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Arsenal Versus Newcastle: The Narrow Road to the Deep North East
Where do I begin? We’re three games into a spluttering start to a season which promises much but has yet to deliver. We’ve lost one on a bewildering afternoon which felt like watching a match after inadvertently switching the Splenda for a tab of acid, nothing quite made sense. We’ve won one in a gruelling […]
Arsenal Versus Liverpool: Breaking Warren’s Heart
I bumped into Warren on Thursday, I was haggling in a camera shop, he was mooching about town with his daughter. We haven’t seen much of each other lately so we pressed pause in our respective schedules and brought one another up to date. As with most people in these circumstances it wasn’t long before […]
Football’s Habituation Principle
A guest post from @foreverheady On Tuesday night I watched United take on Club Brugge in the Champions League qualifier. I enjoyed the early goal against them, of course I did, but any hopes of further embarrassment were stopped short by an excellent performance form their new player, Memphis Depay. Although the rest of the […]
Arsenal Versus Palace: Enough Is Enough
As Manchester United marches inexorably towards the Premier League title leaving us to wait and hope that Manchester City can beat Chelsea and so keep us in touch with our neighbours and fellow strugglers at the bottom of the table, Arsenal fans are left with one question. Why? Why can’t the stubborn management at our […]
Arsenal Versus West Ham: Let’s Get This Party Started
The anticipation which built throughout December with each candle John Noakes or Peter Purves lit on the Blue Peter Advent Crown inevitably resulted in an anti climactic Queen’s speech and a fight with your sister for which you were bound to be blamed regardless of her having started it. Similarly the warm, flat lemonade sensation […]
Arsenal Versus Chelsea: Just Arsène meets Violet Elizabeth
A couple of short months ago I wrote to you of a harbinger. Like the early snowdrop suggests the first death knell of another long winter, the removal of the goal posts from our local park signified that the football season was nearly over and summer lurked around its traditional seasonal corner. In what seems […]
Arsenal Versus Lyon: Games Don’t Come Any Bigger Than This
As the transfer crazed hordes follow the script fed to them by a click hungry media and demand more money be spent, and while they crave another Arsenal player be thrown on the beach to make room for a newer, more shiny and above all more expensive model, the rest of us, with an appetite […]
Arsenal Versus Everton: Meaningless Methadone
When I finally stopped drinking the need to have a glass of liquid ever at hand remained with me. I used grapefruit or cranberry juice mixed with carbonated water. This provided a necessarily bitter beverage and a useful prop to ease me into my sobriety. Cigarette smokers have a variety of patches, gums and electronic […]
Summertime Blues
There was a suggestion in the comments on PA a few days ago that I might be tempted to return from my football free summer holiday and rejoin the general discussion. It seems that at last we have something of real substance to debate. Football is, or so I was led to believe, back on […]
Arsenal Versus Nobody: What I Did On My Holidays – Part 2
If you read last week’s non match day blog then you’ll be familiar with my approach to the close season. For those of you arriving late to the party here is a brief résumé. Whereas my usual function here at PA is to provide a brief literary distraction on the day of the match, during […]