Hello again, dear old sticks, and may I wish you a very good ‘daypart’, depending on precisely where in the British Empire you currently reside. It is almost certain, however, that you know what time of day it is, unlike our good friend and egg-eyed folk hero, Mr. David Moyes.
For it is to Manchester that we first turn today. Trafford, more precisely, notable for its impoverished elderly people, lack of decent restaurants, vicious canines, and its horrible football stadium, the Glazerdome, delightfully fragile in its vulnerability as a home venue for poor old Fergie’s Flounderers, who this week were ejected from the League Cup like a Tuppeny Tom from an upmarket hotel. Like a dog from a butcher’s shop. Like a cadaver from a ship. Like a.. Well, we could go on. It is almost always bad form to delight in the misfortunes of others, but in this case it is perfectly acceptable. There is even a word for it: Fergenfreude.
Fergenfreude is enjoyment obtained from watching Manchester United, every week, five out of the past six in fact, getting diced up into dog vittles by each and every team they play. Fergenfreude is a pleasing sense of retribution for the irritating dominance of this once great team. Fergenfreude is for all the times Old Red Nose tapped his cheap wristwatch to alert the referee that he would be expecting enough time to be added on to the match for United to score an equaliser.
Fergenfreude is for Ruud van Nistelrooy. Fergenfreude is for Roy Keane. Fergenfreude is because United were so good for so long and it quite gave me, and football, the pip. Let us speak plainly: United are in such turmoil that one of their fans telephoned the constabulary to ask to speak to Sir Alex Ferguson. Read that sentence again. They are calling the police because things are so awful. (The wonder here of course is that the fan in question was actually calling from a district of Manchester. My guineas are on the call being cunningly re-routed from a middle school in South Korea).
Like King Midas’s cursed cousin, everything David Moyes touches turns to ordure. Enjoy it while it lasts though, chums. As much as it would be a thing of ecstatic wonder if United collapsed like Leeds, or declined like other big clubs of the past, your Huddersfields, your Preston North Ends, your Liverpools – it is not going to happen. Only today we learn that the stripling Mr. Mata, of Roman’s Ghastly Dozen, is making his way northward, having been deemed an encumbrance at the Fulham Dog Track. Thought by the Portuguese mountebank to be not vicious or thug-like enough to even make the bench, Mr. Mourinho seeks to compile a team of violent vagabonds. This is what he does. Every player in a Mr. Mourinho team has to be part-thug. Just as every signing at Arsenal has to be part multi-lingual intellectual.
Yet should we not have signed him, cry the ill-educated in our support? There are two types of people who think we should have signed Mr. Mata: Those who think we should have signed Mr. Mata and those who understand football. Our attacking ranks or filled to the brim with the sneakiest, craftiest magicians in world football. He is a fine player, but we have much nicer ones, thank you. One notices, incidentally, that a Mr. Piers Morgan of America wanted The Arsenal to sign Mr. Mata. So whose side are you on?
We should of course mention the win over Fulham this weekend last: Splendid show by Cousins, who seems to be full of the joys of midwinter, skipping and frolicking here and there, probing, teasing, bamboozling, like bullfighter and bull in one bijou package. Special mention must go to young wing nuisance Steven Knabbley, the Tufnell Park Terrier, who irritated the Fulham defence like itching powder in the codpiece for pretty much the whole match. At one point toward the end of the first half we even saw his signature move – ‘Mrs. Roberts Washing Basket’ – a delicate switchback turn. The ‘K’ is audible, by the way, a strange anomaly from the part of North London where he grew up.
And of course Sir Albert Sesley reached his landmark 100th game for Woolwich. He is on his way to becoming a Woolwich legend, but until he reaches the levels of grit and determination of Frank Moss, he shall remain a prince rather than a king. Frank Moss, as you will know, the only Arsenal glove butler to score in a top level match. In 1935 against Everton, he dislocated his shoulder. No Family Pew in those days and he had to play on, down the left wing, and scored the first in a two nil win. A true legend.
The win against Fulham leaves us clear at the top of England, not that you would know from a perusal of the current journals. As Arsenal are being stoically ignored by the media, for research purposes (and because I’m a bitter old bugger) I have compiled a handy chart for the news-papers, which ignores those clubs falsely propped up by either the plundered mineral wealth of an entire country, or by the wealth of an entire country:
1. Arsenal
2. Liverpool
3. Tottenham
4. Everton
So you see? It looks utterly ridiculous. Perhaps Manchester City and Chelsea have their uses, after all.
Til next time – pip pip!
