Morning to you all from a very chilly Dublin. I know this first hand because I had to drive the Blogette to her Saturday job.
Pfff, teenagers these days have it good. I used to have to get up and cycle on morning’s like this when I was a lad. I remember working for a large Irish supermarket chain and this was in the days before shopping trollies had coin slots and all that. People gave a pound note for a trolley upstairs and when they brought it back to the car-park downstairs I gave them a pound back.
That was a fun job (not), but I did put it on my fledgling CV later. Honestly, I claimed to be the ‘non-mechnical mobile equipment supervisor’, heh.
Anyway, on to the football and today we face Wigan Athletic. We beat them last season but left it very, very late to do so. We can talk all we want about putting a performance in today but really it doesn’t matter how we play once we get the three points. Playing poorly and scabbing a winner after it goes in off Alex Song’s arse will give the team much more confidence than dominating the game, having lots of chances and finding ourselves on the wrong end of the scoreline after Wigan score with their only shot on goal.
We need the three points, obviously, and Arsene is aware of our failings this season, it seems. We’ve beaten United then lost to Villa and City. We’ve lost to Fulham and to Stoke. So the manager says:
We know we have to beat all the big teams but we also have to deliver in a more consistent level against so-called smaller teams.
So-called indeed. As for the team I think we’ll see Djourou keep his place in defence, I think Sylvester might play as it’s Kolo’s first game back and if Eboue is actually fit he may start on the right. Up front it’ll be Adebayor and van Persie, barring any late injuries.
We’re more than capable of beating Wigan but the attitude has to be right from the start. There can be no turning up thinking this is a game we’re sure to win after beating Chelsea. We need to look at Wigan as if they were Brazil. Put the required effort and hard work into it and we’ll win the game.
The manager says he’s convinced William Gallas will stay with the club, saying:
My desire is clear, I want him to stay of course. We want to keep William with us because he is an important player in the squad and what other people try to provoke, or try to put out in the media, we cannot master.
Let’s see what happens when January comes around then. But the manager has wanted to keep players before and been unable to do so. It’s all down to the player, if he wants to leave then there’s not much you can do about it.
The old Cristiano Ronaldo story is doing the rounds again. Ronaldo spoke about how he visited Arsenal and Arsene Wenger charmed his mum. Arsene the player. Wenger says it was down to Carlos Quieroz that United signed him but also says the money was a factor. Of course it was. Arsenal had agreed a fee of £4m or so with Sporting Lisbon, United came in and offered £12.5m, a transfer which as probed by the owners at the time. Anyway, he went to United, became a cunt and that’s the end of that chapter.
In the wake of Roy Keane’s departure from Sunderland Arsene says he’s never felt like walking away but summed up the football manager’s life nicely I thought. He said:
In life sometimes you have a happy period of six months and after six months you are less happy. In football it’s a happy period of two days and two days of complete despair.
Sort of like being a fan then, I suppose. Was it after we’d lost the league in 2003 when we played Southampton and beat them 6-0 (Pires and Pennant got hat-tricks)? I remember how awful losing that league was but how much fun that game was to watch. Football is mad, you know.
Not much else happening this early on a Saturday morning. Anyone sensible is still in bed. So here’s to a good result today, no matter how we get it, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
