March 10th
Main point of interest today is the draw for the Champions League quarter finals which takes place at around 11am GMT. That’ll probably be closer to 11.30 as they generally preface these things with some clown talking about how great UEFA is and how they’re not at all just a bunch of money grabbing weaklings unable to addresss the real issues in football. Anyway, I have no particular preference. A Spanish draw would be nice as it means I’ll probably be able to get to the game.
Despite our progress in the CL and being the only English club to do so some people have to have a pop. West Ham manager Alan Pardew has decided he’s important enough that people might care what he thinks and he has criticised the lack of English players in the Arsenal team. He also says that all teams should be made include at least three English players. I would just like to take this opportunity to criticise the lack of non-cunts in the West Ham side. They’re a disgrace to non-cunts and I would like to propose that each team should include at least three players who are not complete and utter fuckbags. How do you like those apples, Pardew, you cretin?
PFA Chief Gordon Taylor has also opened his big fat cunting mouth, saying “It’s an English club but not an English success.”
He can go suck a leper’s cock for all I care. The Sun does a league table of how many English players each team has. We’re in the ‘relegation’ zone while at the top of the table Birmingham have 12, while Pardew’s West Ham, Manchester City, Newcastle, Charlton, Middlesbrough and West Brom are all in double figures. And what a reflection that is of the English player. Not one of those teams is ever going to challenge for the league and more than one of them has a good chance of real relegation. Still, we should listen to a man with less than one season’s experience of Premiership management and pay over the odds for English players who aren’t as good as other players but they’re English and that’s the important thing. Not winning matches or competitions or trophies. How many ‘English’ players did the Liverpool team of the late 80s have? To my recollection it was full of Irish, Scotch and Welsh with an Aussie and a Zimbabwean thrown in for good measure. If buying lots of Englishmen brings you the massive success Birmingham has enjoyed this season then I’ll put my stock in Arsene Wenger and not Alan Pardew.
Jens Lehmann says being dropped for Manuel Almunia last season was a good experience for him. I said last season that when he got his place back in the team he certainly seemed more focussed and that, along with his burning desire to be Germany’s number at this year’s World Cup, has seen him become the best keeper in England in my opinion. Complacency is a footballer’s worst enemy and maybe that happened to him a bit but this season he has been consistently excellent and it’s a real shame he’s not a couple of years younger so he could stay as our number one for a few more seasons. I was discussing this with my chum who needs to buy a new 70s home shirt during the Madrid game and we concluded he’s definitely our favourite Arsenal goalkeeper since Blind John.
“I categorically, from the bottom of my heart do not want Thierry Henry to leave Arsenal Football Club” – Ian Wright explains his recent comments after a rather harsh backlash.
Thierry himself has called Wednesday’s 0-0 win over Madrid his ‘greatest Champions League moment with Arsenal’. I think it might be for most of us as well. Nobody gave us a chance of beating Madrid over two legs, let alone winning away in the Bernebeu. If was going to be won by us it would surely have been done at Highbury but the boys have shown the potential that the manager has always claimed there is in the squad. Now it’s a matter of finding the consistency to bring things to the next level. About his future he said “We’re a good team with good togetherness and you surely saw where my desire is. The way I was playing is the most important thing, not all the time talking about my contract.”
Well, that clears it all up! Still, when things are going well, or in the wake of nights like Wednesday, it becomes less of an issue. Let’s hope it remains that way from now until May.
In other very brief news I believe we may be in for a month of Sundays and if you have any relatives or friends down there you might want to send them a woolly jumper because hell has just frozen over. James Lawton writes something nice about Arsenal. Oooooh, and there goes the flying the pig.
Finally it’s goodbye to Paul Merson who has finally hung up his boots. He said “It goes very quickly. When you are a kid you think you are going to play forever. But it has just caught up with me.”
Good luck, Merse. And that’s that. The final day of the week. Thank fuck.
