This week, a gentleman’s guide to how to conduct oneself for the rest of the season.
First of all, now is not the time to panic. The time to panic will be when we need seven points from our last game against Everton in order to leapfrog Spurs into fourth.
On current form, we need to consider the potential postponement of St Totteringham’s day for at least one season. Thus far, Spurs have not show any signs of the hilarity that has accompanied their twenty consecutive failed attempts to finish above us.
In the event of what we shall call The Tau Eta Phi Kappa Scenario, named after the Ancient Greek alphabet equivalents to the dread letters THFC, there is a key protocol to be observed.
Remain in your house. Do not attempt to go outdoors for any reason. Give up your job.
By now you should have constructed a nuclear shelter, known as Sol’s Retreat, four storeys underneath one of the wings of your house. There is no need for any Internet connection in your bunker.
Do not under any circumstances take a mobile telephone or any kind of modern connected device into Sol’s Retreat. There are plans afoot to start a radio station called Arsenal Radio: Only the Good News which will only feature Arsenal reports and chatter from 1930 to 2016.
Shows on the proposed wireless station include:
- ‘Nothing to See Here’, a discussion about why no football matches were played after Tuesday March 7th 2017
- ‘Wenger: His Enduring Genius’ will broadcast from 0900Hrs to 1200 hrs every day, seven days per week. The 70th Minute will focus on some of his most tactically brilliant substitutions
- ‘The Emirates: Home of Champions is a 52 week series exploring all the Premier League titles Arsenal would have won had it not been for Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Leicester City or Those Pesky Kids’ – narrated by Gerard Depardieu from the fantasy novel by the manager himself.
Other shows include Bayern? More like BOTTOM, an attempt to poke fun at Germany’s best side.
‘Bottle: Why It’s Overrated’ is a discussion programme involving the entire first team from 2016-2017.
‘Fourth is Best If You Are More Stylish Than the Winners’ is a history programme featuring great sportsmen, women and teams who finished fourth but should have won if the world was a fairer place.
All this will be interspersed with sports radio recordings only from 1930–31, 1932–33, 1933–34, 1934–35, 1937–38, 1947–48, 1952–53, 1970–71, 1988–89, 1990–91, 1997–98, 2001–02 and 2003–04.
There is a new comedy character being developed for the station, a kind of mascot, if you will. He is based on Mr. Lucas’s android creation from his HG Wells type talkies Star Wars. The new character is called R2-10-2.
R2-10-2 is a hapless little robot. He huffs and puffs and bleeps and bloops but to not very much effect. He is supposedly a combat robot but can only beat inferior robots. He has trouble beating his contemporaries, his equals, and those whom he really should be defeating once in a while.
He invariably loses these battles, but by virtue of beating weaker robots he somehow retains his sub-excellent status. He is not a bad robot, but he is not the best. He’ll have his own show from the start of the station until he snaps his robot hamstring four weeks in.
Let us hope that none of the above is necessary. We have a dozen league games left. The countdown starts now.
STAY SAFE.
