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

[kamikaze80]

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.

right, and as outlaw said, as long as you give 100% on the pitch, then you are fulfilling your contractual and moral obligations. or do you think there's a contract clause that says you have to make a good faith effort to appear to be an arsenal supporter as well as a player, even after you've transferred to another team and your arsenal contract has expired?

 

[AnthonyG]

Hmmm, I agree with qs - while we employ them none of that stuff outlaw mentions is on in any way shape or form. (Feel I've heard this argument before).

You're being too generous to outlaw there with your additions kami, i.e. once they've left the club, I agree, they can do whatever re: Arsenal. If they want.

 

[Burnwinter]

There's no clear delineation between contract matters and on the field performances, and that's the main flaw I see in Outlaw's argument.

Players acting the fool over their contracts or exhibiting "unsettled" behaviour (courting offers in the press, attending tap-up meetings, complaining about wages and salary, generally being ****s) can affect the whole team's performance.

Don't think this was particularly the case with Vieira though.

 

[wellington]

Surely Vieira was a case of "time for a change". He'd been at the club for a long time. He'd done everything here. He wanted to go somewhere else, a new challenge. I don't think he was trying to be disruptive, but I do think he wanted to go, and would have told his agent - and we all know what agents do.
Wenger didn't want to sell him, but realised that the longer he stayed, the more disconsolate Vieira would get.
So he was sold. Fair enough. A bit like Henry for me. They gave great service, played their hearts out for us. But then they want to move on. Perhaps it's the disadvantage of having ambitous players.
I think that's completely different to Ade, who hadn't put in years of service, and was disrupting the team just by being a pratt.

 

[banduan]

If you think hankering for a change of jobs while you hold a high-profile position is not going to affect your employer, fellow employees and customer's or stakeholders view of you, you're either naive or just not exposed to this sort of thing.

 

[wellington]

If you think hankering for a change of jobs while you hold a high-profile position is not going to affect your employer, fellow employees and customer's or stakeholders view of you, you're either naive or just not exposed to this sort of thing.

Sure. But that's not quite what I'm saying.
I understand why Vieira wanted to leave, and I think he gave his all while he was here. Including supporting and encouraging the other players. As did Henry.
Ade did not.
There's a way to leave a club and stay a hero, and there's a way that's destructive.
For me Pat is still a hero.

 

[Accomplished]

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.

Not sure if you missed it, but about 30,000 Sp**s fans stood up and sang the pedophile song a couple of weeks ago. enough of a minority for you is it?

this isn't even on the same radar...

 

[Burnwinter]

Not sure if you missed it, but about 30,000 Sp**s fans stood up and sang the pedophile song a couple of weeks ago. enough of a minority for you is it?

this isn't even on the same radar...

:? That avoids addressing my position - which is that the Togolese team bus attack is an ugly choice of subject matter for anti-Ade chants. If you're going to make a point of calling me out at least engage with what I said.

 

[sabret00the]

Congratulations Anzac, proper chuffed for ya.

 

[irishgunnerz]

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.

Not sure if you missed it, but about 30,000 Sp**s fans stood up and sang the pedophile song a couple of weeks ago. enough of a minority for you is it?

this isn't even on the same radar...

Ah so something is acceptable if only a minority do it...

Sorry mate, agree with most of your posts but not this one. If they did sing about the ANC or his mother or father or whatever (and based on what I've read in a number of forums etc from people who were there, they were indeed said/sang) it's unacceptable.

The * song is unacceptable, complete and utter vileness... and so is any song about the ANC attack. You cant dismiss one casually while getting up in arms about the other.

 

[Lukazan]

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.

Why do you have your doubts?

I'm not sure about the ACN stuff, but a friend of mine who went to the match told me people were singing the song about Adebayor's mum and dad.

 

[Accomplished]

heyhey I never said it was acceptable. my point was, a couple of people said it wasn't as much of an issue as the wenger chants, because, quite simply, not nearly as many people sing it.

personally, I'm pretty ****ed off that most of our fans are silent when the team actually needs them, but some of these ****s are happy to sing that sort of song. says a lot about them...

It's despicable, but at white hart lane the other night, the pedo song was THE song. the ade thing was a song sung by a few hundred people, not many thousands, which I think makes a big difference (not in acceptability, but in seriousness)

you can't go weeding out every bad chant that gets sung, but the most popular ones can be tackled, and should be tackled. of course we should try to get rid of this stuff, but I ask you this, which chant deserves more attention? For me, it's the wenger one by about 10000000x

 

[outlaw_member]

Why do you have your doubts?

I'm not sure about the ACN stuff, but a friend of mine who went to the match told me people were singing the song about Adebayor's mum and dad.

We're just as bad as everyone else. No set of fans has more class than another, even if many of us like to think so.

 

[outlaw_member]

There's no clear delineation between contract matters and on the field performances, and that's the main flaw I see in Outlaw's argument.

Players acting the fool over their contracts or exhibiting "unsettled" behaviour (courting offers in the press, attending tap-up meetings, complaining about wages and salary, generally being c**nts) can affect the whole team's performance.

Don't think this was particularly the case with Vieira though.

It doesn't really affect the team just as long as the performances of said player hasn't dropped. Like Kami said, as long as the player performs on the pitch, he is fullfilling his contractual obligation and that is all we should rightfully desire from an employee/footballer. Obviously, there are many moral obligations set down by the gaffer but how many people actually adhere to them in any walk of life? Sure, some actions can be severly detrimental to the team, but we've had captains who've been to jail, so it would have to be something utterly horrific.

 

[outlaw_member]

If you think hankering for a change of jobs while you hold a high-profile position is not going to affect your employer, fellow employees and customer's or stakeholders view of you, you're either naive or just not exposed to this sort of thing.

Can a press report, which I presume most footballers tend to avoid anyway, affect the team severly enough that they are unable to perform on a matchday? Granted, if it's something disparaging to the team on the whole but I'm not sure how an individual's desire to look for new pastures, which won't be actively pursued until the actual possibility arises, be reason enough to derail the whole team during the season?

 

[xcdude24]

Why do you have your doubts?

I'm not sure about the ACN stuff, but a friend of mine who went to the match told me people were singing the song about Adebayor's mum and dad.

We're just as bad as everyone else. No set of fans has more class than another, even if many of us like to think so.

That's not true at all, really. We have our bad apples but the proportion of them to normal folk are ridiculously small compared to a lot of other clubs.

 

[Burnwinter]

It doesn't really affect the team just as long as the performances of said player hasn't dropped. Like Kami said, as long as the player performs on the pitch, he is fullfilling his contractual obligation and that is all we should rightfully desire from an employee/footballer.

Re the bolded bit: maybe. Pretty impossible to judge either way. I think an established star causing contract problems is likely to turn the heads of a few other players.

Edit: I mean, I'm not going to argue against that for the sake of it. I got into this discussion to defend Paddy, who I loved

On the whole, though, not a fan of players who publically engage in contract and transfer brinkmanship.

What the bolded part above means to me is "if you're going to make outrageous demands, you'd better deliver on the pitch" rather than "you're playing ok, so we'll ignore your off field bollocks" - a question of emphasis.

 

[wellington]

My recollection of Paddy's public comments is that he would express frustration with how he was treated in England by referees, and so made general comments about leaving the country. But I don't remember him saying he wanted to join Inter, or Real etc.
I'd left London by then though so maybe I'm not remembering it correctly?

 

[Burnwinter]

No, Vieira wasn't that bad, but he was being acted for by Marc Roger who is absolute **** during the period.

 

[-vapour-]

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

Why do you have your doubts?

I'm not sure about the ACN stuff, but a friend of mine who went to the match told me people were singing the song about Adebayor's mum and dad.

I heard a few people trying to start the Mum and Dad chant a couple of times. But in fairness to the majority of fans as soon as we heard it, we outsang them with "we've got Arshavin, **** Adebayor".

The most racist were the City fans anyway, I saw about 5 inflatable bananas at least. I could only presume that was in reference to how our fans apparently through bananas onto the pitch after THAT incident at the corresponding fixture.

There will always be a select few who are racist or whatever, but that is why the club try and stamp down on these certain individuals by asking you to report it, if you see or hear anything untoward.