Up For Grabs Now

Very many apologies for the silence from our end this weekend.

Fictional excuses: Grabber was getting a few of his choicest bonsai trees ready for an agricultural show this week, and I was engaged in a gruelling shampoo testing programme.

After some humming and hah-ing and a chronically timid piece of defending from Gael, we finally managed to crush Hull City beneath our imperious Arsenal heel. A goal of happily Piresian economy from Nasri and then a box-busting one-two between Van Persie and Bendtner gave the scoreboard the warm and fuzzy glow of dominance, an aura which was probably merited over the piece, however tardily it might have been achieved.

At this point, I’d like to reiterate that Alan Shearer is an imbecile of Daniel-Levian proportions. He ‘talked’ last night on MOTD (where we were scandalously on after Man City) about the home fixture between Hull and Arsenal, and said that Hull had been “dominant” on that occasion. He can only be describing the sort of dominance where you park not so much a mere bus as a bona fide East Coast mainline express train (with a quiet coach and a serviceable cafeteria) in front of your goal and then score a wondergoal and a header from your only two tentative sniffs at goal. Idiot.

I hope Shearer finally plucks up the balls to finally take the Newcastle job just so we can watch him oversee a disastrous implosion which gets them relegated having been hailed by hysterical Geordies everywhere as the messiah. We’ll see how far his lazily-informed, smugly expressed, know-all hindsight gets him then, won’t we?

Though I must applaud Johan Djourou for his innovative, and potentially homicidal, last minute upwards-headering technique, yesterday really belonged to the man possessed of 3 assists, the goal of the month for December and the balance of Natalia Markarova Rudolf Nureyev (who, my researcher informs me, is a ballet dancer with ’sick’ balance).

Yes, the man on form right now is Robin Van Persie. When he isn’t injuring himself or butting the unfortunate goalkeepers of lesser teams firmly on the bonce in seemingly unprovoked attacks, then he’s crashing rasping free-kicks against the bar and ripping opposition defences firmly asunder. More crashing and ripping and less injuring and butting, thanks Robin. He’s an absolute joy to watch right now, and long may it continue.

Something else which will hopefully continue is our ability to score late goals. Arsene, never one with a head for figures, helpfully pointed out post-match that:

I think we have scored 16 goals in the last 15 minutes of the last 33 games, and we did that again today.

I’d be very interested to see a proper analysis of how many of those goals were in some way related to the substitution of Emmanuel Eboue in favour of a player with a working knowledge of the sport. I’d wager a fair few.

As ever, we love to hear your thoughts, shouts, groans, cheers, yelps, farts, screams and laughs. Stick ‘em in the comments section where the sun don’t shine and we’ll have a right old chinwag.

In an extraordinary turn of events, Arsenal will announce the appointment of former Newcastle skipper Alan Shearer as their new manager later today. The move comes after an inconsistent start to the season saw Gunners fans grow increasingly frustrated with legendary boss Arsene Wenger, whose refusal to strengthen the squad in the summer is largely seen as the reason behind the team’s indifferent form.

Shearer had been expected to take up the reins at Newcastle United following his departure from his position as an analyst on the Match of the Day programme, but he revealed to reporters this morning that the lure of the Emirates stadium side had been too great to resist.

Ok, you can calm down. Hopefully your screen is still attached to your computer. If not, please don’t blame me, I was relying on your sense of reason and justice to disbelieve the above report, which is complete guff, of course. I just thought that on a morning when so many Gooners seem to be sweating and fretting uncontrollably about the state of the side, and where the same ground seems to be blogged over and over again, it might be therapeutic for us all to imagine what life might be like with Shearer instead of Arsene.

Well, his first signings would definitely be Kevin Davies, Martin Taylor and Chris Morgan.

Shearer: [wide-eyed, Geordie accent, illogical] “The first thing I noticed when I came into training was, hey, these guys are a bit skilful aren’t they? If you ask me what they need is some elbows and a bid more backside. Davies, Taylor and Morgan have three of the biggest arses in the Premiership and are all extraordinarily violent, unpleasant individuals who play football in a proper English way – not at all.

“If I learned anything from my five years spent edging awkwardly away from Mark Lawrenson it’s that if you want to win football games, you need the benefit of hindsight, some bendy virtual arrows, tight River Island shirts with bizarre pockets all over them, some very obvious explanations, and the profligate over-use of the words “great” and “Frank Lampard” in the same sentence.”

Even those of you who have been hanging around at the end of your tether for so long now that you’re beginning to wonder whether reaching the end of your tether is really such an important event as it’s hyped up to be, and whether the end of your tether isn’t just the end of a piece of rope used to tie you, goat-like, to some country fence and how can that be so significant a thing? - yes even you most cynical bunch of tether-botherers, must admit that Arsenal are in a much better way than the poor misguided fools who are about to appoint Shearer as their manager.  Aren’t we?

Rumblings: a story is whispering around that Milan want to sign giant Udinese centre-half Christian Zapata, a player we were strongly linked with in the summer. This would be very annoying as he sounded like exactly what we needed and if he goes on to great things it will be one of those really irritating nearly-signings. Granted, I have only seen Zapata play in real life once, but his service to my Arsenal side on Football Manager was really invaluable.