As my blog is called Arsenal Truth, and I’ve never shied away from telling it, it would be gutless of me to do anything other than do what I always do, and that’s tell the truth as I see it. So I’m going to do what most Arsenal fans would never do on a blog and admit that yes I DO want Arsenal to fail.

Why do I want Arsenal to fail? Is it because that would be confirmation of everything negative I have written about Arsene Wenger recently? No, I’ve already being successfully doing that for years. If I’m wrong this year, I’ll still have been right the last three. I want Arsenal to fail because I fear the club is sliding towards mediocrity. And the sooner Arsenal fails, the quicker something will be done about it.

I want failure because I believe the Arsenal board is complacent and does not put anywhere near enough pressure on Arsene Wenger. And neither do supporters put the board under enough pressure… and when the opportunity arises to put the board and manager under pressure (the AGM), the board blocks supporters from doing so by removing their ability to have a voice. That disgusts me.

It tells me that the board and manager know they have made and continue to make big mistakes, yet haven’t the guts to face up to those mistakes or allow themselves to be challenged by the supporters.

I want Arsene Wenger to be put under pressure; intolerable pressure – because nobody else will do it and pressure creates the conditions for change. Wenger’s paid £7m per year to make Arsenal successful — to compete for major trophies — not hang around 4th place indefinitely, and yet the board don’t put him under any pressure to do so. It’s this lack of pressure that’s allowed him to play stupid games with the club for years, with silly youth projects and dumb wage structures that have both failed miserably and made the fans suffer.

Wenger should be put under pressure, and that sort of pressure should be normal for a manager earning such a high salary. Gazidis says that Wenger puts pressure on himself, but that’s nonsense – he’s been far too complacent for that to be true.

Let me ask you this, if Wenger had not been put under intolerable pressure from a section of supporters last summer, would he have signed those five players on deadline day? Of course not, that’s why I called it panic-buying. It was the result of pressure to act, or flirt with getting sacked.

Next question, are Arsenal better off for signing those five players? Most people would affirm that the club IS better off. In my opinion, not better off enough, but still better off. So pressure is a positive, and can create the conditions for change – even in a manager as stubborn as Arsene Wenger.

What you need to understand is that it has taken four long years for Arsene Wenger to completely bleed the confidence out of me as a supporter. I have pretty much turned my back on the club for the first time since I was 12, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about Arsenal.

There have been other periods during my 30 years as an Arsenal supporter without success, but the difference now is that the situation is a lot more sinister. The club has a mega-rich owner that hides his motives and invests nothing, a chairman who doesn’t know what time of day it is, and a feckless CEO afraid to stand on his own two feet, afraid to make demands of a manager that clearly no longer has the remorseless drive and hunger to make Arsenal a truly competitive team in England or Europe.

Supporters are treated like dirt. Deliberately blocked from having an opinion, they’re paying the highest ticket prices in Europe with added price hikes despite negative net investment to watch a squad that’s statistically going backwards and is in no way entertaining enough to justify those prices.

So yes, I want Arsenal to fail this season; because it’s the only route I can see towards a better future, a different future. With Arsenal’s massive wage bill and cash reserves, Champions League football should be an absolute minimum requirement. However, I reckon that coming fifth would have a more worthwhile impact on the club than coming fourth and qualifying for a competition we’re never going to win. I hope that makes some sort of twisted sense.

And for the record, yes, Arsenal are defending better and are playing more like a team. But isn’t that a minimum requirement? Isn’t it a minimum requirement that a club of Arsenal’s stature doesn’t have lunatic goalkeepers that chuck the ball in their own net every other week, embarrassing players cheating or putting in 50% effort, or a defence that defends set-pieces like a pub team for five years?

I have a question for you. Why have you been accepting such mediocrity? And why are you so delirious when what should be accepted as the norm is finally put right? Why do you accept that the board has been trying to block off every avenue of communication with Arsenal supporters, that Kroenke wants to hoover up all the shares so that no one can analyse the accounts and the shareholders or AST can no longer have a voice in this great club? Why are you so happy that world class players are sodding off every year amongst a plethora of end-of-season lies and ridiculous excuses, then replaced by hideously overpaid academy players that nearly always fail to fulfil their potential or are replaced by inferior quality?

Why are you so naïve?

Who is going to protect the “club”? Scrutinise our secretive American owner? Demand higher standards? Keep Arsenal at the top!? Certainly not you that’s for sure. Certainly not the blogs selling copious advertising, books, mugs and Arsenal pencil sharpeners – what’s their motive to tell the truth? They don’t want to be criticised, they’re too frightened to swim against the tide, they fear losing readership. You can smell their bloody fear.

Personally, I don’t really care what they do – each to his own and all that. But it’s people like me that do the dirty work, put aside 30 years of support to stand up for my principles, and take a verbal kick-in for it.

It took four years for my confidence and belief to be ripped to shreds by Wenger and it will take quite some time to restore it. I’m not going to be fooled by a good run of results against mostly mediocre Premier League sides, especially as this Arsenal team would be mid-table cannon fodder if it wasn’t so evidently over-reliant on the qualities of one player.

I said that this month there are some key games coming. Everton at home, Man City away and Aston Villa away. Arsenal passed the test against Everton, thanks to you know who… again. But the next two games will tell me a lot more about whether I should indeed be a little more positive. I have been looking at these fixtures for ages and wondering if Arsenal would produce or not.

Man City lost to Chelsea last night 2-1, their first slip up in the title race. Chelsea have responded remarkably well to the defeat by Arsenal; we did them a favour, now we’ll see Man City’s title credentials tested when they host Arsenal on Sunday. We’ll also see Wenger’s credential’s tested too. I’ll be watching the game, and will report honestly on what I see.

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