Monthly Archives: February 2011

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
February 22, 2011 posted by arseblog

A Tuesday meh with some added meh

Ahh, you know what’s a pain? Writing a whole intro to a blog post then accidentally selecting all and pressing the number 2 to see it all disappear.

Yeah, it shouldn’t be a problem because of the awesome power of Apple+Z to undo but undo didn’t work and these words, this wonderful prose … lost … forever. I could try and recreate them but it would be like da Vinci finishing the Mona Lisa, tipping a pot of Crown Emulsion over it and trying to reproduce it. He’d have to do a different Mona. Mona Jessica. Mona Irene. Lisa would be gone.

So this is the Mona Irene of blog intros. Not a classic, it won’t hang for centuries in the Louvre, unlike Oliver Holt’s masterpiece “The Coronation of Barcelona and Virgin” (something to do with a Richard Branson sponsorship deal, I think), but it’s all you’ve got.

Anyway, onto things Arsenal and despite the immense tragedy of having to play another game of football things are going reasonably well at the moment, you’d have to say. Cup final coming up on Sunday, just beaten Barcelona, scrapping for the league and still in the FA Cup. It’s not too shabby at all. So to bring us all back down to earth how about stories about Samir Nasri threatening to quit?

Well, you can find them all over this morning. Nasri ‘quit threat’. Nasri ‘I could go’. Nasri ‘What’s for dinner? I’m starving’. Anyway, here’s my thinking on this: meh. Not meh at the possibility of Nasri leaving but meh at the story and meh at the timing of the story. We know his contract is up next summer and from what I hear we’re fairly confident that a new deal will be agreed. Arsene Wenger has said consistently the matter would be looked at in the summer, Nasri saying the same doesn’t make it a huge story all of a sudden.

Personally, I don’t understand the waiting part. Never have. Players and clubs claim they’re too busy, too focused on football to sign a deal. It’s not as if the players have to go in there after training, bargaining for an extra £50 every time they score and an expense account with a local taxi firm. They have agents and advisors and managers who take care of all that for them. The only thing they have to do is walk in, pick up a pen, make some kind of vague X where it says they should, and then walk off considerably richer than they were before.

In fact, all things being equal, the player could be lounging around in his pyjamas, playing PS3, eating a truffle soufflée and buying pieces of Tracy Emin’s ‘art’ just to destroy them, and Agenty could nip around and get him to sign. Job done. However, as much as I like to imagine that’s the way the life of a top class footballer works I suspect the truth might be somewhat different so I’m not going to worry about it at all. I can’t control it and I guess we have to trust the manager when he says it’ll be done and hope that Nasri sees his future with us.

You know, if I was super rich I’d buy things I didn’t like just to destroy them. Like Sp*rs. I’d sack Harry and make John Sitton manager. And insist he play 8 up front. And fly keeper. And pay him so much money he couldn’t possibly argue with me. And when the crowd held up their ‘Sack the Chairman’ banners at the games I’d flick the switch and electrocute them all. There’s nothing whatsoever in FIFA rules saying you can’t electrocute the fans of the club you own. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

Also this morning stories about how Barcelona are ‘furious’ with us for signing another of their youth team kids. Youngster Jon Miquel Toral Harper (English mother, you see) will join us as reported by Young Guns via Catalan Radio. Apparently they’re going mental and stuff but such is life.

The stare of Ivan GazidisI suspect that their fury is rather being played up simply because we’re playing them again in a few weeks. Sure, they might be upset at losing a promising player, but stories of a face-off between Gazidis and Sandra Rosell could be to do with any old thing. I suspect Gazidis just stood there and gave him the stare. The stare of unimaginable Gazidisness – and whatever Rosell had a beef about was no longer an issue.

Anyway, the best thing about this story is the complete and utter bollocks The Sun have made of ‘their’ world ‘exclusive’. 101 Great Goals has the details. Couldn’t happen to a nicer paper etc etc.

The Mirror says Wojscez©® is walking a ‘Twitter Tightrope’ after his weekend comments about Cashley’s penalty miss. Pfff. He probably shouldn’t make a habit of doing it, in fairness, but it’s hardly worthy of any FA attention. And thankfully the Mirror didn’t use the phrase ‘Twightrope’, which would have made me want to drink a cup of angry bees.

Also, reports of a Vermaelen setback are wide of the mark, I’m told. He’s running normally, heading back to full training and if he’s not going to feature in a reserve game it’s probably because he’s not quite ready. We’re going to be ultra-cautious with him, I suspect, and that’s what’ll delay the comeback slightly.

And finally for today, just a pointer in the direction of a new feature on Arseblog – The Tim Stillman column. Tim will be here on a weekly basis and this week he looks at the Orient game, fandom, Stoke and the Carling Cup final. Enjoy.

Right, that’s about that. Tomorrow we can look ahead to the game against Stoke, team news, preview, finding new ways to describe Pubis and Lennie, all to come. Until then, have a good day.

Columnists
February 21, 2011 posted by Tim Stillman

The Tim Stillman column: From Brisbane Road to Wembley

Tim Stillman column - Arseblog

I’m delighted to announce a new Arseblog feature, a weekly column from Tim Stillman – who you might know from his stuff at Vital Arsenal. He’ll still be there, Vitalfans, don’t worry, but once a week he’ll do his stuff here too. This week Orient, the magic of the cup, Stoke and a trip to Wembley.

—–

I know it is something of an anathema to debunk “the magic of the F.A. Cup” but does anyone else really hate underdogs? The prescribed view is that we should applaud their pluckiness and cast their day tripping, “only go once a decade” supporters as “long suffering” fills me with nausea and unfettered hate.

I think my terminal grumpiness and cynicism has come to a stage that even when that pack of cunthounds from the Glazerdome play a side like Crawley, there is a small part of me that wants them to smash Crawley 8-0. When I see 9,000 Crawley fans (average home attendance 1,300) make a once in a lifetime visit to Old Trafford and sneer tunefully about supporting their local team, I often think their utter cheek should be rewarded with a ten goal hiding. Whilst watching such games, I always think of that geezer that has been to every Crawley away game since 1983, looking around at Old Trafford and asking, “Where the chuffing crikey have you lot been for the last ten years?”

It was this sense of reverse snobbery that we encountered on our way out of Brisbane Road on Sunday. I’m an incredibly placid guy, I’ve seen pretty much every event inside football grounds and have heard every insult going and usually do not so much as flinch when any bile – comedic or otherwise – sails my way.

Orient fans

But when some gurning twerp shouted at me and my mates on the Leyton High Road post match, “Arsenal are just full of foreign retards. Eng-er-land,” I couldn’t help asking, “Which part of England is Jonathan Tehoue from?” The eloquent answer this professor of logistics gave? “Fack off you cunt.” He’s got a point, I am a cunt, but he still couldn’t answer my question. Then on the bus back to Stratford, another pub bore piped up, “I’m a bigger Orient fan than any of you will ever be Arsenal fans.” My cohort Luigi, being less of a coward than I in these situations, asked:

Luigi: “Who are Orient playing next week?”
Bore: “I know, cos I’ll be there!”
Luigi: “So who are they playing?”
Bore: “Away at Brighton…or Huddersfield. Dunno, I’ve had a drink haven’t I?”

Sounds like you might want to sort that one out before you embark on that journey guv’nor.

Let me suffix this by saying I have no issue with Leyton Orient or their supporters. One of my best mates is blah, blah, blah etc. I have just come to despise this notion that I should feel guilty for supporting a fucking awesome football club, especially when I go to more games in a month than most people packing out Brisbane Road on Sunday have been to in their entire lives. Particularly annoying is the patronising, pathos laced commentary these teams are given by the fickle media. Put a sock in it Tyldesley, we know full well you couldn’t give two shits about Crawley Town now Monday is here.

What’s worse is with the draw we’re going to have to listen to those oh so hilarious chants of “We support our local team” and “Eng-er-land” all over again at the Grove. And we’re going to have to make out that it’s the first time we’ve ever heard either chant. “Oooooh, did you come up with that by yourself? Wow, aren’t you clever? Not like I haven’t heard that every fucking week since 1999.”

And if, like me, self pitying recipients of undue media sympathy get the little veins popping in your forehead, then the visit of Stoke this Wednesday will really send your despise-o-meter doolalley. Just the thought of Tony Penis prowling the touchline in that stupid fucking baseball cap makes me want to punch walls. Walls made of reinforced concrete, none of this dry wall rubbish. I actually think from the perspective of the media shit storm this fixture would otherwise invite, it’s probably a good time to play the knuckle dragging team of atomic mutants. Sandwiched between the Carling Cup final and engagements with Barcelona, a rearranged midweek match will probably quell the hyperbole.

Whilst it is perfectly natural for us the fans to want to pound Stoke into a soft, doughy stew until Tony Penis’ eyeballs bleed pure excrement, the players will need to focus on the job at hand. Still, don’t be surprised if some Stoke cunt studs Fabregas or Nasri in the last minute so that they miss the Carling Cup Final and the Barcelona second leg. Make no mistake, Pulis is exactly the sort of small man syndrome suffering fuckwit that would happily instruct his grunting orks to do that. “Lacerate, my pretties. Lacerate!” Then, of course, we’ll suffer the “he’s not that sort of player” bollocks, which the media help perpetrate ad nauseam in their usual casserole of nonsense, and we’ll all sigh deeply and go to take a lonely walk in the woods with only a service revolver for company.

Ryan Shawcross - the clogging cunt

I’m not usually the sort to indulge in verbal jousting of opposition players. I didn’t even boo Ade-pay-me-more. Make no mistake, Shawcross will get it both barrels from me. Not because I believe he genuinely meant to mangle Ramsey, but because of the self pitying, irrelevant platitudes that followed his act of recklessness. He promised not to change (isn’t the point of accidents as a result of recklessness that you learn from them?) and he shows no sign of having grown a brain in the ensuing year since he left the pitch in tears at the Britannia.

He’s already been sent off twice since for brainless fouls since. I realise he hasn’t sawn some poor sod in half in either of those red card incidents, but both showed that that sense of recklessness and stupidity hasn’t left him. And why would it have? When his manager and the football family behind the typewriters routinely make excuses every time he has a brain fart, why would he learn? He’s a ticking time bomb and unless someone makes him face up to his responsibilities, it will only be a matter of time before Ma Shawcross will be called for again to fetch her blubbering son from another football ground.

Speaking of violent cunts, Birmingham await in the Carling Cup Final. Is anyone else as pant wettingly excited about this as me? A trip to Wembley for a Cup Final has been too long in the waiting. I think the supporters realise that this could be an excellent launch pad for this team a la Graham’s class of ’87. We seem to have all of the ingredients, but we just need that piece of silver to give the team the belief and the tang of sweet success in their nostrils.

The squad have dined out some nice plaudit hors d’ouevres over the last few years, but you sense we really need the meaty goodness of a trophy to kick on. Possibly a trophy made of steak and chips. Or something. Pleasing prose about pretty passing alone won’t feed our children! But I think most of all, we really want to win this trophy so we can finally eliminate that fucking infernal, “Arsenal haven’t won a trophy since 2005” sentence that seems to have hung over our every action for so long.

Here’s hoping that when I speak to you again this time next week, I’ll be able to punctuate the blog with, “Arsenal haven’t won a trophy since Sunday….” LD.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
February 21, 2011 posted by arseblog

Leyton Orient 1-1 Arsenal : Yay, replay!

Football is a funny old game. One minute you’re beating Barcelona and in the throes of joy, the next you concede a late equaliser to a lower league team in the cup and back comes the despair and misery.

Almunia Orient

Ok, maybe not despair and misery, not here at least. There are those that like to have a good wallow and that’s how considerate this Arsenal team are. First they give them a great night like on Wednesday, then give them yesterday so they can slag off all the players and the manager. There aren’t many teams that would be that obliging.

It looks looks like a bit of that David Blaine magic rubbed off on us yesterday and we now have a replay we probably didn’t need, but there you go. That’s football. I only got to see the first half so can only comment on that.

I think the word is ‘meh’. Not exactly an enthralling cup tie by any means. Arsenal had most of the ball but did very little with it from an attacking point of view. Orient defended well enough, got men behind the ball and we lacked the bit of cleverness needed to open them up. When we did, and Gibbs cross found Chamakh six yards out and unmarked, the Moroccan should have scored. Instead he made a total hash of it and put it wide.

At the back debutant Ignasi Miquel (not Mee-gwell, Jon Champion, you poxbottle) looked fairly calm and assured. And, erm, beyond that there’s not a great deal I can say about the performance. Not a great deal caught the eye.

I had 5Live for the second half, fading in and out on the old MW as I was driving the car, and I caught commentary of Rosicky’s goal. I had a feeling he’d score and it seems many people took me for some kind of soothsayer and plonked a few quid on him to do just that. If only I had followed my own vague betting advice I’d be ever so slightly less poor this morning. The Czech’s first goal since he was a teenager came via a header from beyond the penalty spot, set up by Bendtner. Imagine the odds you could have got on that?

It seems that the manager wanted that team to go on and finish the job off. No substitutions were made. Arshavin hit the post. And then, late on, Jonathan Tehoue tricked his way through Gibbs and Miquel and fired a shot between Almunia’s legs to make it 1-1. They get a replay at the Grove which will cash them up and fair play to them.

It adds one more game to our already hectic schedule but that’s hardly the end of the world, is it? Another chance to see this glorious second string huff and puff is something we should all look forward to. Afterwards Arsene said:

Overall it is a disappointment, but we are still in the competition and will now play at home. The most negative side of our result today is one more fixture and in fairness that is not what we needed. We have had problems in the cups against teams from the lower divisions to finish them off, but also we have given a lot. Sometimes, mentally, a breather would not be bad.

The one thing you could say about our FA Cup run this season is that we’ve shown remarkable consistency. We made hard work of two lower league teams in the previous two rounds and did the very same again yesterday. I expect us to go through at home and while a replay isn’t ideal it really isn’t a disaster. This is what happens in football. And not just to Arsenal either, although we’re kinda good at this sort of thing.

As I tiptoe my way around the toys that have been chucked from prams one thing is clear though – there’s a definite and obvious gulf between our ‘first’ XI and those on the outside of that. As I said yesterday it’s a lot to expect players who don’t play regularly to come in and perform at a very high level. However, it’s not too much to expect that a team full of internationals and experienced players might be a bit better than they were against Orient.

What’s most apparent is the lack of urgency. In the first half we had most of the ball but seemed content to just have it, rather than doing anything particularly positive with it. That’s something we could work on and these lads need only look back at Barcelona on Wednesday last to realise that having more of the ball doesn’t guarantee anything.

Anyway, if we’re going to win this FA Cup we’re going to do it the hard way. A 3rd round replay, a win with 10 men over Huddersfield, now another replay against Orient, and then, should we win that, we’ll go to Old Trafford to play United in the quarter-finals. Quite the run of games but there you go. I’m fairly sanguine about the whole thing, really. I’ve seen much, much worse from us in the cup down the years, and from teams who really should have done better, so I’ll await the replay and take it from there.

In the meantime we’ll turn our attention to the Stoke game on Wednesday because that’s now the most important thing. There’s plenty of time to preview that and I’ll do so in the days ahead.

Speaking of which, there was a competition for two tickets that game which appeared briefly on the site on Friday. Of those of you who caught it in time the RNG has selected Simon Jelbart. I’ll be in touch with you regarding collection etc. To the rest, better luck next time, more competitions on the way.

Finally, my thanks to GilbertoSilver from Gunnerblog for his second half commentary in the live blog. It might have been 5Live style but there was no irritating, fat, Northern Irish Liverpool fan anywhere near it.

And just while I’m on the subject – ESPN are now employing Robbie Savage? I just don’t get it. Surely there must be some ex-footballers out there who can a) speak English properly b) don’t sound like a banshee sucking a helium cock and c) who know a little bit about the game of football.

How has Robbie fucking Savage, of all people, become so ubiquitous? I have made a point, as much as possible, of avoiding any pre-match waffle because the standard of analysis and previewing is just so low. The departure of Richard Keys from Sky means I’m more likely to tune in to them again from time to time, but Ray Stubbs sitting at a pitch-side picnic table with Robbie Savage? I mean really.

Yesterday they also had Steve McManaman on and with him and Savage squeaking away it was like listening to Aled Jones violating a Water Sheringham. Enough. Give us people who can speak properly and intelligently and who don’t have voices that would make you jam knitting needles in your ears.

ESPN = d’oh . Any other suggestions? Just realised my suggestion was entirely incorrect due to Savagesque mangling of the English language. Oh well. ‘Extremely shite people narrating’ – I like, via @JackyBanner. Some good ones in today’s Arses too.

Right, that’ll be that. Have yourselves a good Monday.

Arsenal live blog
February 20, 2011 posted by arseblog

Leyton Orient v Arsenal – live blog!

Join me for live blogging of Leyton Orient v Arsenal in the FA Cup 5th round. Just open the window and read – updates will post automatically so there’s no need to refresh the page.

Kick off is 4.30pm – team news posted as soon as we have it. You can also join in with ‘Matchday chat’. You can sign in with Twitter or Facebook or register a new account. When you log in with Twitter or Facebook for the first time you’ll be given the chance to choose a chat username. Then just post away.

Click to launch Leyton Orient v Arsenal live blog.

Come on Arsenal!