Did you hear the one about Jack Wilshere?

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
12 Jan	7:45 PM	LC	Ipswich Town (A)	0	1	Lost

Some powerful Arsenal bloggers and commentators are desperate for Wenger to fail because it will validate their opinions. It is not really about what is happening on the pitch – it is about them.

The whole point of blogging is about giving your own opinion to the world. One cannot complain about accuracy when reviewing blogs. Most bloggers are ordinary folk, not journalists. They haven't signed up to any responsibility to anyone or anything.

Having said all that, bloggers that are also good writers gather a large following. With that, there should really be a little bit more responsibility. There are a few Arsenal bloggers that make very good reading. One or two have a real talent for writing – in fact, they are professionals. I enjoy reading their stuff and I will need all my fingers and toes to count the many fantastic occasions where I have been inspired or exposed to a new insight by reading them. But as things get tough out there on the pitch over the past 5 years, opinions among fans have split to two camps, each having their own champions.

I have watched with interest as many bloggers swing from side to side – including me until last season. Last season, I would not be able to sleep for nights because Arsenal lost. My heart pounded so hard from stress and my mouth and voice dries up to the extent that my 4 year old daughter got frightened. My mood would sour for days because of a loss. I decided this season that I had to find a much healthier way of indulging in the sport I love. If I wrote a blog two minutes after a loss, I would say very stupid things, full of venom, factually wrong, badly thought out and simply angry. If I waited two days, I would be measured. I don't want to spend my days referring to other human beings as useless, pathetic, moron, clueless etc. I would prefer to say what I think someone can do better. I would prefer to find a way of loving the club that I will always love and have little choice about it in a more constructive way. Not with hatred.

So this season, I am choosing to love the club and hope it does well. I feel healthier and happier. I am not recommending it to anyone. It's just my choice. Fans who think Wenger is not good enough, may have a very good point. I call this the NO camp. Fans in the YES camp who think he is just right for the club may also have a good point. I take time to listen to both. Those who think he is awful may be deluded. Those who think he is great may also be deluded. I hear good arguments from both camps everyday.

But there is an extremist version of the No camp. In their eyes, Wenger cannot do anything right. Everything is all wrong. The reason I call them extreme is because they are lost in their own fundamentalism and are beginning to manufacture evidence from thin air to support it.

Here is one example. I apologise to the writer in advance, it was just a very good example of a point I have wanted to make for a few months now. It is a series of bizarre conclusions from an event, done only to support a view that Wenger is no good and Arsenal is going nowhere. That's opinion by the way. In my view, it is an extreme that we need to pull back from. It has become a case of people getting desperate for Wenger to fail so that they will be proven right. It is not about Arsenal anymore, it has become about them and it drags fans into a negative place. That's not good for the club.

So the headline of the article is "Wenger took Jack Wilshere off after he shouted".

Really? A bit of drama at Arsenal so I click in to check this piece of amazing news. Did Jack shout at the manager? No.

"A friend of a friend was at Ipswich .....He said this: In the second half, Jack Wilshere started shouting at a couple of Arsenal players..."

I have no reason to disbelieve the guy. So there is the event. Jack Wilshere (nice to have a name like "Jack" in the team) is shouting at a few players. We have accept the event as reported.

Here is where it begins to get weird. "....As soon as Jack did that, Wenger took him off."

So now, there is a very direct link between Jack shouting and him being substituted. Now maybe I am lacking context in the dialogue between the parties but what made someone draw that conclusion? Why would you draw that conclusion? Arsenal were chasing the game and the manager made a substitution. Is this a deliberate attempt to back up the long running idea that Englishness – shown here by a nice English boy shouting is not allowed in "Phrench" Arsenal and its "pampered" superstars in Wenger's "creche"? Or is there some other unreported evidence to suggest that it was the shouting that did it?

Then comes brilliant conclusion number two. "Within 10 minutes of Jack being taken off, Ipswich scored."

So this is meant to give the following impression. Jack Wilshere was substituted because he shouted at his team mates. Arsenal lost the game because Jack Wilshere was substituted.

That sounds all very harmless but in the history of "Phrench", "crèches", "pampered" and being Cesc Fabregas's personal confident and his conduit for his personal thoughts, it is a pivotal moment because it was a new low. It is the point where it was clear that it was not about the club anymore but about being right (that's opinion).

Football is a frustrating business. Football is every Saturday. It takes you up and it takes you down constantly for 9 months when there is so much else of life that you have to be dealing with. It is relentless – when it is good, it is wonderful. When it sucks it really hurts.

I can understand those who have given up on Arsenal. But we should really not make things up. It is good enough to say we have not won anything and you don't believe in the team. But we can't make things up to get other people riled up. We can't try to use the misery that we face to drag people into a negative place. Strong emotions when justified in strange ways can have bad consequences – there is a lot of emotion and thousands of fans are reading it. In that case we should have a little more responsibility. One that is bigger than being right.

I am not going to say to a fan go support someone else if you don't like it because that is suggesting that I am a better fan than someone else and that is wrong. But maybe there is there is a case here for my old boss's advise "if you not going to say anything productive, try not to speak so often". i.e. it is not wrong to speak up even when it is not productive. It is, however, not good to speak up often and constantly when it is always unproductive.

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