Tag Archive | football
COUNTERFACTUAL ARSENAL
Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people’s emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about “what might have been.” When Less Is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists Victoria Husted Medvec, Scott F. Madey, Thomas Gilovich Despite my awareness that football fans, including yours truly, often react irrationally to the fortunes […]
Arsenal Versus Aston Villa: Mozart’s Requiem
So here we are. The goal posts are down in the local park. What used to be a pitch is now just a playing field. Bristol Rovers have won their by now customary promotion and I have one more blog to write before crossing my feet on the desk and lacing my fingers together behind […]
Arsenal Versus Sunderland: From The Mouths Of Babes
Cormac and I enjoy wide ranging conversations on our evening dog walks. He’s nineteen now and in common with most chaps in their late teens is a wealth of fascinating knowledge and dubious facts. Spending his life at the hi-tech coal face of information technology and being a ‘stuff’ magnet he has learned and read […]
Arsenal Versus West Brom: As You Like It
I’ve always known I was special. If I wasn’t I would probably only have suspected it rather than being so certain. This way of seeing oneself in the world is in all likelihood a common ignis fatuus – I very much doubt I’m the only one so thoroughly deluded. There are occasions however when my […]
Arsenal Versus Palace: Springtime Cannibalism
With Aston Villa’s relegation now confirmed there is a whiff of the end of term about the place. The last rites have been read to Bolton and Dagenham & Redbridge and people are anointing probable winners in each of the divisions except for the fourth where Northampton are already champions. Mrs Black is making noises […]
Arsenal Versus West Ham: Just Desserts?
For all it’s supposed evils, fraping, grooming, cyber bullying, and those Nigerian millions I still have yet to receive, the internet is actually a fairly splendid virtual world. A parallel reality where another me can frolic free from the restraints of his earthbound self and all the baggage that sorry sack of disappointments carries about […]
Arsenal Versus Watford: In Like a Lion, Out Like A Lamb
So how did you spend the football free Easter break? Tiptoeing Wordsworth like through the sudden yellow rush of spring blooms? Blowing the cobwebs off the lawnmower and wondering if that Argos garden furniture was going to last another season? Perhaps you read a book or two, planned a holiday or just filled the empty […]
Arsenal Versus Everton: Blindness, Intoxication and an Eternal Song
As you know I enjoy subverting the concept of the match review, ignoring the accepted wisdom of the ages and not padding out my piece with projections of the line up, the score and the performance. I prefer to take some aspect of my day to day journey through this vale of tears and explore […]
Arsenal Versus Watford: Candles In The Wind
What a weekend this could turn into. Shotta said he experienced the kind of disturbance in his waters which set off a rumbling in his tail bone causing him to wonder if the stars might align in our favour in one giant, glorious three day festival of sporting joy. Could Rafa sprinkle magic onto the […]
Positively Arsenal 