Are there any positives at Arsenal at this moment?

 Today a piece written for the excellent You Are My Gooners  blog by @Swales1968 .I would like to thank him for allowing us to revisit it and them for their fantastic work

I suppose it depends on how you define positive, I could sit here and type a list of things that I think are good at Arsenal today. In doing this though I would be leaving myself open to the ranting of people with a negative view of Arsenal.

It is easier to find the negative in something rather than to look for the positive’s and this is where blogs twitter and forums excel. You put up a post about a player and you will soon find over two thirds finding something wrong with what he is doing.

When we post something seen as positive are we posting that everything in the Arsenal garden is rosy or are we saying yes there are problems but we can see the bigger picture in all this and the positives outweigh the negatives.

The positives are there but are either shouted down with the same overused quotes or the responses get personal. It is rare to get a reply to a positive point without one of these two things happening. You can go onto certain football forums put something positive on there and be verbally abused within 2 posts.

Why is there such a split within the Arsenal fan base? How can people see the same football club in totally different ways? It would be easy for me to blame forums, fanzines, blogs etc. For their views carry a lot of weight amongst the fan base. Could this be down to the Arsenal fans wanting some answers? Or is it a change of attitude from Arsenal supporters going from hoping to win a trophy to demanding they win a trophy?

But what answers to what questions, what do Arsenal fans really want? The quote most trotted out by the negatives is “no trophy for eight years” this is of course true but is that the be all and end all of supporting a football club? If so why do fans go to watch Barnet every week that is not for the trophies so why is it a benchmark at Arsenal?

“The players are rubbish” are they? If the players are that bad why are Arsenal sitting in 5th position in the supposed hardest league in the world?

“Wenger has lost it” again sitting 5th in the premier league with three of the richest club teams in the world above us.
“The board have no ambition” have they not? What do they want from the club then, to be like Stoke, Villa or Everton? Do you not think they would not want to win a trophy?

“Ivan Gazidis what the f*** do you do” was the call from the BSM walk before the Swansea game. Well what does he do and what has he done wrong. Everybody and his dog is now an expert on running a multi million pound football club, the sponsorship experts seem to be in all walks of life. There must be some well sponsored groups, clubs out in the world if the knowledge spouted by some is to be believed. Again when you push for an answer about what is wrong the reply is normally “oh that’s just wrong a club like Arsenal should be doing better”I read forums and hear snippets of radio shows and hear the same tired arguments about Wenger, the board, the players but what I don’t get are answers. Get Wenger out, but when asked who to take over you get Jose or anybody but Wenger. Get rid of Stan is another call but when asked what then you get “get Usmaniov in” well what evidence is there that he would do anything different. The Russian has said he would
keep Wenger as manager so that won’t change; he has spoken of investing in the club but only by a share option. He is as far as I can see not going to be an Abramovic or Sheikh Mansour and put loads of his own personal money into the club.

Back to the original question are there any positives at Arsenal?

To me there are positives, The players Wilshere, Gibbs, Jenkinson, Cazorla, Giroud etc. The youth set up
The stadium
The change in sponsorship policy
The change in wages policy
Wenger
The sound business practice

And as I said these positives are easy to knock and I expect them to
be because what I see is many Arsenal fans looking at the negatives
rather than looking at the positives.