There was a minor stir a few years back when some American scientists bred a strain of “gene-edited” hamsters with the chemical that causes anger removed, presumably so they could achieve one of humanity’s historic goals: the dream of a more docile hamster.
Unfortunately the opposite happened. What the scientists created was a race of hyper-angry hamsters. These were described a little glibly in the media as Mutant Rage Monsters. But science is always more nuanced than this. We shouldn’t put angry hamsters in a box, even when we are literally putting angry hamsters in a box. Longer studies have shown more varied results. Sarcastic hamsters. Hamsters that hold grudges. Hamsters that retreat into silence on long car journeys. Even a subset of passive-aggressive hamsters who are, seriously, just fine with this. It’s pretty much what they expected from you, anyway.
Ultimately, the scientists concluded that anger is a highly complex response, that understanding it requires a broader study, and that maybe they should stop messing around with rage-hamsters and take that job putting lipstick on moles. But they are clearly right about rage. It is a strange, hydra-headed thing, its sources hard to discern. And at this point Arsenal have already entered the room, there at the edge of your vision, the most reliable source of rage in English football right now.
Why do people hate Arsenal so much? It is a question worth asking. The league title could be decided on Tuesday. Why will the journey to this point be defined by dismay and resentment? Why, when it comes to Arsenal, do we all turn into rage-hamsters clawing at the bars?
The obvious starting point is: do people actually hate Arsenal? The answer to which is yes, they do. A recent social-media study concluded Arsenal’s fans are the most disliked in the Premier League. Even Mikel Arteta drives people into a state of rage, from his unremarkable control-based tactics, to his invariably bland public statements, to his frenetic touchline appearances in black zippy coat and sober grey slacks, like a travelling hitman on a fishing trip.
Last week, a post-match ESPN panel went viral on social media after the host suggested other Champions League coaches might want to literally punch Arteta in the face, while his panellists nodded along, as though this is an entirely reasonable conclusion deserving of a deep-dive around the lighted tactics table.
Among rival fans, the idea has long since been fixed that Arsenal are the bad guys. Neutrals should want Manchester City to win the title and Paris Saint-Germain the Champions League final, because this would be purer, lovelier, better for football. It is certainly an interesting point of view, one that fully embraces the performative aspects of sport, the way beauty, aesthetics, the halo effect overwhelm everything else. PSG may be a propaganda project, the destroyer of leagues, dependent on $2bn in loose change and the will to power of a dictator state. But yeah, Désiré Doué is very cool. So good.
In reality, Arsenal is an objectively good elite-football entity. If we must have hyper-rich clubs, this is the model of how to do it. Generate your own revenue. Don’t bend the financial rules. Don’t run debts funded by shady interests. And yes, the ground is literally called the Emirates. Also, no thanks, I don’t want to go Rwanda. But within the limits of a grubby and compromised world, this is perhaps as close as we’re going to get to a functional mega-club.
Arsenal are also a counterpoint the other great threat to football: the Chelsea soccertainment model, with its destruction of sporting culture and its deeply stupid talent clearing-house methods. This is at least a pure football project. Produce your own players. Field five Englishmen in a Champions League semi-final. Give a young manager five years to build a team. And yet Arsenal are more likely to be held up as a model of all that is bad. It is at least worth trying to understand why. The simplest explanation is this is a reasonable response to the way they play, which can be boring and fussicky to watch, based around team defence and margins at set pieces.
There is a legitimate sense that football, and indeed life, is becoming overmapped, broken down into data-driven phases, like the Vorticist view of nature; organic shapes transformed into units of human control, with Arsenal an ultimate expression of this. But there is also something paradoxically traditionalist in grinding out victory, in saying this is the level of defence you will need to beat. It should be difficult. If PSG do end up eviscerating the best defence in Europe with their speed and targeted dribbling then it will be hard-earned, ennobled by the strength of their opponents.
Plus, Arsenal are not cheating by playing like this. They have simply adapted better than others to the current permissiveness on certain kinds of contact at set pieces, in the same way Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal team reacted to the 1925 change of the offside law. The current rules will be changed again. Everyone will have to readapt. For now this is just good coaching, finding a way to top the league with a deeply basic centre-forward and a very good defence.
But then, Arteta is also a problem. Why do people feel enraged by him? Most obviously this is a response to the way he leaps about on the TV feed, too close to the pitch, getting in the way of throw-ins, thrusting himself into the spectacle. But again, he is mainly yelling at his own players. He’s not berating officials or doing the Diego Simeone conduct-the-spectacle thing. This is just a very intense man desperately trying to find an edge in his own team. Who is also, lest we forget, competing against people who stand accused of breaking the rules in pursuit of decisive points. Is it really the behaviour of a mega-villain?
The other thing about Arteta: he isn’t cool. There is a deep awkwardness in his attempts to manage the vibe, to control and commodify being a bunch of relaxed fun guys who are really up for it. Arteta has talked about being on fire and getting on the fun boat, which still conjures an image of a really terrible booze cruise with a bunch of corporate surveyors. He forced a dog to support Arsenal. He has somehow managed to make Pep Guardiola look relaxed and neutral, strolling around in his country green slacks like a dad at a sports day. But is this grounds for rage?
A little desperately, you look for more structural reasons. Is hating Arsenal something to do with London, because people do also hate London? Is this a Brexit thing? Arsenal are the most urbane, EU-ish, London-centred club. Do people hate them because of economic entitlement, because they’re middle class-adjacent and a little smug, because they seem both tortured and triumphalist? But if so, why do other London fans also hate them, although everyone does also hate the other big London clubs, for similarly grandiose, bodge-job, money-falling-out-of-their-ears reasons?
Or maybe it’s not really rage at all but boredom at the spectacle, irritation at the capering man and the touchier parts of the online fandom. Either way, the next few days promise an outcome. If Arsenal can’t beat a relegated Burnley and a Crystal Palace team playing in wayfarers and tie-dyed trousers, they don’t really deserve to win the league anyway. But there is still the prospect the season is building to the promised mega-choke, hamster-backflips, hamster-joy, an all-you-can-eat schadenfreude buffet.
In the end it is hard to avoid the simplest conclusion: people just like hating things now. The content space must be filled. Our hive-mind digital network, the voices in our ears, are geared to locate, reward and amplify rage. A recent study of ocean life revealed that even whales are now required to shout underwater, so loud is the ambient noise down there from man-made activity. This is us. We are the hamsters. We are the rage-shouting whales. All we need is a muster point, a target, a place for the chemicals to go.