Ozil to Ramsey, Ozil to Flamini and the Theo/Aaron axis brought about the goals – Three fine goals, I might add.

There is no doubt that Ozil has made a difference to our fortunes. His composed passing in the final third is always going to lead to chances. The latest step in Ramsey’s development is obviously a huge factor too. Goals win games and Ramsey scores goals. These are huge factors.

Yesterday, however, we saw a clear example what I believe to be the biggest factor of all. At 1-0, Cardiff were mounting a fight-back, and why wouldn’t they. Last week they kept the current champions within sight and earned themselves a draw – why not do the same to the future champions?

We know our team is good enough to create chances but I can’t recall any team in all my years of watching football who are good enough to not concede chances. Every great football team needs a great goalkeeper to bail them out from time to time.

When a cross came in from the Cardiff left and found their striker’s head just a couple of yards from goal, the game was set to go level.

When I used to collect the World Cup ring-binder things, they would always have an illustration of a save by England’s Gordon Banks. The ball was all but in when suddenly Banks was on the deck scooping the ball over the bar. Well, Szczesny didn’t get the ball over the bar but the Cardiff header was all but in and the save had this Gooner on his feet.

If Cardiff got back to 1-1, the whole thing would have been different. Perhaps we would have won but it would have been against a side with something for which to fight. It would have been against a stadium of Welsh fans who were no longer full of respect for their former player. At 1-1, they would have tasted our blood and wanted more.

From that moment, it looked like Cardiff realised that it wasn’t to be. Our boys battled to regain supremacy and the familiar pattern resumed. We were back in control.

So, I say that many of these wins –particularly yesterday’s— have been hugely down to Wojciech Szczesny. The guy is truly one of the top players in his position.

Thank you and keep going Chezzer!

Thanks for reading,

Up the Arsenal!

“So what’s the blog about this week then Dad?”
“Well love, as I’ve told you many times, it’s an Arsenal blog. You know, about the football team, Arsenal.”
“Yeah but that doesn’t usually stop you, remember when your team were playing Sunderland and you wrote about a family holiday and how you ended up driving around Roker Park because your Dad got lost?”
“Fair comment. But in my defence I do have to pad it out a bit. Especially if I don’t want to just write what every other blogger is writing. It is after all only a football match and one that hasn’t even happened yet, there really isn’t much to say.”
“So who are they playing this weekend then Dad? I know it isn’t Manchester because you haven’t been in a foul mood all week. Talking of which who exactly is Judas?”
“He was a character from the Bible. Allegedly grassed up the messiah, but I’ve always wondered about it, I mean didn’t Jesus tell him what he would say, who to and when? A bit of a set up job if you ask me. Anyway let’s stay on the point, we’re playing Cardiff.”
“We are?”
“Arsenal”
“But you said we”
“Yes yes I know, that’s how fans describe their team, they become so involved, so much part of the club that it feels like a part of our lives in a way that nothing else really does.”
“Nothing?”
“Oh come on love I don’t mean family, of course not, in a way, you and your brother are just as important as Arsenal, but unlike other hobbies or entertainments following the fortunes of a football club becomes tribal, it’s us against them, you know?”
“No, not really Dad, sounds a little bit mental to me. Anyway, Cardiff. I’ll tell you what, you could write about the time me, you and Warren went to see the Arctic Monkey’s at the Motorpoint Arena – that was in Cardiff”
“Yeah, or there was that time I drove into Cardiff to get Liz to the train station.”
“I don’t remember that”
“You weren’t there. We were camping at Llantwit Major.”
“Was that when you did the Gavin and Stacey tour of Barry and Barry Island?”
“Different story love, don’t interrupt”
“Well excuse me”
“Sorry. Anyway, we were camping, well, caravanning to be precise, and Liz had screwed up the dates because when she told me to book the holiday she already had tickets for this music festival, an eighties thing at Henley On Thames. Rewind, that was it, and it turned out she had to get there while we were still booked on the camp-site in Wales. Turns out Llantwit has a nice little train station and the train from there went straight through to Reading where her mate lives”
“Vanessa?”
“Yeah Vanessa, anyway they were meeting up and the train is cheap as chips from LLantwit so she books a ticket, she’s always using trains for her job so it was the work of a moment for her to organise it, did it on her phone in fact, anyway as I said she books a ticket and I drive her to the train station on the Friday morning early. And I mean early, the train wasn’t due for twenty minutes. We stood on the platform, she’s chain smoking to make sure she gets enough inside her to last the journey and I’m wondering what to do in Wales on my own for a couple of days, a bachelor gay, both of us content and looking forward to the weekend. Until I utter the fateful words. ‘You got your tickets?’ She just raises her eyebrows, you know what Liz is like, the seasoned traveller, and pats her pocket. Then checks it, frowning. Then begins patting and poking in all of her pockets. I couldn’t believe it. She travels by train all the time and has never forgotten her ticket, not once. And the thing was, we’d been stood there so bloody long I could’ve driven back to the camp site got her tickets and got her back in plenty of time – but not any more. ”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I couldn’t drive her all the way to Reading could I? We had, much to the amusement of the good folk gathered there on Llantwit station, a minor domestic. You know, one of those public arguments where you try to keep your voices down so as not to attract too much attention but everyone is thoroughly enjoying it because you are the only two people talking and they can’t help but hear it. In the end we drive back, get the tickets and she works out that if I drive like an absolute maniac I might just get to Cardiff before the train does and she can join it there. This seems infeasible to me, the roads around Barry, Cardiff airport and Cardiff itself being a tad busy at that time of the morning and trains having the advantage of going at a hundred bloody miles an hour and in a straight line. Well anyway, she won the argument”
“Well, der”
“Yes, quite. She says the train makes lots of detours and stops and that ought to buy us enough time and so off we trot like something out of a bloody cowboy film chasing the damn train all the way to Cardiff and you know what?”
“Mmmm?”
“Are you listening? I said you know what? As I get into Cardiff city centre the satnav is telling me that we might just do it, the train leaves in ten minutes and we have five minutes to go.”
“So it all worked out?”
“Not exactly. And this is where the second domestic disturbance tested the foundations of our union.”
“Anyone ever told you you talk funny Dad?”
“Many people, many times precious. This secondary and much more voluble dispute centred around whose responsibility it was to ensure that the satnav is regularly updated via the Tom Tom website. You see had it been up to date it wouldn’t have been telling us to turn right down a road which was clearly no longer a right of way. Yes we were in time, yes we could see on the map that the station wasn’t far away, no we couldn’t bloody well get anywhere near it.”
“So what happened in the end?”
“I drove in a manner likely to provoke the interest of the local heddlu, unsure of where I was going until we came in sight of the station, I flung her out, her rucksack after her and she legged it, over a wall, through a car park and out of sight.”
“You didn’t go with her?”
“I was exciting the ire of a rather large vehicle across the path of which I had stopped the car in the manner more usually reserved for American detectives or perhaps desperadoes, either way I needed to beat a retreat.”
“So did she make the train?”
“Yes, it was running late.”
“That’s a really lame fucking story”
“Daisy!”
“Sorry dad, but you’re going to have to do better than that for the blog.”
“I could talk about how well Cardiff played against Man United I suppose, at least that would be relevant.”
“Are they a good team?”
“Man United? God no.”
“No, Cardiff.”
“Oh I see, pretty good I’d say, I think they will be full of confidence and really hard to contain”
“But you think your team will win?”
“I always think we will win. It’s why it hurts so much when we don’t. It’s probably why some fans feel so let down when their team lose”
“But surely Dad it isn’t the team’s fault that fans decide to invest so much of their emotional well being in the result of a football match. That’s the fans fault. The team want to win because that’s their job regardless of whether you and a bunch of similarly weird blokes”
“And women”
“and women, decide to hinge their future happiness on the outcome of what is, essentially, them just doing their jobs.”
“Yes but a lot of people are too emotionally immature to realise that. You on the other hand being my daughter are not only beautiful but smart too. It’s genetic”
“Smart enough not to put my happiness in the hands of a bunch of strangers at least. Anyway how do these folk react? They start fighting fans of other teams or something?”
“Oh God no, this isn’t the nineteen seventies. They go onto the internet and verbally attack fellow supporters and the Arsenal players and manager”
“What? But that’s ridiculous”
“You’d think so”
“If, as you say, they identify with the team so strongly that it’s like a deep abiding relationship, like a family, then surely they wouldn’t attack their own family? I mean it’d be like publicly vilifying their children for failing at school, or being bullied by someone bigger and stronger”
“Or someone smaller and weaker – even worse”
“Well Dad, I don’t think I’ll ever understand you football fans, so I’ll leave you to your blog, good luck with it.”
“Actually Daisy, I don’t have space to write it anyway now, our conversation has taken up the word count.”
“Shit”
“I know right”
“Dad”
“Yeah?”
“Stop trying to talk like a teenager.”
“Sorry”

Wiziwig suffered a DDOS attack the other night. There’s a sentence I couldn’t have predicted I’d be writing when, as a boy, I  used to wait up, yawning, for Match Of The Day to come on, wondering whether Arsenal would feature or not. In fact when I was much younger I didn’t wait up at all. If I wanted to watch the single most important programme of the week my Mum made me go to bed early and I was then  woken up to watch it before going back to bed. My parents were old school and believed firmly that children needed their sleep. Even though lying in bed staring at the ceiling an hour before my bedtime, excited like it was Christmas Eve, made sleep all but impossible, I usually did drift off. Eventually.

Mum would shake me awake at the appointed hour and I would wander in to the front room, wrapped in my dressing gown, hair awry, bewildered and blinking into the light of the television, a strange youthful alien creature materialised into the adult world of drawn curtains, hushed tones and night time TV. Dad would bring me a cup of sweet milky tea and I’d settle in next to his warmth on the settee in anticipation of the famous theme tune. Football for me has always been a place of cosiness, familiarity, excitement and expectation all commingled and stirred into a nostalgic emotional gumbo.

And now Wiziwig has suffered a DDOS attack. It’s difficult sometimes for my generation to maintain a grip on the childlike wonder with which we started our love affair with the most beautiful of games. With the explosion of technology which we have seen in recent years the way in which we consume football has altered beyond measure. Whereas I used to listen to a small transistor radio on a Saturday afternoon in the hope that the second half commentary (yes only the second half) would feature the Arsenal game, or try to decipher those strange encoded half time score cards that surrounded the touchline if I was at a Bristol Rovers match, nowadays I can watch via satellite or terrestrial television, listen to commentary provided by the club itself, wait and watch the whole match on the Arsenal Player the following day or select from a multitude of internet based players and watch every match live with a choice of commentaries from all around the world. If I wanted to discuss a match I had to have a couple of mates around listening at the same time and we could debate what we were hearing. Or if I was at a match I could discuss the half times with my fellow Gas Heads. The entire crowd was made up of Man United, Liverpool, Arsenal or Leeds fans. We were all supporting the Rovers but secretly almost the entire terrace was populated with people part of whose hearts were far far away. A couple of closet QPR fans would chat with a West Ham fan over their fags and flasks about how well Everton were doing. And all we knew we gleaned from the code in the programme and the alphabetized scores where nowadays scrolling advertising rolls relentlessly around the pitch side.

I vividly recall listening to a sixth round cup tie in which Arsenal were playing. Dave Bell, Wilb and Speed Bradley were all in my room with me and the commentators competed with the crowd noise to bring news of the match via my portable transistor. In those days, as the home side attacked, the sound of the roaring crowd drowned out Bryon Butler and Peter Jones, achieving a crackling distorted crescendo and leaving the listener in an agony of ignorance until the noise subsided and the commentator could at last be heard telling us whether a goal had been scored or the target missed. On this occasion the game was on a knife edge, the team were attacking again and again, the scene painted for us from the genius of Butler or the poetry of Jones , I forget precisely which was on the microphone, and as the tension grew I gripped the radio in feverish excitement. The crowd roared, the commentators erudition was lost in a welter of north London voices, Dave Bell held my arm, Wilb and Speed exchanged nervous glances, nobody spoke as we all waited to see if the ball had finally gone in and when the noise subsided sufficiently for us to hear that it hadn’t I flung the radio across the room where it erupted into a sorry pile of mute plastic pieces and silence filled the room. I felt three incredulous faces turn slowly from the shattered transistor to stare at my own horrified disbelief, and we decided to go out and ride our bikes for a bit instead.

Nowadays I don’t have anyone in the room. I don’t love the commentary as I used to. I don’t have to be woken up to watch the very abbreviated highlights. The whole thing is at my hi-tech fingertips. I never miss a match, I watch particularly well executed moves repeatedly on youtube or Arsenal player and mention anyone from Arsenal’s past and I can summon up some kind of footage of them in action. Has this diluted or increased my enjoyment? Well I have to say one thing has remained constant. I’m still that feverish little boy, muscles knotted, nerves taught, ready to smash the radio when we don’t quite score. I don’t think that will ever change. Now I have a whole world of fellow travellers typing away and transmitting their thoughts directly into my room with whom I can cheer, share consolation, argue, unfollow, favourite or applaud and with the passing of this country’s finest ever commentators I can choose to listen to Dutch or French or (and this is often the case) Russian voices thrilling to the fast flowing football of my favourite side which means I don’t have to hear Butler and Jones’ sacred memories sullied by the irredeemably despicable  gibbering of their modern day successors.

Unless of course Wiziwig suffers a DDOS attack. Well on Tuesday night it did. In the absence of suitable safe links I tried for a while to listen to Arsenal Player while watching ITV but the perfect sync seemed to slip and the voices anticipated the action in a way that leant them a curious prescience so I was compelled to switch to Messrs Townsend and Tyldesley, more for the stadium noise than their wisdom you understand. How I long for the days when the crowd would simply overwhelm the commentary. It wasn’t all irritating though. In fact in a strange way Arsenal’s hypnotic stroll through the motions on Tuesday night brought with it a revelation of sorts. I don’t follow fools gladly on Twitter and not at all in the comment section of blogs but a few retweeters and a couple of good folk keep me abreast of the prevailing mood. On Tuesday it seemed many must have been watching a very different game to the one I was enjoying. There were rumblings, discontent at individual players performances and that of the team overall. When you consider the laughable ease with which we controlled the game this was something of a shock to me. But then I began to pay attention to Townsend and his pal. It dawned on me that if you are being drip fed a continuous diet of half truths, fantasy and over arching negativity about the match you are watching the chances are you might just start to feel that maybe things are not after all going too well. Is this maybe why the world beyond the barricade seems so unhappy even when we are enjoying our best season for years? They are constantly being told things are not right, performances are below par, the squad is too weak, Arsenal are having a nightmare, can’t pass, need to step it up. By never listening to the British media I don’t receive these messages and so I make up my own mind based on what is actually happening.

Townsend of course blew his cover with his involuntary cry of ‘Get in’ as a Marseilles player shot low to Szczęsny’s left compounding his embarrassing error with “I was applauding the fact that I thought he’d got himself a lovely goal”. No Andy, no you weren’t. You were caught up in the moment like any fan and you showed your true colours. The feeble attempt to make a really pitiful excuse moments later, like the rambling and painfully inept way I attempted to explain away the broken radio to my Dad all those years ago, merely served to make you sound even more guilty. It was a schoolboy error, but it at least proved beyond doubt how horribly biased against us the man actually is.

So my advice to enjoy your football is find an alternative to Wiziwig in case of DDOS attacks, get to bed early if it’s a late kick off, and don’t stand too close to me if I’m holding anything small enough to throw.

“Leo Santos ‏@_LS87_ 15m

If Man Utd had given that performance ITV’s keywords would be ‘patient’, ‘composed’, ‘professional’, ‘untroubled’, ‘comfortable’.”

There you have it.That’s how the game should have been described, but the 3 stooges on ITV  (Wright,Dixon and Keane)  just talked absolute bollocks . The usual shit about big tests and Giroud getting injured.

Twitter was full of halfwits moaning about Ozil.  It’s beyond stupidity.

We won the game within 30 seconds.

Jack was back to some good form and Monreal is the unluckiest player in the world that he cant get starts.

Anyway,we are top of both of the leagues and if people want to look for things to complain about then bollocks to them.

This Arsenal team really is a force to be reckoned with.

Right, that’s the suits sorted.

I got a chance to talk to Arsene Wenger immediately after the most recent AFC Shareholders’ meeting in October.  At the time he felt the club still needed to work harder.  That was his comment in response to my fulfilling a long harboured desire to simply shake his hand and thank him for all he has done for the club.  A simple “You’re welcome” would have been sufficient.

My guess as to how he’d answer the above question is: “Quite”.

He would be the first to point out we’ve won nothing yet, this season, and there is a long way to go.  He might mention something about little bit marathons and sprints.  I don’t know.

But this uniquely humble, committed, visionary genius of a man would be the last one in any room to start counting his chickens.

I, on the other hand, unburdened with a fraction of his wisdom can, as I write, immediately spy that we are top of the two leagues that matter, out of one domestic cup competition and ready to do battle in another.

On what basis, then, might Arsene argue that we are merely doing “quite well”, at this stage.

Arsene, in that modest manner of his would suggest that our house is in relatively good order with a fully-functioning world class stadium continuing to routinely sell out on match days.

Our squad is a balanced one with a decent mixture of young first-teamers developing their talents alongside older heads.  Our recent arrivals ply their trade shoulder-to-shoulder with those who know only how to wear the Arsenal shirt.  Our squad is also a profoundly stable one having emerged intact from the last transfer window with no loss of stars and a trimmed down squad.  There was the small matter of the addition of three players, at least one of whom can legitimately be described as a world class superstar. And whilst Flamini’s impact on the squad has proved as great as the speed with which he hit the ground playing the Wenger-way as though he’d never been away, a third fellow, oh Yaya, can usefully described as a decent future prospect.  None of the three new players added can be said to have disrupted the squad or its playing style at any level.

It’s worth noting that not all new signings work out – at AFC or any club.  The development of Olivier Giroud is bordering on astonishing.  Despite what some might suggest our first choice forward is indeed fit to wear the shirt and not only that, is fast becoming one of the most dreaded and least ‘playable’ attackers seen in the EPL possibly since Drogba cast his immense shadow across the defences of the land.  Per Mertsacker (100 games for Germany, 95 at senior level) has suddenly just revealed himself, to some, as one of the finest centre-backs in the game.

Quelle surprise!

As Arsene probably wouldn’t say.

And to cap it all, Aaron Ramsey’s turned out not too bad.  Much to the chagrin of those who fell over their own reputations in writing him off as ‘not good enough for Arsenal’.

These four players alone have in recent months been the subject of some public doubt and even ridicule but in reality their success simply highlights that far from Arsene Wenger having somehow ‘lost it’, he has very much retained his eye for talent – and world class talent, at that.  At the same time, 2013’s defeat of both Bayern Munich and Dortmund also exposes another lie that Wenger somehow does not ‘do tactics’.  This summer’s purchases in particular embarrassed those who liked to claim he does not have the nerve to deal in high-profile, high-value player acquisitions.

Evidently, these three aspects of our recent history serve to suggest the Manager is in extremely good nick.  His continued public charm, humour and humilty are not the hallmarks of someone about to give up on anything, either.

We have an injury list that has proved manageable with established first-teamers getting back to action in time to facilitate squad rotation nicely ahead of the business end of the season.

We have quite possibly the most exciting U21’s squad likely to be found anywhere in world football.

We appear to have cash in hand to fund further strengthening in either January or possibly more likely in the summer.  Unlike most UK clubs we are not up to our eye-balls in debt and neither are we hemorrhaging support despite the dire warnings from the nay-sayers.  We lack neither the wisdom, confidence or the stability at the highest levels of the club which would otherwise cause us to rush out and squander all available cash like headless (wait for it) chickens.  We are big enough to bide our time.

In the EPL, as of this weekend, we find ourselves on 28 points and a goal difference of 14, four points ahead of second-placed Liverpool and Chelsea, five ahead of City and Southampton, seven ahead of Man u and Everton, who bring up the rear in seventh.  Way, way down in mid-table, after 12 games gone and with 26 to go, Tottenham, having jettisoned all the cash from the Bale bale-out, cling to 9^th place with just 20 points and a goal difference of -3 (minus three).  But, ironically, Spurs’ situation, despite the envy-driven, panicky hysteria amongst some of our own less well-grounded fans during the transfer season, turns out to be not really relevant for this article, after all.

In order to better grasp how well Arsenal are doing at this early stage it probably helps to look at our nearest competitors and consider what kind of health they are in.  The problem is, it’s not always easy to tell exactly who are our nearest competitors.  Liverpool have undeniably done well, having survived the early games of the season sans Suarez, and they are now clearly benefiting from his particular brand of attacking talent.  If ever a player was putting himself in ‘the window’ it’s Luis and one fears for Liverpool’s post-January prospects should they fail, like Tottenham in the summer, to keep their best player.  The impact of the loss of key players to Arsenal in successive seasons has to provide a salutary lesson for all; subtract Suarez and it’s difficult to imagine Liverpool keeping up with the leaders as Spurs have conspicuously failed to do.

Whilst City remain the favourites with many to win the EPL, their form is remarkably inconsistent having already lost four EPL games – a third of those played – drawn one including the loss to Sunderland, a side looking destined for relegation (again).  City’s away form in combination with a huge question mark over the confidence issues affecting their goalkeeper are nonetheless still a side a long way from a crisis.  Equally, however, given the sums spent in recent seasons, they, alongside every other competitor to Arsenal, are a long way from dominating the league and if the points-lost trend of the last 12 games is maintained, then success is hardly assured.

Both Chelsea and Man u play a particularly unattractive, unappealing brand of football which has nonetheless been getting results. A good number of these results, however, can hardly be said to have been all that deserved.  The simple fact is that the south Londoners have already dropped 12 points and united 15 and it’s still only November.

It’s true that Arsenal have also dropped points – 8 in all – but these days points gained at our expense are generating a shock wave of surprise at the loss, such has been the nature of our form throughout the whole of 2013.  Our goals against column shows 10 goals conceded which ain’t bad for an attacking side supposedly frail at the back (who’s writing this shit?).  Only one side, Southampton, have a better record with 7 against and we just stuck two past them on Saturday.  Does that count as a ‘test’?  I’m guessing not on account of their not being above us in the league (is it the same person writing all the crap, it certainly feels like it?).

In contrast, Man u dropped two more points at Cardiff yesterday but this resulted in merriment amongst observers rather than shock or awe.  Despite having had decades to plan this, the ineffective handover to Moyes from Ferguson coupled with their abject failure in the transfer market and the rushed replacement of backroom staff at Old Trafford has clearly had an impact on united’s start to the season.  Meanwhile, down Fulham way, Jose’s touch looks far less assured than first time around and how he copes without a limitless transfer budget remains to be seen.  His first summer actions in loaning out some of the club’s best talent might be considered odd in the extreme.  Neither his nor the Glazer’s club will likely run away with anything this season even with a fair wind from now until May.  Quite what the impact will be of failure to finish in the top four for any of these clubs hardly bears thinking about.

That all said, in truth, and without bothering to attempt a like-with-like analysis versus last year’s fixtures and results, the English Premier League is wide open.  There is plenty of time for others to sort out their form (not you, Spurs) and for Arsenal to, theoretically at least, lose their way over the coming 26 games (they won’t).

But for me, it’s the trend that is significant.  In overall terms and on every identifiable criteria, the club is going forward where others are stumbling or stalling.  Even in Europe our form has been outstanding with the warning from London being heard loud and clear across the continent following remarkable performances and results against Dortmund and the rest.  It can not pass without mention that the two defeats in the EPL have come about to some extent as a result of either refereeing intervention or intervention of a less divine source with both squad sickness and terrible officiating playing key roles in our rare 2013 setbacks.  Had the fans of any of the top clubs been offered parity on points at the top of the EPL by Xmas I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have to be Lois Suarez to, well you can guess the rest.

So yes, Arsene, if you were to say to me you thought we were doing quite well I’d have to agree.  Sure, the marathon/sprint thing is as true today as it’s always been.  But I do think with the hard graft the manager already believes is required clearly permeating the squad’s work ethic, we are as well placed as anyone to win, and to win well this season.

Whether that turns out to be the trophies some say the club clearly deserves to win, only time, a handful of games in Europe plus twenty-six riveting encounters in the EPL, will tell.

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

How does this grab you boys and girls?

Would you have taken that after 12 games before a ball was kicked?

I would.

We are in this position simply because, despite a huge injury list, we have played the best football and, so far, have been the best team in the league.

When I used to ask the malcontents  “What do you expect?”  they would usually say “I just want us to compete”.

Well I  say we are doing that okay, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, on to the game.

That was as professional a performance as you could wish to see.  After the opening 5 minutes we took control of the game. They were pinned back and we looked like we would score.  That we were gifted the first goal is unimportant; it was a deserved lead.

From that moment on I was convinced we would go on to win the game.  Our goalkeeper and defence were imperious.  Each one of them were an 8 or 9 out of 10.   Giroud was most people’s MOTM.  Mine too

Now although I watched the game I still can’t tell you what position the rest of the team were supposed to be playing in.  If I was going to be critical, I would say Mikel was below his best in the first half.  However “below his best” does not mean he was bad, because “his best” is exceptional.  He still distributed the ball well and spread the play nicely.  This was not Arsenal at its free flowing best, but it was a team that looks like it could move up through the gears if its free flowing best IS required.

I believe we are in this to win it.

So we can pick through it in the comments section. Let’s face it, most of you know more about the game than me.

Happy days.

When I last visited Southampton it was to play at a venue called the Brook. It’s a cracking place both to perform and to see a band and an easy drive for me and it made me think rather warmly of the place. This of course put me in a minority among my peers. The rest of the band, from Portsmouth to a man, looked upon Hampshire’s biggest city with much the same love as you and I might reserve for a Spurs supporting Great Dane with diarrhoea that had just evacuated twelve pounds of semi digested Pedigree Chum onto our best Axminster.

My football memories (there are precisely two) of Southampton go way back. The first comes with a wholly unsavoury confession which I hesitate to make public here. You see, back when I was still in short trousers and newly arrived in England, I decided to choose an English team to support. I was already fascinated with football and Chelsea had an extremely photogenic and exciting team and I briefly flirted with the idea of supporting them. Can you imagine? It was a bloody close run thing as well, what with them defeating the universally despised Leeds United in the FA Cup final that season. Just the kind of behaviour to turn a young boy’s head. Then, as now, Southampton was the closest top flight club to my home town and as a treat my dad took me to the Dell to see not the home side but the visitors who included the likes of  Bonetti, Harris, Osgood, Hudson, Cooke and Hutchinson. It was, on reflection, a heck of a thing for him to do because he was a Pompey fan himself and while neither Chelsea nor Southampton was destined to be my team, the occasion, the crowd the sheer bloody excitement of the thing were massively significant if not fundamentally instrumental in sparking my lifelong obsession with the beautiful game. Not that watching Chopper Harris repeatedly kicking Joe Kirkup six feet into the air could be classed as a thing of beauty, but I’m sure you catch my drift.

I didn’t visit the Dell again until Arsenal came to town for a League Cup 4th round replay in November 1985. It was a wonderful night. We won three one, Charlie Nicholas scored and we successfully wound up Peter Shilton to the point were he nearly climbed into the crowd to sort us all out. In a neat symbiosis Spurs also travelled to the south coast in the same competition and lost to Portsmouth. Life can be sweet at times. I went down with my mate Jon in my shiny new Skoda 120LS which, unfortunately for us broke down in Buckland Dinham on the way home, moments after the village pub shut for the night.

The only other part Southampton played in this old man’s misspent youth was beating Man United in the FA Cup final of 1976 and for that and all the other reasons above I harbour them no ill will. I don’t wish them well this afternoon of course, that would be a step too far, but the way they have gone about their business this season has, quite rightly, drawn plaudits from far and wide. When you consider the appallingly unambitious, lowest common denominator football some of the smaller clubs have practised over the years, all of them dragging out the feeble excuse that it is the only way to guarantee survival in the Premier League, it is a joy when teams come up and try to move the ball around and get forward in numbers.

Obviously the silly talk of us being underdogs today is just a symptom of the disease of exaggeration, hyperbole and over reaction which infects so much of today’s media both social and professional. Southampton are coming to the home of the league leaders, who, on their day can beat any team in the world, and they know they will need to be at their very best and Arsenal at their worst to create an upset today. I am not belittling the opposition, I hope I may never be accused of such premature triumphalism, and I know that the kind of disjointed, insipid display we put on in the first half at Old Trafford will not be good enough if our visitors do play to the best of their abilities, but I am very positive about today. As Arsène said yesterday, there were lessons to learn and the team have learned them. It’s all about self belief and imposing your game on the opposition whomsoever they might be.

As far as the squad is concerned it’s one step forward one step back. Flamini suspended and Theo returning from injury is, I think , indicative of the change in approach the team needs to adopt in the light of its last outing. We need to get at and behind sides with pace. We need to start frightening teams, putting them onto the back foot in the style of the great Arsène Wenger teams of recent years. I have no qualms about our defence, we look very solid with either Arteta or Flamini in front of our back five, I think we just need to play a little more in the other teams half. Of course, we need to pass the ball quickly and accurately as well and for me the key player is Tomáš Rosický. He keeps things moving and ups the tempo in a way nobody else does. He may be back from his illness, we shall have to wait and see. If he is fit then guessing the team selection is all but impossible as there are too many undroppable players on the list. It’s a problem I’m sure Arsène is delighted to have and one he’ll have in spades when everybody is fit again.

The wingless wonders have done us proud up until now. With the return of genuine width and pace  we become an immediately more threatening proposition and with the option to rest tired legs and replace them with authentic quality I am really looking forward to part three in what is shaping up to be the most intriguing Premier League battle in many years. More than anything I’m just bloody relieved that despite cheering Chelsea on to that FA Cup win back in 1970, something happened in the summer and I decided that the team for me played in red with white sleeves. It was, as I have said, a close run thing.

Today its a post by our old mate Bradyesque7.

*There was a line in this post that could easily be misconstrued as hate-speak. If I read this post, and knew what I now know, I would think that it was a disgusting comment. Rather than further highlight it, I have removed the line. I apologise to anyone who knows what I mean and took offence. *

Hard times have befallen Europe. We borrowed too much and now the majority of nations in our continent are in a period of austerity. While we all built mansions with swimming pools filled with copagne (two parts Champagne, one part cocaine), Arsenal were exercising some (possibly) self-imposed prudence.

The time has now come to reap the benefits of our cautious approach as we now have the cash at the ready to sign players who can genuinely improve our team. We are now in a position whereby we can sign players that our peers would love to sign. So you would have to consider the plan to be a successful one, yes?

Well, not if you’re in the discontent business. This week, I read a blog from the guy who calls himself ‘Angry of N5’. This is, apparently, not just clever name. In his blog, ‘Angry’ went into great detail on how things could and should have been done differently. Now, of course there is room for debate, and I’m sure that within the club there was such discourse.

The difference between somebody within Arsenal having an alternative view, and the hacky bloggers who seem desperate to criticise, is that the people within the club are furnished with accurate and up-to-date information. ‘Angry of N5’ admitted in his own blog that he can’t be sure of the numbers with which he is working. He is guessing. Why is it not a surprise that his guesses come in the form of criticism? Why is it not a surprise that he thinks it all should have been done differently? Because he is in the discontent business. ‘Happy of N5’ just isn’t as cool.

Speaking of hacky blogs, I read a post from the prestigious and ever-popular ‘Ladyarse’ recently. There are some sports writers who write the articles for their employers (red-top rags) and have their work headed with some outlandish rubbish which may or may not even relate to what’s in the piece. The beauty of blogs is that we write what we want to write. It’s up to us which approach we take. So, when Nicklas Bendtner gave the answer that millions would give, Ladyarse decided to remove all context in order to gain the maximum hits their site. Reading the article, they did use accurate quotes and, as you know, Bendtner did not say anything that suggested that he deserves to play for Barcelona or Real Madrid.

Why did they go with the headline ‘Bendtner – I’d like to go to Real Madrid or Barcelona’? Well I can only speculate on that but I suppose that it’s the same reason that the tabloids do it. Bendtner bashing is good numbers. Truth and integrity are found in the dusty corners of the library.

I would have included links but I just didn’t feel like it.

Thanks for reading. Up the Arsenal!

Nearly there folks. Another couple of days and football returns. I’ve not heard of any injury problems as a result of the irritating internationals, which is a refreshing change. The international breaks have in fact provided us with another indication that things may be a little different this time around. Of course we all knew that this season would be different. The squad having had time to grow into a settled, balanced unit and the success of the latter half of 12/13 were enough to tell anyone with half a brain that we would be a force to be reckoned with but the success of the transfer window really made that obvious even to those who didn’t want to see. I’m not talking about signing Mesut. We all know he needs a season to bed in just like anyone else would. No, I’m talking about the fact that we didn’t lose any players that we didn’t want to, that’s the real story of the summer and we are reaping the rewards.

The biggest surprise for me so far this season is for once we have had a brief glimpse up the skirt of lady luck which flirtatious harlot has rejected us time and again in recent years. The internationals usually arrive in perfect time to either disrupt a nascent run of good results or to injure a couple of key players. This season we have staggered a little towards them like a boxer, ahead on points but having taken a couple on the jaw and in need of the old sponge and spit bucket. We were hanging on for the bell. The breaks came just when a squad, which had performed miracles given a terrible injury situation, most needed them. More than that we had players who needed a couple of weeks to get back to fitness and shake off sickness. Aaron Ramsay, surely the pre-eminently pivotal member of our squad and the one who most needed to recharge his batteries even experienced a mild tightening of his hamstring, just enough to make him miss the Wales game – disappointing for him but vital for our hopes. Now we can look forward to Theo and Lukas coming back and to those who succumbed to the germs at Old Trafford regaining their bacteriological equilibrium. In short the timing of the break couldn’t have been much better.

So how did you spend it? I know some of you prefer the methadone of watching the international games to the cold turkey of just sitting it out and waiting for the real thing. I attempted to watch a bit of Italy versus Germany in solidarity with you but it was like being offered Vimto when you ordered Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. Instead I filled the gaping hole in my sporting appetites with Dennis Bergkamp’s biography. It’s an easy read, more of a long interview than a biography, but nonetheless, like a proctologist’s photo album, contains a couple of choice passages. My eye was drawn to the part covering his early Arsenal career. I couldn’t help but wonder how it might inform our thoughts on the latest pretender to Dennis’ saintly crown. Mesut Özil could (just possibly) be the closest thing we’ve had to a Bergkampian signing for a little while. A recognised talent for both club and country, landing in North London when at the peak of his powers, seemingly in perfect time to add the vital spark to ignite the sleeping giant and propel it to great new heights. Well maybe.

The fact is we didn’t know if Dennis would work out or not and we don’t know if Mesut will. We didn’t know that Aaron would be the most important player at the club (although some suspected he might be pretty hot stuff) or that Per Mertesacker would prove to be the most significant signing in yonks. We don’t know. I don’t, journalists don’t and bloggers don’t. What we can do is to examine the experience of those who have gone before and in so doing be better able to speculate on the trials facing the present incumbents.

In his book, Dennis talks about the pressures on a newcomer to Arsenal and the special pressures an expectant crowd can bring to bear on a special player. He was surprised not to get more stick than he did, he felt the crowd cut him a lot of slack in his first few months as if they knew he could explode in precisely the way he did and were just hanging on crossing their fingers until he did. He also speaks about the way even the best players will play a little within themselves in the first few months at a new club. They don’t take the lead, don’t put themselves forward too much. Cautious about taking risks and making mistakes they play the safe passes instead, easing their way in.

Part of the problem is the players around them don’t realise how to play to the strengths of a truly world class number ten. When they began to realise Dennis’s whole game improved. He and others interviewed for the book speak with fond memories of my favourite Bergkamp moment, the assist for Freddie against Juventus. The thing that stuck out for me was the fact that all that jiggery pokery and, lets be frank, taking the piss out of some of Europe’s best defenders for all that time was done quite calmly and deliberately and for one simple reason. He was essentially twiddling his thumbs waiting for Freddie to jolly well wake up and make the damned run into the area. Watch it again and imagine Dennis thinking ‘ho hum, tiddly pom, come on Ljungberg make the run will you, I’m getting bored of this’. But he knew if he held the ball long enough someone would guess his intent and make the charge full in the knowledge that they’d receive the absolutely perfect pass no matter how he had to deliver it. That kind of mutual understanding and confidence in team mates takes time to build.

There are signs that Aaron is catching on. I cannot wait to see how Theo and in particular Lukas respond to Mesut’s place in the Arsenal set up, it will only take a couple of players to find his wavelength and for him to find the pace of the Premier League and we could well see a return to the mouthwatering assists to which we became used during Dennis’ reign. Of course if he doesn’t work out a quick glance at what Santi, Olivier and Jack are capable of still suggests this side are already able to produce some pretty blinding football