Happy Saturday to you. It’s absolutely pissing down with rain here in Dublin, it’s grey, my head is somewhat *boilked* after one too many pints of Scraggy Bay last night.
Still, I came home and wrote what I think is possibly the most insightful, informative article of my life on Arseblog News last night. It’s no wonder so many writers are inveterate drunks when this is the kind of quality you churn out when you’re working half-cut – I might even have been three-quarters cut, in fairness.
I do like the idea of Chile trying to stop Alexis playing in the FA Cup final. I know they wouldn’t, but imagine if they tried. This is a man who lives for football, as you can see by his performances, so trying to invoke some flaky FIFA rule to stop him turning out in a showpiece game like this would be utterly fruitless.
I heard that sometimes after training Alexis is out there doing things with the football and he has to be called in to stop him just playing all day. He challenges some of the young players to games of three-and-in. From time to time he’ll come up to Arsene Wenger and ask ‘Do you need anything from the shops? I’ll run and get it. TIME ME!’, to see if he can beat his own record. His car door can only be opened by him kicking a football into specially designed bucket 50 yards away. His fridge contains no food, just fresh footballs. After years of garden practice his dogs, Atom and Humber, are both good enough to play for mid-table Premier League sides.
So, I don’t think there’s any danger of him missing out. However, because the Copa America runs from mid-June until the final on July 4th, there is a danger of him being not quite ready for the start of the new season. You would hope that the lessons of this season will be learned and that, despite his huge importance, he’s given the proper rest to ensure that his season isn’t afflicted in the same way as some of the World Cup returnees this year.
Not only that, we have to make sure that the squad is strong enough to cope without him for a while. That wasn’t the case this season. We had to throw Per Mertesacker back into action after just a week of pre-season training and he remains the player with the most Premier League minutes to his name. The same with Mesut Ozil. It’s not quite as intense as the World Cup but still, let’s make sure that whatever we do with our squad this summer – and I think there’ll be a few things going on – we don’t put ourselves in a position where Alexis is necessary early on and we suffer the consequences of that (of course if they don’t get our of their group then it’s a moot point, but we’ll see).
The manager’s press conference was pretty uninteresting yesterday. There was some stuff about Mourinho and ‘respect’ but frankly it’s too dull to go into. I don’t think anyone could argue against the fact he can be a classless boor at times, but that’s just the way he operates as a manager. I’m sure he likes his kids and does a lotta good for charidee but doesn’t like to talk about it, but as some players are different animals on the pitch to off it, his Modus operandi is well known.
I don’t think it’s anything that unduly bothers Wenger, and he’ll know that looking for the Chelsea manager to behave more respectfully is like asking a dolphin not to be a complete arsehole, but hopefully now this whole thing is trickling to a close. The only way I want this to resurface is if the boring becomes boaring, and it’s a giant pig tusking the shite out of Mourinho, but I’m not holding my breath.
Not much else happening this morning. If you haven’t already you can check out yesterday’s Arsecast with Paolo Bandini and Jeorge Bird – who many people have pointed out sounds uncannily like Jack Wilshere. Thankfully Jeorge is not quite as injury-prone and you can check out his latest column on the Arsenal youth over on Arseblog News too.
I think some coffee and bacon is in order now, then I have to get into the right gear to take the dog for a walk. Till tomorrow.
