Oh if only there were some entirely made up word that would describe my hangover in one handy soundbite.
Sweet suffering Jebus I blame the Mugsmasher for this. ‘Fancy a quiet pint?’, I said, ‘nothing mental mind. You know me. When Mrs Blogs is away I am paragon of virtue and good behaviour’.
‘Sure’, says he twiddling his moustache and throwing his cape over his shoulder in a dastardly manner. ‘That sounds grand’.
Well, when I was walking through the mean streets of the newly Googled Dublin last night some time after 4am I realised that those weren’t quiet pints at all. In fact, they were actually whiskeys and rums. He’d tricked me again with his wily ways. When will I ever learn? I suppose the mere fact that one has a brother so cunning and Machiavellian would drive an upstanding and abstemious man like myself to the drink. It’s a constant struggle to escape his boozy clutches. I must do better.
Anyway, looking ahead to tomorrow’s game against Chelsea and the injury news is not great. Cesc, Almunia and Kieran Gibbs have been added to the lengthy injury list. Let’s face it, if some of these guys were cars you’d have a quiet word with some local gentlemen of ill repute and then feign surprise when the police called to tell you they’d found the burnt out remains of your motor somewhere up the mountains.
“I’m sorry Mr Wenger but your 2.5GI Van Persie is no more”.
“NOOOOO, WHHYYYY?!! Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to spend this lovely insurance money”.
Cesc’s hammy isn’t quite right yet, Almunia’s got a broken heart while Gibbs did something to his calf during the Partizan game. There was also bad news regarding Thomas Vermaelen. Arsene said in his press conference yesterday that his achilles was a big problem, not quite so big that it requires surgery, but big enough that he’s going to be out for another few weeks. Adding him to the lifers like RVP, Walcott, Ramsey and Bendtner and that’s the guts of a good team we’re missing.
Nevertheless Arsene is confident we can go there and get a result, saying:
If we turn up with a great performance – and I am convinced we will – we will beat them. Football is always down to the performance of the day.
All they need to do is stop in at the local Tesco and buy a big jar of ‘Great Performance’. They should probably stock up on blunderbusses too because Didier Drogba has been talking about how much he loves to play Arsenal. And why wouldn’t he? I feel the same way when the centre-foward is slow and fat, it makes my job a lot easier and evens the playing field.
The midweek win against Partizan put us back on the rails, if you will, but this is much sterner test altogether.
“This is a much sterner te …”, oh.
I think it’s a game we simply can’t afford to lose. A draw is no bad result at we have to show we’re better than last season’s humiliations. It was depressing and embarrassing at home and at their place last season, we’ve got to put it some way right tomorrow. I don’t particularly care how we play once we get some kind of result.
And speaking of how we play and such, Gael Clichy talks to The Sun:
We have great players and when we play our best football it is difficult to stop us. But it is five years where we have been saying the same thing.
So at some point you have to ask yourself a question – do you want to be the team that’s playing the great football or do you want to be the team that’s winning silverware. We want to try and do both but that is very difficult.
There’s not a great deal you can add to that really. Other than ‘Dear Gael, please stop making monstrous cock-ups, thanks!’.
As a Saturday aside how about this? – Trophies are overrated. I just throw it out there for your reading pleasure.
There’s not a great deal else going on other than my overwhelming desire to cook various parts of a pig so that’s what I’m going to do. A final look at the Chelsea game tomorrow. It won’t be as late as today’s.
Well, not unless that Mugsmasher tricks me into drinking ‘beer’ again. I think I’m wise to him now though.
I think.
