You’d think that the title was already decided wouldn’t you?
People have been declaring Manchester City the Premier League winners already with six games to go, assuming they’ll win all their remaining games. But if this season has one unifying theme, it’s random inconsistency. Isn’t that what we actually want? So why the assumption? Banter, you say? Isn’t that a bit weak? Is that the best you’ve got?
The truth is that both teams seem likely to drop points in the coming weeks and Arsenal’s run-in is far, far easier than City’s. Interestingly, both sides play Crystal Palace, who are perhaps the most inconsistent of any Premier League team, capable of being tedious or great.
This is how titles often used to be decided and you can’t confidently make assumptions about results. If Arsenal do lose it after leading for so long it wouldn’t be surprising at all, but is it really so nailed on that they will? I personally don’t care either way but to dismiss them this far out is silly.
The whole ‘bottling’ thing is also getting tedious in that it assumes once you’re ahead, you must stay ahead and if you don’t it’s down to some laughable inadequacy. It’s just annoying and is pointlessly unaccepting of variations of results. Losing doesn’t equal ‘bottling’ – it’s just losing – and it’s a stale joke to suggest it does every bloody time it’s mentioned.
I say this as someone who has good reason to dislike Arsenal. I still recall 1989 and hearing their fans singing ‘what’s it like to lose your job?’ while beating us 1 -0 at Ayresome Park. Never mind working-class solidarity, these were Thatcher’s acolytes and in every sense, the enemy. One Arsenal fan was clingfilmed and superglued to a lamppost on Newport Road, as you did to Tories in 1989. A small victory in the class war.
How are Man City the neutral’s choice v Arsenal?
So I don’t have any innate sympathy for Arsenal but none for City either, who represent the terrible path football is walking down. But ignoring all of that, at least this isn’t a cakewalk for one side. At least it is competitive in a sense, even if it is a race between the evil and the objectionable.
Would it be surprising if Arsenal win more games than City in the next month? And even if they don’t, do we have to take the pish out of them for being beaten by the Infinite Middle East Money Machine? Hardly a win for the underdog is it?
READ: 16 Conclusions from Man City 2-1 Arsenal: Cherki, Bernardo, Haaland, O’Reilly, bottle
And anyway, “haha you were leading, now you’re losing” is just not actually funny. Rather it’s a bit pathetic. After constant repetition for so long, it’s just boring. It is also part of the trend of getting pleasure out of others’ suffering that feels part of a sh*tkicker’s mindset. It’s no way to conduct your life about a sport you love.
I mean, how long can you laugh about such a thing anyway? Are you really so keen for City to win for a fifth time in six years? It smacks of a kind of playground bullying. By all means be critical of Mikel Arteta or the players but losing isn’t bottling no matter how many times you pretend it is. The difference between drawing and losing can be the width of a post.
Arsenal haven’t given up or even made many mistake; they’ve not been hammered or played relegation football. Losing can be a marginal thing. A loss can easily be a draw. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me that now City have been all but awarded the title, it takes the pressure off Arsenal and this losing streak becomes a distant memory.
I understand it’s ‘football culture’ and given I’ve been going to the football since 1969, I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the nature of it. It just seems to me to be the sort of ‘fun’ that is part of the heinous Paddy Power banter culture; do you want that and isn’t that doing the devil’s work?
So can we just not celebrate a team losing so gleefully, for so long? Or is being a tw*t the fullest extent of our ambitions?
