With Arsene Wenger having announced that he was leaving Arsenal, “Match of the Day” on BBC TV featured the “Football should be an art” banner, at the Arsenal Stadium, in its opening sequences for the Arsenal match against West Ham United, which Arsenal won 4-1.
The banner was organised by AISA members and publicised with the support of the “Untold Arsenal” blog and was primarily funded by AISA members.
Here is the video of that moment when the BBC chose our banner as the focal point of its recognition of Mr Wenger’s importance in the club.
During his time at Arsenal Mr Wenger oversaw 1235 competitive games and 57.25% of them were won – a higher percentage win rate than any other permanent manager in the entire history of Arsenal. He won the League three times and the FA Cup seven times, making him the most successful manager in the history of the FA Cup since its foundation in the 19th century, and of course the most successful manager of Arsenal.
Background
In 2015, when Blacksheep first came up with the idea for an Untold Arsenal banner at the Emirates I must admit to feeling the success of the project was unlikely. But Blacksheep took the idea forwards, liaised with the club and with RedAction, found a designer in Jennie Bradley, plus a manufacturer, and made it all happen.
Once the idea was up and running it was easy to think of having a vote of Untold readers to invite everyone to have a say in which banner slogan we might use.
In fact we knew that one of the slogans (Welcome to Stadium Wenger) would be unlikely to be welcomed by the club, what with the Emirates Airline paying a fortune to name the stadium after them, and so it turned out. But our second choice was accepted, and so the banner was made.
During the course of our voting and discussions on Untold, Blacksheep and I found to our surprise and amazement that a number of readers and commentators on Untold were anxious to make a financial contribution to the banner – and in fact we had to start telling readers not to give us money. My fear was that since bookkeeping was never my strong point, I would lose track and never be able to thank everyone.
So we agreed on a process, and later, once the project had Arsenal’s approval, over a period of a couple of weeks we collected donations via PayPal and bank transfers. Below is a list of those who gave money to Untold during that period.
We knew from the start that we had no control over how long the banner would stay up, but it is still there, which is itself something of a testament to its attraction.
Above all I would personally like to thank Blacksheep for his determination to see this terrific idea through. It just shows what can be done if you feel it is worthwhile.
The Roll of Honour
Supporters of Untold who kindly contributed to the Untold Banner in July 2015.
- Gideon Adedokun
- Olanrewaju Adenekan
- AL
- Arsenal 13
- AudioCap
- Florian Barca
- bjtgooner
- Blacksheep
- Bootoomee
- Marcel Bogaerts
- Jenny Bradley
- Walter Broeckx
- Oliver and George Brookes
- Andrew Crawshaw
- Brickfield Gunners
- Ian Denton
- Mandy Dodd
- Mitchell Falkenstern
- Darryl Frost
- Drew Gray
- Satu Maarit Hintsanen
- Sam Hurst
- Jambug
- Jon Kissi
- Ben Lam
- Declan Lynch
- Rob Lackey
- Bob Mac
- Menace
- Chris Mines
- Colin Munce
- Damilare Oyewole
- Pararealist
- Daniel Prasnikar
- Michael Philip Shelley
- Jetinder Sidhu
- Daniel Skaardal
- Enhao Smit
- Gavin Smith
- Charlie Spencer
- Curtis Spencer
- Richard Stocks
- Plus those who asked to remain anonymous
