Ok, I’m now officially bored of this Interlull. There are games today with some Arsenal involvement, but it feels like it’s been going on for ages. Even the spam I’m getting is boring. I mean, what’s the point of this one?
Well, thanks for that John. Firstly, I don’t know which John it is and I most certainly don’t have any plans scheduled with a John whose arrival might be delayed by him missing a flight. Secondly, if you’re going to go to the trouble of telling me you’ve missed the plane, at least go into some detail.
Was it a traffic jam? Did your child get his head stuck between some railings? Were you involved in a road-rage incident with a cyclist who captured everything with his helmet-cam and also a camera strapped to his head? Perhaps the taxi driver was a terrorist who was paid to kidnap you and bring you to the underground lair of an evil villain who is blackmailing your boss for your safe return in exchange for nuclear codes. Make it exciting.
Spammers usually want something, like for you to click a link; sign up for some dodgy product that could affect your virility; or to hack your system and steal your very identity; but this makes me just think of a really lonely person randomly sending email to people he doesn’t know to increase his feelings of isolation by apologising for meetings that never existed in the first place.
“I’m sorry Michael Bay, I cannot now star in your remake of Mask, the story of a hideously deformed young man who makes lasers when he plops and can explode toasters with his mind.”
Living life vicariously through spam, what a world we’ve created.
‘Everyone knows a John’, he’ll say. ‘Imagine the larks when I beat the ridiculously long odds to send a spam message to someone who is waiting for a John to arrive by jet-airplane and that guy thinks he won’t be arriving at the airport because he’s missed the plane and then John arrives in the airport and there’s nobody to greet him and he ends up living there like Tom Hanks in that film about that guy that lived in an airport.’
Anyway, I think it just about sums up the state of this particular international break, even if Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain did score a goal last night for England (clip here). Hopefully it’s one that will do him some good because his form has been a little indifferent so far this season. A winner against Chelsea at Wembley in August looked like the kind of thing that would set the standard for this current campaign, but he’s struggled – particularly defensively – and he’s still yet to really nail down a place in the side.
I have to say I found the talk of how he lacks belief and self-confidence a little strange, because whenever you see him he comes across as very self-assured and confident, but maybe on the pitch it’s a different thing. By his own admission he’s hyper-critical and possibly dwells on the negatives rather than the positives. In which case he really needs to take a leaf out of the Theo Walcott/Homer Simpson approach:
That’s not to say he shouldn’t try and learn from the mistakes, simply that he shouldn’t let them fester. Otherwise I’m afraid he’ll end up like Spammy McGee up above, sending desperate, inconsequential spam emails from his mansion with a heated swimming pool in it and a TV bigger than any wall you’ve ever seen. A fate to be avoided.
Meanwhile, Per Mertesacker has been talking about Calum Chambers, the 4th musketeer in our collection of central defenders. With Gabriel challenging the established Mertesciely axis, Chambers provides the depth and despite a couple of unfortunate own goals this season, he’s done quite well when he’s been needed. And the BFG is backing him to really make the grade, like a footballing Major Tom:
He’s eager to learn, he really fancies challenging every single centre back and that’s something you need. When you step up as a young talent, you need to challenge the old lads. It’s really good to have him so that we can improve. You never stop working, you never stop doing things because there’s someone behind you – in a respectful way – who is giving absolutely everything in every single training session.
That’s what my feeling is. When he does that, he’s got a great chance to develop as one of the top centre backs.
I like him, I have to say. It’s always touch and go with a young talent, more than ever these days when people make their minds up about a player’s ability and potential so quickly, and especially at centre-half. It’s a position where there’s a lot of learning required and unfortunately much of that learning is tied in with things that can be costly to the team.
He seems a pretty level-headed young man though, and perhaps for the first time in a long time we’ve got a young player coming through the ranks who can properly learn from those ahead of him. We’ve had promising young defenders before but they were either thrust into action and asked to learn on the job, or they had a massive spanner like William Gallas as their ‘mentor’.
If you had to choose a couple of defenders who could guide you through the early years of your career then Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscienly are a great pick. The experience, the differing styles, that the fact that neither of them is such a wanker that you want them to be blasted out of a cannon into a gigantic cactus, all of these things are important and hopefully Chambers, and Arsenal, will see the benefit of that.
Right, that’s that for this morning. If you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to this week’s Arsecast Extra it’s available here or via the player below. It’ll help pass some of the time, and already it’s been receiving great reviews and comparisons with Jean Michel Jarre’s ‘Oxygène‘. Listen well.
Till tomorrow folks.
