Have Arsenal fans become the easiest to rile in the Premier League? And is football actually any fun anymore?

Send your views to theeditor@football365.com

A question for the youth of the Mailbox
I’m seeing more mails and more articles all generally exuding the same message – football has gotten more boring. It tallies up with the feelings of me and my friends, less time spent watching it, less time generally spent caring about it, less time spent talking about any of it. I doesn’t seem like a big deal, just part of growing up I suppose, but the mail last week from Chris, Croydon really resonated (and not just because I found out there’s a wine bar in Croydon).

Wasn’t football more fun when any given Super Sunday would be worth going to the pub for if you had the time, because seeing a few “crap” teams on the fixture list didn’t mean it would be boring? Wasn’t football more fun when football could be a clash of styles – Wenger’s Arsenal vs Pulis’ Stoke or Fergie’s United vs Mourinho’s Chelsea – similar to when the UFC would be a great kick-boxer vs an excellent BJJ grappler. Much like the UFC has become a hegemony of well-rounded fighters with less specialties fighting on the White House lawn in front of military flyovers, it feels like football has become the same – carbon copy teams with different badges competing in cash grabbing product.

What I’m wondering, and putting to the younger members of the mailbox, is – are we just old men viewing the olden days through the rose tint of nostalgia while we talk about the glory days of Dion Dublin headbutting Robbie Savage? Or has football actually gotten more boring? Do young people still think this is fun? Do you talk about xG in the pub? Genuinely curious.
JB (can’t wait to find out being in my 30’s makes me the youth of the scientific control group that is the mailbox)

Ready to throw Trigger’s broom in the bin
I’ve finally realised what supporting a football team is exactly like Trigger’s broom in Only Fools and Horses.

Trigger gets an award for looking after his broom for 15 years and then tells the lads that it has had multiple new broom handles and multiple new brushes.

So there is nothing of the original broom left.

Since I started supporting Manchester United in the ’60s there have been multiple new managers and even more players. The owners have changed, the strip is replaced every year, and the style of football directed by each manager is nothing like that of Best, Law and Charlton.

So, are we all as dim as Trigger? Why do we have to stay with the same club when not one iota of it is the same as that which engaged us to give them our emotional support.

Let us change! Let us be free of this stranglehold that means we have to sit and watch dismal football when over the road or down the country other teams are playing entertaining matches.

Time to stop supporting clubs to be free to support football!
Tim McKane

Arsenal fans are officially the p***iest
I would just like to congratulate Arsenal FC on their latest title, finally taking the honour of “P***iest Fans in English Football” off Liverpool, who now lose this title for perhaps the first time ever!

Proudly display the Pissiest Fans in English Football trophy alongside the Premier League Trophy, the golden Premier League trophy and innumerable Wenger-era Fourth-Place Trophies!

To the Arsenal faithful, well done and keep up the great work!
Lee (tongue only slightly in cheek)

On Welsh slurs and Arsenal
I note with great amusement that my comments from a few days ago triggered ‘Stu Gooner in France’ to the point where he felt compelled to do a racism about Swansea and there being plenty of sheep (you know, with it being in Wales, guffaw). I can’t be sure, but I think I might just have touched a nerve.

Anyway. Putting aside for a moment the fact that F365 actually published that slur – another conversation entirely btw, about one of the last “acceptable” forms of racism that remain – I would point out to Stu that Swansea is a pretty ugly concrete jungle to be honest, a coastal city home to 250,000, with high rise buildings going up at a rate of knots in the last few years. So unless the sheep are hiding as construction workers in hi-vis jackets, I can’t say I’ve seen many of them about. Stuck over there in France, you’ve lost touch with what’s been happening back in Blighty. You need to get out more Stu.

As for the football, well, as I said in my original letter, the three in the Sky studio on Sunday looked like they’d just been told their lottery numbers came up but they’d forgotten to buy the ticket. I was simply reflecting the general vibe felt by them, myself and countless others on the day. My letter was in solidarity with my fellow survivors, it certainly wasn’t for Arsenal fans (although, there’s probably a fair few of them who felt like bleaching their eyes out on Sunday evening).
Andy H, Swansea

How to make teams play v Arsenal
Now that we’ve established that it’s (mostly) everyone’s else fault that Arsenal games aren’t the thrilling, open spectacles they could be I’ve been thinking about how it could be solved.

If the powers that be want to make games more entertaining they need to stop teams parking the bus. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a home team sit as deep as Forest did in the first half on the weekend. How about this – two players from each team must be in the opposition team half at all times. This will obviously stretch the game a lot. Even on corners the defending team will have two players up, which means the attacking team will want two players back. The biggest hurdle will be the punishment for infringements because it’s likely an infringement could interrupt an opposition attack. Maybe ref plays on and brings back for a direct free kick on the D?

Or we just accept that teams are allowed to play in different ways, as they always have; teams parking the bus against Arsenal is therefore legitimate; Arsenal’s job is not to entertain neutrals when the opposition refuse to play football, it’s to win in any way they can; and RHT/TS should stop moaning.

Much love.
Simon Cochrane

Never gonna happen…
Sensitive little soldiers aren’t they? You’ve probably forgotten given until last season it’s been a generation since you won the PL, but when you’re the team with the most money lavished on it, and the current champions (and this is the important bit, so focus now Gooners) other teams will defend deep! This is where El Monotone needs to earn his obscene £25m a year and works out ways of breaking down stubborn defences using his creativity and imagination, not to mention his ridiculously well stocked squad (spoiler alert: he’s going to fail here since he has neither creativity nor imagination).

It’s difficult playing good football as the outrageously well furnished champions with a target on your back, aye, but Fergie did it, and Pep, and Klopp, and Flick, and Enrique, and Ancelotti, and Wenger, and Zizou, and, and, and, and….

It’s okay to have a limited manager, but it’s not the other team’s fault that he draws on his experience as a la masia reject/humdrum centre-mid when working out how to break down a back 10/ruin watching football next. I get it if you’re happy just to win something and fuck your eyes’ feelings, but if you want to be proper big boys, well, you need to be proper big boys. Otherwise, neutrals like me will vent at the harrowing shite we are watching when we sit down to enjoy Sunday lunch then the big match. That’s just how it works.
RHT/TS x

(I reckon that fella with the Arsenal shirt and the gimp mask on Insta with the other Tarquins singing Gooner ditties like they’re in a barbershop quartet is one of our gaggle of BTL Arsenal stans, and I’m pretty sure I know who too….)

Why I care what people think about Arsenal
With regard to your comment as to why Arsenal fans should care about other people saying Arsenal are boring, you have a fair point. We shouldn’t care. Many probably don’t. However, I care a little bit…

I fully accept that Arsenal didn’t always win with a beautiful style of football last season, and this season is no different really. But as I’ve said before, the reason is the way the opposition will set up against us.

Every team has the right to do what they need to do to try to win a game of football (within the rules though!). So whilst some are berating Arsenal for being dull, making lots of sideways passes, not scoring enough goals, having annoying fans, having a manager they don’t like, being too physical, not being physical enough, spending too much money, whilst not spending enough money on a striker, should they not also be questioning why the teams that Arsenal play are not trying to play the beautiful game?

I fully accept that fans of other clubs will have a blinkered view towards a team who are not their own, being successful. I couldn’t stand United during the Wenger years. They don’t bother me now though, for obvious reasons. Same with Spurs. There’s just no needle anymore. Arsenal have way bigger games to play.

But when moaning about how boring Arsenal are, at least acknowledge the fact that if 16 players are standing in the penalty area, the majority of whom are defending, then there’s not a lot of room to play football. Come out, play man for man and see what happens then.

Still, until we’re not champions anymore, everyone else can suck it!
Stu – Gooner in France (old enough to know I shouldn’t be bothered about this stuff)

Arsenal boring talk is boring
This whole debate about who’s responsible for Arsenal being boring is, well, boring.

It reminds me of that scene in Batman 1989 when Batman accuses the Joker of making him due to Jack Napier murdering his parents, to which the Joker retorts that Batman made him by letting him fall into that vat of acid.

The truth is that it’s a bit of both.

City and the rest of the league made Arsenal. But it’s Arsenal’s choice to play the way they do.

Mikel could resort to playing like Arsene. We get turned over every week and he keeps the rest of the league’s fans happy.

But that’s not his job, is it?
Graham Simons, Gooner, (Mikel’s doing fine), Norf London

Red Cartel is such a nonsense
I’m a Liverpool supporter, and I find it just ludicrous that anyone would talk about a red cartel, especially within the context of City’s cheating.

LFC are clearly a big club, but big to the extent of seeking some kind of monopoly on success? Nope. Before 2009 (and until 2018 or so – I’m picking 2009 because the context is City’s cheating, remember), we were desperate to win the league, desperate to win anything; but just not quite good enough. Man U were the big dogs and we had some severe inferiority-complex that manifested in the team upping its game in matches against Man U.

There were many seasons where I’d feel the dream was over by Autumn. In some periods, we’d put together a really good half season, but couldn’t sustain it or build on it for next season. Oh the pain of Cameron Jerome scoring a worldie at Anfield. Oh the misery of Thomas Sorensen producing a man-of-the-match performance for Stoke against us, again. The slow sinking feeling when you’ve waited a year for Mark Gonzalez to get his UK work permit only to see him be cack. Years of Mailboxers telling us that Liverpool are nothing more than a mid-table side or a cup-side.

Jeez – we needed penalties to beat Cardiff in the League Cup in 2012! Cardiff were not even in same division as us!!

So much disappointment. So much pain and hurt. Then a whole cohort of wazzocks write in here to tell me that my club was and is part of an elite group trying to withhold success. People spouting this ‘red cartel’ bollocks ought to be arrested, subjected to mild physical harm and added to the sex-offenders register.
Hesh (LFC)

Man City owners have to go
There’s, understandably, a lot of chat about potential punishments for City, but there really is only one thing that matters: the removal of their owners.

All the trophies have an asterisk next to them anyway whether they’re stripped or not. The entire case against them shows that they’re completely reliant on Abu Dhabi pumping money. Without that, there’s no need to stick the boot in, they’ll just implode because they’re living beyond their means.

Get the owners gone (and use it as evidence for why state ownership should never be allowed) and give them a points deduction that relegates them, as much to end the conversation for at least a season as anything. Get the clubs to agree a collective settlement figure in lieu of lawsuits as it’s in everyone’s interest to move on with their lives and leave it at that
Lewis, Busby Way