Yesterday’s game against Sp*rs raised so many questions for me. Having travelled that morning from Dublin knowing that Sp*rs were now stronger than us, I have to admit I was ever so worried. Robbie Keane surely wouldn’t lie. Peter Crouch also had his tuppenceworth to throw in about the respective merits of both teams, suggesting that his was better than ours. He seems an amiable, honest chap. Why would he dissemble so?
And then, sitting on the tube to Victoria, I read Harry Redknapp in the papers saying that Arsenal lacked the experience for games like this. And you know what? They were all right.
Sp*rs were stronger than us when it came to making substitutions. Keane must have raced off the pitch quicker than Billy Whizz when his number came up. And Crouchy, if I may call him that, had it spot on. His team outshone ours in the whole ‘The only plan we have is to hoof it to up the lanky cunt up front who will use his elbows and lean all over our defenders’ thing. Credit where it’s due.
And as for ol’ Twitchy himself, Arsenal did lack experience. The experience of being shit cunts who got turned over big time without Arsenal ever really having to play that well. If it’s no trouble to them at all I would very much encourage more hubristic chatter before we play them again. It does make victory all the sweeter.
There are some who might say there’s little chance of a day which begins with two gin and tonics at 6am ending well. Those people would be wrong. Awake at 5am, on a flight, then a train from Gatwick having to listen to a crazy woman talking to a bloke who looked like Lee Bowyer crossed with an Orc, then to Holloway Road via the Armoury and in the pub by 10am for a breakfast pint of Guinness. It could only have been better if the pint of Guinness had bacon and sausage in it. Oooh, there’s an idea. A real breakfast pint, eating and drinking.
Folks arrived, the atmosphere built, some nervous, some quite confident that Sp*rs were going to take it all the way, songs being sung, copies of Two Halves being read having been brought to the pub by GilbertoSilver, the build up was fantastic. And inside the ground there was a real buzz. Lots of red and white and a corner of teeny-tiny white cocks.
The game itself was odd, at first. Ref Clattenburg allowed David Bentley away with a deliberate handball and a very obvious foul in the first couple of minutes. Maybe on another day you might say the ref showed some common sense and didn’t get his cards out too early, but that other day is for cunts. It was a North London derby and we wanted the pantomime villain booked. As it turned out Bentley trudged around the pitch forlornly trying to do something, anything, clearly not so much for the team as for himself. I laughed at the number of times he stood, hugging the touchline, his arm in the air like a desperate schoolboy who for once knows the answer to teacher’s question, only to watch the ball messed around with or given away by his teamchums.
Gomes made a fantastic save from Cesc. So fantastic I was almost on my feet to cheer the goal but it wasn’t to be. Yet. Bendtner was replaced by Eduardo after picking up a groin injury. Arshavin pootered about the place not doing very much at all, the game was a bit flat, a bit one paced and at times we were careless and sloppy in possession. Players on their heels and not their toes, missing passes and it was a bit frustrating because we knew they were there for the taking if we stepped it up a bit.
It was hard to see where the goal was going to come from. Then we got a throw on the right, it came back to Sagna who crossed it, Robin van Persie got ahead of Leadfooted King and poked it home to make it 1-0. Awesome. And I was still celebrating, and laughing, at Sp*rs when all of a sudden Cesc was clean through on goal and it was 2-0. The roar was primal. There was a man sitting behind me who was a guest of an Arsenal fan, a neutral observer in all this, and he seemed most amused at the way the second was being celebrated.
Not that I care. I’d have lap-danced for him at that stage if he’d asked, such was my delirium. 2-0 to the Arsenal rocked around the Grove, the place was heaving. From going in at half-time 0-0 to being two up almost out of nowhere. I had to watch Match of the Day when I got home to see Cesc’s goal properly and ol’ Twitchy complained about the Arsenal goals saying ‘There wasn’t a good one between them’. I respectfully disagree.
The first goal was marvellous, instinctive striking play, the kind of poacher’s goal that would have pundits creaming themselves and telling Capello to take Michael Owen to the World Cup if he were capable of scoring that kind of goal these days. But the second. Well that was a fucking brilliant goal. What do I care if Agent Palacios gave us the ball back easily? Cesc took it, went past one man, skipped over Palacios’s lunge, nutmegged Leadfoot King, brought it on and stuck it past Gomes at his near post. If that isn’t a fucking good goal then I need to start watching netball instead.
At 2-0 with this Arsenal team you can’t ever be sure. Even against opposition as poor as West Ham or Sp*rs but nerves were settled early enough into the second half with the third. Apu-Apricoto took out Eduardo on our right hand side, the linesman flagged and everyone stopped thinking the ref would give the free kick. Instead he waved play on, Sagna reacted quickest, took it on, crossed towards Robin van Persie but it was meat and drink for the goalkeeper, except the goalkeeper turned out to be a vegetarian teetotaller and spat it back out into the path of Robin van Persie who put it away to make it 3-0 to the Arsenal.
When you consider Eduardo should have had at least one, possibly two, it could have been even better. Wenger went absolutely mental when Eddie missed the second chance. As it trickled wide he took off his jacket, threw it on the ground, jumped up and down, his arms extended in pure ‘What the fuck was that?’ mode, but it was only because he wanted to turn the screw as much as we did. 3-0 is a decent win, 4-0 or 5-0 is a right slapping and who wouldn’t have wanted to inflict that yesterday?
Sp*rs only real moment of danger was when Bentley managed to produce one decent set-piece delivery but it was well saved by Almunia who looked assured and confident on his return to the team. And afterwards the consensus was that it had been easy. That for all their talk, all their bluster, Sp*rs were just … well, they were just Sp*rs.
For us it was another three points, we’ve dropped only two from our last 6 league league games, a temporary move into 2nd in the table although United’s win in the evening put them back above us (we do have a game in hand), and it was a reminder to our neighbours that it’s what happens on the pitch and not on the back pages that counts. As Arsene Wenger “Football is not about opinion. It’s about performance”. And how can you argue with that?
The pub afterwards, more songs, more pints, post-game euphoria which is what gets you through when you’re sitting in Gatwick, as tired as a cunt, having another couple of gin and tonics to add symmetry to the day’s proceedings. The tiredness doesn’t matter when you’ve won 3-0, when you’ve had a great day out with great folk, when you realise that football, for all the frustration and vexation and disappointment it brings us at times, is probably the best thing in the world. Ever.
Only because we are the Arsenal though.
Reaction: Arsene Wenger, Robin van Persie.
