Satire: Reactions to Arsenal's first trophy in nine years

Arsenal's FA Cup win in 2005

Arsenal’s FA Cup win in 2005

Arsenal go into May with nothing but the FA Cup final to play for, as has been the case since the last nine years. Arsenal fans, I beg your pardon, it’s 8 years, 10 months, 27 days, to be precise. Between them and the FA Cup trophy stand Hull City, whom they face in Wembley next month.

Since long, the board of Hull City have wanted to change the club’s name to Hull Tigers Ltd. But after getting their proposal rejected by the FA, they now have to live with their current name at least for this season. What if they couldn’t change their name? Arsenal are the only team in the Premier League who are capable of unleashing the tiger (pun intended) within the smaller teams. They did so against Birmingham City in the Capital One Cup (then Carling Cup) final in 2010. And if they lose to Hull City, Hull fans can at least boast about invoking the tiger within.

Suppose everything goes right for Arsenal, as it seldom does, they will lift a record 11th FA Cup trophy on 17th May, a record shared by Manchester United who themselves seem to have virtually retired this season with Fergie. The Arsenal fans and the players alike will go absolutely berserk in joy. If a fourth-place (imaginary) trophy can derive so much excitement from the Arsenal players and the fans, just imagine what a real trophy will do to them.

Arsenal players celebrating after winning race to fourth spot with Spurs

Arsenal players celebrating after winning race to fourth spot with Spurs

Now, we move to a time when Arsenal have already won their 11th FA Cup and first trophy in nine years. The aftermath of this win among Arsenal fans is not hard to conceive, is it?

It is a first trophy in Arsenal colours for almost all of the Arsenal squad. When they last won a trophy, Serge Gnabry’s age was in single digit, while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was in his high school. What a distinguished achievement that is on winning the world’s oldest cup competition!

Nostalgia is running through Mathieu Flamini’s veins as he lifts the same trophy that he lifted almost a decade ago. It’s a sort of time travel for a man who has travelled from Marseille to London to Milan, and back to London. The only trophy that he won in his time at Arsenal will be his first trophy on his second homecoming, as Arsenal fans call it. Little do they know that his home is Marseille.

The owners of Arsenal, the American Stan Kroenke, who owns two thirds of the shareholding, and the Russian Alisher Usmanov, who has built up much of the other third, will finally make a public appearance together. They have decided to wear long Wenger-esque jackets in a tribute to him, with a contract paper ready for him to sign it in front of all the reporters and the fans. Fans have also requested to carry Wenger on their shoulders through the streets of North London as a sign of respect to the man who’d grown old showing nine years of patience on winning the oldest cup competition.

Meanwhile, Laurent Koscielny has started an online petition as a signal of protest for fans to sign it, as Arsenal, in spite of ending their trophy drought and paying off their stadium debts, are not ready to increase their star player’s wages who is on relatively modest wages of £50,000 a week. Liverpool fans are supporting this by creating a PayPal account in his name and donating £1 each as a retaliation to the audacious £40,000,001 pound bid made by Wenger for Luis Suarez last summer.

However, Arsenal fans don’t want to pay heed to this uncalled for mockery by Liverpool fans as their FA Cup win has still not sunk in. They are busy chanting on the streets of North London as Arsenal players go on a rooftop trophy parade on a bus.

Wenger has finally resorted to the social media to make his feelings known to his faithful as he tweeted this just after Arsenal’s FA Cup win against Hull City.

wenger1

Wenger after the FA Cup win

Jose Mourinho has come out in public and apologised to Wenger for calling him “a specialist in failure” earlier in the season. However, Wenger didn’t reciprocate this time, but was rather thankful to Mourinho. “I’m grateful to Mourinho for deriding me in public. For his comments made me work even harder towards ending this trophy drought. I got determined to prove my critics wrong, and that’s how I achieved my aim,” he said. This came as a shock to everyone close to Wenger, as they couldn’t believe their eyes the change a reward can bring in a man’s life.

Wenger has finally realised that one can win nothing without spending, as he described the club record signing Mesut Ozil as the luck factor in winning the FA Cup, though he was either injured or performed poorly in most of the big games. However, Ozil still has his heart in Real Madrid and can’t get over the fact that Real Madrid beat Barcelona 2-1 in last month’s Copa del Rey final.

Ozil tweets about Real Madrid even after Arsenal beat Hull in FA Cup final

Ozil tweets about Real Madrid even after Arsenal beat Hull City in FA Cup final

For someone whose scouting network involved France 90 percent of the times, Wenger believes he now has the right to travel around the world as the FA Cup win has finally brought some much needed financial input to the club, which he can proudly call his own. He has decided on spending some time with his family in Nagoya in Japan, where he first established his name as one of the top managers. It is believed that Wenger is actually going to Japan to recruit Asian prodigies into Arsenal’s youth academy because he fears Barcelona or Manchester City will buy his players.

In what has been a failure of a season for the trophyless Manchester United and Barcelona, and with Manchester City only winning the Capital One Cup, all of Arsenal’s ex-players have decided to make a sensational return to the Emirates in the pursuit of money AND trophies.

Robin van Persie is tired of David Moyes’ rigorous training methods and has decided to come back to his so-called father Arsene Wenger. Cesc Fabregas and Alex Song seem miffed at the prospect of constantly playing second fiddle to the star-studded midfield of Barcelona and want to make a return. Also, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy have expressed their desire to come to the place where they made their name by saying they like Arsenal’s “project” and want to be a part of it.

Arsenal fans had long been exasperated by the continual derision of the rival fans on their ability to mess it all up at the biggest stages of every campaign. They are not going to take it any more, and hence have written to the cyber police to take down this site – http://www.sincearsenallastwonatrophy.co.uk/ – immediately.

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Edited by Staff Editor