Up For Grabs Now

Since there is literally nothing going on of any relevance to the Arsenal this day feels a bit like doing a jig in treacle. Except for the internationals, which are relevant to us only in the way that it’s relevant that your female friends go on a sex tourism holiday somewhere – ie, you hope they don’t get raped by a local or trip on a rusty chlamydia-nail, but other than that you’d rather they came back quickly and didn’t talk too much about it.

Or alternatively, if they insist on talking about it, that it involves a hideous drug dealer they met called Ashley Cole whom they brutally maimed with a cheese fork before stealing his wallet, only to give him back a whole load of money to confuse him and then orchestrate a massive economic crisis and hyperinflation in the country of the currency you gave him so that during his recuperation his money becomes worth less and less whilst he is unable to move due to his mangling, then just as he regains the ability to walk his money becomes valuable again, so he skips triumphantly into the road where he is hit by a van carrying horse sperm, the impact of which shatters his already fragile legs before he drowns in the sperm.

So there’s not much going on basically.

However, for the blog we have several large pieces of news. Firstly we have, after almost a year of operation, been added by the mighty arseblog to his blogroll. Now to those of you in the outside world this might seem rather a sad thing to celebrate, but for us young blogs, rolling around in the pigsty of the internet hoping some of the poo will stick to us, it is excellent news. Anyone who finds us from there, welcome, and many thanks to arseblog. We feel like we’ve arrived.

We have also been added to newsnow, meaning that we have been accepted as a respectable and serious source of Arsenal news, and not a collection of underqualified morons specialising in baiting other, more angrily earnest blogs (see the past). We welcome further anyone who has joined us from here, and apologise in advance for offending you with tales of Islington Shuffle and other tittle-tattle.

Ho hum. Goodness it’s slow. Anyone been anywhere nice on holiday? Don’t forget you can guarantee you always receive our high-quality posts by signing up below to the mailing list.

Morning all. Isn’t it difficult to keep one’s eyes on the football world with so much envy-inducing Caribbean-based cricket going on. Why would you want to be stuck in England worrying about Eboue when you could be in a paddling pool in Barbados? That’s what I want to know.

Mind you, some of those Caribbean guys know a lot of stuff about football. I remember in 2005 I met a rasta guy in a bar in Antigua, and after I realised he wasn’t going to hurt me it noticed this guy was complaining about our lack of strikers. This was ages ago, remember… I pointed out that Bendtner was coming through, and he said that Bendtner looked promising but wouldn’t cut it eventually as he didn’t have the application. Well, quite.

What I’ve been trying to do for the last two paragraphs, and which isn’t going to work, is avoid discussing the current Arsenal side, and more specifically discussing Saturday’s limpid 0-0 draw with Fulham, which has put us all but a minor miracle away from fourth place in the Premiership. Yet again we remained largely unthreatened, and yet again we stayed resolutely unthreatening, resulting in a kind of horrible stalemate, awful to watch.

Wenger seemed like a worried man, and I think what bothers him almost as much as not winning is that we’ve seemingly run out of attacking ideas – we’re not fun to watch. Perversely it might be more fun for everyone if we were leaking goals and scoring them – drawing 2-2 or 3-3 all the time, rather than this 0-0. It’s because it’s an Arsenal we’re not used to under Wenger, and we’re worried. There have been bad patches before, but we’ve never had a problem scoring goals. It’s a new sort of dilemma, and nobody seems to have any easy solutions to it.

This uncertainty is creeping into his own speech: after the match he said, of Walcott, Rosicky, Fabregas et al:

Let’s not make heroes of those who don’t play’

Don’t adjust your screens, this is the same manager who reminded us at Christmas time that Rosicky, Walcott, Fabregas and Eduardo would be like new signings for us when they came back. His emphasis has shifted: no longer is it ‘all the elements are nearly in place’, it’s now ‘this lot need a talking to’. And who’s going to give it? A policy whereby all the players are totally professional in their approach every game, and give it their all whilst being technically virtuoso is all well and good, except for the part where it doesn’t work and we draw nil all at home to Fulham.

Sad and frustrating, basically, but for me there’s more to it. This is just my opinion, and it’s going to get some people very wound up, but a big part of the problem is that it’s boring. It’s no fun to watch, no fun to read about, it just makes me angry. And why shouldn’t it? I feel frustrated settling down to watch these games, paying money for seats, spending hours reading and writing about this club when it’s painful. Does this make me not a real fan (an unreal fan?)? I don’t know. I don’t think it does. I’m never going to support another team, but if football is a religion, and Arsenal is my creed, I’m perhaps suffering from remembering that faith is a one-way street – you give and give to a team, and at the moment we don’t get a whole lot back.

The team exists for the fans, not the other way round. People announce with pride that they’re Arsenal through and through, as if Arsenal had somehow sacrificed something for them that they had to repay with loyalty. All I have tying me officially to the club is the money I hand over for television subscriptions, for shirts, for tickets. Emotionally I clearly have far more invested: my whole life as a fan, my personal history, friendships made through the game. Living the ups and downs is one thing, but it’s just so much more aggravating when it seems that they’re not even trying. It’s a cliché to get cross with the overpaid superstars, but I’ve never felt it before. Bloody annoying, isn’t it?

Anyway.

With Villa drawing it gives us a real chance to narrow the gap. Let’s hope we can. It’s also very funny that Tottenham lost the Tottenham Trophy on penalties, but less funny that it was to United, who this season are playing a kind of gameshow game where there’s a big pile of silver, and they have to see how high they can climb up it. A Spurs-United Carling Cup final is a bit like watching two really ugly people get off in a club: you don’t care about the ‘result’, there’re no real winners, least of all the spectators, but if they must do it, ’twere well it were done quickly (lot of Shakespeare today). 

A brief word about Arseblog, which just turned 7, and many happy returns to it. What the guy has done as a blogger is pretty extraordinary, not just within sports but across the whole internet. Writing every single day, rain or snow, matchday or ‘Interlull’, is no mean feat, let alone keeping it interesting, informative and amusing – even today, a pretty glum day:

Maybe I’m a petty man, a small, petty man, for getting my kicks from the misfortune of others, but David Bentley is rat-faced chav whose catastrophes will always be thigh-slappers to me.

There are others out there doing good stuff, but few would dispute that this is the granddaddy. It inspired us as well as countless others – as Arsenal fans we should thank our stars that he’s on our team…

That’s quite enough moaning and poo-nosing for one morning. But if you’re bored, why don’t you enter our competition? Or sign up for our email list?