Hello! How are you? Hope your all doing well, for the night of October 22nd at 8.00pm (western European time) sees the Mighty Cannon go all Shakhtari and receive a visit from FC Shakhtar of the Ukraine for a 90 minute dance to the music of time..

Our Mole/Miner visitors are currently 27th in the CL, having drawn and lost one and we are in 13th, winning one and drawing one so far, as you of course already know. Normally they play in Donetsk at the Donbas arena, but due to the conflict with Russia since 2014 they have re-located firstly to 1,000 km to the west and taken up home in the Arena Lviv back in 2014 and then to a stadium in Kharkiv. But have played cup games in Gelsenkirchen D-land. I’m not sure how that works out with their fans? They won their league last year and are currently 4th in the Ukrainian Premier League. And this is a team that likes to score goals and has a smattering of Brazilian players in its squad to add a touch of the old samba to the borscht.

Formed in the difficult days of April 1936 in the Soviet Union, from a mixture of mining communities, apparently a Shakhtar is a coal miner who works in a sub-surface shafted mine, and is a derivative of the word shaft. After the Great Patriotic war(WW2)  there were only three players left, how they coped with such a devastating tragedy I have no idea. In all they’ve notched up 56 years of professional Soviet football, and 33 years of professional Ukrainian football. They remain a popular side in that country.

Our old pal Henrik Mkhitaryan played for them back in 2010-13 (72 apps/38 goals).

They won the UEFA cup in 2009. Reached the SF’ s 15/16 and in 19/20. This is a team that participates regularly in Euro football, and has a tough reputation from the Soviet times and afterwards. We are head to head with them; won two, lost two, both times losing the away leg and doing the business back at our shed. Their coefficient rating is 63.000, sandwiched between Rangers and Eintracht Frankfurt..

The Kroty(moles) have won the Ukrainian league 15 times, the Ukrainian cup 14 times, Ukrainian super cup 9 times. The also won the Soviet cup four times.

Their manager is Marino Pušić with a 71% win rate, but alas have been given by somebody somewhere only a 4% chance of winning this game.

Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces that I’m sure have made you feel like going out semi-naked into the street singing ‘hey nonny nonny’ to relieve yourself from the tedium of it.

Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses! 

COYG and keep on keepin’ on!

Mills

Hi all.

There we have it, our first league defeat and well earned it was.

We kicked off with three defensive midfielders with little or no creativity between them ,and low and behold , we created nothing, zilch, nada, nowt. The first half hour, 11 v 11, was awful turgid stuff which resulted with zero attempts on goal. It was slow laborious stuff and we turned the ball over cheaply time and time again. By the way, they were far form being good. It was poor. But what is most annoying is that we set up in a way that “poor” was almost inevitable.

Then, yet again, we got a man sent off for the third time this season, because of careless play, and for the third time……stupidity. Trossard’s ball was a shocker, but Saliba absolutely fooked the job up when he yanked him down. It was a red, sorry, but it just was. We the tried to cling on for a draw, like we have managed to do the two previous times, but this time without Saliba. We needed a miracle, and didn’t get it.

So I’ll say this now, and it’s not a knee jerk reaction, this has been coming. We have not been playing as well as our lofty league position suggests. Results have been better than performances in general. We are fantastically solid in defence, that’s a fact, but fluidity and flare are thin on the ground, with Saka being the only bright spark in these two dimensions, and one individual isn’t enough in a team game.

Now we go into the Liverpool game minus Saliba. Here’s hoping.

Pedantic George.

As we say goodbye to the the warm sunshine for this year, and head into the gloaming of October and worse, the next inter-lull (oh joy of joys), I think we’ve all got a bit of an idea how things are moving this season for the mighty Cannon. It might not be what we wanted (top), but it could be much worse (Spursy), certainly there’s much to be proud of and take home from the City game despite all its high-octane disappointments, and there was the highly enjoyable night out with the young Guns against Bolton.

Atalanta was a bit of a squib rather than the complex cynosural fireworks that we would have liked. And of course we’ve all hoped for flowing, intelligent football and it turned up against Leicester. Perhaps we all would have loved to have seen PSG utterly destroyed, which was well within reach, but even so, a memorable and much  welcomed victory. 

Yet before that we seemed a bit blocked what with Odegaard having been stretchered off on an international battlegrounds but perhaps the Guns are starting to adapt and finding a way? Merino looks hungry, and we have a rock solid defence which can calm the nerves, the likes of which I haven’t experienced for a long time. Nice. Also nice was coming back from 1-0 down to beat Southampton, when for a moment it flashed through our minds that perhaps doom awaited us. Nicey nice was Martinelli grabbing a couple of goals, can only be good for the old confidence? Tomi’s back and the further we go on into the dark days of autumn and early winter the more we will need a squad. Nicer than nice was watching seventeen summers Nwaneri, looks like he could do well this season, and sure hope he does.

This years clash with Livercrutches suddenly takes on a new meaning as they have sneaked into pole position, albeit by a single point. But we still remain invincible, something that suits us well.

How have you digested the season so far?

To those that have made supportive comments for my previews, many, many thanks, its much appreciated, I’m genuinely sorry the previews aren’t better, or more like other blogs (story of my life!) I’m doing the best I can(often poorly I know). I’m not a natural born-writer and often I have to rely on tie-ins, plus you all have excellent footballing(Arsenal) minds and great analytical insight so I’m not going to set myself up as knowing, when I don’t. But its meant a heck of lot when you guys have added your own stories, thoughts and memories concerning Arsenal, its gratifying for sure. Can anyone else please cook up some articles, sure would make things interesting?

See you for the Bournefootandmouth game. Thanks again!

Mills

Hello, how are you?

Hope you’re doing well? On Saturday Oct 5th at 3.00pm (western European time) sees the mighty Cannon entertain at our shed the Sotonists of the deep south for target- practise and manoeuvres. A match-up which at this moment of writing gives Southampton a 5.9% of winning, so I’m sure ye old dark arts will be out and about even before All Hallows Eve comes around. Not that they’re that dark if everyone can see them and most teams sooner or later use them, so much for esotericism these days? Plus even if its irritating its not illegal, can you hear me Man City? Privileged City seem to think we should just all lie down and let them win, but why?

“you didn’t defend Stoke City usage of the dark arts though did you?”

“of course not, like most humans I’m a slippery hypocrite!”

To round up of this first part of the seasons tedious previews, I do have one really pathetic story concerning Southampton and Arsenal. Over thirty six summers ago, I dated a girl who had moved down to Southampton to attend college. I was living in another part of the county at the time and it took at least eight gruelling hours on the bus to get my Arsenal all the way down there for a visit. The first time I turned up I got drafted into her landlords indoor seven-a-side team, by then I had zero interest in playing and didn’t do too much and was subbed off at HT. A situation that was to the advantage of everyone concerned. But my footballing days were not to be the only demise I would experience in that city… 

Some months later, after one utterly monumental, endless -grind of a journey where I emerged from the bus looking and feeling like the living dead, having endured ten hours (life’s ref had added and extra couple of hours for punishment)of travel torture. Later, sometime around midnight I found myself getting (quite unexpectedly)the old heave-ho (how marvellous!), the whole reasoning was never really explained to me as why I was getting the tin (a new billy soy of course, pastures green and me being a tool), and why a phone dumping hadn’t sufficed I have no idea, certainly would have been much more convenient all round.

As you can imagine I was pretty irritated and slunk off in some room or other to be alone with my ego as it tortured me over the whole situation. Meanwhile the Arsenal were in action on the radio against, yep old Southampton themselves. Now some months before, there had been an incident, a post coital one, that went like this: I have ADHD so the old mind flits an flutters all over the show, anyway, it was about 5.45pm so time for the results and I asked her to put the radio on to hear them as they came in, as she was nearest to the set. Man, she went fkn nuts! Somehow this was never really forgotten and that incident made it into her black-book of injustices. 

Later, back at the dumping ground, she came in the room to see how I was suffering just as the Southampton/Arsenal result was being reported on: 3-1 to the Gunners, so I gave it the big one, acting all superior like a ten year-old kid would, I might have got the boot but the mighty Arsenal, my true partner, had triumphed over the place where she lived and its football team and of course her negation of me! COYG! I deserved an award for being such a tool, she didn’t even like football, let alone Soton. Utterly pathetic, but quite amusing how in my undignified torment I could take the victory for myself! Seems quite a regular footballing occurrence?

“erm, I think you need to see a psychiatrist, perhaps five times a week”

Interlude: A quick dance through my Southampton music of time… Mick Channon’s windmill arm celebrations, nice 80’s Subbuteo kit, The Dell, seeing the Guns lose there, Manninger had a howler, Matt Le Tiss scores a blinder, never been to St. Marys, loads of great players transferred from them; Walcott, Beefy, Ainsley, LBM, 1976 cup final-Stepney can’t reach Turners shot down to his left, bit of a bogey team in the Weng years except for the cauldron of sweat final in 2003, Alan Ball, Steve Williams, Ken Monkou, berth 44 on the docks, Aaron, you say goodbye, we say hello. Fin.

Ok, back to the more important subject of physics: Southampton come to us having taken a bit of a battering in this early part of the season. One of five teams that haven’t notched up a win yet, although perhaps they were unlucky to not beat Ipswich?

So the old Sotonists head to head with the Arse be: We’ve won 53, drawn 30 and they’ve won 23. Our first meeting was back in 1927 in the FAC and we triumphed 2-1. We didn’t play again until 1966. Our last three meetings with them has been LDD. Southampton don’t have the bookmakers backing at the moment as they only have 5.9% chance of winning against us (yes, you told us) so we don’t need to sell anything to anyone at the crossroads to get better. Begone! For nights swifts dragons cut the clouds full fast. And yonder shines Auroras harbinger; at whose approach ghosts wander here and there and troop home to churchyards. Damnèd spirits all that crossways and floods have burial, already to wormy beds are gone, for least day should look their shames upon. They willfully exiled themselves from light and must for aye consort with black- brow’d night!

Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces that I’m sure have made you feel like reading the articles in pornographic magazines and ignoring the pictures.

Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses! 

COYG and keep on keepin’ on!

Mills

Hello! How are you?

On Saturday 28th of September at 3.00 pm (western European time) we entertain at our shiny shed the infamous And Leicester from England’s Waist lands.

I’ve been struggling with this fixture and I have no idea how to write about it .I want to apologise in advance, the only way I can write this preview is to find some different (narcissistic) angle that can get me motivated, otherwise I just can’t get there.

As a kid in the 1970s, we often went down to Dymchurch on the south coast and rented a static caravan there. Meaning; retch-inducing tinned ravioli, finding severed sheep’s tails in the field behind the caravan (“here mum, what’s this?”) and mostly overcast days on the polluted beach and a freezing grey-green sea, that is if you could actually cross the busy road to get to it without being reduced to tomato purée. Laughable it it might have been to some, but it was exciting and full of new and phenomena to digest , I wouldn’t swap it for other lives or memories made.

For some strange reason we would hang out where the sewage pipe came out on the beach whilst trying to avoid the mysterious dark clumps that some comedian said was onyx ( we didn’t check), whilst playing our favourite game of filling up a plastic bottle (plenty left behind by the conscientious sharing, caring litter distributors of life) until it floats properly and then bombing the shit out of it with bigger stones to try and make it sink. As you can see it was big laughs in our family, and if you’re clever, pollution can be used to entertain you! Odd thing was I loved playing that game but would get impatient and soon find a massive rock and turn into Bomber Command and sink the fker, much to the irritation of the other players, these days I’m much more accommodating and patient. Honest Guv!

That camp site was massive and my brother and I being little Herbert’s would sneak off and explore. I can still remember us hiding under someone’s caravan watching utterly green-eyed (as alienated kids) while these two groups of families had set up a three-a- aside tournament and all their relatives were watching in deck- chairs and cheering them on. It was really cool and genuinely impressive to watch people supporting each other and having a good time, each game seemed to have the power of those late 70s late afternoon/early evening Wimbledon semi-finals; everyone giving it all and fighting to the end. Dang, I wanted to get up and play. I can’t tell what I had to eat last week, but can still remember the long-haired flash- harry kids name who dominated the tournament. This was before 1977 so the Gunners weren’t quite yet in my life in those days. But football was.

Another time I came into contact with football on holiday was on the Gower. A Jujitsu club of Asian lads had come down from Birmingham and they would run in circuits around the caravan field as part of their training, often going past ours. Slowly we got to know these two brothers that were roughly the same age and we started having a kick around with them then got grafted in the Jujitsu boys makeshift-teams.

My bruv and I really clicked with them, and for a week or so we were all best friends, young kids, no agendas, strangers, yet united by friendship in football. We did some training with them, and also joined in and ran around the Caravan park as they did endless circuits and played in some more matches as the summer nights were long. 

Then they left and we never saw them again. I can still see their faces even though I’ve forgotten their names and yet can still remember some of the things we talked about. I’ve often wondered how life treated them. Odd isn’t it that through football (and other sports) you can strike up friendships very quickly? Now I’m starting to sound like the Grandfather in Jon Boorman’s film ‘Hope and Glory’ when he’s utterly assholed and lists off all those he knew as a youngster that were now old or dead. But he was sincere, and so am I.

There was one school in our area that I played against and they had burnt down their art department the week before, so you can imagine that school had a reputation. We lined up and the opposite kid in front of me on the right wing called me a c*nt then ran his studs down my leg. Spiffing. Nice to meet you too. I was used to sports injuries by then, some tool thought I was mouthing it off at him( I wasn’t) and he spiked me (more like lacerated, I still have a massive 6″x1″ scar on my leg) at an athletics meeting, and being in the good old days he avoided any kind of punishment. Weird thing was I didn’t go off in some injured sulk but still did the 400m relay with chopped up leg in tow. He was a pill- head and was totally blocked, not much of an excuse though.

I also busted my collar bone playing rugby, trouble was I tried to carry on (it broke after getting in a three-part sandwich from which I emerged effing and blinding all dazed and confused and not giving a crêpe about what any teacher thought, such was the utter agony) and then like a tool I carried on, and tackled this guy and got up looking a bit peaky and said “sorry I’ve got to go off”. I didn’t like egg chasing too much though and after that it was the end of my career as I knew the old collar bone would just snap again. Rugby was a weird one, I played full back and was pretty fast (by 12 summers I could get under 12 seconds in the 100m and for a skinny shrimp is wasn’t bad) so I just used to run with the ball. “run Forest run!”. Scrums weren’t mine, there was a big kid kid at my school called smelly Smith. Poor bastard, he was actually a good bloke, but no-one wanted to get in behind him in the scrum as his nomenclature did him justice.

Of course (like you) I have millions of stories playing football: I recall about fifteen of us up the park all smoking cigs aged about 11 and playing football at the same time (someone shouted out “football with fags!” and we all sparked up-Woodbines or something horrible like that, but pissing ourselves laughing while we did it). But our commitment to football meant playing before school, at break, lunchtime, after school, if there was no ball, then with stones, kick arounds in the almost dark up the affo (the athletic ground), trying to avoid the creepy jimmy bastards who lurked in the park down by the swings. House school matches (we had a Rolls- Royce of a team), school matches(once in a blizzard, I was so cold I just walked home in my boots as I couldn’t get them off) and often on half frozen pitches, half quagmire, half permafrost but also playing in some really exciting games where other team wanted to turn you into Hackfleisch afterwards for beating them. Playing in the boiling summers heat and feeling knackered and sloth-like but still carrying on…

I didn’t ever win a final, played in some, but didn’t win any. I did score some goals that made golden memories(including scoring a goal that won a league) and often I was made captain, but was too shy once the title was conferred on me,( Japan: Ghosts), would often clam up and really I was a better supporter (pseudo-captain) helping as a team player more than leading people up the garden path. Plus often there were sensitive psycho’s in our team, they didn’t like being barked at, and also I was moving away from wanting to play football, it was done, I knew I could achieve no more , I hated the last team I was in as it was too divided and half the team couldn’t be bovverd. Sometimes I would play those games over in my head, the pure ecstasy of smashing that ball in the back of the net…losing and being close to tears, being severely anxious before the games, and sometimes hating every second of it. I supposed its daft as a brush to think like that but even so some of those games would make a great yarn. 

I played for several outfits at club level, one was really full of talent and sophisticated and one lad went professional and others that were just as skilful, sadly didn’t. Some became a successes, some failures (whatever that actually means) and some tragically killed themselves, others OD’d. Some found heavens and some found hells; kids, cats, dogs and divorces. Many of the places where we played have now been built over for housing and the worlds turned enough that none of those old memory- ghosts haunt anymore.

As the years fall away like autumns leaves, many of those connections come undone, and even names get lost in the tackles of time but somehow, the faces of memories don’t, and for that I’m grateful. Places like PA are a still a shed for a natter and place to potentially work things out, even if there isn’t a black and white answer.

Everyone needs a shed for a pillow?

This summer I contacted some old friends from my days working in Leeds (Karen’s a LUFC fan and Jon’s a YC fan, and yes he was at that match!) and I was blessed to swap some long emails with Karen and she was telling me about her dad who was a miner and detailed his experiences underground but also she had this to say, which really touched me:

“before I stop talking about dad, I will tell you one over thing that you will appreciate. When he was young he set up a football club called Dominoes, made up of lads who were not judged to be good enough for other locals teams that were part of the local leagues etc-Fitzwilliam Boys etc. He ran it for years, mum washed their kits and brought them half-time refreshments, and they very, very rarely won a game(not sure if they did win anything actually)but I know some of the people who played and they always say it was the best team to play for and that they had a great time”.

Sometimes just to be a part of something is so important in life, some people ridicule the idea of inclusivity but its one of the most important ideas we have as humans. But unsung heroes like Karen’s mum and dad, doing all that for those rejected lads, makes me well up thinking about how kind-hearted and decent they were. Everyone needs a chance.

Leicester? I know zilch all about them, I didn’t mind them too much back at the Filbert Street days with that low stand behind the left hand goal ( as the camera looked), but since they moved I have no relationship with them at all. I’m sure its all very insulting to them and means psychologically that I should be excluded for not being as accommodating as some hippy from Woodstock and that I’ll never work for the BBC. But that’s the way it goes.

They seem to want to be rivals with us, and got pretty irritating when it came to the end of the season some years back and they were taunting us about not qualifying for the champions league and the Spuds were ‘having a laugh etc’. Soporific guy. Soporific.

I can’t even bore you to tears with some kind of nostalgic guff where I supported them in a Cup final. Because I didn’t. I won’t.

Historically head to head we are W 72  D 45  L 33. Our first game was back in 1895 and we lost 3-1. They were called Leicester Fosse in those days , we were the boys from Woolwich and it was a 2nd division affair. Our last game with them was in Feb 2023 and we won 1-0. Their historical silverware haul is 1 FAC, 1 PL and 1 LC. At the time of writing this( 21.9.24) they lie in 15th.

Manager Steve Cooper’s overall win rate is 47.60%, his Leicester stats I’m not putting up as he’s a brand- new manager. Veteran Jamie Vardy is still their club captain the man that said that he wasn’t interested in Wenger’s offer to come to the Arsenal as ‘nothings happening there’. Well nothing doesn’t exist son. And you were wrong.

Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces that I’m sure have made you check into a sanatorium to save your minds. I’ll be in the bed next to you also getting treatment.

Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses! 

COYG and keep on keepin’ on!

Mills