It may be an immensely well worn cliche, but one discovers very little about oneself during the good times, it is during the harder times that one discovers one's true make up and metal. This is well worth bearing in mind given the current goings on, or apparent lack of them, at Arsenal Football Club.
One of my key thoughts from last season was that I do not want to see us fail to win games when it is abundantly clear that the players are not giving their all to the cause, this happened far too often last year, it revealed a deeply worrying rot in our squad that has yet to be properly cleared.
Winning is not the be all and end all for me, what I cannot and hope I never will come to accept is players not being fully committed and motivated when playing competitive games for the club. I can accept a lack of ability, I can accept being outplayed, I can even accept errors of judgement, but what I will not accept as a fan is a lack of effort and desire. I want to see eleven fully committed players giving their all every week, I want to see us fight for every single second that the ball is in play and if we are to lose games or drop points, we must never ever lie down.
If they are really Samir Nasri's words in the newspaper today then they really upset and anger me. They are demonstrative of a deluded and arrogant player who seems unable to see just how critical his own failings were in his teams inability to finish off the season with a trophy or two. Nasri's disappearance in the cup final sum up his poor second half of the season, he had the chances to be a hero, instead he choked and was no winner.
Nasri's alleged comments have a lot in common with Denilson's words from a couple of months back, they both clearly want to win things but it is simply not good enough to talk about wanting to win trophies, one has to back this up with consistent performances and the right attitude. Although both players are different in many ways, they share one thing in common, they have had important roles in our lack of success in the last couple of seasons. Both of their sets of deluded comments show a complete lack of insight into their own failings as players, as if they have not had anything at all to do with our recent failure to win trophies.
I do not feel it appropriate to divert my anger towards the club, the majority of our frustration and anger should be angled towards some of our highly paid players who are not fit to wear the Arsenal shirt. Indeed a new particularly unpleasant, greedy and avaricious breed of player has been created by the current footballing environment in which certain clubs are immune to any semblance of financial sustainability. Football is losing its soul and the players are becoming more mercenary and soulless by the year.
