Arsenal fans need to have true belief as much as Arteta and the playersplayers....

A modern mega football club such as Arsenal is so much more than just a squad of players, it is a vast infrastructure of elements, a plethora of teams of people working within the organisation as well as those working outside and in relation to it, PLUS millions of fans all over the world. Evidently, for all to be in good order then the players must do their job – play football well.

And then everyone else employed by the club from top to bottom must also do their jobs. Well, we too as fans have an obligation to do our job properly – when led by the performances of our team last season, we showed just how good we can be as supporters in our stadium.

Being a fan, however, is not just shouting and singing on matchday, it is also about the way you feel and talk about your football club on a daily basis. We all contribute to the collective atmosphere and psychology surrounding the club we support. The quality of the football played dictates much about the state of things, but the whole feeling surrounding the club is in large part OUR responsibility.For this to happen, every little helps – everyone must chip in. As such, those of us who pretend to be writers on the subject of Arsenal must also attempt to do what we do best – write well. For writers, words should matter. They do matter. We need to find the right words to understand and put into context what we have just lived through, and it is important that we do it well so that we know how to then interpret what will come next season.

Concerning our experience of the season just gone by – any Arsenal fan could not help but feel disappointed at the finale. Our team led the league for the great majority of the campaign only to be overtaken at the end as they ran out of steam. Some fans went as far as accusing the manager and players of “bottling it”, of not having the nerve to get over the line and hold off the challenge from Man City.

Others still went even further, claiming that such a collapse was indicative of an inevitable flaw in head coach Arteta’s character, and that we would not be able to take the next necessary steps to becoming a successful club in this new era under his leadership. While those fans that remained on a more positive bent wished to lay emphasis on the excellent and unexpected progress of the team, not one could honestly say they did not feel a little let down by the manner in which the scintillating football our lads were playing fizzled out into a series of scrappy performances, watched more with hope than confidence that we would get a result.