In the News: Clattenburg has jacked in his real job to take a tax free £1m a year in the middle of the desert. But it’s all about the next generation of referees and making a difference. Honest. Klopp has blamed the lack of a winter break for the Mickey Mousers’ collapse in the title race. I blame the fact that they are f*cking hilarious and couldn’t beat Swansea. Or Hull.
The Others: Who’d have thought you could have so much fun with European football when you’re not in it. (As HWWNBN keeps reminding us, even though he is largely the one responsible) Always nice to see Farca get a thrashing. L’Equipe gave Messi 2/10, for he had not a single touch in the PSG box. For the record, Klopp, he did have a winter break and it didn’t do him any favours. Marca actually refused to rate eight of the blue and red striped f*ckmuppets, which was about half as amusing as Sp*rs getting turned over by a mid-table Belgian side. God bless gallant little Belgium. And their fantastic chocolate. Always the icing on the cake too when Alli ends up flailing round when he doesn’t get his own way, like an ASBO teenager who’s had more than a whiff of White Lightning, and ends up in the book too. Have that you petulant, diving little sh*tc*nt. I also had a giggle at Howard Webb, “live from the match truck”. Which I swear is parked somewhere in a Slough industrial estate because the cheapskates at BT won’t fly him out to sit with the prima donnas.
But. If all those things marginally amused me, I actually shed tears of laughter watching L’Arse. There are very few days when I want to sit and watch the post match analysis of an Arsenal game in minute detail. Wednesday, however, was one of them. I know if we were better people we’d mind our own business and
I took Pep apart a few weeks ago, therefore it is only fair that Arsene gets it with both barrels this time. Because though things looked decidedly depressing for the Goons at this point, they were not out of the competition yet. It was 1-1. Cometh the hour, cometh the manager. Or not. Four minutes after their captain went off, they were behind. Even this need not have been the end of the world. You hold 2-1, you moron. Because then you only have to win 1-0 at home. Your fans don’t care if it’s not pretty, they just want not to be humiliated again. They just don’t want to have every Chelsea fan they know ripping them apart like jackals in the office on Thursday morning. For the love of God, Arsene, we hear them cry, just show some common f*cking sense. Marlene (sitcom alias) sent me a text at this point. “He’s just too f*cking proud to make an intelligent footballing decision.” Happily for all of us, this was exactly the case after the whole fixture started caving in around the Goons’ ears. Instead of damage limitation. Whinger brings on Walcott and Giroud at 4-1. This confirmed for me that he has actually lost his mind. This was the football managerial equivalent of that episode of South Park when Mel Gibson goes bonkers and runs around taking dumps on car bonnets in his Braveheart makeup shouting KABLAAAAAR!
@TalkOfTheBridge pointed out on Twatter: Ozil cost more than Hazard, Xhaka (lol, just L O L) cost more than Kante and Mustafi cost more than Luiz, but Arsenal apparently don’t have the spending power to compete which is why they are a mess. No, say I. They are a mess because Wenger should have bowed out after the FA Cup win in 2014. I’m not going to laud the good things he has done for their club, because it will make me sick in my mouth, but they exist. The fact is though that at 67 he has nothing new to offer Arsenal, and if they are going to progress as a club he needs to step down sooner rather than later. The world
Our Game: Was f*cking awful. Begovic, Zouma, Ake, JT, Fabregas and Chalobah retained the chance to start in the cup run after the last round, whilst Ruben and Michy dropped onto bench. The game started at breakneck speed, and after a bumptious start from the home side, we looked as if we were going to settle down into our rhythm. This did not happen. It was shoddy, lacklustre and frustrating. Any final ball into the box was as flaccid as an octogenarian with a dodgy ticker. Wolves’ fluffy little tails were up, we continued our Burnley trend of giving the ball away. I’ve had more enjoyable afternoons being dragged around the abyss that is IKEA in Croydon. Everything went down the middle. Everything went up in the air, despite our inability to win a header against the home defence. In the first 45 minutes we applied about as much effective pressure on Wolves as me trying to push a Sherman tank along when my little finger.
If the first half was like being dragged against my will around IKEA, then the beginning of the second half was like being dragged against my will around IKEA with period pains. Finally, after 55 minutes we appeared to work out that we were not winning anything in the air and that we should try a short corner. Finally, we appeared to realise that going down the middle had not worked once and started playing it out wide. Wolves had got really deep, but we were still too hapless
So: This wasn’t winning ugly. That doesn’t cover it. This was winning Iain Dowie. We rode our luck today. A lot. Wolves will feel hard done by not least on
were not at all at fault. Ake was exceptional at times, Chalobah deserves to be dry-humped one by one by the whole of the away support for a brilliant tackle in the box with the result still in the balance that could have ended up with a penalty being awarded against us if he had fluffed his lines. I can’t recall Zouma putting a foot wrong. The composition of the back three changed a few times throughout the evening, and JT was the constant holding it together, (and getting about as arsey as we were about how slow everything was) but on the whole as a team we didn’t gel together at all well, and we very nearly came unstuck. Too many changes against too strong opposition. Huge sigh of relief, Sutton in the next round please. I’m donning my yellow beanie now ready for Monday night and opening my living room window so I can hear the glorious live sound of the Goons capitulating. Again.
AC