The Good, the Bad and the Ugly side of being an Arsenal fan

I can’t stop loving Arsenal! By Sylvester Kwentua

Kanu Nwankwo, a former Arsenal player is a cult hero in Nigeria! After the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta where he practically rescued the Nigerian under 23 team from losing to Brazil, he became the darling of every Nigerian, including me! So, Arsenal signed him from Inter Milan back then, they practically signed over a million Nigerians, who were ready to support the club he played for! Kanu Nwankwo introduced me to Arsenal football club.

For more than 25 years I have supported this great Arsenal club and I must confess, I have had good, bad and ugly experiences as an Arsenal fan.

THE GOOD:
if I was asked to pick the best moment I have had as an Arsenal fan, I will surely pick the period when we went a whole season without losing a league game! I still hope to witness that from Arsenal again before I die. There are several good times I enjoyed with Arsenal, especially the period when we had Thierry Henry as our chief attacking player. The Champions league final against Barcelona in 2006, is another good moment I enjoyed, although we lost the final to them. Who can forget 2002? The year where we won the League and the FA cup Double! The season where we got Man-Utd’s buttocks whooped was another one for me (I have brothers who are all Man-Utd fans and being the only Arsenal fan, I enjoyed rubbing it into their faces then). The most recent good moment I have enjoyed as an Arsenal fan, is the FA cup we won in 2014, after several years of not winning a trophy! Guys, we all know how the joy of winning a trophy feels like, don’t we?

THE BAD: I have a lot of times I have felt bad as an Arsenal fan. The several times when we have been knocked out of the Champions league round of 16, ranks top on my list! The times when we could not keep our star players and losing them to our direct rivals, also made me sad. Losing the Carling cup final then to an Obafemi Martins inspired Birmingham F.C, made me go berserk! Starting every season brightly and then fading out before the middle of season can’t make a fan happy, can it? Now, things seem to be following the same pattern this season; we got knocked out of the Champions league round of 16 (again) by Bayern Munich (again) with our worst ever drubbing at the Emirates. Next week, we may lose our star players to more ambitious clubs and we may end the season trophyless, after starting brightly again! How bad can it get mates?

THE UGLY: The only ugly experience I have as an Arsenal fan is seeing Wenger still coaching my darling team! This man is finished tactically and football wise! Does he need God to personally come down from heaven and ask him to leave before he knows his time is up? Wenger please go!

Despite all my experiences as an Arsenal fan, I am still proud to say I remain an Arsenal fan for life! What about you folks?

Sylvester

10 Comments

  1. Sylvester , I implore you to take heart as you bear the latest disappointments that Arsenal have suffered at the hands of Liverpool and Bayern Munich whivh culminated to a combine aggregate lose of 3-13 in goals difference. Sir Keswick the Arsenal chairman has spoken. So we should wait to see what will follow his statement later. But I guess if Le Prof qualified Arsenal for next season’s UCL campaign and also won the FA Cup later, Le Prof will be asked by the Arsenal board to further extend his current deal there and he may do so.

    1. Why should we listen to this walking ghost called Chips? Seriously. This is why he just said:

      We will always run this great football club with its best long-term interests at heart.

      This is utter bo llocks. No, you never had club best long term interest at heart. You have promised us the sky and the moon, the fact that we will win like Madrid or Bayern, that we will be THE TEAM. You simply lied tou all of us,all you’ve ever cared about is money, hence we are where we are. And the thing that pi$$e$ me off the most is that you f4cked up the mind of the best manager we had. He is a human wreck by making you loads of money and because of this he will never coach again. And now none of you have the decency to save Wenger from himself. I know why you don’t want to do that, everyone knows. Because he makes you all truck loads of cash at our expense. To me, the main reason I want Wenger gone not at the end of the season but NOW is to see how your profits drain day by day, to see you leeches gone forever. And then, with a proper mentality in place AS WE DID 10 YEARS AGO even when we were playing second fiddle to United or Chelsea, we may build upon this foundation with a new owner.

      1. All the board wants is more and what Wenger does is to make them money perfect combo n we the fans are their cash cow but lucky me am not in london so I don’t pay all that huge ticket fee to see my darling Club… Wenger Pls go

        1. I got really bugged when he said long term interest. He couldn’t of said many worse things than using that again, and so soon after the decade we spent living by it. Really annoyed me.

  2. What a load of bollo cks. If there’s any definition to a plastic fan then it has to be this text above. The best memory is the invincible , a team built by Wenger piece by piece with the exception of Bergkamp and Parlour which didn’t even had a huge contribution. Then it ends up saying the ugly part is the fact that the man who created invincibles is still in charge.
    And there’s one more thing about this. Until 2000 no one in Nigeria heard about the Arsenal, the model put by the club in place (and I am not saying that it was Wenger doing that but he did contribute a lot to it) is the reason Arsenal is a global brand today.
    I enjoyed invincibles, I really did but to me the best memory as Arsenal fan was the night at Anfield. In my heart, Invincible season doesn’t even come close to what I felt back then. I would rather give away Invincibles season and have this horde of leeches driven out from the club. Or give away Invincibles for a title in 2008 when season collapsed after Eduardo was butchered on the field.
    So, before you weigh in the good times or bad times as an Arsenal supporter make sure you don’t contradict yourself few phrases after.

    1. He didn’t contradict himself, he just doesn’t feel the same way about the man as he did back then. Just because you once love somebody, doesn’t mean you don’t end up hating them, you can even love and hate at the same time (anyone with friends and family will know that feeling).

  3. A bit off topic but this is the arsenal am dreaming of next season:

    Brand new manager IN, WengerOut
    Auba IN, GirOut
    VerattIN, Le coqOut
    Rodriguez IN, GibbsOut
    Scheimechel IN, CechOut
    Renato Sanchez IN, RamsyOut

    Clear the dead woods.

  4. Reading about how the board need to be sure Wenger can reinvent himself. This is a new one, but is it just talk with them saying what the fans want to hear without making the necessary changes. Fans want someone new to bring something different, so Arsenal talk about “reinventing”, I wonder what made them think of that word. Probably went a bit like …We are running out of excuses and ideas, we need to re-invent some new ones, hold on, we might be on to something here. Brilliant work Chips, here’s an extra three mil for you’re latest excuse/idea.

  5. The good, the bad and the ugly…a clint eastwood spaghetti western was it not?
    More appropriately another was hang em high…and this is what we should do to the board lol !

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