Up For Grabs Now

The last two days have resembled less a serious attempt by the footballing world at a convincing series of events subject to such traditional vagaries as divine providence, chance, and Sod’s law, as a spectacular forty-eight hour long play staged across a series of venues and with a cast of hundreds of thousands, a play scripted and directed by an Arsenal fan as full of wit as he is empty of compassion.

First came the dismissal of Orange Brown. One of our most belligerent irritants has been banished from the Premiership into footballing oblivion. And all because of Nicklas Bendtner’s finishing ability.

‘Gardening leave’ is the most bizarre way I can think of of telling someone to bog off, but bog off Brown has.

And Brown’s afterlife? Not so much the little Match of the Day studio in the sky as a call centre somewhere nasty up north, I suspect.

The Lord Almighty? Former Arsenal goal-getter Henry

To their credit, Hull City will almost certainly now escape plunge deeper into the relegation mire after their cost-cutting appointment of Iain R. Dowie, a man whose middle initial stands for ‘Revival‘ ‘Relegation’.

Bye Hull! Brilliant.

And then, to cap it all, said Drogba gets sent off for almost no reason, the referee conned into punishing one disgusting Mourinho-schooled cheat by the shameless skullduggery of another, Thiago Motta.

Marvellous.

Where were your flip-flops tonight Didier?

Well, what a week it’s been.

Eurozone Goal-God-cum-Scandinavian-Rhinocerous-impersonator Nicklas Bendtner smashes three past Porto to launch us into the Champions League quarter finals, then nips one past big bald (bad) Boaz in minute 93 to send us joint top.

Two days earlier, Arsene Wenger described Emmanuel Eboue as ‘the complete player’ to the derision of absolutely no-one.

These are days of strange and wonderful events.

The shoe with which the British media and large sections of the Arsenal blogosphere (to their eternal shame) have spent the last year or two kicking this Arsenal side and Arsene for building it, is now not so much on the other foot as in the process of being gleefully jammed inch by inch down the throats of those who chose to doubt and snipe when they should have hoped and cheered.

Former call-centre middle manager Phil Brown could barely get his whimpering and garbled objections out on Match of the Day, and ought to be branded a moaner in precisely the fashion in which Wenger is every time he gives his opinion on a leading question. All the attention was rightly on how big a goal that could be for Arsenal come the season’s end. Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of which Bendtner deprived Orange Brown so late on turned out to be the margin by which the Premier League was finally rid of Hull City?

Eight games left for Arsenal and the expectation, however much we try to keep it under control, is pretty big right now. When you get into this position it’s misery or glory, no mediocre middle-ground. That in itself is a symptom of success.

If we don’t win the league now, then the very same pundits and bloggers who said Arsenal couldn’t even make the top four with this team will be writing the season off as a failure, even though Arsenal have mounted the title challenge they said would never possibly materialise.

We can win this league. Maybe with the relative run-ins of the top three we should now win it. But if we don’t, let’s hope the fans can at least retain the optimism and togetherness forged over recent weeks instead of indulging the panic-button-bashing tabloids.

“F*ck off back up north you w*nk*rs!”

‘Nuff respec’.

The quote is from the Daily Heil, who took time out from whingeing hatefully about foreigners in general to whinge hatefully about Cesc Fabregas, attacking him for wearing a hoodie and throwing “tantrums”. Presumably, if he’d stormed onto the pitch wearing a tweed suit and a deerstalker, spitting “I say, Zayatte! We’ve had about enough of your sort round here” they might have had less of an issue.

Let’s clear a couple of things up. Cesc was wearing a pretty nice outfit when he went on his post-match rampage – great jeans, nice jacket, good shoes. Sartorially, we can have no complaints.

Phil Brown said he had no right to appear on the pitch “dressed as he was”. Why not? I mean the game was over (Hull lost, you may remember) and Cesc is the captain of the club, so having an evening stroll on his pitch isn’t exactly taking liberties is it? And this from the man who spent the first half of the season looking like this.

So Cesc might not have been wearing a suit, but he looked like a Premiership footballer. With his matching tie-and-perma-tan combo and Tesco value suit, Phil looks like he works for Comet.

Cesc’s comment about “northern w*nk*rs” (if true) suggests he is extremely well settled at Arsenal and that he cares deeply enough about the club to have become personally committed to its many prejudices, the prejudices we all feel as fans. Not many foreign players settle well enough to trade such idiomatic insults – we’re lucky to have him.

Phil Brown said it didn’t matter whether Cesc spat at Horton’s head or at his feet, it was apparently all the same. Perhaps he also thinks metaphorical spitting (such as telling someone to “f*ck off you northern w*nker) is just as bad.

I expect the whole thing will blow over soon enough.

Until then, how’s about a spot of laurel-resting? We at UpForGrabsNow are pleased to smugly point out just how right we were. Check time of month: mid-March. Check league position: 4th. Still in Champions’ League, still in FA Cup. [Smugly] Aaaaaahh.

That’s some canny predicting right there, and easy to forget how gloomy the mood was when that piece was written. Still, it would be churlish to take all the credit, wouldn’t it? And equally churlish to gesture towards some of the other blogs who spent the first week of March brow beating and loudly making moan over our lost season, while we were scribbling away with nothing but a fixture list and a Positive Mental Attitude. Keep it up, boys.

Ooh, and don’t forget to enter our brand-new Phillosophy Football competition to win a Herbert Chapman t-shirt! Simply send the answer to the following question to admin@philosophyfootball.com, together with your name, address and t-shirt size: What was the formation that Herbert Chapman pioneered while he was at Arsenal? There’s five to be given away, and we’ll be announcing the winners at the end of the month.