Ahead of the game against West Ham on Monday night, a number of mainstream media outlets tried to claim that the Arsenal players were not behind Freddie Ljungberg.

Their basis for this claim?

Well, it seems a few of them (or maybe even just one, they do like to back each other up) contacted a player or two to get comment on Freddie before Arsenal went to West Ham.

They received none.

Of course, this is most likely the club instructing players to say nothing, as tends to happen following bad results at the Arsenal and has been going on longer than the last few weeks.

The silence, however, was enough for some to claim that the players were refusing to back Freddie.

And it wasn’t just the Star on Sunday/Daily Star, either:

At the time, it all felt like tabloid nonsense and the player’s reactions as they scored and, eventually, went on to win against West Ham on Monday night, confirmed that.

This is so pleasing to watch pic.twitter.com/dYLrY26WMA

— Renato (@rehnato) December 9, 2019

Lovely stuff and made that elusive win feel just a tiny bit sweeter and was just one of a number of things I noticed during the game.