Monday 2 May 2011

A nice day to start on

I was going to name this blog something nice like Gillespie Road, but then I thought people might think Gilles Grimandi had gone into the pie business or that it was already taken but I won't let minor details like that get in the way.

I'm not an arsenal supporter who can explain with great detail, and a long family history of how I support arsenal because by dad did, and he always used to take me to games, as his dad before him did. Except for my great granddad who supported spurs, and deserted at the Somme shouting "Fuck this! I'm off to the pub..." Or even one that can say I supported Arsenal because of all the great players

No, When I was growing up I spend most of my time with my mum, who hated football and would always say to me "Football's shit, Football's shit, Football's shit" but then that's probably why she got sectioned. However, I watched a game with my dad when I was about seven or eight, it was some team in yellow, probably either Brazil or Norwich. After that I changed my mind, I knew that this 'football' was actually quite good and my mum had been talking bollocks again.

Then it came time to choose a team, so I got the league table out and seven or eight year old me decided "This one has arse in the name. I like arse. Actually, if I support Arsenal I'll be able to say arse in front of my parents", for even back then I was incredibly witty, and that's in a nutshell how I became a Gooner, and hence the name for this blog.

My dad supports spurs, and he did once go on a coach trip to the Somme and say "This is a bit depressing, I'm going down the pub..." Everyone else in Dagenham supported West Ham. I supported Arsenal knowing nothing about them. It was pure chance that they were in London, and a lot better than the likes of Spurs or West Ham. I'm just glad there wasn't a team in the division called Cuntface Utd (aka Stoke City), as back then I'd have been all over them like genital warts.

I've been wanting to start writing this for a few weeks and it's taken till now because I didn't want the first post the be a depressing rant about how everything is wrong with the team. Thats the reason and not because I'm lazy. If theres ever a time to stop bashing the bishop and start bashing the keyboard it's the day after beating Man Utd.

It was a good well taken goal from Ramsey, all the more so considering it's is first full game of the season after getting broken by Ryan 'Cuntface' Shawcross. The team looked up for it right from the start, something that has been sorely missed in recent games. Every ball was contested, never letting Utd get an unpressured touch of the ball for pretty much the whole 90 minutes.

Now I'm hoping from this point on to use more science and less knob jokes, as I'm not going to say much more than that about yesterdays game because it's already been done by the bloggers that didn't get shit faced last night and had their bank holiday bacon sandwiches before 4pm. Like every other arsenal blogger I have an "I'm pissing in the wind" theory about the woe of Arsenal. I read this article on the BBC and I immediately thought of arsenal:

Carol Dweck, a leading psychologist, took 400 students and gave them a simple puzzle.

Afterwards, each of the students were given six words of praise. Half were praised for intelligence: "Wow, you must be really smart!" The other half were praised for effort: "Wow, you must be hard working!"

Dweck was seeking to test whether these simple words, with their subtly different emphases, could make a difference to the student's mindsets. The results were remarkable.

After the first test, the students were given a choice of whether to take a hard or an easy test.

A full two-thirds of the students praised for intelligence chose the easy task - they did not want to risk losing their "smart" label. But 90% of the effort-praised group chose the tough test - they wanted to prove just how hard working they were.

Then, the experiment came full circle, giving the students a chance to take a test of equal difficulty to the first test.

The group praised for intelligence showed a 20% decline in performance compared with the first test, even though it was no harder. But the effort-praised group increased their score by 30%. Failure had actually spurred them on.

And all these differences turned on the difference in six simple words spoken after the very first test.

"These were some of the clearest findings I've seen," Dweck said. "Praising children's intelligence harms motivation and it harms performance."

Full BBC Article

How often have we heard Wenger talk of the teams inherent ability, even as they've dropped points needlessly? How often have you heard Wenger praise the hard work of this squad? A considerably lot less, if at all, I would say.

How many of the current squad are coasting through there arsenal careers, having been given long term contracts with good wages, without necessarily doing that much to prove it on the pitch. Especially when you consider the fact the likes of Flamini, Ashley Cole (as much as a cunt as he is), and Pires were let go because we wouldn't pay the going rate.

I think the policy changed because of us learning from those experiences, and because our financial situation improved, but I think we have perhaps gone a little too far in the opposite direction, giving players too much praise both in terms of the wallet and statements like "We won't bye experienced player X because Y won't get playing time"

We could probably do with some players who may not be great footballers, but are average and that realise just how lucky they are to be at Arsenal and work damn hard because of it to keep up with the more technically gifted players e.g. the likes of Ray Parlour or Park Ji-Sung and Man Utd.

The evidence is clear about what happens when you work hard think Man Utd and Chelsea, and what happens when you turn up expecting to coast through, or that something will just happen and we'll get a goal at Blackburn.

We need less "We have the ability to beat Bolton" and more "We'll only beat Bolton if we work fucking hard! Just like when we beat those cunts from Chelsea and Manchester" Obviously that needs translating into the Wenger lexicon.

Credit is also due to Andrei Arshavin who was doing a job for the team yesterday, making tackle after tackle, kicking Rooney which is always a good sight, and generally pissing off fergie. In the second half if this season he has really bucked up his ideas, and is putting in a shift in every game he plays at the moment. I think he's a player who has really clocked on to the idea that he'll be getting jack shit if he doesn't put the effort in. It was him afterall who got the only cheer of that terrible 'I can't believe I paid 45 quid to watch this' game against Blackburn when he run 60 or 70 yards to make an important tackle.

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