A sucker punch gave West Ham a 1-0 win over Arsenal yesterday which, despite the fact we didn’t play very well, they certainly didn’t deserve. Marlon Harewood scored the goal with about 3 minutes to go. Mathieu Flamini won the ball from Etherington, Etherington fouled him to get it back and eventually played it across the box. Gael Clichy went to sleep and not even Harewood could miss from there.
After Pardew, quite rightly, celebrated the West Ham goal, came over and said something to Arsene Wenger who reacted to whatever was said. I’m sure whatever Pardew said it wasn’t “Jolly bad luck, Arsene!” and whatever it was it was enough to make Wenger, already frustrated by the penalty decision and perhaps the foul on Flamini in the build up to their goal, react and the two managers had to be separated by the fourth official. Some people have said Wenger should have shown more class but it’s the sort of thing I’d expect from any manager who has seen a stone wall penalty turned down – knowing that because your team isn’t performing it’s probably going to be your best chance at a goal – then see a player fouled in the build up to a goal then have some witless cunt like Pardew get in your face about it.
Pardew said afterwards he was just celebrating the goal and nothing was said but there’s no doubt in my mind he said something. Anyone who has watched Arsene Wenger for the last 10 years knows he would not react like that to somebody simply celebrating a goal, no matter how irritating they were about it. Why would Pardew apologise if all he did was celebrate a goal? I’m sure it will come out eventually. In retrospect though I’m sure the boss would shake hands at the final whistle although he might spit on his palm before accepting the hand offered to him.
Oh, and let me just mention that cunt Richard Keys on Sky. Afterwards he was gibbering on like the fucking chimp he is to Jamie Redknapp, who is as insightful and intelligent as a shoe, about how the FA would surely be looking at this to see what charges might be brought. Incredible. What happened between Pardew and Wenger is hardly worthy of FA charges. Sky can’t wait to get the them involved though, and no doubt they’ll show the incident over and over again to make sure they have to do something about it, but they don’t make so much as a two second mention of the fact that some scumbag West Ham fan threw something at Robin van Persie. Does than not also merit an FA investigation? Not according to Sky but then that’s no surprise.
Nothing they do is a surprise. I watched Sp*rs beat Chelsea for the first time in 345 years yesterday evening and again Keys showed what a class act he was. After they came back from the commercials his first comment was not about how well Sp*rs played, and they did play well, and what a good victory it was for them. Instead it was something along the lines of ‘Well, after a tough game in Barcelona during the week and playing for 30 minutes with 10 men here you have to say that it was fantastic from Chelsea’.
Now, obviously I’m no Sp*rs fan but credit where it’s due. Comments like that and ignoring things like the van Persie incident do little to dispel the idea that some people at Sky have their own agendas for whatever reason you might like to speculate about yourself. And can you imagine what the reaction would have been to the tackle that could have broken Robin van Persie’s leg if it had been one of our players on one of theirs?
Arsenal left last night without any comment to the media which is unusual but not surprising. I know people are upset about the performance yesterday and obviously the result but I don’t think there’s too much wrong with us. Every high is over-hyped – like the Reading game – and every low is exaggerated. We dominated Everton, we dominated CSKA, we’d won 5 out of 6 in the Premiership before that and yesterday’s was the first really poor performance I can remember for some time.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we’ve only lost as many games as Chelsea have this season. I have a feeling that what we’ve been lacking somewhat is a bit of a siege mentality. It was prevalent when we used to get red cards all the time. It was batten down the hatches stuff, everyone out there hates us but we don’t care. For me we’ve probably been too nice. Everyone loves the football we play when we get it right and that’s great but we’ve been missing something.
Sometimes it’s days like yesterday that create that little extra within the team, a spirit or a willingness to go the extra mile for your teammate. Perhaps the West Ham game and the sense of injustice around it and the shite that will inevitably follow will be positive for us in the long run. This could be like the ‘Battle of Old Trafford’ which created the unbeaten run. It’s time for some good old fashioned anger. Yeah!
What about us though? It wasn’t a good performance and to be honest I would love to see us revert to a more traditional 4-4-2 formation. For me you need a big, ugly strong cunt like Drogba for that to be really effective. Obviously Thierry Henry is not the same kind of player. When he’s foraging on his own up there he can’t receive the ball in the kind of space he’s been accustomed to. He knows he’s rarely going to win the headers against two centre-halves and it’s no wonder he looks unwilling at times. I’m not making excuses by any means, and I’d love to see Thierry look a bit more involved, but it’s just an explanation. I don’t think we get the best out of quality strikers like Henry and van Persie with that formation either.
Some of the boys looked tired as well. Cesc in particular looks like he could do with a bit of a rest. As well as that we weren’t helped by an utterly shite performance from Rob Styles. He could have red carded Jonathan Spector for his tackle on Robin van Persie which was deliberately over the top and designed to hurt. He booked Gael Clichy for competing a header, he booked van Persie for nothing and he made a huge mistake with the penalty. That’s not to say we would have won if we’d been given the penalty and I’m not suggesting he’s the reason we lost the game but when you see a referee perform that badly then it has to be highlighted. Out of 10 I give him meningitis, the cunt.
Anyway, the best thing to do is get this behind us, learn the lessons that need to be learned and get on with it. We’ve got a Carling Cup game midweek and I expect most of the ‘first XI’ will be rested for this. Players like Senderos, Aliadiere and Walcott will be looking to remind the boss of what they can do ahead of the Liverpool game next Sunday.
Perhaps we’ll hear from Arsene Wenger today but for now let’s just await the inevitable fall out and pomposity from shitehawk pundits and commentators.
