Been a while, hasn't it? I'm always starting my posts this way so you'd think I shouldn't feel bad anymore but I still do. I won't come here and make any promises anymore, I'd just take things as they come.
That out of the way, I was trying to get myself up to date with the latest happenings in English Football and I stumble on this article about Arsenal being the biggest club in London. Before you say anything, at first I said to myself, "here we go again..." but then after going through the story, I found myself nodding my head in agreement at the end.
The things that struck me the most were the last four paragraphs of that article and I've taken the liberty of lifting them and giving them to you for your reading pleasure:
Under Arsene Wenger, the club completed the 2003-04 league season unbeaten with a side that contained some of the finest players in Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp that English football has ever seen.
The club have also remained omnipresent in the Champions League and have qualified for the competition a record 17 seasons in succession, despite the financial constraints placed upon them by the move to the magnificent 60,000-seater Emirates Stadium – the second largest club stadium in England.
To gain a measure of Arsenal’s size and following, for the first two years back in Europe’s elite competition the club elected to play their games at Wembley Stadium where crowds of 90,000 flocked to see them play the likes of Barcelona and Dynamo Kiev – a remarkable turnout when you consider Chelsea regularly struggle to fill their Stamford Bridge home for Champions League matches.
Arsenal’s global reach has increased significantly as a result of their continued presence in the Champions League and commitment to fast, free-flowing football under Wenger. They are the only Premier League club to boast over four million followers on Twitter and 25 million likes on Facebook.
Apart from the jibe at the pensioners, Arsenal's social media standing kind of puts a good perspective on why they've gotten so much flak from almost everybody over the past half decade or so. I mean, over 29 million people around the world with an opinion on how the club should be run and who should and should not play... I don't envy Arsene Wenger or the next Arsenal manager at all.
That said, I'm looking forward to a better season of football in the 2014/15 Barclays English Premier League Season.
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