Tag Archive | Premier League
Just What Do We Support?
By the time you read this it is possible that Jamie Vardy may have been announced as the second major signing of the summer. If so it will be an almost Fergusonian transfer. Buying the star striker of a top four rival, spending big to cover a temporary injury problem on a player with only […]
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: Friends and Enemies Within
So I finally made it to the Emirates nearly two weeks ago. Those of us who work for a living have to plan meticulously; identifying the appropriate home game, getting time-off, booking flights at the right prices, securing tickets. Damn, I felt like an event planner. Call it my English safari. Obviously I am testifying […]
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 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 Tottenham: Journey To The Gods
I’m reading a book written by one of my favourite authors. John Hillaby was a naturalist, historian, international perambulator extraordinaire and above all a damned fine writer. The journeys he undertook and later wrote about are littered with fascinating insights into the history of the places through which he passed and observations on the present […]
Positively Arsenal 