Hello and how are you?
Tuesday the 1st of April will see the Mighty Cannon back in action playing the second of our two matches this season against Fulham FC of wild western London. Kick off at the Emirates is at 7.45 pm western European time.
Spring has sprung! Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droght of March hath perces to the roote and bathed every veyne in swich licóur of which vertú engendred is the flour etc.
Yet the spring-weather lore of our time bears little resemblance to that of Chaucers day. March (where I am) came in like a lamb and went out like a lamb, I don’t expect any April showers as I haven’t seen any for ten years. That’s the way of things for good or bad; all things change…
Well, we’re back again after the longest international ‘break’ ever. When it started I was 24 and now I’m 55. Can you hear the Kinks in the background singing: “where did all the good times go”..?
Everyone seems to be back without injury, phew. But perhaps any relief on that front is with an eye on the looming Madrid game rather than this encounter with Fulham or the up-coming game against Everton?
Mr. Saka looks like he will be returning, and the outlets I’ve been keeping a corner eye on, seem to think he will be the new messiah. How do you feel? I feel a bit sceptical about messiahs who are supposed to suddenly change the whole dynamic of the team and save everyone not just from sin but from poor play.
Do you think this perspective creates too much expectancy and too much pressure? The Selector warned us about too much pressure back in 1980. Seriously though, its unnecessary, if a players been out for a while it doesn’t mean they are coming in better than before, Martins been struggling since his injury and hasn’t hit the form we were used to seeing, and once noticed the Queen of Hearts of mob rule seems to pop up and start shouting “off with his head!”, which, in my mind is way too extreme. But who cares for my bat-squeak of an opinion, loud voices rule the day, even if they are carried away and forgotten by tomorrow’s breeze.
Yet telling us all its raining when all you have to do is look out of the window and see for yourself is poor punditry to me. Whats more interesting is the suggestion of umbrellas, boots and raincoats and where some shelter is? Don’t get me wrong, Saka is a fabulous player and makes us much, much more exciting, but consciousness is a nightmare in football and being self aware messes up everything, and pressure of expectancy makes it even worse? But hopefully he will do the business and leave me with egg on my mush and a scolding for being too angsty.
It seems at his point in the season a cloud of melancholy floats in? Eleven games to go, the baseballs already started, the seasons winding down, sunshine is back again and we will all soon be overwhelmed by the competition of the transfer market.
What a long grind of a journey its often been this year, only because I feel we’ve been underachieving, however I still hope we can keep second, build on it and enjoy St. Totteringham’s day soon. And there’s always next season…
“shut up you Brooklyn bum”
The mighty Cannon has been given a 64% chance by Statto HQ of securing a victory, whilst Wolfie Smiths favourite team have been given a meagre 12%. So come on you Gunners, can we please have five or more.
Take care of yourselves, and power to the people!
Mills
Positively Arsenal 
Sorry all, just got to my Emails.
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Raya, Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly, Partey, Rice, Odegaard, Nwaneri, Merino, Martinelli.
Subs:Neto, Tierney, Zinchenko, Kiwior, Jorginho, Gower, Saka, Sterling, Trossard.
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Ben White misses out with a little niggle so Jimi Gower a 20 year old midfielder makes the subs, he scored for the U21’s last night v Norwich
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looks like Gabriel has done his hamstring, Kiwior comes on
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HT: Arsenal 1-0 Fulham
Merino with the goal, not a convincing performance so far but we are the better side
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Saka on for Nwaneri
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Sakaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa makes it 2-0 to the Arsenal with a header
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with a volley, not a header, sorry.
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Eggie mush! Ha!Ha! Great to see you back Bukayo! COYG!
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sorry it was a header, I’m not watching, only listening and they contradicted themselves on how he scored
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Trossard on for Timber who is injured
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9pts behind liverpool with 8 games to go
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with 8 games to go both man utd and spurs can only reach the points total arsenal currently have
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Another good win against another good side.
Just when things were looking up we lose four defenders out of our eight recognised squad players and the nightmare of Partey playing at right back against Real looms large.
Before that we have a difficult trip to toffee land and the last ever trip to Goodison. Having several left backs and several “alternative” CB’s has left us short of Right backs and dedicated CB’s.
We have done well coping with injuries this season but we seem to be right up against it in the final embers of a fiery season.
Saka, Nwaneri and Martinelli were all very dangerous last night so maybe we need to rely on a Forrest style for the remaining games.
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George, mailed something over to you for a maybe. COYG!
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Gabriel out for the season, absolute nightmare
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all these hamstring injuries point to an outdated training regime, that old fucker wenger is past it
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spurs away to chelsea, its 0-0 at the moment, anything other than a win for spurs would make today st totteringham day
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Happy St Totteringham Day
Mind the Gap
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THE EVE OF ST.TOTTERINGHAM by William Sphinctermillspeare
ST.TOTTERINGHAM’S confrontation with a ghostly apparition and containing the tragical historie of Dr.Faustus Chicken Spude, in 1 Act. Second folio.Non Inferiora Secutus. 1595 AD.
Dramatis personae:
Anon, a ghostly Chicken, all frothe and whine.
St.Totteringham, a saint of excellent style and infinite skill.
Actus Primus. A cold night in early-April (black-thorn winter).
Enter the ghostly Chicken (moaning and frothing):
“Ooohhhh woe is me! Ooohh poor me! Trapped in anger ever thus and crushed by memories four and sixty years past, few save the longe beards can recall such was the last, oh! my kingdom for a coop of wire and wood,of bird feed greene and goode! Yet my eye are but also greene with anger and jealousies! Ooooohhh the winde mills of my mind! Usurped we can ever see by the Cannon! Our country lanes were infected, what art thou Fortuna? Fickle!Fickle!Fickle! What foul perfum`d Wool-rich southern winds have blown these usurpers upon our country woods and by their folly erected theatres of beauty and others I can but only decry! Even a station was named after them thereby! Oh woe is me, woe woe!Hubble bubble boil and trouble! Ohhhhhhhh forced to wear the horns! Le corna capote! Ohhhhhh”.
Enter St.Totteringham:
Stay illusion!What? Art thou known to Mephistopheles?What kind of strappado is this, such taxation?Art thou free of self-bounty or purely here to venew unbarbed?Or art thou a grobian of the pullum familias that cometh from the yonder forgotten corner of woods,that they call the Middle Sex Coop?For thou art not of the citie surely? I often thought a Cooper was a man that maketh barrels for fermented wine, not some frothing beaste of torment and whine? For by my leave, there are many a strange fire-side tale from such uncouthe regions,for it is often said that out there in the chlorophyll`d country the swing-buckler folk there doth worship from the Newe Worlde that tis often called Americae, an unnatural base worke; the potatae. Or Spude as tìs known by those who knoweth such things and by which they too are called such and such. Art thou that which is named a Spude?
What strange musings are these musings upon? Art thou the haunted strange creature from the country chicken lagoon? Or washed upon these Positive shores from the darkest vapours of night and cursed to perform as a Chas and Dave midnight masque until dayes first light or finally purged of thy sins?
Of such waits I have heard, uttering songs that sound like a fowl turd!I have heard of such apparitions indeed, seen upon country lanes well within the deep dark velvet hours by travellers lost and in need! Tis strange indeed to behold such an apparition, and to consider things as country matters! Repent oh torn spirit! Repent! Begone! He that weareth the statute cap of the chicken shall reek ever more of the odours of the Coop, cursed with blots and stains and breedeth only a stench hence, all noise and uppity.
Good Sirrah, take my advice and change thy Lily livery to red and white, tis but only wise!
Repent! Repent! Thy memorie is steeled with bygone days, memories abased in an chemical black and white haze,and thence never to gold or silver find, thou art fogged and lost in the mercurial mists of time, when Helen of Troy had blesséd the earth with her beauteous gaze and set sail a thousand ships and cursed, the West Ham quite rightly to a lower worlde. Hath thou still tears for salad days long hence gone,back in the year ’61? I see that it rankles in thy mind,he that you call Judas, but knoweth he could but retire to win our purpose,and tis often colic for thee I can but imagine, it plagues thy mind, so lust doth play! Think therefore not on such matters and knowe that while with us he was but very a happie winner of cup and league and Invincibilitie!
Farewell, thou lob of spirits,I’ll be gone! Repent! Repent! I, St.Totteringham and these Positively goodly souls,doth beg thee repent!- before its too late for thy soul and thou art for ever cursed to worship the Chicken, ever hoping for glorie in thy amphitheatre and pondering like Achilles the plough-man, that hath lost his sweat and the green corn, to dreamily wonder up at the very vastly canopy the earth and search by thi`stars of heaven and question whence the named of foregone years was never to be incorporated whence, and yet tis thine own thought that maketh torture hence!
To temper these questions tis folly and a foolish ship to put to the winds of memorie, and tis but for the learn`d men that pour over fustian books forsaking the fires of winter to knowe, but foregone names shame us not, but tis more amusing and would take much more than verbal utterances to make such cut-works upon our guts!I have heard tis often winter in the land of chicken and affecteth the mind so beyond the help of any apothecary to be found here,there or anywhere.Tis true?
Yet we urge thee while pondering this too, think on, one Dr.Faustus! Yes he of Wittenberg, a fool! He too followed the Chicken.A cock-a doodle do! Hark his cries as yet in the lower coops of Dante’s Coop`d-hell!Hark! He too pondered the crowing cock,and twas tempted by the Coopers lust for power and footballe of the foul white-socke, and hath forever since suffered like a severed capon upon a fiery twiggen landscape of rocke, where hence candle and bell could no longer make haven! Repent!Think on Faustus trapped in a Coop of his own making, forced by day to read at no sovereign leisure again and again, certain tomes by writers of their empty histories and siege, tales of yore and bore, forevermore, too study only engravings of failings in the Europa League!
Such folio’s that also conjure gladly,nylon-trouser flared, sideburn`d, tobacco, stacked shoe,and greasie fare,not even to mention ye olde budgie hair, are but trophy-wise,wafer thin?!Not even fourth,as a look-in!
Look ye not at such foul-belched ways of beak and feathers! Cast thy eye not upon such workes, tis folly! Tis true, the master Doctor hath no idea what fowl thought were bak`d in the pie whence tempted by the strange ways of Haringey and lured by sweet lies of “shift and power” whispered in northern parts by many a nefarious towne crier.
“Curséd am I” Faustus cried to the night sky, “for I should have followed the Mighty Cannon, Gun and dear old Holloway!”His mind thence was poison’d evermore, swimming in a torment of poor sporting jealousies and rages and plagued by the lurid ways of the seven deadly sin-sisters,forced to watch abased games day after day except where the pungent fumes of gunpowder put paid! “Look at that! Look at that!”cried Les Mots, son. Repent I tell thee!
Repent! Sirrah,I implore thee! O curséd spirit release thy self from the mad-bred ways of the Lane, the Spude and the chicken beaste,and forget thy pain, learn from Dr Faustus,and an Arsenal fan become,the way of the Cannon and the Gun! See him again before thee, cursed to a cooped up hell of torture!Behold his cries for clemency, as he is thus forced to recall Mister Waddles hair, rank and all mulletie!
Tis enough for anyone cursed or not think ye not of Lily white and all that froth!
But come, lay down thy tattered and torn feathered shirt of white, and cast not thy beady greenéd-eye upon thy neighbours and singeth under the moon and stars with Saint Totteringham, for I am he! And come, let us sing a Friars canto mallimaufry :”chick, chick,chick, chicken, lay a little spude for me its happened again before Easter, and you’ll never catch Chelsea, oh chick, chick, chick chicken lay a little spude for me”…
But Hark! The dawn cometh ! The drums must sound and the shall cannons roar, as we call Chelsea to stunt thy claim to the throne! Begone oh fowl apparition! Gramercy for the dawn! Begone to thy coop and darken these skies no more! For merry making must we and thou must from this place fly! Begone!
But if I, and these here Positive Angels of Arsenal have offended,think but this and all is amended, that you have slumbered here while these words did appear,and I ask good folk do not reprehend, for if you pardon you will mend. And as I am honest Gun, if we have somehow unearnéd this here very sun, now to escape the chickens tongue, we will make amends long,else a liar the Gun you call, and goodnight unto chickens one and all!
Adieu!
Chicken: “Oooohhhhh, woe is me,oooohhh we were here first! Oohhhhhhhhhhhh woe is me curséd to thought of Perryman and former memorie!”
Exeunt.
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Happy St Totterings day everyone
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GOODBYE GOODISON.
Hello and how are you?
Saturday 5th of April sees the Mighty Cannon take the long and winding road up to Merseyside for a lunch-time clash against 15th -placed Everton FC. Kick off at Goodison is at 12.30pm western European time.
Well, this is our final trip to Goodison, a stadium (mostly) built/shaped by our old and reoccurring chum, Archibald Leitch. After this season Everton will be relocating at their brand-spanking new Everton stadium (eighth largest in Britain) down at Bramley Dock on the riverside in Liverpool. It’s been pretty interesting to watch how its been constructed as an Everton fan with a drone has been giving us a peak into the workings of it all during the last four years.
Of course Goodison existed before the Leitch design and there were several uncovered as well as a covered stand. Celtic park was inaugurated on the same day as Goodison although the site itself was grounded way back in 1892
By 1895 Goodison was being further developed, with various architects involved and our Mr Leitch turns up to add his touch sometime during 1909, and from then on all sorts of new stands were built using special types of trusses that now only exist at Goodison, Ibrox and Fratton Park. I wonder if some kind of museum might ask for when the demolition of Goodison occurs?
Goodison was bombed (like Highbury) during the second war but was easily renovated and floodlights were installed in 1957, followed by undersoil heating (like we also had a Highbury) in 1958. The Goodison road stand was partly demolished and renovated with some criticism in the early 70’s. Of course following the Taylor report after Hillsborough, the ground was renovated again to accommodate seating, and the Park end stand was demolished and rebuilt in the middle of the 1990s.
Goodison is oddly unique in that a church ( St Lukes) protrudes into the ground only yards from the corner flag and Everton don’t play matches on Sunday morning out of respect for those worshiping.
As a kid I quite liked Goodison, when the away fans were still behind the goal and not shoved in the corner so the cameras couldn’t see them as it seems now. The Merseyside derbies seemed quite a big deal and of course I always rooted for Everton. Goodison was also important as it often hosted the FAC semi-finals/semi-final replays in the days before the New Wembley began to play the semis, which in my opinion seemed to take away from the romance of ‘getting to Wembley’ as an Endstation. This last semi to played at Everton was back in 1985.
In 1894 they did host a FAC final and FAC final replay in 1910. Later, many games in the 1966 world cup finals would be played at Goodison, including a semi and also many old home championship matches. Remember them ye of the long beard?
Everton have apparently staged more top flight matches than any other club, and have played there (with exception of for four seasons)
for one hundred and twenty-two seasons. It also held various military maneuvers pre-WW1 observed by the King George V and many rugby matches were played out as well a big- bout boxing (also as part of the Rocky film Creed) whilst also witnessing a baseball game between the White Sox and the Yankees.
Our first game at Everton was way back in 1905. All games inclusive its 225 played against Everton. So its roughly 112 games at Goodison. It amazing if you think back over those years and all those players, many forgotten except as treasured family photographs, players came into focus as you started to support and follow football and go out of focus as times and line-ups change.
Probably, altogether about 4,000 games have been played at that ground. From the first game against Bolton in 1892 to the last versus Southampton this coming May 2025. From Dixie Dean, to Andy King to Geoff Nulty to Adrian Heath and Peter Reid to Calvert-Lewin and Mr.Pickford. Adieu Goodison, thank you for all the memories!
Our chums at Statto HQ (at the time of writing) have given the Mighty Cannon a 55.6% chance of winning and the Toffees only 17.6%. So I hope we say a final goodbye to the grand old lady of Walton Park by giving Saka rest for the Real game and hitting them for five.
Take of yourselves.
Mills
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It’s up
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