - Sat 24th April 17:30 - ESPN

[marco]

Just seen the below on F365...was it so bad at the match?

Ashamed Of The Arsenal Chants
I was at the Arsenal game on Saturday and I left feeling utterly let down. You'll be expecting me to lay into the players now for their somewhat insipid and boring performance. However, you'll have to look to others for that. I am writing in to address something which for the first time made me ashamed to be an Arsenal fan: the chanting at Emmanuel Adebayor.

I'm all for booing the guy. Pantomime villains are all part of football and he left our club acrimoniously. But there was a significant minority of the crowd in my end, and no doubt elsewhere, singing two different songs which both boiled down to "we wish you'd died in the shooting before the ANC". This is disgusting and, frankly, made me ashamed to be there. Not to mention the effect it would have had on our own team to know that the crowd were largely ignoring them just to throw despicable insults at one opposition player.

If anyone who sang those songs is reading then I have a message for you: you are pathetic, worthless individuals who either have no humanity at all or are happy to suspend any sense of human decency just to bait an opposition player. Please do not darken our stadium again.
Ben, London, AFC


...Arsenal fans like to take the moral highground. We really do. And on all manner of issues: We play better football than you. We spend less money than you. Our owners have more integrity than yours. Just kids, don't you know, and when they get older...but it doesn't really work, unfortunately, if 60,000 of you sing songs about a certain player's mother being a whore, or chant racial slurs about the same player's father. It doesn't really maintain the image. And it rings hollow too, when you then get up in arms about that song all those nasty uncouth fans sing about Arsène Wenger every time he has the temerity to stand up in the dug-out. You can't really expect any better, if you do just the same.

Adebayor left. Get over it. All this fuss about him nearly a year on, it just looks a bit...pathetic.
Matt H, (when is this season over? is it soon?) Battersea, Arsenal

I'd like to know if anyone off here who was at the match heard this stuff? I have my doubts.

i have never heard the songs about his mum being a whore+ elephant stuff..

you used to like coach trips but not anymore got sung -i personally dont think there is anythign wrong with that
and "it should have been you it should have been you shot in angola it should have been you" i heard pre game but not at the game.

nothing for anyone to get their knickers in a twist about.

 

[dreamLord]

Possibly the most interesting point in the game, from my seat at any rate, occurred when a yobbish sort behind me started singing chants that glorified in Adebayor’s traumatic experiences aboard a coach in Angola. An elderly man in front of me turned around, and demanded the guy shut up. His argument was plain: whatever our problems with Adebayor, people died that day. It’s not something to be made light of. It’s fans like that, who are not prepared to see the good name of this club tarnished by a few imbeciles, who make me proud to support Arsenal. If we’re going to jump on to our high horse when Arsène is made the victim of sick chants, we can at the least apply the same moral code to ourselves.

Gunnerblog. I suppose there were a few chants then.

 

[outlaw_member]

On the subject of Vieira did he really have to hug Adebayor when he went off? Adebayor has been an absolute c**t to our fans I thought it was unnecessary to do it while the fans were cheering him.

Not to open up a whole new can of worms, but it does crack me up when fans get all sensitive and s**t when the tables are turned. When its fans goading a player, its all good hearted banter (bar the racist/homophobic ones, of course) but when a player does it?

Double standards are a given. :wink:

I've never understood why fans have such high expectations for footballers when they're off the pitch. The only thing that should ever matter is how they've been performing for the team. Who cares if Vieira was clamouring for five consecutive seasons for a transfer, when all that should matter is the nine seasons he was involved in? Who cares if Hleb wanted to go eat ice cream in an Italian parlour, when all that should matter is the three seasons he was here? These players aren't fans of the club so expecting them to behave as such is ridiculous. They aren't saintly robots either, so expecting them to conform to your idea of a professional footballer is also wildly unrealistic. Hell, they shouldn't have to conform to anyone other then themselves. None of us have any right to expect another person to behave in a manner that we desire.

Sure, we pay them their wages and support them but they're the ones giving us the service, afterall. Who would we pay to watch if there weren't any players? The only thing that should ever matter is how they've performed for us and what they've contributed towards the team. Loyalty is incredibly overrated when almost everyone is always looking out for themselves, ourselves included. If Cesc wants to spend the next three years flying to Barcelona every other weekend to garner a deal with Laporta, then let him just as long as he performs for us in the meantime. Footballers are employees just like everyone else, and we are all only ever loyal to one thing, the paycheque. If they aren't committed on the pitch then that is another matter, but as long as they give 100%, that's all that should matter and what they do in their free time should be very little of our concern.

 

[qs]

I've never understood why fans have such high expectations for footballers when they're off the pitch. The only thing that should ever matter is how they've been performing for the team. Who cares if Vieira was clamouring for five consecutive seasons for a transfer, when all that should matter is the nine seasons he was involved in? Who cares if Hleb wanted to go eat ice cream in an Italian parlour, when all that should matter is the three seasons he was here? These players aren't fans of the club so expecting them to behave as such is ridiculous. They aren't saintly robots either, so expecting them to conform to your idea of a professional footballer is also wildly unrealistic. Hell, they shouldn't have to conform to anyone other then themselves.

Sure, we pay them their wages and support them but they're the ones giving us the service, afterall. Who would we pay to watch if there weren't any players? The only thing that should ever matter is how they've performed for us and what they've contributed towards the team. Loyalty is incredibly overrated when almost everyone is always looking out for themselves, ourselves included. If Cesc wants to spend the next three years flying to Barcelona every other weekend to garner a deal with Laporta, then let him just as long as he performs for us in the meantime. Footballers are employees just like everyone else, and we are all only ever loyal to one thing, the paycheque. If they aren't committed on the pitch then that is another matter, but as long as they give 100%, that's all that should matter and what they do in their free time should be very little of our concern.

Bollox. They have contracts and they are expected to abide by them. They are more than employees, they are assets, hence their value, their wages and their contracts.

 

[outlaw_member]

Contracts are often worth nothing more than the paper they are written on. As I've mentioned before, the only thing that ever matters is their performances on the pitch and the integrity of those contracts has always been largely dependent on that factor.

 

[qs]

Contracts are often worth nothing more than the paper they are written on.

Leave it for talkSport and the like will you. Of course contracts have worth.

 

[Wenger14]

On the subject of Vieira did he really have to hug Adebayor when he went off? Adebayor has been an absolute c**t to our fans I thought it was unnecessary to do it while the fans were cheering him.

Not to open up a whole new can of worms, but it does crack me up when fans get all sensitive and s**t when the tables are turned. When its fans goading a player, its all good hearted banter (bar the racist/homophobic ones, of course) but when a player does it?

How does that relate to my post? :?

 

[Burnwinter]

you used to like coach trips but not anymore got sung -i personally dont think there is anythign wrong with that
and "it should have been you it should have been you shot in angola it should have been you" i heard pre game but not at the game.

nothing for anyone to get their knickers in a twist about.

Adebayor was on hand when several people were shot down, some of whom died, less than four months ago.

 

[Accomplished]

you used to like coach trips but not anymore got sung -i personally dont think there is anythign wrong with that
and "it should have been you it should have been you shot in angola it should have been you" i heard pre game but not at the game.

nothing for anyone to get their knickers in a twist about.

Adebayor was on hand when several people were shot down, some of whom died, less than four months ago.

do you not think he knows that?

either you're being sarcastic, and failing, or you're just trying to be smug, and failing.

The point is, it was a severe minority, as it always is with these things. It was probably about 10 people, but since 10 people can make more noise than 10,000 at the emirates, it gets heard...

 

[Burnwinter]

The point is, it was a severe minority, as it always is with these things. It was probably about 10 people, but since 10 people can make more noise than 10,000 at the emirates, it gets heard...

Of course it's a minority. Doesn't justify letting that minority off the hook. It's low, about as low as songs about Hillsborough, the Munich air disaster, Wenger * chants or gas chamber jokes.

Really too holier-than-thou (or smug or sarcastic or whatever) for you? You don't see me criticising people for singing about Redknapp's twitch.

 

[Anzac]

Oh. Anzac watched the match at 3am...less baffled now
.

Further to my earlier post re time zones, probably the REAL reason I fell asleep was as the result of the arrival of another propective Gooner to our household - born on the 23rd.

He's the real reason for the current lack of sleep & why I can not get too emotional about either the performance v City or where we are at currently re the season etc - the football etc is a bit 'flat' & no comparison.

 

[Burnwinter]

Congratulations Anzac!

 

[Anzac]

Congratulations Anzac!

Thanx buddy.

 

[wellington]

Oh. Anzac watched the match at 3am...less baffled now
.

Further to my earlier post re time zones, probably the REAL reason I fell asleep was as the result of the arrival of another propective Gooner to our household - born on the 23rd.

He's the real reason for the current lack of sleep & why I can not get too emotional about either the performance v City or where we are at currently re the season etc - the football etc is a bit 'flat' & no comparison.

Congrats Mate. I was actually thinking just recently that your posts were a little more balanced, and wondering whether maybe you were realxed now the title was gone. Or maybe taking some medication. But I see it was another release of tension, and a natural boost.

 

[Anzac]

Oh. Anzac watched the match at 3am...less baffled now
.

Further to my earlier post re time zones, probably the REAL reason I fell asleep was as the result of the arrival of another propective Gooner to our household - born on the 23rd.

He's the real reason for the current lack of sleep & why I can not get too emotional about either the performance v City or where we are at currently re the season etc - the football etc is a bit 'flat' & no comparison.

Congrats Mate. I was actually thinking just recently that your posts were a little more balanced, and wondering whether maybe you were realxed now the title was gone. Or maybe taking some medication. But I see it was another release of tension, and a natural boost.

Thanx - lack of energy = lack of intensity/passion - lol.

 

[AshburtonGhost]

Congratulations on the little one, mate!

 

[Tourbillion]

Congratulations mate.

 

[Wenger14]

Congrats Anzac.

 

[bojed]

Congrats 433 442 4231.

 

[IBL]

The gooner army grows, congrats mate