Shooting one of your own isn’t wise

I’M unsure whether it’s a change in attitudes of a Reality TV-driven society in general, or the nature of football fans in particular, that accounts for the abhorrent “pays your money, have your say” behaviour from so many Arsenal fans last weekend.

It’s certainly not my idea of “supporting” the team, to hear our own crowd lay into a player with such vociferous venom, that Wenger felt forced to sub the sub, saving him from further punishment by withdrawing him from the fray. Having failed to secure that all-important second goal, as the Gunners contrived to shoot themselves in the foot during the nervy closing stages, believe me, I was no less angry than anyone else, with Eboué’s succession of calamitous interventions.

But from a purely objective point of view, it can’t possibly benefit the club to slaughter one of our own assets, to the point where he ended up leaving the field as damaged goods, with Manny suffering the sort of psychological damage that’s far less straightforward to heal than any physical injury.

Since time immemorial, there have been boo-boys on the terraces who’ve had a tendency to pick on certain players, making them a scapegoat for all their team’s woes and it’s always bothered me how quick they’ve been to get on the backs of their pet target, instead of offering them encouragement. Yet where in the past, clubs could count on gaining a 12th man advantage from the inspiration afforded by their home crowd, sadly in more recent times, we’ve witnessed the demise of the sort of unconditional contract between a club and its fans, to express our support through thick and thin.

Having been guilty of the sort of immature behaviour that’s hardly endeared him to the majority of Gooners, Eboué must be used to being given the bird by the Arsenal crowd. I was prepared to cut the Ivorian kid some slack. Considering he’d not seen any first team action since October, some rustiness wasn’t so surprising. But it wasn’t so much the booing that bothered me. What I found utterly reprehensible was the way so many Gooners rose as one, to revel in his departure, almost as enthusiastically as they’d celebrated our goal. With what will have sounded to him like the jeers of the entire 60,000 crowd, it’s no wonder Manny trotted straight down the tunnel, broken. Perhaps Wenger will still be able to make use of him away from home and it could prove wise to get him straight back on the horse.

However much as he did with Song after a nightmare performance at Craven Cottage a couple of seasons back, our manager might think it best for Eboué to disappear, long enough to rebuild his shattered confidence and to give the fans time to forget. Should this be the case, I hope our fickle fans are happy with their consummate demolition job, when injuries and suspensions continue to take their toll and we end up regretting not having Eboué around as an option.

In a TV feature about the experience of blind fans at the Arsenal on Sunday night, it was revealed that the club even installed a guide dog toilet area when building the new stadium. Yet having saved us from the perils of the doings of half a dozen highly trained dogs, they don’t seem to have paid nearly so much heed to the problems of the huge piles of horses**t plopped liberally around the ground.

Aside from such fabulous facilities for the blind, the principal consequence of our move has been the additional capacity. Sadly, amongst the 20,000 extra fans there seems to be little or no appreciation of the traditional obligations that come with the price of a football ticket. Thus a Premiership wide problem is perhaps more prevalent at the Arsenal because so many of the seats (one third!) are occupied by a passive theatre-style audience that sits back and only responds on cue, either to the bringing on of the dancing girls, or the appearance of the pantomime villain.

Support is a two-way street, where in the face of a dip in form, we can only be expected to remain staunch, so long as we’re confident there’s no lack of commitment. In an age where contracts are not worth the paper they are written on and players can change clubs quicker than their underpants, we’ve cause to question whether it’s merely pound notes which are the motivation for our pipers’ obscenely priced melody.

Obviously he’d be too old and too uncultured to feature on Arsène’s radar, but watching Fulham v Man City, it occurred to me that we could do far worse than signing an honest Cockney lad like Jimmy Bullard. Apart from the inspiration of his energetic efforts (and the fact that he strikes a wicked dead ball), he’d be the sort of player our fans could relate to.

Bring on the Boro and a long schlep to the northeast that’s guaranteed to sift out the sort of genuine Gooners capable of restoring my faith in my Arsenal tribe.