steww
Arsenal Versus Chelsea: End Of The Beginning
Three FA Cup finals in four years and a team so consistently excellent that finishing fifth is seen as a major disappointment. What a gloriously happy accident that my seven year old self should have chosen to support the side in the red shirts and white sleeves all those very many years ago. Was I […]
Arsenal Versus Everton: Touch and Go
And so here we are. The final curtain call of yet another season is upon us. Elsewhere the thing has been done and dusted for some time now. My neighbourhood team have long since taken in the goal posts. There’s a travelling funfair on the pitch, dodgem cars racing around the goal mouth, the Waltzer […]
Arsenal Versus Sunderland: Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
Sorry but I’m struggling to get my head into football mode for you this morning. Don’t panic, I haven’t gone all Jose Mourinho, I don’t regard the final fixtures of a season as any less interesting or important than the first, it isn’t that. I’m just buried in another project and it’s demanding all of […]
Arsenal Versus Southampton: Drop The Monkey
There was something extremely cathartic about Danny Welbeck’s goal on Sunday. A palpable relief of tension so orgasmic that my involuntary exclamation awoke Liz from a deep and dreamless sleep. I was watching in the wee small hours having evaded the score until I returned home from my labours and had managed to remain quietly […]
Arsenal Versus Man United: Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon
“You know what I’d like now Stew? I’d like your lot to win the FA Cup and us to win the Europa. If nothing else it will annoy Spurs, City and of course spoil the party for Chelsea.” It was funny to be chatting amiably with my only Man United supporting mate the day before […]
Arsenal Versus Spurs: Credit Where It’s Due
I understand that in the knockabout pantomime jeering between rival football supporters it is necessary to deride the success of one’s adversary and inflate the prowess of one’s own chosen team. I get it. It’s the reason fans of Mansfield and Crewe can, without any discernible trace of irony, both sing that they are watching ‘by […]
Arsenal Versus Leicester: Ifs and Buts
Today began well enough, ice on the windscreen answered to the scraper without undue recalcitrance and the breakfast was possibly one of my finest efforts. I like breakfast. In another life I’d like to be a breakfast chef I think. Then sadness as I turned the final page of the Shepherd’s Crown, a book I’d […]
Arsenal Versus City: Cloudbusting
A season which I have been reliably informed is a disaster, best forgotten, a total shambles, and a sad the end to Arsène’s reign has somehow contrived to find Arsenal in an FA Cup semi final. I had to check the fixture list twice to see if I was dreaming, but it appears that while […]
Arsenal Versus ‘Boro: Simple Pleasures
I own one of those portable screens, you’ve probably seen them, they’re about the size of a slim hard backed book and are terrifically clever. One can watch television programmes, read electronic facsimiles of books and play simulated card games on them. As I say, quite extraordinarily impressive devices and I never fail to give […]
Arsenal Versus Palace: Pass The Soap Please Jeeves
I’m in a dilemma this morning. Not the classic Marmite or marmalade dilemma – that was resolved many years ago when I realised that one can simply have both. Not at the same time you understand, I’m not an animal. News from across the pond has reached me of an American ritual of spreading both […]
Positively Arsenal 