Have you ever tried to get to sleep while grinning so much that it hurts your cheeks? That’s what beating BloodMoney FC at their own stinking patch can do to a Gooner, and even this morning you’d think the corners of my mouth were on some mysterious mission to find out what would happen if they finally reached my ears.
As before the United game, I saw the line-ups and immediately compared the midfields. Arsenal’s: Nasri, Cesc, Song, Denilson. Chelsea’s: Mikel, Kalou, Ballack, Deco, Lampard. Like them or (much more probably) loathe them, those last three are right up there when you’re talking about the best midfielders in world football over the last 10 or 15 years – midfield generals for major European nations and superclubs who have won pretty much everything in club football. Song? Denilson? If the hideous pin-striped Chelsea prawn botherers hadn’t been so preoccupied wondering where the soul of their club has gone (it now works in a Russian aluminium factory, if they really want to know) then they might have been quite justified in chanting “Who are ya? Who are ya?” It would have been an unusually sincere enquiry.
One ill-judged (as always) blogger promised we’d lose if Song started and was this morning backtracking faster than he could say “Fair enough, then, Arsene probably does know”. Humiliating times for the haters, but they will never learn.
That said, Song has looked pretty crap in midfield so far this season and I didn’t much fancy his match-up with Ballack and Lampard. Yesterday his passing was crisp and his positioning tight and though he looks by no means a long term solution to the DM problem, he showed he can do a job providing he concentrates hard enough. UpForGrabsNow is clinging to the hope that Santa will execute some kind of complicated reindeer-based manoeuvre which transmogrifies him into a six-foot-four Senegalese called Patrick circa 2004.
Yesterday Van Persie finally looked like turning into the big-game forward you could really hang your title-challenging hat on – sharp, confident and lethal. For the first goal he did that thing where he strikes the ball so purely and so hard that his body can’t really deal with the force and spins right round and falls over as soon as he’s connected. His second was pure class. Good to see that Gallas was the first to congratulate him each time. What a willy.
It strikes me that an Ade-Rob division of labour might work quite well. Ade can muscle in the goals against the shit-kickers and Rob can score the difficult, elegant goals against the big boys. Fine, he can throw in a few ludicrously skilful volleys against smaller teams, but largely he should be allowed to chill out and hone his Boyzone-ish quiff while Ade bangs them in.
So get gloating, Gooners! I refer you to my carefully researched Gooner Gloating Guidebook for expert tips on how to best enjoy Triumphant Mondays such as this one. The names are pretty much interchangeable.
Of course, Monday’s like this would be even more triumphant if we were much tighter to the top of the league. As it is it’s seven points. Seven. Perhaps it would have been an idea to casually beat Villa and City rather than not try and lose pitifully to both of them. Just a thought.
Finally, spare a thought for Roy Keane. Lovely bloke. Humble, gentle, sensible. Bunch of expensively assembled Spurs knock-offs lost 4-1 at home to Bolton? How very sad.
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