It’s gone completely quiet bar the fact that some of our players were involved for their countries last night. I haven’t seen any wailing or gnashing of teeth on Twitter so I’m assuming nobody’s been maimed or lost their leg at the knee.
I don’t even know who played and for how long, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care. Sweden were in town last night and they nearly knocked me off my bike on the way to 5 a side. Well, truthfully it was the Mugsmasher’s bike but the knocking stuff is spot on. Actually, being perfectly honest about the whole thing it was one rather inebriated Bjorn Borg looking bloke who seemed to have no idea what traffic lights were for rather than the entire nation of Sweden, but still.
I don’t bear grudges against countries for the actions of one of their hairy drunkards, so fear not Swedes. I still love you and your Limpary ways. All’s well that ends well.
Looking around the papers this morning and there’s already talk of the January transfer window and moves that we might make in January. I suspect I’m not alone in this but I have a little bit the up to my tits with the transfer window and all it brings. We’ve just come through one of the most difficult, yet ultimately successful, transfer periods in our history and, you know, haven’t we all had enough at this point?
I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and say it was over-analysed (although hopefully sensibly so for the most part) but between now and January 1st there is literally – and that’s actual literally and not the Jamie Redknapp bastardised version – nothing we can do but get on with things using the players we have.
Even when it does open again, I would like to see changes made. Although the first change I’d make is move it back to the old system when you could buy players all season long up to a cut-off point in March. What was wrong with that anyway? I know they said it was something about making clubs use their young players if and when they needed them, but beyond that I dunno.
If that’s not a runner, then I’d open it only in the month of July. 31 days to do it all. If you get it sorted, great. If you don’t, tough shit. That’s your own fault for being crap. That way every team would be complete, one way or the other, before the start of each campaign and it would make it a lot easier to produce pre-season previews. There would be no need for the phrase ‘at the time of writing’.
I suspect agents wouldn’t like that too much, so if that was the case I’d move to a system where all the agents in the world are brought together for a gigantic event in a new stadium that I would build. I would call it The Colosseum and, wearing leather britches and open toed sandals, they would be given a range of weapons. Such as the spear, the javelin, swords, daggers and perhaps the odd caltrop.
All the agents would then be put into the middle of the arena and set at each other. If Agent X kills Agent Y then he gains of the players represented by that agent. The battle continues (perhaps with the occasional introduction of large, hungry cats for increased japery and evisceration) until there is just one agent left standing. He has ALL the players and he holds his weapon in the air, battered but alive.
Thinking he is triumphant, he is then stamped to death by an elephant and each team gets randomly assigned players from the pot. Any player that refuses to go their assigned club, for whatever reason, is put to death by means of Scaphism. If that doesn’t act as a deterrent to the rest of them, then nothing will.
Sky Sports News, of course, would be present, looking to make more pantomime out of things. But their presenters would find it’s very difficult to report in an error free and professional manner after being nailed to crosses that circle the arena itself.
“We getting some breaking … news …”, an annoying Scottish man might intone, before correcting himself. “No … not news … it’s my legs.”
What larks, eh Pip?
I think I need to take the dog for a walk. Some more Arsenal Gent squad profiles coming later. More from me tomorrow.
