Former Chelsea midfielder Craig Burley launches stunning attack on 'spineless, mentally weak' Arsenal fans

Arsenal supporters protest against Wenger in April 2016
Getty Images
James Benge8 February 2017

Former Chelsea midfielder and ESPN pundit Craig Burley has issued a dramatic rebuke to Arsenal supporters, calling them “spineless” and “mentally weak”.

After a week where Sky pundit Gary Neville called a supporter an “idiot” for holding a banner calling for Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger to resign Burley has claimed that Arsenal fans are not doing enough to drag their club out of “mediocrity”.

Burley said: “I'm telling you, Arsenal fans: you are spineless. You are the mirror image of your team: weak, mentally weak.

“They follow their club across Europe and up and down the country in England, and they accept the mediocrity - and it is mediocrity, by a club of that standard, getting in the top four.

“They keep using the Champions League as some barometer for their success but every year up until now - apart from the time they got to the final in Paris [in 2006] - they've been knocked out in the round of 16. Every time. What's the point?”

In April 2016 a group of Arsenal supporters protested against the sterility around the Emirates, with REDaction, the Black Scarf Movement and the Arsenal Supporters Trust backing a decision for supporters to hold up “time for change” banners during a home game against Norwich.

The protest was widely viewed as a failure, with only around 300 banners being held up calling for the manager to leave whilst many in the Emirates chanted “there’s only one Arsene Wenger.”

Speaking to Standard Sport earlier this week Robbie Lyle, founder and presenter of Arsenal Fan TV, urged supporters to “get behind Wenger until the end of the season”, acknowledging that there was little purpose in trying to unseat the manager before his contract expires at the end of the season.

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Lyle added that he would “hate for him to go out in the wrong way” amid fan rancour and sustained protests.

Burley, however, insists that Arsenal fans are not doing enough to force change on the Arsenal hierarchy and should be “stamping their feet” at the Emirates.

“It should be better than that. It should be about better than just making money and being a business. It should be about having success domestically and on the European front and that's not what Arsenal are about anymore. And it seems that's what the supporters are happy to endure as well.

“Arsene Wenger between 1996 and 2004 was amazing, absolutely amazing. But between 2004 and 2017, it is stale. Yet the spineless Arsenal fans will not get up at the Emirates and voice their opinion, and really stamp their feet: 'We want change, we want change. It might hurt for a couple of years, but we want to go in a different direction.'

In Pictures | Chelsea vs Arsenal | 04/02/2017

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“Now if the Arsenal fans don't believe they've got a voice that can change that thinking, that mindset, within the Arsenal hierarchy, then they're wrong. Because as fans, you can make that change, you can pressurise the board to think again; pressurise the manager to think: 'Well, I need to maybe take a backseat, and let somebody else get in.'”

In the summer of 2011 Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis told a frustrated Arsenal Supporters Trust meeting that the board completely supported Wenger but that the manager would be “ultimately accountable to the fans”.

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