Coombs the reason why this is such a good take is that to agree with it doesn't necessarily mean you believe in the guy one way or the other.
Well that's my point. I don't necessarily believe in him. I admire what seem to be his resilience and force of personality, but I'll save admiring him as a manager for when he does what a great manager does: win.
Coombs It's my own issue, in large part. Maybe I'm just getting older, maybe I'm just too unhappy about the state of the world, going to work everyday, etc. A personal malaise that results in me seeing only the worst in Arteta or even Arsenal.
Yes, I see. We're all getting older, though. Every Arsenal fan who saw Thierry Henry in his pomp and stuck around has been waiting twenty years for a title now.
I've been feeling a bit nonplussed. That's part of the reason I've set up these dramatic stakes for myself, we must win or Arteta must go. I'm investing the current state of affairs with values that aren't absolutely intrinsic.
Here's a doozy that struck me a few weeks back, though. I've been talking to many of you since around A-M days in 2006. Not all, but many of you. In that time none of us has witnessed an Arsenal title with any of the others. We've hoped for it every season and we've developed a friendship and solidarity while hoping, but our joint hopes this far haven't been vindicated. At the moment I have this feeling if victory happens, it may linger on as anticlimax. Don't get me wrong, victory will be hugely joyful. But in the aftermath one job will be never to regret the years of hope. I'll have to make sure I never do. And if I think about them sincerely, I never regret the years.
What I wonder based on what you've written is: are you preemptively regretting a victory we still don't have? Because that, my friend, would be a mug's game.
After all, what is it we do on OMITT? We hope for Arsenal to win a major trophy. We don't actually witness Arsenal win a major trophy, that concept sounds like turn of the century terrorist extremism. Would winning a major trophy be doing a summer madness? Would it be like the Prize with a real capital 'P' and no trademark™ at last? Would a major trophy be like a new signing?
Aside from all these long and unregretted years, it would always feel a bit like this with Arteta's Arsenal. The club and the sport have changed during the wait. The waited-for victory, if and when the wait were to end, wouldn't be a victory of the same club competing in the same competition in the same sport, and it wouldn't be thrilling us as the same fans.
What I won't do in that event is externalise my feelings about broader history and load them onto Arteta's shoulders for my own consolation. As I said above, Arteta is accountable for victory and not for preparation for victory, but also not for how I might feel about victory. Just win it. So, plus ça change, but I still love Arsenal, and this OMITT community present, absent and enduring as well, for what it's worth.
If victory were to happen, it would be cool to organise a mass email to the old membership and see who still has their shitty old Yahoo and Hotmail email addresses, and fancies coming back for a mini-reunion. I'd even give @Biggus a hug if he showed up, though he's probably a sovereign citizen by now, way he was headed.
If, if. It's not a given. Don't jinx it.
