On self-respect

"Self respect is when you're able to stand up for your own considerations."

- my friend, on Saturday, after we watched Ironman self-respect the shit out of some Afghan warlords

I wanted to jot this down before I forget it. It's my thoughts from a conversation I had yesterday. It's got very little to do with football, but I'll be using it as a metaphor. It IS nominally a football blog, after all.

The idea we fleshed out was that you need self-respect before you can be respected by others, but you don't need to be respected in order to be loved. And we realised that there's a crucial distinction between the two concepts.

Wenger is loved by his players. He sees potential in them at a young age, and puts more faith in them than is sensible. He fast-tracks youngsters into the side and he's willing to pay for their education in points and titles. Of all his former players, only Bentley and Pennant have said bad things about Wenger. Says it all, really.

However, Wenger is not respected by his players. He puts their personal considerations above his ambitions for the team. He lets them flirt with other clubs, he lets them run down their contracts, he lets them get away with lax defending and an lack of effort. He refrains from signing squad players because he thinks the added competition wouldn't be "fair" to his current players.

As a result, players take him for granted.

Wenger doesn't have the self-respect to make a stand against his players. He's too nice. He accommodates their ambitions, and as a result, they walk all over him. They've lost respect for him because he doesn't stand up for himself. They profess to love him, and I'm sure they're genuine, but they take advantage of him because they know they can.

When you've lost the respect of your players, it's very hard to win it back. They don't treat you properly. They won't trust you enough to obey you. They always have, in the back of their mind, the idea that another club will be better for them.

If you try to discipline them, they often get angry because they're used to walking all over you. They start to resent you, and look for ways to get back at you. It degenerates from a good, healthy relationship into a series of tit-for-tat mind games. It's very exhausting.

One thing I couldn't work out was how you went about regaining your self-respect if you've lost it. Any thoughts?