Today a guest post from Georgaki-Pyrovolitis, and good stuff it is too. Enjoy.
The Beginning
Norman Newson was always a nuisance. His first mistake was to snatch my ice cream one pleasant, warm, late spring evening. He then ran off and climbed a ladder propped up against his house, all the way to the top and sat on the roof next to his dad who was fixing the tiles. I was impressed that he had the balls to do that. I must have been about nine years of age and he about two years my senior, the same age as my older brother. He was either brave or totally stupid. I stood there staring up at his silhouette as the warm glow of the sun descended behind the ridge of tall Victorian terraced houses.
“I like spotted dick” he shouted, but these were still my days of innocence and I was not aware of double entendres.
“You do have to come back down, you know” I shouted, “you bastard”, I added under my breath in deference to his father.
Then I heard the distinctive voice of uncle Andreas, as he shouted up in the direction of Newson senior on the roof, “Hey Newson, I will teachin’ yoo ay lesson so you teachin’ yoor son ay lesson” as he waived his clenched fist at the poor fellow on the roof. Newson senior stopped what he was doing and looked down at uncle Andreas. I remember Mr Newson as a rather decent and gentle man, an ambulance driver. He was apologetic and promised to make amends. He offered to climb all the way down but uncle Andreas, although a hot head, could be reasonable too.
“You stayin’ up there, we talkin’ later. We havin’ no time. We are goin’ to see the Arsenal”
“Get George an ice cream and I will pay you later” said Mr. Newson and he returned to fixing his roof.
And so, uncle Andreas, gathered up two of his four sons, Aggie and Frixus and me and took us to Highbury. That was my first live game. I don’t remember who the opposition were but Arsenal must have won. I was awestruck by the occasion. I became a Gooner.
A few years later my friends and I were old enough to attend home games at Highbury without uncle Andreas. Highbury was three miles from Hornsey – just a ten minute bus ride to Finsbury Park station and a ten minute walk from there to the stadium. We attended most home games and the big one away at White Hart Lane. We were members of a red and white tribe.
My first favourite player was George “Geordie” Armstrong. It seems to me that I have always been attracted to quiet, reliable and effective players. Before Geordie Armstrong I had a great respect for Bobby Charlton over the brilliant but unreliable George Best (my first recollections of football were watching Manchester United vs Benfica in 1968 surrounded by my dad and uncles who all tended to be United fans).
Although a regular at Highbury my overall view of the football was that it was rather boring. A committed Gooner that actually enjoyed watching Liverpool. I looked forward to “Match of the Day” on BBC on Saturday night and “The Big Match” on ITV on Sunday afternoon. In my opinion Liverpool played the most attractive football during the 70s and 80s. Even more than Liverpool, however, I couldn’t wait for the World Cup, because we were guaranteed the champagne football of Brazil. Now that was football.
The Middle
During my time at university during the early eighties I fell out of the routine of following Arsenal. I was, after all, not in London and was never to return as I followed employment opportunities wherever they happened to be. I did enjoy the victorious team of 1989 and remember throwing myself into the sofa a few times after Michael Thomas scored the most improbable winner at Anfield. Anders Limpar was a fantastic player as was Rocky Rocastle. That team played some really good stuff and I thought George Graham was a great manager. Yet, I was still not overly attracted to the English game and Arsenal were not distinctively better than any other team at that time. I couldn’t wait for the international competitions to come around because I expected to be entertained by Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Italy and Portugal to name a few reliably great footballing nations.
My separation from the English game grew wider as I had moved to the USA in 1990 and remained there for three years. By the time I returned to the UK in 1993 the Premier League was a year old. I began to take a moderate interest in my Arsenal again. Then Georgeous George accepted a few brown envelopes and ended up getting the sack. Bruce Rioch was a dull interregnum as far as I was concerned and I was getting excited by Ruud Gullit’s cosmopolitan Chelsea side. These fantastic foreign footballers were flooding the Premier League. I loved it. It meant that I would get see their sumptuous skills on a weekly basis. No longer would I have to wait for the World or European Cup competitions. Then one day my interest was piqued by the news on BBC Radio 4. They had responded to the Evening Standard’s headline “Arsene Who?” and had a telephone interview with the man whilst he was coming to the end of his tenure with Grampus Eight in Japan. I was intrigued. What was going on? Who, indeed, was this man?
Well, what followed, and has continued unabated for 17 years now, is one of the most remarkable periods of footballing history. One that I feel privileged to have witnessed and all because of one man, Arsene Wenger.
Fundamentally, it is the philosophy of Arsene Wenger and the implications of remaining true to this through thick and thin that has made this period of human history so interesting. I really do mean human history beyond football.
When governments with one too many corrupt politicians, motivated by their own vested interests shamelessly collude with private equity, greedy bankers and arrogant media moguls and abuse their power and influence, everything suffers, including football. Here in the UK the aristocratic elite that dominates the establishment has had a corrosive effect on our country. Some are famous descendents of the slave owning families that benefited from the British Government’s compensation scheme designed to make the abolition of slavery palatable (http://is.gd/pICM6m). They have destroyed our manufacturing industrial base and have encouraged the finance and service industries to try to fill the void. It matters nought where money comes from as long as it is invested here. “Money for nothing and the chicks for free” and we are indeed in dire straits. Russian oligarchs invest the stolen mineral wealth of the Russian people here. They seek highly visible, British assets to protect themselves from the Russian authorities who are coming after them for their role in the rigged elections that lead to the re-election of Boris Yeltsin. This money has been used to ‘dope’ the English Premier League as exemplified by Abramovich in acquiring Chelsea (http://youtu.be/GmCtci6cen8). The Russian secret service runs amok in London poisoning and shooting Russian dissidents, gangsters and money launderers and we watch in amusement whilst Chelsea buys trophies.
Similarly, Arab dictators of the small gulf states do likewise in their practice of ‘soft diplomacy’. They associate themselves with visible, culturally significant, iconographic assets that will protect them if there is any fall out in a conflict between Israel and Iran. So they buy assets like The Shard in London, The Chrysler Building in New York and Manchester City Football Club. With regard to the latter: ‘”English football has been warned it has allowed one of its major clubs to be exploited as a “branding vehicle” by an international regime accused of human rights abuses after a trial in Abu Dhabi, a country ruled by Manchester City’s owner and his brothers, was widely denounced as repressive, involving torture, and “fundamentally unfair”‘ (http://tinyurl.com/mnxvwxs). Do Manchester City fans care about this? No. Most don’t even know where Abu Dhabi is! Does the ‘red top’ Murdoch Press write about this? Hardly. Let’s all do a Poznan-in-our-pants. Do our ‘democratically’ elected representatives care about this? You know the answer. Would anybody have objected had Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi or Robert Mugabe bought an EPL club? This is another example of the betrayal of the people of this country. All of this distortion of the beautiful game has happened in the last ten years. The owners of Chelsea and Manchester City alone have doped the EPL to the tune of £2.5 billion. That is what it has cost them to ‘scrape past’ Arsenal during a period of financial constraint due to the building of the best stadium in Europe.
Arsene has said on numerous occasions that his philosophy is ultimately about entertaining the fans who pay to watch their team. I can write with complete confidence that the best football I have ever seen, on a very frequent basis, has been from Wenger’s Arsenal. I will reinforce this by elaborating and stating that some performances safely eclipse Barcelona or Brazil, even during these last ‘trophy-less’ years. However, it is not just the quality of the football that sets Arsenal apart. It is everything that has happened, on and off, the field during this time. In the face of a concerted media onslaught, deriding everything and everybody at the club, and the financial doping of football, Arsene Wenger and the board have remained steadfast. I would have wilted, conceded and given up completely in the face of such constant and unremitting attack from friends (certain fans?) and foes.
I have posted the following once before and do so again here: we have won trophies these last eight years. We retained our reputation for the most attractive football, we have the best stadium in Europe, we now have financial stability, we have our dignity and class, but most important of all we still have Arsene Wenger.
The Wikipedia entry for Arsene Wenger has a fantastic digest, some of which I reproduce here:
“Arsenal are considered the “great entertainers” of English football; pundit Alan Hansen described the 2004 team as “quite simply the most fluid, devastating team the British Isles has seen.” [Yes, the same Alan Hansen!-GP].
Dein described Wenger as the most important manager in the club’s history: “Arsène’s a miracle worker. He’s revolutionised the club. He’s turned players into world-class players. Since he has been here, we have seen football from another planet.”
Similar sentiments have been expressed by his fellow peers and former players, most notably from Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Patrick Vieira and Brian Clough, who described Wenger as a “top, top manager” after surpassing his Nottingham Forest side’s record of 42 matches unbeaten.
Former Watford manager Graham Taylor praised Wenger’s contribution in English football: “It is that change of culture, the change of philosophy which I think was the most important … I believe his biggest contribution to football is getting across the idea that players have to prepare right and look after themselves”.
American baseball general manager Billy Beane considers Wenger to be an “idol” of his and has lauded his transfer strategy”.
For those interested all these quotes are referenced in the Wikipedia entry (http://tinyurl.com/pz9eo64).
As far as I’m concerned we have still remained the team that has played the best football during the past eight years too. There are a number of reasons to explain the lack of silverware, I’ll not repeat them here they’ve been discussed many times already. What was important to me was that I had convinced myself that our best 11 could beat any team in Europe. We were never far away from doing this consistently. I had seen enough to have hope. I accepted that we could not spend like the world suggested we needed to spend. I also believed – and still do – that we still don’t need to spend big on ‘four or five’ world class talents to get back to the top. I have posted on here before that we were on a consistent, upward trend, before signing Mesut Ōzil. Those who ascribe our current position entirely to this one player merely confirm their arrogance. They are still trying to justify their lazy and unsympathetic comments towards Arsene Wenger and AFC in general.
I have often wondered why pundits don’t use the same effusive language to describe the quality of the football provided by Man United or Manchester City (Chelsea? Not if Mourinho has his way). At times they do describe it in glowing terms but never in the way they have for Arsenal. Why is this? Through my rose-tinted glasses I see Arsenal play with such elegant simplicity, it is poetry in motion. In my mind’s eye the smiling face of Thomáš Rosickŷ exemplifies this art form. Arsene selects players like Rosickŷ, that are intelligent and require little tactical coaching. He gives them the freedom to play ‘their game’. You have only to read the last interview with Cesc Fabregas where he expresses a nostalgia for the freedom he had at Arsenal, laments the freedom he lost when returning to Guardiola’s Barcelona and gratitude for the freedom he now has again under Tata Martino. He ascribes his better performances to this freedom (http://is.gd/FqPmBW). These intelligent, independent, technically brilliant units of productivity that characterise Arsenal teams euthanize the opposition. In stark contrast Manchester United teams were cold-blooded, ruthless killers – they followed the instructions of their manager to the letter. They never strayed beyond the remit given to each individual player. It is my one complaint about Arsenal. Their desire to dispatch the opposition humanely means that we score fewer goals than we could. Manchester United are humourless, relentless and cruel, they never show mercy, Arsenal do.
The End
So this is my Arsenal. It’s about beautiful football and when they are on song I hear the happy, simple and beautiful rhythms of Santana. This is no accident. The image I have of the Santana band is a fusion of peoples and cultures playing together to produce heavenly sounds – a fusion of Afro Cuban, jazz, blues and rock. I think of “Oye como va” from the Abraxas album: Oye como va, mi ritmo, Bueno pa’ gozar, mulata (Listen to my rhythm, Good for fun, mulata) where a mulata is a woman of mixed race (for me an important symbol). A tune so simple, but executed with such precision, it is just beautiful.
Then I think of Arsene Wenger’s famous quote “When you represent a club, it’s about values and qualities, not about passports” (http://is.gd/kBpKgO). And he let’s his exceptional charges loose on a football pitch where they weave their magic.
Finally, I don’t want to hear talk of a successor for Arsene yet. I know it is inevitable, but it mustn’t happen for as many years to come as the man can give us. I’m bewitched:
Yes, you got your spell on me, baby
Turnin’ my heart into stone
I need you so bad
Magic Woman I can’t leave you alone
Positively Arsenal 
These are my favorite posts,where we learn about each other and understand the roots of our love for the club.
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And the ice cream George – did you get the ice cream after the game ?
(banned smiley winky thing)
Excellent writing GP, as well structured and lucid a piece as it has been my pleasure read on any subject in a long while.
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Georgaki,
That has to be one of the most gripping and substantive Posts I have ever read!
Interlacing a fascinating personal anecdote of the youthful Georgaki with a leavening of politics before climaxing with a heartfelt eulogy for our great manager is brilliant.
Your assertion that Mr Wenger’s influence extends beyond the narrow confines of Premier League football is very true, he is in many ways a hero for all football fans everywhere for his integrity and the way he has shown how the great game should be played and would always be played by his teams.
Heroes can shape history and destinies through the vision of their intellect, the beauty of their creative expression and the prowess of their honesty and leadership, and AW has shown the way.
Long may Arsene Wenger reign! 🙂
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Thank you very much for this wonderful piece, time to be nostalgic.
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Bloody hell Georgaki (the other George). This is a wonderful. So many themes I can identify with. Most of all we share the same love for Arsene and the footballing values he has bought to Arsenal. That is why I disavowed myself from those who shamelessly withdrew their support from the man when the chips were down (after Judas sold himself to ManUtd), letting loose the doomers and enemies by declaring it was the end of an era. Arsene may be ageing but it is blindingly obvious that we have a bright future future of beautiful football ahead of us built by our own sweat not by the boot of oppression of Arab monarchs and Russian oligarchs. Thank you Arsene.
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What a star you are, other George
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Georgaki-pyrovolitis:
This is brilliant. Thank you.
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m-a-s-t-e-r-p-i-e-c-e
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there is only one ARSENE WENGER
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This sire is all I could have wished for.
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Great read , enjoyed the nostalgia and the reasoning for the love of our club.
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Very messy business, thieving ice cream, especially escaping up a ladder and over a roof with it. Takes skill. I reckon the kid had form. Done it before.
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Probably never went to Sundae school
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Amazing piece Gerogaki. Extremely well written. You should write more for PA.
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Georgaki*. Sorry for the typing mistake.
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Fantastic stuff George,really enjoyed it,also a great shout about that Paisley Liverpool team-they played some delicious football which reminds me-how about that Ramsey flick against the post on Saturday?
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That Newsom was always a bit Flake-y.
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First class writing George.
I knew it would be when you threatened this a while back. Hard to do justice to it with one or two words but suffice to say your experience of the club, in the round, your feel for its place in the world – then and now – chimes almost perfectly with my own.
It does strike me that one thing almost all the visitors to PA seem to have in common is an understanding of why and how Chelski and Citeh are where they are. I think this knowledge alone fuels a good deal of our indignation at those who can not see beyond the last headline attacking the club for some perceived failing or other. Our disgust at the unpleasant smell emanating from Old Toilet as the most recent revelations by the likes of Gary Neville that he thought it was normal to influence the referees by bullying them as he’d been doing it so long – all drives our mutual determination to back the one club in the top four working to do things the right way.
Articles like yours go a long way to enunciating our shared perspectives.
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‘It does strike me that one thing almost all the visitors to PA seem to have in common is an understanding of why and how Chelski and Citeh are where they are.’
what i dont understand is how other bloggers and fans-talk-stations accepted city and chelsea as ‘part of the game’ now and that we should ‘ speculate to accumulate’ while completely ignoring HOW we want to do it as a club.
instead of showing pride in what we were/are doing they wanted us to accpet defeat with regards to FFP and just play the game like them sharks did with thier limitless funds….worse our fans wanted us to risk EVERYTHING just so it would be seen that we can ‘challenge’ ….lol….. fucking stupid cunts.
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Breathtakingly wonderful piece. Welcome to George’s stable of hacks – looks like we now have a thoroughbred in our midst. Just superb.
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Andrew, the sense of injustice is even more heightened with the revelation on Twitter yesterday that it has been almost 2 years since a ref has had the sense of decency and professional responsibility to call a penalty vs United. This makes a mockery of any statistical anomaly much less an empirical observation of the constant fouling in the box by Vidic and his gang.
Was it 2 years ago Foy or Atkinson called a penalty or sent off a United player and were punished by never being assigned a Man Utd game for nearly a year? No wonder Rooney can kick a player and feel outraged that broadcasters like Tyler and Souness are convinced that he should have seen red.
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Great piece Georgaki.
I too had a spell where I distanced myself from football, due to a new found fascination in house music and recreational drug use… I think I can honestly say I didnt even watch Match of the Day for about 3 years. Not trying to be contentious, or show off, just want to unburden myself, so to speak.
Up the Arse
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shottagunna
November 25, 2013 at 12:25 pm
i like how united fans blame the ref for cardiff’s equaliser at the end by claiming he distracted the united players..particularly evra….well if evra wasnt as keen to do a neville on the ref then maybe he would have stayed focus on his job which is to defend and not influence refs … 🙂
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Hopefully this is just the first of many treats that George will give us.
The more people that write articles the better.The site is for everyone to share experiences and become friends,as much as it is about chatting Arsenal.
That said,what a time we are having chatting about our glorious team.
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Thats so true George. The tram are doing really well and as usual were written off by all the so-called experts who told us we wouldnt qualify from the CL group. We mustn’t (and won’t I am sure) take marseille lightly, but a win and we will have qualified I reckon. And I am confident we can go to Naples and get a result if we need to, well I can’t see us losing there anyway.
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the tram? team!
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Dexter,you should get writing too.
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I dont think I am capable of writing anything more than childish inane b*llo*cks at the mo PG. The hellish dissertation experience has sapped any writing energies I had man.
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Dear me Dex. If I can do it,anyone can.You also have a big advantage,you are literate.
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I need a muse… George, put you favourite string vest and flat cap on and bring the lard with ya…
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I dont really have an excuse right now as I am currently “inbetween projects” Ahem.
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Amidst all the exceptionally good writing on here I spied a good paragraph from Tony Evans in today’s Times at the end of his piece hammering managers and fans for their hypocritical whingeing about refereeing decisions which do not suit them.
“Officials make mistakes. They are human and flawed. Yet football’s howls of phoney indignation are more offputting than errors. When whining and winning go hand in hand, we all end up the losers.”
Very true
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Until the referees, who are now paid professionals operating from their own ltd. company (in the UK) choose to back themselves up with the tools that officials in other sports are happy to use they deserve all the heckles they get. Because until they do that they will have no credibility in the world of 21st century sport.
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Thank you George (Hornsey George). In these last eight years AW has kept AFC at the Top of the game, and has still been a pioneer of the game, trading tactics with the best managers out there (they all copy each other, and why not!) . Incredible, but true. http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/24/andre-villas-boas-tottenham-defence-manchester-city
Says here that young Pep at Muncih used some long balls against an uber-pressing team. Not exactly a revolutionary solution, but, well, you know where you saw a modern passing team do that first! Had no choice really after so many teams in the PL try to out hustle the Arsenal.
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Ooops. That’d be the wrong link above.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/25/pressing-concern-borussia-dortmund-bayern-munich
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I agree that teams can’t press a whole a season for ninety minutes every three days. It’s why Arsenal dont do it all the time. It’s why they’ve been so good at pacing themselves through games, like Saturday.
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A little bit left in the tank for Marseille.
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Gerogiaki: “Similarly, Arab dictators of the small gulf states do likewise in their practice of ‘soft diplomacy’. They associate themselves with visible, culturally significant, iconographic assets that will protect them if there is any fall out in a conflict between Israel and Iran.”
They aren’t buying up assets because of the Iran v Israel ordeal. They are buying up these assets so people don’t continue to view them as the ultra religious, ridiculously backwards nutters they truly are. And since whores like Bernie Ecclestone couldn’t give a shit what happens to the powerless in these countries, we’ll continue to get the whitewashed view of these countries.
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love it love it love it ! after you told me and shotta you had written this ive been trying unsuccessfully to get near a computer all day. It was worth the wait whatta piece.
Like George said, these nostalgic musings that take us all back tom how our love first started are usually the best posts however having taken us back to an innocent time at which we could empathise you then went into a damming verdict on the commercialism of our game, our country and the values of world right now. Finishing off with a glowing tribute to our salmon against the tide and the importance of our club holding on to him.
I found myself reading this with a smile, frowning in the right places and nodding continually brilliant.
Steww take the baton and run.
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Mirallas getting away with that horrible foul on Suarez sets a very dangerous precedent. Phil Dowd messed up bad by letting him stay on the pitch.
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Past it my ass
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Gainsbourg69
November 25, 2013 at 2:52 pm
bastard player from a bastardy ex club owned by a fat bastard…..only when he scores against totenam or united i like him. or chelsea even …
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G69 & H13
As you well know, certain people are allowed to kick, foul and injure their opponents. I give you J Barton, younger incarnation of L Bowyer, for starters. When it comes to Miralles, I say he’s another one. It is Miralles who smashed up our Ryo, who was playing for Wigan – leaving Myachi in tears against the hoardings. It was so blatent. No foul was called. Ryo was stretchered off, but of course, nobody was saying it was an assault, after all, it’s only an Arsenal player. Within a week or two, McManamann assaulted some poor guys knee, right in front of Halsey. There was some after-talk about this – mainly how McM is such a promising young player, blah blah, and that perhaps the FA’ll have a look at changing the rules, blah blah.
There are patterns in these doings. Miralles injuring Myachi and getting away with it means he’ll continue to do that (Aw, it’s just a rush of blood, unless it’s an Arsenal player). McM will do it again – it’s in his DNA and he reminds me of Dan Smith. Rooney can do what he likes, obviously.
I’m probably the only person alive that thinks Wes Brown’s red card was correct, right?
(Ooowah, ‘ee got the ball/That’s the worse decision I’ve seen in my life/blah blah – **** right off).
I see Ozil’s firmly among the ranks of Arsenal players that can be kicked about without the offenders being punished. (Did you see a foul given against Giroud 20 secs. into the match against Southampton?)
Anyone see the ‘tackle’ on Ox that has put him out for months?
I apologise. I’m pointing out some negatives.
This is such a magnificent article, and typically, Steww and PG are self denigrating their own wonderful writing skills. Stop it – and write more!
Please.
Thank you.
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Not quite ‘in front of Halsey’ Ranteta
Halsey said he would have set off McManaman if he had seen the Wigan player’s kick on Haidera
As Halsey did not see it, but supposedly another official did see it, under the FA rules at the time so not action could be taken
I have NO PROBLEM WHATSOVER in a referee not giving a red card, yellow card, penalty etc for something they actually did not see
So the FA changed the rules to allow for retrospective action from the beginning of this season
Now what I would like to see is a bit more sorting out of serious, dangerous play, whoever is the perpetrator and whoever the victim
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rantetta…i agree with it all…..but the way i see it …..where is the person above Wenger in the Arsenal hierarchy to protect the club’s investments on the pitch from the assaults of these barbaric millionaire hooligans ? Picture a beckenbauer type figure at Arsenal and ask yourself…how many people in the f.a or media would lose their jobs the momment assualts on our players went unpunished as they have had the last few years. How many journalsits would hav e been sent to alaska or beg on thei rknees and apologise for the crap they write ? Wenger was left alone to cope with a football nation attacking arsenal from all angles….on the pitch, on the media, on the transfer markets….to his credit wenger never complained….i would have told the arsenal board to do one and that they are too @small@ to be in the world elite if they cant even put the messgae out ‘dont fuck with us’……
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“look people i invest to bring superb talent like reyes fabregas eduardo to this league and some pathetic low life scum encourage aggressive tackling and assault? are you going to do anything about it or shall we sue refs and hacks for damages and withdraw team from epl and bring your whole epl/sky product to its knees with bans and demonstrations and general bad press, do you really want to go war with us ? we are the CANNONS we will bomb you to the ground ”
i dont know …anything..something…
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IMO, the only sensible campaign we can mount is to bring refereeing into the 21st century by injecting technology. That is the only way we can reduce the influence of the lowlifes, the corrupt and the careerists. Finsbury is spot on:
“Until the referees, who are now paid professionals operating from their own ltd. company (in the UK) choose to back themselves up with the tools that officials in other sports are happy to use they deserve all the heckles they get. Because until they do that they will have no credibility in the world of 21st century sport.”
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Unless I am missing something important Shotta it is not referees who decided either whether technology is used or not used in the professional game, or the rules and regulations of the game.
Am I correct you are suggestion that referees should decide on the use (or not) of technology, and the changes they regard as best on the R&Rs ?
Now that is bold, very very bold – allowing the referees to set the rules – bit like allowing Judges to make the law ( frightened face)
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anicoll5
You’re correct in what Halsey said post-game, however, given the incidents he sees or deosn’t see, he has an history of ignoring violence on he pitch. (I’m thinking about games he reffed where Wolves were our opponents, and their then captain, Karl someone, or someone Karl – where he now, haha?). I’m thinking about the ‘wonderfully expensive Jordan Henderson’, who smashed his shoulder into Arteta, causing Mikel to have to miss the remainder of the match, a couple of years back. Halsey conveniently had his back to that one. I say “conveniently” but I put it to you (as one does) that the ref had allowed Liverpuddle to amsh our players around, and at the moment of the incident, Halsey was too busy making sure Arsenal players didn’t get any retaliation in, as well as turning a blind eye to whatever the scousers chose to do. Even during the recent Palace match Halsey, as co-commentator with BT Sport, deemed Palace’s fouls to be fine.
Yes, the FA have introduced summat. I’m waiting to see what the FA do about Rooney and Miralles. (FA, possibly?) This august body never had problems calling out Arsenal for ‘whatever’s’ in that line. Paul Davis got a 10 match ban and yet I can’t even see the punch anywhere, tut. (My hero – well, one of many). What will happen when the Chavs stamp on Ars players, like Ramires did to Coquelin – and then go on to score a goal? (FA, I venture). How about all those red cards we got years back? What were our opponents doing to us and how were they punished?
My memory could well be incorrect, but when watching the highlights I thought Halsey had a clear view of McM’s assault. The lino certainly did.
H13
Call me deluded, but I think (hope) that Ivan G’s involvement with the FA is the modern day equivalent to D Dien being vice chair at that org.? I think Dein was a good spokesman for the FA and England, but that didn’t stop ManU from getting lesser points deduction than Arsenal, (You can stick your fucking 2 points up your arse, la la la).
I’d like to think (and this is where you’re fully entitled to think I’m off my trolley), that Gazidis, following the Villa match, vented his spleen at the FA about A Taylor, and about the frequency of constant unfair officiating against Arsenal, although it’s all about the Premier League, ultimately, and Skidmarkmore – combined with Rupert & co. clearly couldn’t give 2 fucks about Arsenal – with their ‘sensible’ financial policies and articulate manager, whose a ****ing ‘farriner’ to boot.
In keeping with Arsenal’s “class”, if there’d been an apology for that shambles of Villa shite, IG and the club would’ve kept stuum about it. (I don’t think there was an apology and I’m sure A Taylor wasn’t demoted or punished in any way). But I think IG has the skills to play politician, given he was chief something or other of MLS, or whichever other sports thingy they have in the US.
By 2005 I was pleased to see Arsenal players largely being honest and sporting in their play, but it seemed to lead to even more shit-kicking from our opponents. Arsenal players don’t kick goalies when they dual with them (or rabbit punch like that **** did to WS1 at Newcastle 4-4, phat phil). And I thought I’d rather it remained that way…. until Flamini flattened some spuds guy…. then I realised that when it comes to it, I’m still a **** who’d like to see Arsenal players KICK THE BASTARDS BACK and STAMP ON THE ****s.
Brevity? Succintilicity? I fear not. Sorry. (Don’t even know how to make a smiley face).
Altogether now:
♫You can stick your ****ing smiley-face up your arse♫
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coll,
Riley would be better off writing letters asking for what is needed* as opposed to letters or phone calls apologising to the odd manager when he feels like it?
* What could that be? Let’s have a look at the Olympic Hockey Mens final. Played In London. Watched by millions. With Replays. For a game that is quicker then football, played in 30 minut halves they didn’t have to much trouble with this new fangled technology. Like all other big sports.
Above is the mens Olympic final from last year. First call for a replay 112 minutes in to the video, well into the second half, six minutes before the end of the game! Doesn’t take too much time. Players aresn’t rolling around on the follor for five minutes for no reason. Or trying to convince the official of this or that whilst telling them their life story. It seems to work! I think hocakey must be a harder game to officiate, faster moving puck, sticks in the way etc. If Hockey officials who are undoubtedly of a high quality (faster, quicker game) and experience need the help then I can’t see how football officials with players enacting so much gamesmanship do not.
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