a complaint about complaining

I am of course an Arsenal supporter, but I don’t like what the club is turning into: a whining machine. Mikel Arteta’s ceaseless complaints about unfair treatment — which sound exactly the same when he has a strong case and when he doesn’t have a leg to stand on — have now become the default position for the players and for the fanbase. The result has been twofold.

First, it has tended to make what had been a dynamic and exciting young side extremely unlikeable. Nobody likes whiners, and Arsenal never stop whining. I love Arsenal with a kind of helpless love, but I don’t like this side. They’ve become obnoxious.

Second, the moaning about unfair treatment has deflected the players’ attention from their own behavior. By making it a habit to blame everybody except themselves, they have lost the discipline and focus needed to succeed against top competition. William Saliba is a great defender, but his brain-dead red card against Bournemouth not only cost his team that match but may well be catastrophic for the upcoming test against Liverpool. And I truly believe that he would not have had that lapse in concentration if his manager (over the past few weeks especially) had spent less time complaining and more time teaching accountability.

You could scarcely have a more obvious red-card offense than Saliba’s against Bournemouth, but of course a large chunk of the fanbase is baying for the ref’s blood. As I say, the moaning and whining have become habitual now, a matter of reflex. Arteta has finally woken up enough to say that these red cards — three in eight matches! — need to be “eradicated,” but will he be able to change his own habits of finger-pointing? After all, Arsenal have been plagued with red cards since Arteta took over — five more than any other Premier League side in that period — and he seems not to have asked himself any hard questions. Now his strategy for dealing with the constant indiscipline is to ignore it and hope it will go away.

Time will tell, and the season is still young, but the Premier League is an unforgiving one, and it seems to me highly unlikely that Arsenal can overcome both Man City and Liverpool. The title may already have slipped from Arsenal’s grasp, and if so, it’s not the refs’ fault. It’s Arsenal’s fault, and primarily Mikel Arteta’s.

UPDATE: More evidence for my thesis.