Tag Archive | football
Arsenal Versus Paris St Germain: Get Orf Moi Land
I was listening to BBC Somerset on the car radio yesterday. Not proud of it, obviously, but Radio 4 had decided to lead with Nigel Farage and I didn’t want him in the Hyundai with me so had switched channels in haste. They were interviewing some poor beleaguered soul from the Environment Agency or National […]
Arsenal Versus Man United: Sceptic Stew’s Septic Stew
The international break came at rather a good time for me. In one way at least. Not in a ‘let’s all sit down and enjoy some great football kind of way’ – chance would be a fine thing. I refer more to my Quixotic attempt to add a couple of thousand words each day to […]
Arsenal Versus Ludogorets: The Norway Of The Year
The last time I had anything even remotely resembling a proper job, and we are going back into the halcyon mists here, there was a rhythm, a recognisable pattern to my work year. I was shackled in the engine room of academia, not teaching of course – they don’t allow inarticulate, uneducated oafs from the […]
The Goal Is 86 Points – Arsene Wenger
Something really important was stated by Arsene at last week’s AGM, which from my reading has hardly been picked up by the football commentariat and especially the Arsenal bloggers whom one would assume are supposed to support the club. He said: “…. the championship will be decided between 82 to 86 points and what we […]
Arsenal versus Reading: A Royal Flush
I don’t know what Arsène wanted for his birthday, there is in any case little about this most cerebral of football managers to suggest he is particularly motivated by material possessions. I’ll bet he didn’t have a nil nil draw with Middlesbrough particularly high on the list though. Fortunately we weren’t the only club with […]
Arsenal: If Only We Had Santi Cazorla
Last Saturday’s disappointing nil-all draw with Middlesbrough had many of us fans, including yours truly, rushing en masse to the comforting refuge of captain hindsight; somehow the result would surely have been better if only we had Santi Cazorla. I don’t blame fans for thinking this way given the pernicious effect of “Recency bias” […]
Arsenal Versus Boro: Discipline and Fizz
Let’s get the grovelling out of the way first. And the excuses, let’s get those out of the way first too. Oh heck. Is there a mathematician in the house? Can I have two first things? Even if I can you’d need to discount the preceding five sentences wouldn’t you? All I was going to […]
Arsenal Versus Ludogorets: Odd Man Out
One of the barbed suggestions bandied about wherever Arsenal fans are scoring points off one another (and as I write this I must confess to the warm blush of shame because I seem to remember employing it myself on more than one occasion) is “If that’s how you feel then you are following the wrong […]
Arsenal Versus Swansea: Listen Very Carefully, I Shall Say This Only Once
I grew up immersed in radio. Probably as a result of being brought up by parents who in their turn were raised during the medium’s golden age. As with many people of my generation I swiftly tired of the feeble and inane antics of the gormless, coiffured imbeciles who polluted the airwaves from the studios […]
Santi Cazorla or Aaron Ramsey: Wenger’s Dilemma
It is the interlull and idle minds have idle thoughts. At the risk of arousing the mischief-makers in the fanbase, who eagerly need a scapegoat du jour to feast on when the going gets wobbly, there is something intriguing about the future role of Aaron Ramsey when he returns from injury given the way the […]
