Morning all. A very quick Friday round-up for you.
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And there we go. Thanks for reading. Have a great day.
It’s a bit mad to think we’re suffering the Interlull tedium and missing football when this time next month we’ll probably be wishing we had some kind of break because of the relentlessness of the schedule.
All football, ALL the time.
I suppose this one feels a bit worse because of the all the postponements. We should have had more football last month, but in a little over 6 weeks we’re going to have to steel ourselves for the Mother of all Interlulls when the season breaks for the world cup. What on earth are we going to do?
Yes, there will be football when the World Cup itself starts, but there will be no Arsenal. And as the tournament progresses, the amount of football dwindles. From three games a day to one game every three or four days, and then what are we supposed to do to pass the time?
Count how many montages of glistening skyscrapers and David Beckham we get via the TV coverage? Here’s David Beckham on a motorcycle, showing off the many beautiful streets of Doha. Here’s David Beckham at the beach wearing aviator sunglasses, his tattoos digitally removed to ensure we see his oiled-up abs.
Suddenly, the sound of Playing with the boys by Kenny Loggins blasts from our TV speakers, Becks is joined by three other high profile ex-pros for a completely and utterly and most definitely heterosexual game of volleyball.
“Let’s go!”, squeaks Beckham and the fun begins.
Back in studio, Roy Keane bemoans such activity as a frippery of the modern world, insisting that back in his day they’d never have played volleyball and instead would have engaged in some completely and utterly and most definitely heterosexual Grecian wrestling.
“Wrestlin’! Wrestlin’!’, mimicks Ian Wright in an Irish accent. At first Keane looks like he’s going to give him a dig in the side of the head, but he can’t help but laugh.
“Fecks sake, Wrighty!”, he says. Nevertheless, he makes a mental note to send a ‘Thanks but no thanks’ to Beckham’s invitation to a Manchester United reunion BBQ happening at a private beach later that week.
On the BBC, Gareth Southgate defends his decision to take 19 defenders to the World Cup, and even then there’s no place for in-form Ben White, overlooked to facilitate a surprise recall for Des Walker.
“I have to make decisions as a football manager,” he explains, “because I am a football manager and football managers have to make decisions. Some of them are easy decisions, some of them are difficult decisions, and some of the decisions are neither easy nor difficult but they still have to be made. In this instance, you could say that some of the players I picked fell into each category but I think it would be unfair for me to say which ones are which.”
That’s left to Henry Winter in The Times who elicits the information from a confidential source in the England camp who goes on record to say, “As a confidential source I have to leak information. Some of that information is easy to leak, some of it is not so easy to leak, and some of the information is neither easy or difficult to leak.”
“SOUTHGATE THE DRIP“, screams the headline in The Sun when they put two and two together some weeks later.
It’s all ahead of us folks.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for this morning. There is a brand new Arsecast for you, chatting to Matt Spiro about William Saliba, as well as Flo Balogun and Nuno Tavares who are on loan in France this season. We also have some Interlull Arse-waffle with Andrew Allen.
All the links you need to subscribe and listen are below. Have a great Friday.
