Greetings!
What a week. From CIPFA being crowned ‘Student Body of the Year’ at the prestigious PQ Awards, to Afternoon Tea at The Dorchester, I’ve had a thoroughly enjoyable and unforgettable few days, not to mention the football! Having been spanked 4-0 in Milan and then being dumped out of the FA Cup by Sunderland, there wasn’t much reason for joy or optimism but how quickly things can change in football.
Last Sunday we played host to ‘ze enemy’ as Bacary Sagna calls them. I prefer ‘yid twats’ – to put it politely. Personally, I couldn’t think of a better game to help resurrect our season. The media monkeys had even labelled this game as a defining moment for Arsene Wenger’s future. Morons. This is a man who has guided our club to Champions League football 14 years running whilst ensuring we finish above Spurs in the league every season. To put this into perspective, prior to Arsene’s arrival in 1996, Arsenal had only qualified for Europe’s elite cup competition a total of 12 times.
Now I know we’re yet to win the Champions League and you could argue that we’re nowhere near good enough to do so, but a seat at Europe’s top table offers huge financial incentives, incentives which have allowed us to move to our magnificent stadium. It annoys me how easily people dismiss the significant achievement of building a new, state-of-the-art footballing arena in London. Consider clubs like Liverpool and Tottenham. All we ever hear about are their plans to build new stadia, failed planning requests with local authorities and dreams of how they’ll be bigger and better than the Emirates. As per usual, it’s all talk and no action.
Which brings me back quite nicely to the North London derby. Comparing campaigns thus far for each participant: Spurs, currently 3rd in the league, no Carling Cup, no Champions League and with these players widely viewed as their best squad in history, the 2011-12 season has been their 'best ever season'. For Arsenal, currently 4th, no Carling Cup or FA Cup but still in Champions League - correct at time of writing (!), it’s our ‘worst season ever’.
Admittedly, I was nervous going into the match and for the first 35 minutes of the match, you could understand why. A very sluggish start supplemented by some scary defending and a diving baboon, gifted Spurs with a 2-0 lead at The Emirates.
** sorry, just need a moment to laugh at Spurs as United go 3-0 up at The Lane**
An unprecedented goal from Bacary Sagna, who’s celebration screamed. ‘right, I’ve had enough of these insufferable twats, let’s get on with it and let’s do them.’ For me, this set the tone for the remainder of the game. A few moments later we were level. Even Gary Neville was creaming himself as RVP banged in a screamer to put us level before the break. There was only one team in it for the second 45, with Thomas ‘Little Mozart’ Rosicky and Theo ‘no footballing brain’ Walcott contributing to the rout. Does anyone know what Rosicky took before the game? The man was on drugs, and what a performance. Only took him six seasons but what an unbelievable shift. My word.
My compilation of the Spurs match can be found here. Enjoy x
What impressed me most about this result was the manner of performance. Having realised we were in trouble at 2-0, we took the game to them, closing every ball with tenacity, attacking with pace & penetration and being ruthlessly clinical in front of goal. I was particularly pleased for Theo. He’s been getting a lot of stick in recent months, some of it deserved but some of it harsh. Chris ‘Einstein’ Waddle, once claimed that Theo doesn’t have a footballing brain. Certainly worked OK on Sunday and neither were ‘pelanties’. People forget that Theo is still only 22. On his day he is unplayable, just ask Croatia, various Champions League opponents, Chelsea, Liverpool and now Spurs. His problem is lack of consistency and he must address this, however all this said, he still boasts 39 goals in 132 starts – better than Gareth Bale’s 21 from 102.
Spurs fans should quickly take a photograph of the current league table. It’s squeaky bum time. You won’t be in the top four for long. Know your place; forever in our shadow.
Yesterday saw me head to Anfield for the first time. A fine stadium, which has played host to many memorable matches, was at full capacity for a mouth-watering lunchtime clash. On the back of the derby spanking, a win for the Gunners meant the gap between the two sides would stretch to 10 points.
Liverpool started very well, dominating the first half and even missed a generous penalty as Wojciech Szczesny made an impressive double save. There is no doubt that Luis Suarez is a very gifted footballer, our defence unable to cope with his guile in front of goal on several occasions, but he is such an obnoxious, cheating twat. The scousers eventually took the lead after Laurent Koscielny put through his own net. I’m not going to dwell on that too much – it happens. Get over it. He has been our best centre-back for a while now and has saved us on more occasions than not. Liverpool could have been out of sight, only to be rebuffed by an impressive Szczesny and the post, and instead, we were quickly level when RVP headed in a marvellous cross from Sagna.
There was a lengthy delay at the start of the second half when Mikel Arteta suffered concussion and a jaw injury in an off-the-ball collision with Henderson. We’ll know more about his injury in due course and naturally we wish him well in the meantime. He has been a terrific signing for us and we need him back as quickly as possible. During the eight minutes of injury time RVP (his goal-scoring predictability as easy as wondering when Diaby will next be injured) latched on to a sublime pass from Song and he smashed the ball inside Reina’s near post. Cue battered knees and injured neck during wild celebrations in the Arsenal KOP. Euphoria.
As per tradition, we paid the Colonel a visit to celebrate in fine style before catching our train home to end a glorious day. We came. We conquered. We KFC’d.
In closing, some things in life will always bring me right back down to earth. In line with our chant for RVP, ‘he scores when he wants.. he scores when he waaaants, ROBIN VAN PERSIE, he scores when he wants’, I went home and when ma asked about dinner, I responded with, ‘I eat when I want.. I eat when I waaaant, I’m FK, I eat when I want’. She slapped me.
Much love x
