Arsenal fans have every right to be angry and they know it

Arsenal fans are angry with the state of their club. They have every right to be. Anyone who can’t handle it should find a new place to work.

Unai Emery and the Kroenke’s (Stan and Josh) should be grateful for the anger they’re feeling from Arsenal fans right now. Anger means fans still care. The next step is apathy. At that point, the club won’t have to worry about a toxic atmosphere at The Emirates because it will be half empty.

Considering the abysmal quality of the football on the pitch, apathetic fans and a half-empty stadium is no less than the owner, the board and more than a few players deserve.

They all have fans to thank for the massive wages that none of them are currently earning. Considering the fact their millions come courtesy of working people who won’t make in a year what Emery and the Kroenke’s are going to make this week, all of their performances are quite simply unacceptable. Furthermore, there’s nothing wrong with fans holding them accountable for it.

Sometimes it feels like no one remembers that fans were promised that moving into The Emirates would allow the Gunners to compete for the highest quality players in the transfer market and produce a sustained period of world class football in the process.

Instead of world class football, fans have witnessed the club’s footballing standards fall off so dramatically that they hardly recognize the team they’re watching. The painful truth is that Arsenal is much closer to being a mid-table side than it is to being a title contender.

As it stands today only two Arsenal players, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, would merit serious consideration for inclusion in the first XI of Europe’s elite football powerhouses.

Adding insult to injury, fans are paying some of the highest ticket prices in Europe to watch some of the worst football. Should fans be happy about paying dry-aged rib-eye steak money for microwave gas-station cheeseburger football? No.

Would the often criticized AFTV even exist if Arsenal had anything to offer besides tired excuses for a track record of over-promising and under-delivering since the club moved to The Emirates? Again, the answer is a definitive, no.

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The anger Unai Emery, and the Arsenal hierarchy are commiserating about is a symptom, not the cause of the troubles. Fans have literally lost track of how many calls for patience or unity have come from players, coaches and the board, only for nothing to ever really change. Every season, the same fatally flawed team and lackluster management plays out against the backdrop of fans shelling out thousands to buy kits, tickets and cable subscriptions to support the club.

Stan Kroenke sold Arsenal fans all over the world a bill of goods when he conned them into paying for The Emirates with their own money. Then he and the board starved Arsenal of desperately needed resources while using the money to finance another new stadium for Stan’s football team in Los Angeles. It’s not a stretch to say the sorry state of the footballing product is a direct result of almost fifteen years of willful neglect by Kroenke and the board.

The cherry on top is a manager who doesn’t seem to have a clue how to get the best out of his team or instill any sense of identity aside from playing a faceless, uninspired, brand of losing football that is squarely at odds with Arsenal’s best traditions. It all adds up to a large chunk of fans who have literally had it with false promises, mediocre football and absentee ownership. Arsenal fans deserve better and they know it.

They deserve answers as to why Leicester City has more championships in the last five years than them, a better manager than Arsenal and better players than Arsenal at nearly every position. The fact of the matter is fans have been bamboozled and played for fools by Stan Kroenke and the board. That’s why fans are angry and not afraid to show it.

What’s more, the next step won’t be anger, it will be Arsenal fans deciding to spend their disposable income elsewhere because they’ve had enough. It’s fan apathy, not fan anger that Stan Kroenke and Unai Emery should be worried about. Make no mistake, Arsenal is running out of time before the former overtakes the latter. If that happens, Stan Kroenke, Unai Emery and the board will be begging for fans who still care enough to be angry.