Feature

Our support

Stateside Gooner

By Chris Toronyi

What does it mean to be a supporter of the Club? Does it give you the right cheer when you want? Does it give you the right to complain when you want? I'd say "yes" to both. We all have different views on motivation and different ways of communicating our feelings about the Club – and the play on the pitch. There isn't some Arsenal Supporters Bill of Rights or a binding document that we all must sign before becoming a supporter.

I've said before that I don't think booing during a match is proper support, but who am I to judge how others should feel? I firmly believe that motivation is engrained in positive reinforcement – always looking for the full half of the glass rather than the empty half. But we're all different, and we all feel emotions in different ways and experience matches in different ways.

The fact is we all want the same thing from the Club: Success on and off the pitch. Are we over critical? Who knows? And does that really matter anyway? It's how we think and what we want.

I view it like this: we have a verbal contract with the Club. Under that contract, we support the Club – and demand the best from the Club. How you do it is up to you.

Thanks for reading and thanks for listening to Arsenal America Podcast. This week on the Podcast we have Andrew Mangan of @Arseblog and Jeremy Wilson of The Telegraph who chat Spurs, mentality, the motivations of AW and Kroenke and look ahead to Bayern. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or stream from the site.

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Chris Toronyi is a longtime Arsenal supporter and the host of The Arsenal America podcast, available every week at ArsenalAmerica.com and on iTunes at "Arsenal America Podcast." You can read more of Chris' thoughts on Twitter.

 

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Arsenal Football Club or Arsenal Media Group.