Dave Tickner: Arsenal fans entitled to want more

Arsenal fans, eh? Eh? Yeah, they are a bit, aren't they? The Arsenal fans. You've seen them, the Arsenal fans, on their ludicrous YouTube channel, in their vast array of branded club merchandise, or on the Twitter, or on the train with their delicious food hampers and miniature bottles of prosecco. Hahaha, look at them, the Arsenal fans.

Look at them, they're moaning away about how awful it all is again, from their lofty position of immense privilege. Let's all have a good old laugh at the Arsenal fans. Who do they think they are?

But, and stay with me here, what if they've got a bit of a point?

Not about the hampers and the prosecco, or seeing the club shop brochure as some kind of Panini/Pokemon Go 'collect them all' challenge. Fair play, they're bang to rights there.

But why shouldn't Arsenal fans, even with their established ridiculousness and privilege, have a bit of a moan? Are we not all entitled to that?

The particular argument that grates runs broadly thus: Arsenal fans shouldn't moan because fans of other clubs have it worse. Arsenal, with their top-four finishes and their Champions League football and their big modern stadium and their St Totteringham's Day should count their blessings when most clubs can only dream of that kind of elevated stability.

This is nonsense. Tempting and convincing nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Taken to its extreme, only one set of football fans at any one time would be entitled to moan about anything. Unless there's literally nobody worse off, then pipe down. Maybe it's Coventry who get the thumbs up. Or Nottingham Forest, or Charlton, or Leyton Orient, or maybe it's one of the teams living hand to mouth in the real world of non-league football. I've not crunched the numbers. The only fair way to decide would probably be a weekly Twitter poll to decide which specific set of fans are entitled to be a bit miffed this week.

And let's go one step further: it's only football, innit? Why moan about that when there are such serious threats out there in the real world? How can anyone moan about football when a giant orange toddler is sat in the White House SHOUTING IN CAPITAL LETTERS at CNN or the New York Times? Ironically, it's precisely the sort of whataboutery deployed by those on the far right who suddenly develop a deep concern for women's rights in Saudi Arabia whenever someone suggests Donald Trump might be a bit off.

Of course Arsenal are better off than all bar a couple of English clubs and only a handful across Europe. But that's befitting their status in English and continental football. Nobody is automatically entitled to a place at the top table, but Arsenal fans have more justification for expecting it as the norm than fans of, say, Fleetwood Town.

And just because your club can only dream of finishing in the top four and getting knocked out of the Champions League in the last 16 by Bayern Munich every… single… year doesn't mean that fans of another club should be permanently delighted about this Groundhog Day existence.

There are billions of people hungry in the world, but if your three meals a day were always the same pleasant and technically nourishing yet ultimately underwhelming fayre then you too might get a bit grumpy. Crass comparison, but that's where this kind of whataboutery leads. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Arsene Wenger's achievements at Arsenal are vast. He has come, for better or worse, to define the club he has run for over 20 years. He deserves particular credit for keeping Arsenal where they are through the move to a new stadium. Even in his recent fallow years, no other manager or club can match him for consistency in hitting that top-four target.

Arsenal fans should acknowledge that, and do. But that doesn't mean they should settle for it, and there are times when it appears that Wenger has.

If fans of permanent second-tier fixture Ipswich complained about 15, soon to be 16, years of plodding along in the same place, few would begrudge them. This is sport, this is football. It's meant to be a release from the unrelenting routine of normal life.

Arsenal fans are perfectly within their rights to want that same escape, even if the unrelenting routine of their normal lives happens to involve delicious food hampers and miniature bottles of prosecco.