First we turn to the City of Manchester Stadium, AKA the Abu Dhabi Dome, AKA The Lowest Circle of Hell Arena, AKA The Shitty Hat Stadium, AKA Manchester City Council Stadium, AKA Stockport Park, AKA The Palace of Grotesquery, AKA The Oil Ground, AKA The Compound of `Mercenaries, AKA Mrs. Nasri’s Hideout, AKA Sagna’s Sanctuary, AKA The Kingdom of Doom, where last weekend a plucky band of twelve-toed genetic curiosities collectively known as Stoke City Football Club, over 120 toes between their First XI, struck a blow for the little man and beat the subsidised, football-killing monsters whose success is only down to the petrochemical wealth of an entire country enabling them to purchase by the Bentleyload – a team of supremely gifted warrior athletes (and Bacary Sagna) – whose only reason for being in that godawful slum-ridden hodge-podge of cotton mills, estate pubs, thriving heroin dealerships and urine-stinking shopping ‘precincts’ is that they all quite like earning ten times more per week than your average working woman or man does in a year. Two and a half cheers then for little Stoke City.
Except no, that is not quite the case. The Coates family, Stoke City’s owners, are the Poundland Abu Dhabi Royal family of the North. They have subsidised plucky little Stoke to the tune of £86m. “Without the backing of this wonderful family, we would not have achieved anything like we have today,” said horrendous little water rat Anthony Pulis last year. Utterly vile.
I am sure that at the time, Manchester City must have felt like a stinking tramp had entered their stately home and proceeded to relieve himself on the floor, but in reality it is nothing like that. So whilst it is only correct that we should take an almost sensual pleasure in the defeat of the Abu Dhabi Vulgarians, we should remember that it was a team who are in effect the Jumble Sale Chelsea who did it.
Turn then, if we must, to the unhappy rannygazoo that was Woolwich’s unedifying draw with Leicester Fosse weekend last. Mr. Windsor continuing his somewhat ill-proven argument that strikers are something of an unnecessary frippery, started Whizzband Saunders up front, with our lively billikens of Cousins & Orwell behind Mr. Sangley hoping to supply the Gentleman’s Favours.
Yet Mr. Sangley continues to impersonate an electrified marionette, He is a nuisance, a distraction, a handful, what the Vikings would have called a berserker, but a world class striker he is not. There is one thing you have to do, repeatedly, twenty or perhaps thirty times per season, which he has not yet done. We very much look forward to him doing that but perhaps he would like to continue his education on loan somewhere.
None are available, cries the manager, much like the layabout husband when asked by his spouse to toddle off to the shop for a pint of milk. They have sold out, dear, and I am staying right here on my harris.
Which brings us to the signing of Danielsan Arantes do Dat Guy Nascimento Santos Welvalho, or simply Welé. Please see below for the Gooner faithful’s attitude toward this particular signing throughout the day. At 11pm, I would say that the majority were fairly gruntled with his acquisition. If he is given a run in the side, with Orwell and Cousins sending in the ticklers, all may very well be oojah-cum-spiff by the end of the season.
More anon
The Gent
