I am sleepy this morning. And possibly a bit grumpy. I share no other traits with the rest of the seven dwarves though. No, not even dopey.
Speaking of dopey how about those Birmingham fans? During the game on Saturday they sang ‘There’s only one Martin Taylor’, to laud the man who broke Eduardo’s leg. How edgy. How hilarious. Or, to put it another way, how knuckle-draggingly stupid. Arsene Wenger was not impressed at all, saying:
Frankly, that is atrocious. They will not be remembered for the quality of their taste with that kind of remark. Eduardo was here. I don’t know how he felt about the chants. I just put that in the ranks of stupidity.
What is a surprise is that not only were they were able to stop drooling down their fronts long enough to sing that, it shows a measure of co-ordination and communication you don’t generally find with single cell organisms. Some call David Attenborough. I know football fans, Arsenal fans included, sing and chant things that aren’t really that funny or, indeed, push the boundaries of good taste, but Eduardo is hardly the kind of villain who merits that level of opprobrium.
He had his leg bollixed up in bits by a crude challenge which nearly cost him his career. He has never really criticised Taylor, he’s certainly never criticised Birmingham City, yet these chimps sings songs about him like that?
There are many words to describe people like that but, perhaps, the Birmingham fans (I call them ‘Mingers’ for short), would enjoy the fact that shortly after that fateful game at St Andrew’s we played Aston Villa. Aston Villa fans sang hilarious songs about Eduardo’s injury including ‘One Martin Taylor’, and 18 months later the Mingers follow suit.
So nicely done, Mingers, you are Villa fans. Not to mention half-witted, slack-jawed, eat every meal from the local chipper megacretins. You can hold hands with Phil Brown on the way back to the Championship.
Theo Walcott will have a scan today on his knee. I’m told he spent yesterday limping about the place so there’s definitely something up but hopefully it’s nothing too serious. On the tackle that caused the injury Arsene said:
I don’t want to go too overboard because one of the beauties of the English game is total commitment. We have to cut out what is really dangerous but we have to keep the basics, the commitment that makes the league more attractive than any other league.
As I said yesterday I thought the challenge was hard but fair and typical of the English game. Theo didn’t see it coming so had no chance to try and ‘ride’ it but how many times have we seen Arsenal players down the years make challenges like that? It was Keown tackle, a Steve Bould tackle, a Tony Adams tackle, and while it’s unfortunate Theo is injured it would be wrong to try and cut that out of the game. It’s a contact sport which has had many of the physical aspects watered down or removed altogether in recent years. It would be a shame if we lost more of that side of things. Anyway, fingers crossed for Theo, no doubt we’ll get news sooner rather than later.
Elsewhere Arsene did a big interview with L’Equipe, bits of and pieces of which are emerging in English now. I’ve read this Sky Sports version and the translation seems a bit weird to me. Sort of like the person translating it wasn’t quite fluent in French and sat there with a dictionary for some bits. That might be just me though. Arsene talks about Real Madrid’s interest in the summer but said his commitment to Arsenal and his players meant he couldn’t leave. He also spoke about how he felt a duty to leave a legacy, saying:
It would be unforgivable to have had the privilege of longevity and leaving no trace after me. But that means a win in the Champions League, because great wins reinforce certainties and give rightfulness to a culture.
There’s the usual stuff there about killing Song and Denilson with signings (zzzz), the finances at other clubs and the ‘doping’ at City and Real Madrid, nothing terribly new really, but Arsene’s legacy, more trophies or not, will be the way we play football and the expectation that whoever takes over maintains that.
Beyond that not much happening. There’s Champions League action tomorrow so there’s likely a press conference today, so hopefully we’ll get news on Theo then and we can look ahead to the AZ Alcazar game tomorrow.
Till then.
