I’m a typical fickle armchair supporter.

I’m not the only one. There are hundreds and thousands of us skulking around the edges of football. We’re defined by our intermittent love for the game, and our wavering support for our chosen team. We’re the guys who only watch MOTD when our side win. We’re the people who go to the pub for the big match, when really we’re there for the social aspect of it. We’re the curmudgeons who fork out for a ticket once every three years, then spend the whole time at the stadium moaning about the price of hotdogs or the uncomfortable plastic chairs—or the lack of hot women in attendance. We’re the people who shout about our love for (insert team) when we’re winning, and shout about our hate for (insert team) when we’re losing. We’re basically like discontented husbands.

We’re the fickle armchair supporters.

I support Arsenal, who themselves are an inconsistent unit of players, a team intent on ruining my faith on a bi-weekly basis. I’d almost prefer to support a team like Hull, because at least with them any result is a good result—even a loss. They could lose thirty games in a row, and it wouldn’t surprise me or upset me or annoy the fans, fickle or otherwise. But with Arsenal, there are certain demands and expectations that us fans (at least us armchair fans) want to see fulfilled. Otherwise we’re not happy. We become despondent, even if most of us don’t know what that word means.

When we’re winning, I always assume we’re going to win forever; just one victory after another, until either I die or the premiership joins with the La Liga and loses all credibility as a league. I automatically believe we’re unbeatable, another team of “invincibles”. I tell everyone THIS is our year (forgetting that I say this every year) and THIS season we’re going to win everything: FA CUP, the premiership, that competition that used to be sponsored by Coke before they realised no one cares about it, the Champions League, and any other cup someone else can think of or invent. I usually say this to everyone with belief and great alacrity, as do most typical fickle armchair Arsenal fans, even if they don’t know what alacrity means without the help of a teacher. (It means enthusiasm, to save a few of you a trip to dictionary.com and/or your aunty who seems to know everything; from the meaning of long words to where you can find good quality coke to who your real dad is).

But then along comes the inevitable: they let me down. They let us ALL down.

Arsenal switch from champions of the world to a team you usually see playing in a park on a cold Sunday morning, most of the players jogging off at half time to the nearest bush to either relieve themselves, or to relieve their teammates, depending on which park you go to.

I stop applauding Van Persie as the next Dutch Delight; I no longer call speedy Gonzales Walcott Wunderkind, nor do I refer to Alex Song as anything other than nappy-headed (which I occasionally add HO to, if he’s played particularly bad). All the team receive an equal amount of chagrin, even if most of us—including me—don’t really know what that means. Also, everyone hears about my disappointment and shame to be an Arsenal supporter.

I then switch tactics: I tell everyone Arsenal are terrible, the manager should be fired, the players are slow and stupid and probably rapists, too. I lament my team in every single way possible. I even consider giving up watching football altogether.

Then the next week they win four-nil or five-nil or eight-five, and I’m back to loving them and praising them again. No more cussing my players; they’re once again amazing.

I’d like to be a fan who sticks with his team, through thick and thin (like Sol Campbell did in the showers), but it’s just not in me to do it.

Because I’m a typical fickle armchair Arsenal supporter (quite a mouthful I know; I said the same thing to Sol Campbell), and at the moment of writing this: I hate them, they’re rubbish, Wenger should be fired, and Bendtner should be shot.

Hopefully they’ll win soon and change my mind again.

Christmas is a time for miracles: flying reindeer, warring families reunited, a decrease in stabbings (unless you live in Croydon), and the only four weeks of the year where fat, sweaty, silver-haired paedophiles find gainful employment.

However, THIS Christmas may also be when Mark Hughes finds himself out of a job, pink slip in hand, wondering where it all went downhill.

For those yet to get the news bulletin (or for those of you who live in an igloo and only JUST managed to get an internet connection), Manchester City are now one of the richest teams in the world, thanks to a takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group—not to be mistaken with the Arsenal joke (I mean, midfielder) Abou Diaby, who isn’t nearly as rich, nor the owner of any oil so far as I know. Other than, perhaps, the invisible oil on his boots which causes the ball to slip away from him so often. But that’s another issue, for another article, for another day, and another time.

My point is that Manchester City are hoping to be the new Manchester United, and they’re willing to sink as much money into the grass as needed to ensure this happens. Their main problem, however, is that their manager is still an amateur; a footballing legend with about as much managerial initiative as Gareth Southgate, but with just a little more credibility. His purchases since the end of the season have only bolstered my opinion.

Mark Hughes has negotiated and paid out varying amounts of money (mere pennies to the group of billionaires who own the club) to buy three strikers and an attacking midfielder. This, apparently, is going to boost their chances next season and take them into the top four, possibly win them the league. That’s what they think, anyway.

But I’d be remiss in my journalistic duties (of which I have none) if I didn’t point out that Manchester City scored 58 goals in the premiership last season—the fifth largest goal tally in the league, only ten goals behind Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea who all ended up on 68. In spite of this high attacking record, Manchester City ended up mid-table, mainly due to their woeful defence—the tenth worst in the premiership, conceding a massive 50 goals.

So Mark Hughes, genius football practitioner decided to solve these defensive frailties by employing some Brazilian logic—possibly a by-product of his time spent with Robinho—and vowing to score more goals than the opposition.

Problems at the back…?

I know, thinks Sparky, let me get in some more strikers. Then we can win every single game 6-5.

Maybe it’s because Mark Hughes used to be an attacking player and therefore doesn’t understand, or care about, the importance of a sturdy defence.

Or maybe he’s still planning to bring in a couple of top defenders.

Or maybe, perhaps, oh-possibly, I’m just a cynical bastard who doesn’t want Manchester City to do well.

Otherwise, people, do you know what’s next?

Rich businessmen all over the world are going to take over the cheapest teams (I’m assuming Hull, Portsmouth, etc) and plunge ridiculous amounts of cash into the coffers, so that the league will eventually flip on its head, with the top four teams languishing near the bottom, fighting for survival, amongst a league filled with ‘amazingly good’ teams like Manchester City and Middlesbrough. I really hope that doesn’t happen.

And for that reason, I pray that the team fail to gel, the holes at the back never get plugged, and Mark Hughes loses his position by Christmas.

He’ll be sure to get a new job, anyway; he’s already got the grey hair and miserable face—give him a beer belly and a beard and he’s the perfect Santa.

When I heard the news that Adebayor might be going to Manchester City (and thus become tenuously connected to the Sultan of Brunei), I was angry. Not because Wenger might finally be relieving Arsenal of some deadweight, but because it took him THIS long to do it, and because he didn’t have the ingenuity to angle Bendtner into the deal. It would have been the perfect opportunity to offload two underachievers, without affecting the balance of the team or the morale in the dressing room.

With Adebayor gone, all we will lose out on is a dance routine every time he scores, which means we will miss approximately three dance grooves per season. And with Bendtner gone, we will lose out on nothing, other than the chance to witness football at its worst: a big dumb idiot running around the pitch looking for either the ball or a clue, neither of which he seems to ever find.

For some reason, despite Wenger’s plethora of managerial abilities, he has NO IDEA when it comes to recruiting strikers. Here’s a list of previous flops from the top of my head:

—Francis Jeffers

—Sylvain Wiltord

—Jeremie Aliadiere

—That Reyes guy whose first name I can’t remember.

—Baptista the Beast

—A couple of random French guys he found on the Riviera one day and decided to offer a professional contract to (this one may or may not be true).

Wenger KNOWS wingers; he knows midfielders; he possibly even knows defenders, although that’s yet to be seen. He does not, however, have any semblance of knowledge when it concerns forwards. He got lucky with Henry, and he got lucky with Eduardo (even though Eduardo himself was very UNlucky), and other than that—nothing. Wenger’s decision making regarding strikers is on a par with Nicole Simpson’s disastrous choice in men.

Van Persie is OK.

Vela is class, but probably won’t be ‘ready’ for another five years, by which point he’ll already be at Real Madrid or Manchester Brunei along with Adebayor and half of the premiership.

And Walcott’s almost there, but will most likely be stuck on the wing until he’s thirty, or playing for Barcelona.

Anyway, my point (if I even have one) is that Arsenal should get rid of Adebayor AND Clitoris Bendtner, then bring in a quality striker to replace them.

Otherwise there’s no hope.

It’ll be fourth place again, and time for a new manager.

If you’ve ever witnessed a dying, crumbling marriage, it’s kind of depressing. It’s essentially two miserable, suicidal people, living in each other’s pockets (and panties), just taking each moment as it comes, like drug addicts—one day at a time, man, one day at a time—and doing nothing of any real substance. They basically hang in there, holding on for years and years in spite of the funk they reside in, both of them begging for that initial spark to return. But it never does.

Occasionally, moments come, things happen, and then for the next year they cling to that one good weekend, that one extraordinary mind-blowing sex session, and they fool themselves into thinking maybe the marriage CAN work; maybe they’re destined to be with each other; maybe they can regain that original spark and passion and drive; maybe, oh dear LORD, maybe their relationship will survive and thrive.

But, alas, it ‘tis not usually the case, and they know this—deep down, they KNOW their marriage is dead.

However, they’re scared to move on, to find someone new, to rejoin the dating scene; scared that they’ll end up alone or that they’ll never find someone else to love; they’ll never find that same spark with another person. Thus, they keep clinging, and sometimes go on clinging to that hope until death does them part.

Or relegation, in the case of Arsenal and Wenger’s flailing marriage.

It’s time for the club and manager to admit their marriage was a fantastic one, filled with love and joy and happiness—but now it’s time to move on. The spark has gone, the passion has died, and the sex is stale. In fact, the sex is practically non-existent, other than an obligatory fumble every second week. Plus, Wenger is now flirting with Real Madrid, right in front of poor Arsenal, and possibly having an affair with them, too—and if he DOES go out like that, does end up cheating on Arsenal and skipping straight into another relationship, it’ll only soil all the good that has come before it. It will stain the memories with that one single incident, erasing all the years of happiness that preceded the cheating.

So it’s time to leave, for both our sakes, so that we can remember the good times and gloss over the bad; it’s time to leave the marriage, rather than go behind Arsenal’s back and do something irreparable.

Then Beautiful Sexy Arsenal can start dating again, get ourselves ‘out there’, start recruiting some fresh blood, and experience that thrill again; that wonder; that belief. We want our lives to return to the days when football, or love, or whatever, was exciting.

Wenger has laid an amazing foundation, and for that reason alone our next partner will not just be anybody. We have higher standards now, in both the bedroom and the relationship—and DUE to this foundation, we will be OK. We will probably be better than OK, maybe even spectacular. Because once a person (or a team, or whatever; I’m kind of lost in my metaphor here) has the best, they will keep wanting to achieve that same level, and that means our next relationship will have all the attributes of Wenger — but with the added passion, drive, momentum, and ultimately: hope.

A hope that we’ll once again feel what we’ve rarely felt in the past few years: happy, successful, and fulfilled.

So, see you later Wenger, it was good while it lasted, and we’ll always be friends. But for now, it’s time to move on.
Love and Kisses,
Arsenal.

No win situation

A minute’s silence, please, for a dead profession; an imPOSSIBLE profession; a DREADFUL profession. A minute’s silence, my friends, for the only white people who can truly know what it’s like to be discriminated against based on the colour of their skin—or, in this case, the colour of their jersey: REFEREES.

I’m not sure there’s a more unsatisfying, frightening, HORRIBLE job around. Nurses have long torturous hours, but know they’re doing a service, helping people, and on some level this must allow them to deal with the occasional abuse; their innate benevolence sustaining them through the belligerent alcoholics and psychosexual trauma of repeated mid-stitch come-ons and mid-tetanus-jab flashers. Then you have garbage men, who in spite of the negative connotations attached to their profession, actually make GOOD money—plus people are happy to have their rubbish dealt with. And finally, traffic wardens, who are all impervious to the world anyway, a collection of angry, heartless immigrants who would eat their own mother’s brain if it meant an increase in their overall commission for the month. There are probably other worse jobs out there, but I can’t think of any—or be bothered to.

I just don’t see how anything can match being a referee on a scale of awful-to-suicide. Most of them probably don’t have wives or girlfriends or mistresses and are too stuck in their own misdirected moral code to call out for a special service lady—and the ones who DO have a woman at home are most likely shackled to a miserable old fat chick who settled for them amongst a quagmire of equally unsuitable men, and probably control them so much that being on the pitch is the only time in their life they can feel as if they have any power at all, which is why some referees feel the need to overcompensate and recklessly wield those red cards.

This isn’t ALL referees—like any rule, there are exceptions, anomalies that can’t be explained; perfectly normal children with happy lives and lots of sex on offer, who can play football, who even USED to play football, and yet still decide to pursue a ‘dream’ of being a referee—or a referee’s assistant, even, which is like applying to be an assistant to a toilet cleaner.

However, I figure the majority were bullied at school, like the fat girl everyone used to call Mr. Tubby. Never picked for football, or, if picked, always stuck in goal, or told to stand on the sidelines and watch. So they became referees in the hopes of garnering a modicum of respect, a paradoxical wish: referees, although in a position of authority, are given LESS respect that anybody, much like a policeman, the referees’ distant cousin. A referee can be hated by more people than a terrorist in the blow of a whistle, forty million people glaring pure uncut undiluted Nicaraguan HATE into the screen. That’s not good for one’s soul, I imagine.

Even if they’re amazing at their job, they will still get abuse. Even if they go their entire life without making a dodgy call, the OTHER TEAM will always say they did, regardless. It’s a no-win, like being trapped between a rock and a fat chick. And everyone makes mistakes. If a player makes a few minor blunders, then he’s had a bad game. If a referee makes ONE MISTAKE he’s Lucifer’s son. Or he’s an idiot. Or, if you listen to the perpetual ringing around the stadium of ‘the referee’s a wanker’, he’s a guy who likes to punish himself, too—albeit in a more pleasurable way than receiving a yellow card.

And what about the referees who aren’t in the Premiership? They make maybe twenty or thirty pound a game, ruling over the unruly; little obnoxious eleven-year-olds telling them how to do their job, the omnipresent threat of someone’s mentally deficient father racing onto the pitch to rearrange the referee’s outlook on the game—meaning to pluck one of his eyes from his skull so his outlook is as one-sided as the father would hope.

And here’s the worst part: even if they DO climb the heights of small league football all the way up to the Premiership, eventually they’ll be at the helm of an Arsenal game, and it’ll be back to the eleven-year-olds, telling them how to do their job again…

It’s a vicious circle.

So, please, my compatriots—a minute’s silence.

I’m only with you for the sake of the kids

I used to love England (the team, not the country—or does that count as the same thing?). I mean, I REALLY loved them. When I was younger, England—as well as Arsenal—ruled my footballing life. I worshipped them, praised them, believed in them, wanted to be a PART of them. I had all of the authorised AND unofficial merchandise: the football stickers; the coins; the flags; the hats; the home AND away shirts, both emblazoned with my surname and number nine on the back; I even had the goalkeeper top. I revelled in anything England related; it was true love.

I looked forward to their games—the qualifiers, the friendlies, whatever—unable to wait until the major international tournaments finally came around. I even made my own football version of an advent calendar, counting down until the World Cup or the next Euro competition, whichever was closest. I watched all of the pre-match interviews and previews and TV segments; I read all of the pre-match articles and listened to the speculation and concerns, soaking it all up, embracing my nation. It was all about England. Nothing could take their place, not even the late night Channel Five watered-down porn, the holy grail of my teenager years.

During Euro 96 I kept a mini-booklet to fill in the scores and I wore my grey England kit almost daily (much to the chagrin of my mother who wanted to wash it at least ONCE) and I supported my team to the end; I would have died for England. My entire summer—or was it winter? I forget—was spent watching my country and PRAISING my country and telling everyone that Alan Shearer was a genius (at least in the footballing sense of the word) and I listened to THREE LIONS on a loop, including the remixed versions with the snatches of Jonathan Pierce’s commentary, and I sung along, and I had my dreams, and then…
CRUSHED.

Gareth Horsegate (I don’t remember him being that ugly back in the day—what happened to him?) missed a penalty and we were out. But that was OK. We played well. I still loved England. I would marry England one day. They were the best. Plus I had the World Cup to look forward to.
Then we crashed out of THAT, as well.

And maybe since then—or maybe shortly after—my love for England has gradually waned and died down until now there’s this little dim bulb of hope glowing somewhere deep down inside me, barely bright enough for anyone—not even my tape worm—to notice it. My problem is that despite having that love for England, I’m no longer IN love with her. She’s lost my respect. I’m tired of her, in fact. I want a new love, someone fresh and exciting, someone to get my blood pumping again; I want someone to look forward to, not dread. England no longer does it for me; she’s lost whatever spark she once had, and my feelings have whittled away to nothing more than an obligatory brotherly love. Even my hate toward her is pretty superficial and diluted. I don’t really care enough TO hate.

I used to listen intently when she spoke or did something, hanging on every action or word; now I merely read a book when she’s around, glancing up if she does anything interesting, which is rarely. Even when she DOES do something spectacular, I find it hard to care; all I can think about is the NEXT GAME when I know she’ll revert back to being a boring wet blanket who I should have dumped years ago. She still has her moments of beauty, I can’t deny that, but there are many beautiful teams out there—why did I get stuck with one who will continually disappoint me? Why did I get stuck with the misery?

At one point England was my life, my love, my everything; my moon, my stars, my sun. She rocked my world. Now I think the relationship is past done. She no longer interests me—emotionally, physically, in any way at all. I’m disconnected from her, no matter how hard I try to plug myself back into the relationship. It just won’t work.

I hope she has a happy life, though, and I hope we can stay friends—I would like that—but I think we’re done.
Sorry, England.
It’s not you—it’s me.

Proof is in the cookie

Picture this boring scenario: I’ve cooked up a basket of homemade cookies—very tasty homemade cookies, in fact—after spending years honing the recipe, tweaking and adjusting and swapping the ingredients, and now somebody’s interested in purchasing one of them. Only ONE of them, but there are already some people interested in my other cookies so it’s OK. This man asks how much for Cookie Cole, and I tell him fifty pence. The man says to me, “I’ll give you twenty-five pence plus a half-eaten apple pie.” Now this offends me. I’ve spent years making sure this cookie is worthy of a place on the England table of biscuits and snacks, and this man offers me a half-eaten apple pie?

It also piques my suspicions: why is this man so eager to get rid of this apple pie? What is WRONG with this apple pie? Has he poisoned it? This would be the logical thing to do, if the man were a criminal. He could poison the pie, let me eat it and fall sick, then take back his original stake in the cookie.

Now, taking that elaborate pointless metaphor to Arsene Wenger, didn’t he find it a little suspicious that Chelsea were willing to give up a first team player—Gallas—in exchange for one of ours? No team GIVES AWAY players for nothing. Chelsea probably had enough funds to buy Cashley Cole’s LIFE, yet they chose to offload Gallas instead. I’m almost certain some sort of alarm must have rung in Arsene Wenger’s mind—maybe even a siren—telling him that it wasn’t such a good idea to accept Gallas as a part payment for Cheryl Cole’s wife.

I’m starting to think, actually, that Gallas was a Chelsea plant from the beginning, an undercover operative contracted out to single-handedly—and systematically—sabotage the foundations of Arsenal from within. Or maybe he’s just an apathetic footballer that Chelsea wanted to get shot of; one or the other.

Either way, I’m pretty sure something didn’t connect in Arsene Wenger’s brain that day. Maybe he’d been reading through algebraic equations, looking for the latest passing formula to unlock the secret to premier league success, when he came across the rule that states TWO NEGATIVES MAKE A POSITIVE. Maybe he tried to get philosophical with this information, assuming that now two wrongs DO make a right, and that to swap one whiny little girl for another whiny little girl would make good business sense, and would balance out in the long run. Or maybe, most plausibly, Arsene Wenger saw the opportunity to swap an English player for a French player, thus allowing him to have more people at his post-match table to discuss French politics with; and the iniquities of a baguette; and the wonders of the croissant; and whatever crazy unique ideas he held for that Monday morning’s exciting passing-drills.

I’m not saying Gallas is bad—I’m just saying he’s terrible. He has the mentality of a striker, only chasing down balls when he goes forward, but too lazy and slow and lethargic when chasing BACK. He doesn’t have any desire to win the ball, or to tackle, or stop other teams from scoring. He is Sylvain Wiltord in disguise.

Against Aston Villa, Cinderella’s ugly step-sister Agbonlahor chased down more balls and showed more hunger to win than Gallas has shown in his entire life. Maybe the Villa striker has Defender Syndrome, or maybe he’s just a footballer and does what he’s paid for. And Gabby Agbonlahor should NEVER have scored that second goal; he has speed but he isn’t Walcott. He didn’t skin Gallas. They ran side by side, and with a little more effort and tenacity, Gallas could have shrugged him off the ball or at least made a decent tackle. But Gallas defended like his mind was up front, thinking about the next goal. He defended like a Brazilian.

My point (if I have one) is that Arsenal, a team who were once known for their solid backline, now have a wannabe striker masquerading as a defender at the HEART of our defence. So no matter how many chances we create, no matter how many times Adebayor finally converts one of his fifty-two clear-cut chances, we still have Gallas at the other end, letting through a stream of goal traffic. We need to get him out and plug up the hole. Start from the back, seal up the cracks, and go through the team accordingly. Then we might be able to beat the lowly minnows of the league, rather than lose and expect the fans to be happy paying £40 a ticket to watch Hull hand us our asses.

It’s time to ditch the fake tan!

Everything about Arsenal these days is manufactured around Wenger’s ‘beautiful football’ philosophy. The problem is that their ‘beauty’ only lies on the surface; makeup, false nails, implants, fake tan—none of this makes a woman beautiful inside, nor does it form the foundations of a great team. Arsenal are a shallow ‘beautiful’ side with no substance. Once the makeup is wiped off and the implants go pop and the tan fades, they have nothing left to offer; they have no personality, no confidence, no nothing. As soon as a semi-decent team challenge them, strip back their beauty to its fundamentals, it’s apparent they don’t have a contingency plan to deal with it. They can no longer rely on their beauty and actually have to make a conversation, or engage in some witty banter—or, so much worse: do something other than string together three hundred pointless useless passes that lead back into their own box.

This is because Arsenal spend so much time dolling themselves up, listening to all the compliments about their beautiful football, that they’ve never had to work on acquiring a personality. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Arsenal need to stop believing their own hype, and take it back to the days of Tony Adams and Dennis Bergkamp, when the football might not have been as entertaining, but it wasn’t artificial or overly precious. They have no backbone, either.

We have Almunia, a once promising keeper who now looks shakier than Jens Lehman ever did (a difficult feat to pull off, considering Jens Lehman practically had Parkinson’s in the penalty area). Then there’s William Gallas, a pathetic, whiny, sorry excuse for a captain; a man who doesn’t exactly imbue confidence in the rest of the backline. In front of that is the potentially great Fabregas who has yet to replicate or sustain the amazing form that he showed at the beginning of last season. And up front we have the ever reliable (at least he’s consistently average) Adebayor; an eighty-thousand-pound-a-week steak that tastes like a Mcdonald’s cheeseburger—and plays like one, too. Any average striker can score thirty goals in a season if you give him seven one-on-ones per game. I’m sure even Francis Jeffers could have worked with those odds.

And all they amount to is a flimsy backbone, a weak gelatinous line through the middle, apt to fold under any type of pressure or scrutiny. Look at Chelsea’s backbone, or Manchester United—even Liverpool have a stronger central line than Arsenal. We don’t have a Terry, or a Lampard, or a Ferdinand, or a Van Der Sar, or a Gerrard—we have a group of ‘potentially’ great overhyped pampered children who amount to nothing more than a collection of pass-whores who haven’t learnt how—or when—to shoot. If Arsenal were losing three-nil to Barcelona at half time of a Champion’s League final nobody would expect them to claw level. And they wouldn’t, either. They would fold and die, like they did when they were one-nil up against Barcelona. But Liverpool did it. Then you had Manchester United, one-nil down with a minute to go; somehow they turned that into a two-one lead within the space of a hundred-and-twenty seconds. Arsenal never would have done that.

Arsenal know ugly; that’s not their problem. When the beauty goes, all they have is ugly. We just need to construct an actual personality, learn to be something other than just the silent pretty girl in the corner. Then maybe we can talk about winning things.