Up For Grabs Now

Seismic news today, as my favourite player Emmanuel Eboue announces his intention to become a Hollywood comedian once his playing days are over.

What’s that Grabber? You think he’s already a complete joke? Now, now, that’s unfair – though he’s certainly been a great actor for some time. Just ask Patrice Evra.

The news has been made yet more exciting by Eboue making it clear that he wants to be “The next Eddie Murphy”. It’s easy to laugh at this – it sounds totally implausible - but this is the man who last season became a regular starter in the Arsenal midfield.

And they said it was impossible when he played centre-mid against Fulham away and we got humped. They said that Eboue’s career as a midfielder would come to nothing.

It all adds to the impression that Emmanuel Eboue is the most determined man in the world.

He’s a poster-boy for the fantasy of globalised capitalism. Like Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happiness, Emmanuel Eboue lives, breathes and embodies the American dream. He might only be our second-choice right-back, but to the questionably-talented millions, Emmanuel Eboue shines brightly as a beacon of hope.

Personally, I’m just hoping Eboue is true to his word and emulates Eddie Murphy as closely as possible. I’ll be the first on Amazon’s pre-order list when the Beverly Hills Eboue series is released.

The man knows no limits. How long before he wins an Oscar? And how long, more importantly, before we finally get to see him deployed as a lone striker?

It has been, friends, literally weeks since I (grabber) have posted. I am sorry for this. I had a conversation in the Duchess of Kent with a friend of my dad’s who said that he’d said there was someone in his office who said she read our blog. Since this was the first real-life fan I’d heard of, I was so amazed I nearly drowned in my leffe, and was so startled that I haven’t dared post since, for fear that my waffle might rebound into reality.

Quite a lot has happened since then. We beat Birmingham (yay), we drew with AZ Alkmaar(mmm), we drew with West Ham (grr) and we beat Spurs easily (hahaha). Van Persie’s been good. So has Cesc. Ho hum. We’re ahead of where we were last year. We’re Islington Shuffling less than is usual, except for typical culprit Abou Diaby. Actually on the subject of him – and regular readers will be aware of my strongly-felt prejudices in this area – did anybody see in the newspapers Abou Diaby ‘promising to curb his attacking instinct?’ What? Quoi? His ‘attacking instinct’ is totally irrelevant. It’s like Tom Vermaelen saying “I need to curb my urge to collect cashmere-lined antelope-leather driving gloves” – sure, I think we’d all sleep a bit easier at night, but it’s not going to affect his play one way or the other.

What Diaby needs to curb, put simply, is his shit instinct; the force in his soul which causes him to flatter to deceive season after season. I’ve seen little this season to disprove my previous thought about the man, which is that just before Eboue had his brain wiped, Men In Black-style, of his knowledge of What Arsene Did Last Summer, he whispered to Abou Diaby What Arsene Did Last Summer, meaning that the continuous tradition of players who have known What Arsene Did Last Summer remains unbroken. If readers are bored before the match, why not consider who was the first ever player to know what Arsene Did Last Summer – Remi Garde? Is it possible that we had players who knew What Arsene Did Last Summer even before Arsene joined the club? If this were the case I would nominate John Jensen and pineapple-headed attacking midfield legend Chris Kiwomya.

But that’s just my theory.

In other news myself and some chums attended a screening of “The Gooner Review” the other day, in aid of charity. I went because the film had been well-reviewed on other sites, and also because I like Arsenal. I hate to put the boot in, but rarely have I been so pleased that my money is going to charity. The film was, bluntly, terrible. I feel bad writing this – not nice to put fellow Gooners down, but this is a commercial venture and it’s not up to scratch. Its aim was to present an honest fans’ appraisal of last season, dealing with the lows as well as the highs. This is a noble aim, and for the first ten minutes the charity screening was hilarious – Paul Kaye, who appears as the presenter in the film, introduced it live to the cinema and got the crowd singing some excellent long-forgotten chants – anyone remember “You’re Sylvain… you probably think this song is about you…”

The film then lurched into a “top 10” rundown of moments from our season, as described by a variety of luminaries. There was not a single bit of football shown – we were told that the licensers had refused permission without reason shortly before the screening. But without any football the ‘talking heads’ had to be even stronger, and they were weak beforehand. The ubiquitous Nick Hornby and Amy Lawrence were wheeled out to not say very much, and were joined by a bizarre menagerie of random blokes (guitarists from local bands? ‘Arsenal fan’) and deeply minor celebrities (the percussionist from ‘M People’, anyone?). This would have been fine, had they anything interesting to say, but in the main they didn’t, instead spouting inane clichés about Arsenal’s youth policy, the effect of Arshavin etc. It was like being in a pub full of slightly old boring drunk men after an Arsenal match, when you yourself are completely sober, and have somewhere else to be. The production was clunky, and the video seemed to have been edited who had little experience making, or indeed watching, films. Again I can’t emphasise how guilty I feel about this, but without the football, and some quality insight, I can’t understand why you would part with your hard-earned lucre in a recession to do it. Sorry, Gooner review. I truly wish you better luck next season – it’s a great idea, but this version wasn’t up to it.

Right. Off to the Emirates now. I am taking a friend who trades derivatives at RBS. Can you think of a worse job title this year?

Come on you reds.

So. Another FREE VIDEO on Arsenal.com of the lads in training. We’ve seen this before. And we dealt with it. Not many blogs saw the importance of that footage, but we did, and we shared it with you.

That video was all about an uplifting guitar score which ultimately drove our gigantic Togonian from the club. It offered clues as to the real reason behind his heinous attack on Van Persie’s face. And it instilled, in all of us, a new optimism.

So what to make of this afternoon’s effort?

Well, there has certainly been a seismic shift. Gone and forgotten is the kind of formulaic guitar nonsense that did for Adebayor. But that hasn’t meant a return to Ade’s favoured Togonian hip-hop about shopping. Anything Togonian is clearly musica non grata when it comes to the Colney playlist.

Instead, the players have started training to a bizarre, grungy, grimy sort of electro. Still pretty teenage, and so a good reflection of the fact that most of our bench look like they were born under a Labour government, but funkier, slicker and less objectionable than the sort of puff Arsene made the players jog about to earlier in the season.

As for the training itself, cause for concern, I think. Of course, no-one will admit to a crumb of complacency as we anticipate the visit of Alkmaar tomorrow. But you have to say that a preparation which mostly involves a circle of players giggling in bibs as Emmanuel Eboue does keep-uppies with his backside does suggest a certain laxity may have crept in.

Kieran Gibbs looked baffled about all this, and must have been wondering what Fabio Capello would think if he saw the footage of Eboue and Song doing some kind of synchronised walking. Bad news for any World Cup dream to be associated with such behaviour.

And Boro Primorac looked absolutely furious throughout. And he appeared to be in charge of the whole sorry charade.

Certainly, Wenger wasn’t supervising anyone – he was off in a lonely corner of the pitch all by himself, engaged in a weird Sisyphean passing contest with the metal fence, something I’m sure we’ve all done, but which gets really annoying after a while when you realise that the fence absorbs most of the impact of the ball and it never really comes back to you as you want it to.

BREAKING NEWS: Beneath a picture of Abou Diaby rubbing his face with his shoulder, Arsene has compared his lanky but unpopular enforcer with a magnet.

This, he says, is why he is so attracted to the opposition goal (mostly made of air) and why he frequently appears to have no idea what’s going on, and why he’s never in the right place. All the other players have sat-nav. Diaby still uses a retro compass and a map Gilles Grimandi lent him a while back, but he’s magnetic, or the goal is, and so he’s permanently scrambled.

No idea what to do. Not the foggiest. Definitely not defend.

Arsene has explained that whereas most of us have even less idea of Diaby’s position on the pitch than the man himself, this is merely an interim period before he establishes himself as a fully fledged attacking midfielder. Or as a thoroughbred defensive midfielder. Or something.

Curiouser and curiouser.