Time to put a lid on the toxic idea of 'bottling' in football - opinion
Arsenal, second in arguably the most difficult top-flight league in the world, are the latest to fall victim to the "bottlers" tag.
Losing 3-0 at home to a mightily competitive Brighton side effectively saw them give up the chase in this season's Premier League title race, leaving the door wide open for rivals Manchester City to seal the deal with a win in their next fixture against Chelsea.
Cue fans of rival clubs - and some just loudly opinionated observers lurking in the social media shadows - jumping on to lambast Arsenal's players for "bottling" their best chance at a league triumph in over a decade.
Indeed, the immediate reading isn't great for the Gunners. In April, Mikel Arteta's side sat eight points clear of City at the top of the table.
Yet an unfortunate wobble saw the north Londoners hit a skid in form, with disappointing draws to a struggling Liverpool, a downbeat West Ham and bottom-side Southampton preceding a devastating 4-1 humbling by Manchester City, all of which ultimately saw their gap torn to shreds.
Should City go on to clinch the title, it will also set a new record for the longest time spent at the top of the Premier League - 93 per cent of the season to be exact - for a side to go on to not win the title outright (coincidentally, out of the top five sides for this to happen to, Arsenal feature four times: this season and in 02/03, 07/08 and 13/14 respectively).
Yet while these figures may appear damning, it's all without context.
For long periods of the season, Arsenal were constantly proving doubters wrong, fighting the tide of negative and nitpicking questions in post-match interviews, swimming through waves of criticisms and ignorance from TV pundits, overcoming adversity with dramatic late comebacks, and playing under the weight of heavier scrutiny and harsher judgment as they staked their claim as genuine contenders.
"They won't be there at the end of the season," pundits such as Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher proclaimed in December. And yet, prior to the weekend's defeat, there they still were, playing with a glimmer, albeit a small one, of hope.
The fact is English football is on the verge of becoming farcical in its own right, with Manchester City now closing in on their fifth title in six seasons. It's the kind of dominance that English fans would often point and laugh at the French, German or Spanish leagues for, riding high on our broadly "competitive", "unpredictable" and "open" top division.
But for City now - particularly under Pep Guardiola - not winning the league would be at the bare minimum a huge failure, similar in weight to Bayern Munich missing out on the Bundesliga, or PSG not winning Ligue 1.
To finish second to what many people regard as the best club team in the world on current form, with the best manager, a battle-hardened winning pedigree and bottomless wallets, is actually not all that bad. To run them so close as taking it to the last two games of the season is, to put it bluntly, a hell of an effort.
Nobody expected Arsenal to be anywhere near this position at the beginning of the season, let alone for their young squad to sustain such an impressive challenge for so long. Arteta deserves plenty of praise for his work across the marathon, rather than just resting on his laurels for the initial sprint.
To call them bottlers completely diminishes the entertainment value they've given literally every neutral football fan, that is, preventing us all from being subjected to a boring landslide victory for City by the start of March.
But not only this, shouting "bottlers" at the crestfallen Gunners actually diminishes the impressive comeback and attritional excellence of Guardiola's side.
To overturn such a gap, pouncing on every possible opening and, on some occasions, actually grinding out results against dogged sides like Newcastle and Leeds, all while reaching the FA Cup final and looking good to match that feat in the Champions League - it's genuinely mind-blowingly impressive.
To do all that while also playing some excellent, oftentimes mouthwatering football makes it even more so.
So to suggest that City are winning the league because Arsenal have let them is simply not true, and rather takes away from their own hard work and achievements.
The "bottler" tag isn't new of course. Arsenal's arch-rivals Tottenham were accused of bottling their one genuine shot at Premier League glory in 2015/16 - famously losing out to Leicester. Yet Spurs were barely ever top of the league that campaign, with Leicester sitting in first place for near enough the entire season.
Spurs were also accused of bottling the Champions League final against Liverpool in 2019 - yet it was the first time in the history of the club they'd got there, and they were by no means the favourites to win (they of course lost that match to the Reds).
It doesn't stop there - many even accused Newcastle of bottling this season's League Cup against historically serial winners Manchester United (Newcastle haven't won a trophy since 1955). The list goes on, pretty much every year since Twitter and Instagram became a thing.
How can clubs be deemed bottlers when they're not serial winners and they're in fact probably overachieving? And why can't those achievements be recognised for what they are, rather than ridiculed?
It says more about the fickleness of football fans, coupled with a touch of trollish immaturity and a bloodthirst for meaningless internet points, that the term "bottler" has become so commonplace. It's a boring example of tribalism.
It can be used to completely diminish the progress and achievements of an underdog, a challenger, a disruptor or a runner-up. There's no shame in failure so long as you put up a fight. Every human being on this planet knows how it feels to fall just short.
Fans - particularly of the elite clubs and brought up on a diet of social media - seem to have forgotten (or perhaps never learned) something about the magic of football: it's not always about winning every trophy every year. The sport is about moments, memories, romance, experiencing the highs and the lows, and feeling your way through the entire journey.
It's simply a bit sad and toxic to point and laugh at a team or individual for the ultimate sin of 'not winning'. It sets a very worrying precedent for the future.
Finishing second to a side with ten times the spending power and a 25-man squad featuring two world-class first XIs does not make you bottlers. It means you pushed the best to be the best, and you earned your right to be there doing it.
