The team may be a gaggle of lithe young whipper-snappers but Arsenal’s fans are fast turning into Dad’s Army. Every weekend there’s a small explosion of some kind (even if that explosion is “only” beating Wigan 1-0). You then have your Corporal Joneses who look a bit jittery and shout “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” to anyone who’ll listen. They’re reacting to the Private Frazers who shake their wizened heads at the first hint of frailty in the team and rasp in strangely Scottish accents “We’re doomed! We’re all doomed!”
I’ll try and sum up the arguments being made and made again as best I can:
Private Frazer: Wenger’s stubborn adherence to this inexpensive youth malarkey has led us into trophyless oblivion. These kids will never be good enough. He must buy lots and lots of expensive players as soon as he can (preferably in central defence and defensive midfield) but he won’t because he’s so stubborn. If he doesn’t we’re going to have a terrible season and he should go in May.
Corporal Jones: Please don’t worry about a thing, cos every little thing is gonna be alright. We’re fifth after a pretty smelly start to the season but we’re still only 8 points off the top (5 if we can beat Liverpool on Sunday) and our record against the big teams shows that we’ve got quality, if not consistency. We’re still in the Champions’ League and Eduardo’s back soon. And stop being so silly about Arsene, would you?
So are you a Jones or a Frazer? I’m a Jones, though quite an anxious one.
I think it’s worth noting that Corporal Jones was also responsible for another phrase often applied to Arsenal: “They don’t like it up ‘em!” Often used in the past to explain the apparently inexplicable defeat of truly great Arsenal sides playing some of the most lavish football ever seen to teams like Bolton, Corporal Jones was originally referring to “the fuzzy-wuzzies” with whom he fought in Sudan. In a confusing twist to my Dad’s Army division of Gooners, I suspect that a fair few Frazers out there secretly (or not so secretly) wish that this team had a few less “fuzzy-wuzzies” and a few more English redcoats in the mould of Parlour or Keown.
Enough of that. If anyone thinks of any further analogies between us Gooners and Dad’s Army do let me know.
It’s going to be a long wait for the Liverpool match on Sunday so expect to see the Frazer-Jones debate going round and round again and again until then. Yawn. It’s a match which I already feel way more confident about than I did for the Boro game on Saturday, simply because I think all the players will be working their balls off for the cause.
Since one of Private Frazer’s favourite things is relentless rumour-mongering and since that’s what always gets online Gooners licking their chops, here are a few doing the rounds at the moment:
Brazilian wunderkind Alexandre Pato has apparently caught the eye of Arsene Wenger who could make a move in January. This is pretty left field firstly as the boy’s a striker which is probably our strongest area right now and secondly because he’s clearly the dog’s danglies and Milan have been bragging about him ever since he arrived so selling him would be very strange indeed. The shred of hope here is that they’re meant to be signing Thiago Silva and so will need to offload one of their non-EU players if they want Thiago to play.
Even then, I reckon there’ll be other, richer, brasher teams who would want him more than we do. The only reason I can see for Arsene really wanting him is so that he can unleash a tongue-twisting extravaganza by signing Alex Pato, then signing Alex from Chelsea and finally entrenching Alex Song’s spot in central midfield. We will then have the world’s first Alex-Axis. Or, if you prefer, our grinding wheels of dominance will turn upon our well-oiled Alex-Axle. This is obviously tempting to a man like Arsene.
But how, you cry, will newly crowned X-Factor Champion Alexandra Burke fit into all this? I’m not sure yet, but she could surely provide useful cover at right-back. Signing her might also cement our place in next season’s Champions’ League, as UEFA president Michel Pratini is keen to give the competition back its edge and is reportedly considering inviting Champions from other walks of life to compete in 2009/10.
More likely would be Juve’s 24-year-old centre back Giorgio Chiellini,who could be involved in swapsies with our scowling number 10, William Gallas. The downside being that by all accounts we’d have to give them about £10million of our lunch money on top of sulky Billy and the upside being that we’d have a big, strong, good centre back in return for an actually not very big and constantly frowning jessie.
Have a Goonerific Monday.
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