Week Twenty Three – Just Keep Winning, I have Enough Pants
Things I won’t be talking about this week:
- Whether Mesut Özil is any good
- Whether there are too many blogs and podcasts
- Whether a young French kid we haven’t even signed yet will be the next Nicolas Anelka or the next Yaya Sanogo…
You’ve seen enough about that, right? Yes.
Let’s start with some Monday night football then…
Aston Villa 1 Arsenal 2 – Three points won, a pair of pants gone
Let’s face it, if I had a pound for every time the phrase “We don’t make it easy for ourselves do we?!” or something similar is used to describe an Arsenal performance, I would have enough money to replace every pair of pants I’ve ruined watching something like the last fifteen minutes of that game a few thousand times over.
I saw it as one of “those” games, myself. We were in complete control of the game after two goals within seconds of each other, both fine finishes they were too, and we didn’t seem to know what to do with ourselves.
Then, Villa scored after a poor pass from Santi Cazorla, the crowd got their tails up, we had to endure six minutes of injury time thanks in no small part to that little cunt Agbonlahor breaking Rosicky’s nose, I went through another pair of pants, we hung on for three points and went back to the top of the league.
And that there is the bottom line right now for me. We are at the stage in the season where three points are the most important thing.
There will be debates the day after a game about who’s shit and who isn’t shit, who should be playing and who shouldn’t be playing, that’s something I came to accept long before the Internet was a mere twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, it’s nothing new it’s just discussed on a wider scale than in the pub with your mates. One of whom was the cunt that moans about something or someone before and after every game; win or lose. You all have at least one of those on your timeline now don’t you? Yeah you do.
But the fact of the matter is the more we keep winning, regardless of all that, the less time there will be for worrying about what might happen. We have a run of very winnable games coming up, before a tough run of games, and I for one couldn’t give a fish’s tit how we win them right now. I think the goal difference thing might be out the window now anyway, seeing as Sheikh, Rattle and Bankroll have scored 357,321 goals already (all those goals and only second – imagine if that was us…)
I’m well stocked up on pants now just in case anyway…
One positive I took from this game myself, is that I can see flashes of Jack Wilshere coming into form again. I’m a big fan of Jack, and I’ve thought for a while that he has the potential to become what I believe the acronym police are calling “WC” these days. If he can kick on and start to get anywhere near his full potential, it could be absolutely massive for the rest of the season.
Much ado about nothing…
Wednesday saw the name Julian Draxler used more times than any other name in the history of Twitter, it was also rumoured that the YouTube server went down for a period of time. That seemed to die down a bit the next day, when the talk had switched to Paul-Georges Ntep, a man who appears to have misspelt his own surname. Obviously the talk then turned to “signing fakkin’ French kids…” and the like.
The fact that this was talked about against a backdrop of how blogs and podcasts are destroying the world as we know it (I’m not going there, in fact I’ve just deleted about a hundred words on it as I can’t be fucked) reassured me that the pant ruining end to Monday night’s game had been largely forgotten about.
Perhaps the football isn’t that bad at the moment after all then.
Things are getting strange I’m starting to worry…..
Arsene Wenger’s press conference on Friday was pretty much along the lines of what you’d expect when it comes to the transfer window.
Why people still get their knickers in a twist over the “not close to signing anyone” line I don’t know, but each to their own and all that, I don’t want to contribute to the downfall of society by being a blogger who tells you how to think.
But let’s be honest, he says it all the time, and if you’re inclined to believe he’s been lying to us for the past eight years or whatever why the fuck would you believe him anyway?!
Arsene did mention UFO’s when asked about Draxler’s rumoured sighting at Arsenal’s training ground though. Now, you can read into that as much as you like, but to me he has just come out and said “Don’t believe any of the bullshit flying about at this time of year…” And he said it to the press. Top trolling.
We may have missed a trick here though. It appears that Draxler trained at Colney with Schalke, why couldn’t we have combined that with a UFO sighting, or even better an actual UFO? (They do exist, I’ve seen photos on the internet, and everything on the internet is true).
Alien abduction – the perfect way for Arsene to get these players that are so difficult to get in January. These extra-terrestrial super-beings could easily do some sort of body swapping thing with Draxler and Park. Park emerges from the bench one day playing like a superstar, and Draxler turns out to be shit. Bullet dodged. Job done.
Anyway…more football…
Arsenal 2 Fulham 0 – Just Keep Winning…
A bit of a shoddy first half in the end, after a decent start. Having said that, I wasn’t particularly worried by Fulham, and two lovely goals from Santi sealed it in the second half. Great to see him as the match winner, after some (justified) criticism of him lately, and his role as chief pant soiler against Villa, and we take our deserved place back at the top of league. A place we are still only keeping warm for the oilies according to the pundits…
Alan Egghead Shearer almost started to backtrack on MOTD on Saturday night though.
“So, Alan, we go into the final game of the season with Arsenal six points clear, do you think we can call them genuine title contenders now?”
“Not for me, Gary, no. I’m not saying they can’t or won’t win it, or even that they haven’t won it already, but I said I think Chelsea will win it at the start of the season and I still stick by that….because really, Gary, I’m just a massive cunt…”
Yes, Alan, you are. A massive, massive cunt…
Darren Berry
Islington born and bred, Arsenal through and through.
Published author.
Is Yours Gold? The Arsenal Invincibles Twentieth Anniversary – available now,
Over Land and Sea (and Lockdown), Arsenal 20/21 – The Corona Diaires – released 2021.
Clickbait: Life as a Modern Football Fan – released 2019
What worries me about so miles and miles of comment referring to Julian Draxler is that I have a faint recollection of similar comments for months and months about Eden Hazard. He was absolutely, indisputably and certainly coming to Arsenal, because Arsène Wenger had spotted him and therefore AW was the perfect manager for him to play for. And what happened? Yep, Chelski bought him and he IS fantastic. So what is going to happen to Draxler???