Feel like a bear this morning. Like a big fat hairy bear waking up from a pleasant, dreamless few months at the back of a cosy cave. Hope your break from all things football was equally refreshing and that you found plenty of diverting, and above all interesting ways to spend the languid, lazy, stress free days.
Well you can forget all that because it’s time to take the belt into your teeth, tighten it around your arm and push the needle in. Yep, we’re back on the smack as of four pm this afternoon. Pretending it makes us happy while we sink ever further into the misery of addiction, delusion, repetition and despair.
Of course we experience the occasional high, all junkies do, it keeps us coming back for more. The underlying hope is to rediscover the joy we experienced when we did it for the first time. Today might well be one of those days. Might not be but it won’t make any difference to you and I because we’re pathetically addicted to keep coming back for more regardless of the result, performance or fall out.
Neither of today’s teams has enjoyed a particularly consistent season, both will be hoping a convincing win over a rival will divert the criticism for a week. Who is in the better form? I suppose it’s City based on results and anything but the most partisan view of our recent performances. Taken over the last ten matches there is, in fact, barely anything between the two sides, a mere two points in fact. However when we look at the Premier League form table over the most recent six matches the picture is horribly different.
Spurs are at the top with City second and Arsenal so far down I got a crick in my neck looking for us. So if current form is a guide we will probably lose today. Of course football is a game of numbers but they are only relevant after the event. The stats can’t be used to predict anything because there are way too many variables in a game with twenty two fallible human beings and three officials any one of whom can influence the result with a moment of madness or a flash of brilliance.
Those of you in your first ever season watching the game and supporting Arsenal may find the team’s current plight too much to bear. The rest of us, having been around the block a few times, have seen more ups and downs than a bi-polar lift attendant and can breezily take a few defeats in our stride. We know that a seemingly devastated side, shorn of confidence and steering wildly towards a rocky shore, can suddenly right itself and win in a most unexpectedly comfortable fashion.
Look at Liverpool. In January they couldn’t win a game and everyone was making jokes at Herr Klopp’s expense. Now, a few weeks later, they are world beaters, set to cement their top four place and take Europe by storm next season. It’s this fickle, feckless fly by night attitude, so prevalent among football fans, which puts me off the whole thing.
The sport can be a complex blend of tactics, egos, form and confidence. It can bewilder and confuse, thrill and frustrate in equal or unequal measures. However this is only for the manager and players. When, like us, all you have to do is watch the game, it is actually very simple.
You only really have two things to do – celebrate if your team wins, get over it if they lose. Oh, and you could try to enjoy as much of the stuff that takes place on the pitch before either result comes about. Everything else, the arguments, the opinions, the discussions, is just froth. Ephemeral, chimerical codswallop which, if you let it, will strangle any joy you might once have taken from watching a match.
Before you point it out to me, can I say I do get the irony of using the platform of a football blog to rail against the peripheral flim-flam gushing from opinionated amateur windbags like me. I get it and I still do it. Like I said, tighten the belt until the vein bulges and sink the needle in. I don’t have a problem. Honest. I can quit football any time I like.
Positively Arsenal 
Morning Stew.
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Morning Andrew, morning everyone.
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Morning lads!
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Although an Arsenal supporter since the late 1960’s, the amount of attention I’ve paid to the game has always varied. The Double in ’71 aside, much of the anguish of the early ’70’s was (unbelievably perhaps, now), centred on international football. Bobby Moore’s arrest in Brazil, Bank’s food poisoning, crashing out of the 1970 World Cup with arguably a superior side to the one of ’66, Gordon Bank’s eye-losing car accident and failure to qualify for the 1974 World Cup (Poland, and all that).
Set against that, club football was for this young fan, infinitely the poor relation of the two.
Loved the George Graham years when Arsenal felt reserrected, and gutted when he left.
Then spent the next 20 years after Arsene was appointed following in ever greater, more forensic detail.
And you know what? I still love the club, still love Arsene. Fairly sure I always will.
But this season a perfect storm of irritants have conspired to leave me as weary of the game at large as I’m guessing our lead writer is, at least from the tone of today’s article.
The near-collapse in refereeing standards is neither new nor undocumented. The responsibility for this collapse rests firmly in the refusal of the authorities to introduce technology. It’s become necessary as a generation of modern footballers pay as much attention to ‘winning’ penalties and myriad other ‘advantages’ as any footballing skill their 1970’s predecessors might have more honorarably focused on.
The state of the UK media in going along with the trashing of the game by inventing a whole range of terminology to avoid use of the ‘C’ word – my least favourite being ‘clever play’ when really they mean ‘cheating’ – is beyond disappointing. The abandonment of any kind of moral compass for the sport really represents the beginning of the end of the game we all once loved.
The contemporary crop of fame/attention hungry ‘fans’ I despise most of all. I did not start to follow football to end up with these lowlifes constantly sneaking into my peripheral vision. They are a malignant genie well and truly out of the bottle and won’t just disappear in a few years when Arsene finally hangs up his coat-with-the-broken-zip for the last time.
So failed refs, cheating players, dishonest media and some loathsome fellow fans.
Football eh, bloody hell.
What’s not to like?
COYG’s!
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Take down what I wrote and put Andrew’s comment up. Perfect.
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That’s a beautiful Post, Steww, a truly beautiful Post that for me sums up exactly my own view, and those of many others I suspect, especially the definition of sport, and the reasons we watch the game.
Splendid. We have missed that big, fat, hairy bear [OK, I was a little worried about where you were going with that sentence but the ‘bear’ saved our blushes!!] lol
Welcome back, monsieur.
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Ref standards certainly seem to be declining, and like all supporters are supposed to think, Arsenal certainly seem to be on the end of rather a lot of it.
But , if Wenger is correct with some of his recent comments, maybe some of these refs know exactly what they are doing.
As for the game, fear a tough one today, just too much instability about the place, unless there is something sorted we don’t know about.
teams….sometimes lesser teams, are hitting is where it hurts, time and time again.
But there is always hope
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A few days after the last game I was extremely optimistic that I’d succeed in cutting the emotion for the remainder of the year. Some of that has faded now.
I need to control my fear and loathing of the officials but I’m not sure that’s possible.
I watched the derby yesterday and the old certainty was still there that we are pretty much a team outside of the premier league’s ways and mores.
It’s absolutely nuts what Barkley did in the two derby games, for a total of two yellows, compared to our man Xhaka’s reds and seven game ban.
In one way, it was comforting to see that, immediately after the Coleman injury and the questions it should have raised about British refereeing, Taylor, with the backing of his bosses no doubt, showed such a commitment to ‘letting the game flow’, with derby rules firmly in operation.
Comforting because it was a reminder that it’s not all about us at Arsenal, and the questionable standards here can apply across the league. But that’s where the comfort abruptly ends for me, as I have no trust we can try adapt to this and join the premier league party.
When it’s our turn for derby action shortly, can we expect we’d probably get away with extra things? I’m sure the answers no. Barkley’s first wild lunge, not carded, looked distinctly worse than Xhaka’s second red to me.
Anyway, I’ll try ‘freeze’ my emotions if I can’t prevent the convictions at source, but I might be too far gone.
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Absolute genius of a blog..It’s a bit painful though when the words make you think you yourself could be the subject of it. Like all good writing and comedy, if it makes you see your own flaws and consider the stupidity of your own behaviour, it becomes something very worthwhile, rather than the waste of effort it seems to those that refuse to see themselves in it.
Ricky Gervais is my favourite comedian, because he makes me look at myself and consider that I’m a bit of a twat. That makes me try to be less of a twat. So thanks Stew, because of today’s blog, although I feel a bit of a twat, I can try to do something about it.
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That’ll do Stew, that’ll do.
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Morning all and it is great to be preparing for a real football match and escaping, for 120 minutes or so, the will-he/wont-he bullshit. I want to see us play well and beat Citeh. THAT IS ALL.
Big, big game for a lot of our players today. I would go so far as to say “career defining”. But as people have said to me a million times “Don’t exaggerate”
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“have seen more ups and downs than a bi-polar lift attendant”
We are the Pilgrims, master
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Hi Anicoll,
Agree with your 11:16, sir, and in fact, as Arsene, has said the squad has weaknesses in certain areas that needs to be looked at in the summer, ** I think these last few games could make or break an Arsenal career.
** Where is Eduardo when you need an exact quote? lol
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A nic 11.16, do not think you are exaggerating at all.
If reports are true, the club is being very slow in offering new deals to some players….critics say it is Wenger being slow….tight or whatever, but a more plausible explanation could be that some need to prove themselves…..and I am not referring to Ozil/Sanchez here.
Whatever the possible effects of managerial instability, some players have clearly let the manager down, especially in defending in 2017 especially.
Would never dig out individuals, but there are some who really owe him a performance, starting today.
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Seems Bob Wilson believes the slump is down to the players, if ever there was a man worth listening to…..
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-legend-bob-wilson-really-10143623
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Thanks for the kind words. George – I never meant to make anyone feel a twat. If anyone is a target of the blog it’s me.
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Can’t go today and a friend is going in my place. They’ve been unwell, watching live football is a physical challenge for them!
But it’s a good excuse to meet with friends and family. To remember those you once used to watch the football with. To watch the club who you support, not a random team that’s not run the way you’d like it to be run (these past fifty odd years): that would be daft!
However Steww describes my mood and feelings better then I could – can it ever get lower then these chumps protesting on this particular day during a football match that matters between two serious teams and managers? Disgusting.
This is an ongoing continuous attempt at a hostile corporate takeover there is little other explanation that can be supplied other then a dose of sociopathy (probably true as well) – please note Tim not so nice but dim Payton who now scribbles for our former discredited former chancellor for a loss making rag alongside his loss making AST is still attempting to speak through his PR genius on behalf of all AFC fans – that they have to continue to pretend to represent the majority a decade into their campaign is why they have failed.
As a football lover if supporting a football club that represents the best in English football (no doubt about it!) is an addiction then I’m guilty as charged.
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Stew I think your blog hit the nail on the head today, you can see that everyone in some ways are feeling the same.
We need a win today to try and kick things back into gear, it wont stop the boring endless drone-groan of the WOB but it might get the rest of us going?. They(WOBS) need to take some responsibility for their part in things this season.They wont though.No wonder that lad you work with doesnt look on line to support AFC. Imagine if he looked at the pundits on AFTV…
COYG!
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Thanks Mills. We’re all a bit down in the dumps one way or another and hopefully a good result in the sunshine will lift everyone’s spirits.
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Welbeck to take them apart today? Wobs wont be happy about the Coq playing. But then they are just unhappy whoever plays.
Come on Mesut give us a bit of the old magic today!
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CITY XI | Caballero, Clichy, Stones, Otamendi, Fernandinho, De Bruyne, Sane, Silva (c), Sterling, Navas, Aguero #afcvcity
SUBS | Bravo, Kompany, Zabaleta, Nolito, Kolarov, Delph, Yaya Toure
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Arsenal FCVerified account @Arsenal 33m33 minutes ago
Replying to @Arsenal
For those asking, Ox (hamstring) and Rambo (calf) miss out today
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what has happened Bellerin’s famed speed, caught out once again and Sane gives city the lead.
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Come on Arsenal, heads up!!!!!
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navas only booked for a knee high studs up on monreal, shameful reffing
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coquelin booked
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Arsenal’s passing that bit off that makes all the difference
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Psycho Theo
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xhaka booked for a needless foul
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Playing well but need to hit the target
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Theooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 1-1
not sure how that happened, it was scrappy as hell but well taken by theo
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Well played Theo. Cool and calm.
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Sanchez falls over and flaps his leg up with no one near him. It must be a reflex among these cheats.
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Well, that didn’t last long.
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fucking comical defending, panic stations by a whole host of our players and city make it 2-1
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It’s not the despair that is so hard, it’s the hope
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Steve Hills @Merse10 3m3 minutes ago
On a break, Alexis runs into 3 players rather than pass to a team-mate. But he’s a “winner” so it’s OK.
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HT: 1-2
poor game, arsenal passing a bit off, got it back level but comical panic defending seen us behind only 2 minutes later.
alexis and welbeck poor so far, coquelin adding little, so need to up it a lot in the second half.
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This team yet again take from their deep recesses of shooting themselves in the foot.
Fragile, naive and disorganised.
Know it is reportedly not wengers style, but is there maybe a time for the riot act…..followed by weeks of mindless defensive drilling with Bould yelling expletives at them ?
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Biggest 45 of the season opens with Ospina and Gabriel messing about
Professionals required
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Get in
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Mustafiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 2-2
mustafi heads in an ozil corner
Gabrile replaced kos for second half
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Get in there Staffie
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you do wonder why we don’t do that more at corners, we have lots of big men who should be winning more headers at corners
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Giroud on for Walcott
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about 15 to go and iwobi on for welbeck
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alexis don’t half fuck up so many possessions
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3 minutes of stoppage time to be played
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Great entertainment. Nothing between the sides so a fair result. Can’t ask for much more.
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