The scenes that greeted the sight of Gael’s blood at the WHL ground last Sunday revealed that it is never a good idea to take the Tiny Totts at face (or any other part of their anatomy) value.
As the cameras revealed the baying hordes salivating at the sight of blood, desperate to bite into the body, it became easier to understand why it always seems so dismal in their ground.
So for safety, at the next encounter with the TiddlyWiddlys all supporters are being advised to carry garlic, silver bullets and wooden stakes. Special arrangements will be made to allow these to be carried in to the Ems.
Meanwhile if you believe you have a Tiny Tott living close by, here is some helpful guidance.
First, look for a hole in the ground. Apart from being the natural habitat of the Tott, vampires sometimes have to dig their way out.
Second, scatter salt wherever you think a Tott Vampire will have been. They really don’t like it and anyway it is bad for you.
Third, use garlic, hawthorn branches, or a cross to trap your Tott vampire in a corner (you can also use a corner flag). Protect yourself from revenge by making a cross of tar on your front door.
Fourth dig the Tott vampire in October during the manager sacking season. According to the early Greeks, that’s when a vampire is weakest.
Fifth push iron stakes through his coffin and straight into the ground if you catch him at rest.
Sixth bury his body under running water – vampires can’t stand it and Totts don’t wash.
Seventh fire a silver bullet blessed by a priest into his heart. They don’t like either.
Eighth drive an aspen, ash or white thorn stake through his heart with a single blow if you want to make a lasting impression. I tried this on the Great Cambridge Road and several people turned to look.
Ninth pour boiling water, boiling oil or holy water into his grave. Failing that, onto some area of semi-grassland off the Tottenham High Street
Tenth cremate his body or make a paste from his flesh for closure. Take the paste to Stamford Bridge
If on the other hand you have something more positive to say, and perhaps without too many references to vampires, you might like to consider writing a piece for Highbury High, the magazine which with Untold Arsenal, reflects the positive side of our club.
If you are interested, there’s a new edition out soon. Drop a line to the HH editor and regular contributor to these pages, Ian Trevett at ian.trevett@ntlworld.com and he’ll be pleased to consider your piece.
Advice on How to kill a vampire from Ehow.com
Has Felipe Scolari just earned the easiest £7.5m of all time? I mean, what has he actually done at Chelsea? They still look, by and large, like Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea: same players, same formation, same annoying arrogance. Scolari, however, hasn’t bothered with the more tricky parts of the job that Mourinho mastered, you know like motivating the players, deflecting criticism from them, outwitting his fellow managers tactically and making game-altering substitutions. He hasn’t even bothered to learn the language properly. And then, after seven months in charge, he walks away with £7.5m and can simply say “well they didn’t buy me Robinho” as a defence. Nice work if you can get it.
It seems to be to be blindingly obvious that what Chelsea need is a young manager who is hungry for success and who can rebuild their team with players of a similar mindset. Chelsea have been thinking too short-term for far too long and, as a result, have an ageing squad that lacks motivation. Scolari was not the right man to take the project on, as the signing of Deco illustrates. It seems he was only in it for the pay cheque and, having walked away with millions of pounds for basically achieving nothing it seems he’s got exactly what he was after.
The current shambles that is masquerading as Chelsea Football Club is my prediction for Manchester United in a couple of years, a crazy statement I hear you cry (well grunt, you are Man U fans!) but think it through, once in a while a manager will come along and embody the fans’ feeling about their club, will in fact become so tied in to the identity of the club that when the inevitable happens and they aren’t there the managers that follow them have an impossible job to try and keep the fans and the board onside. Alex Ferguson has this at Man U, Arsene has it at Arsenal and tellingly Jose had it at Chelsea – even driving into work this morning I heard on the radio fans calling for Jose to come back, and that was after two years of bought success!
When Alex hangs up his tracksuit the level of expectation on any successor will be immense, not only will they have to win at least one of the competitions that they are entered in, they will need to do it with someone else’s team and with both panache and an arrogant swagger, they will need to provide good soundbites to the press and wind up opposition managers, in short, everything that Alex does currently, and even if he does all this it won’t be as good as Alex as he didn’t build the team himself!
The crucial factors are going to be what happens if that success isn’t delivered, after decades of success at the highest level are the Manchester Utd glory hunters (controversially I understand that there are some fans of Man U that were there before any glory and will still be around long after, however the most biased fan will admit that there are a number that have only been around for the good times) going to be willing to settle for second/third/fourth for a number of seasons. Or will the chants of sack the manager start up, causing the board to start to panic! There is an awful lot of money tied up in Manchester Utd being at the forefront of European Football but not all managers can deliver in the same way as Alex Ferguson has for a number of years.
In short, with the pending retirement of Alex Ferguson it will be interesting to see who the board appoint to replace him, most of the top managers are going to understand all of the points above and give it a wide berth, (I don’t believe for a second that Grant was first choice to succeed Jose). Could the goings-on at Chelsea be a foreshadowing for Utd, every single neutral fan in the Premiership will hope so!
Hi Tony,
thanks for the helpful guidance – I’m surrounded by too many totts at the moment! 🙂
One of the key processes supporting this aim is the IT Customer Satisfaction survey which has been put together with help from colleagues in Group Business Assurance.
It makes me laugh that Chelsea are willing to sack their manager halfway through his first season like that…..It just goes to show their inflated opinion of themselves in this modern era to get rid of managers like this and for the chairman not to feel a responsability to keep the bloke he had gone through so much trouble to sign in the first place. Its right that whoever takes the job now they will expect miracles from…..they think they have a god given right to be at the top of the league at Chelski and are not willing to go through the formality of playing out the season with the same man in charge to get there! The only thing that stays constant at the Club is Lampard & Terry so they may as well put them in charge….
As if to punctuate the madness of this season both Tony Adams and Phil Scolari have been sacked by their respective teams, ostensibly for failure to perform but in reality because the braying of the supporters got to their respective owners and they chose the easy way out of a complicated problem.
In Pompey’s case you could make an argument that Adams probably wasn’t ready to manage a Premiership team. He hadn’t really distinguished himself at Wycombe and even under Harry he hadn’t really done anything to show that he should be a head coach. Simply put, he needed more time before he took over a team. But worse than just being a raw recruit to the job of management, Pompey promptly pulled the rug from under his team; selling Diarra and Defoe and then cutting the purse strings before Adams could bring in anyone of any quality. It says a lot of the man that he stuck by the team after the owner basically told him he had to perform a miracle. In fact, it may be a flaw that he stuck by that team, by sticking around he let them make him a fall guy — you gotta have more spine than that to succeed as a manager in the Premiership.
Scolari, on the other hand, simply fell prey to the insanity of Roman Abramovich. Roman Abramovich has a hard-on for Arsenal. He saw how Arsenal went from middle of the pack club to perennial league champion challengers in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and wanted to replicate that form with Chelsea. If he pulled it off, just like Arsenal, the club’s value would skyrocket, he’d have a room full of trophies, and everyone would hail him as a genius. What he failed to see is that Arsenal didn’t buy their way into that status, they took the long, hard road to the top of the heap: hard work, dedication, hunger, a stellar youth program, a tremendous scouting network, all components of Arsenal that Roman abandoned for the quick fix of simply buying a few trophies. That’s a house of cards and as the cards got older and the winds of chage blew through London it had to collapse.
I’d feel bad for Scolari if he wasn’t 173 years old and about to receive a £15m payout for the honor of being sacked. I honestly don’t know what Roman expected to happen this season. That team was built by Jose Mourinho for one purpose; to play and win English football. They are not ever going to be able to play Arsenal style football when human refuse like Lampard and Mikel are patrolling the midfield. They aren’t beautiful footballers, they are the kind of players who will grind you down and get a win. To win trophies in England you need to have some (more than one, Arsene) English national team players and you need to be able to put in one goal and shut down your opponents with stiff defense. Jose knew that and he built a team to do exactly that. Paradoxically, to win things in Europe you need to play more like Arsenal than Chelsea — OR — be like Man U and be able to play in a variety of ways.
I don’t think Roman really understood that, so, his insistence on playing “beautiful football,” like his true love Arsenal do, led him to bring in Phil Scolari. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, Phil, Gods bless him, tried his best to emulate Arsenal — right down to the horizontal-passery-ball-holdery-bullshit that is currently plaguing Arsenal. This went over like a fart in church with the Chelsea faithful: if you think Arsenal fans are shrill crybabies who are insanely demanding of their club, you should check out the Chelsea folks — they are complete lunatics.
Hey Roman and Chelsea supporters, here’s a clue, you’re not going to sack your way to a Champions League trophy. In fact, you’re going to sack your way through all the good managers and leave yourself with no one wanting to take the job. Now that the transfer window is closed, and the crazy transfer money has dried up, the only reason I can see to take the reigns at Chelsea is to get that inevitable payout when Roman fires you in 6 months.
So, I feel a lot worse for Adams in this than Scolari if for no other reason than Adams is at the start of his coaching career and Scolari is at the end. Adams’ sacking could have a much more deleterious effect on his career than Scolari’s sacking will have on his. Plus, well, it’s nice to have Arsenal’s troubles out of the papers for a few days and see the Chelsea supporters squirm under the spotlight. I mean, Avram Grant is being linked to the club again for Christ’s sake!
But with Theo coming back by the end of the month (I was hoping to see him on the 21st, but it looks more like the 28th before he’ll be ready) and Eduardo getting a run out with Croatia on Wednesday Arsenal have two players coming back into the fold just in time for Arsenal to strip Chelsea of their Champions League place and seriously question the resolve of Mr. Abramovich and his band of Chelsea-come-lately supporters. Given all that and the sudden availability of Mr. Adams, maybe Arsenal should open the door to Tony?
He could hardly make our defense any worse and as I always say “defense wins Champions League places.”
The only instances when we heard that famous “vocal support” at the scum’s ground on Sunday was when two Arsenal players went down injured. They cheered, jeered, applauded, chanted the “same old Arsenal…” bilge. That’s their famous “vocal support” — lowlife scumbags.
Back to the top4 race (might be even the PL tittle race_): What we need is: The least we can go is 10 wins and 3 draw games, we will check later our chances regarding of our line-up of course with all the fixtures but on the other hand, we have to see the possiblity wins, defeat,and draw games that Chelsea and Villa would go thru.Chelsea must loose 1 game or/and draw 1/2 times for us to outrun them, Villa’s side, they have to draw 3 times and/or loose 2 games for us to outrun them.WILL THIS BE POSSIBLE???Well!, We have to make the analysis.
Sunderland (H)? Yes,Fullham (H)?Yes,WBA(A)?Yes,Blackburn(H)?Yes, CastleUnt(A)? Yes.ManCity (H)?Shud be YES but Draw is pssbl, Wigan(A)?Yes,Liv(A)?Doubt a win but must be a draw.Mddlsbrg(H)? Yes,Prtmoth(A)?Yes (But will b dffclt).Chlsea(H)?YEs,Manu(A)?Draw (Key game),Stoke(H)?Yes.
All of this is guess but must remember that this football, so anything can happen!!, but to me , the key games here are LIV (A) and Manu (A),So lets see whts gonna happen!!!.All Ive put “Yes”straight, for me are undoubtfully wins, but draw and key games might be also a defeat.
The time that we can really give a fair judgement will be during Fullham and WBA games, when Walcott and Arshavin are really adapted to each other on a real PL game.For now, I keep myself CONFIDENT.
SO TO ME, DOESNT MATTER IF HIDDINK or RIJKARD or SOMEBODY ELSE, WILL TAKE CHARGE OF CHELSEA, ANYHOW, THEY WILL LOOSE ONE GAME AND WILL DRAW 1.VILA WILL DFNTLY FACE HARD GAMES FROM NOW SO NO DBT THEY WILL HAVE A FEW DRAW GAMES or MIGHT EVEN LOOSE.Couldnt make the analysis for Villa and chelski co im runnin out of time but if you guys can do it for us to see it together
it’s not as if Wenger said there’s the door guys….. Pires got the arse and decided to leave when he was substituted in the champs league because Lehman got sent off (not much we could’ve done there), Freddy lost his legs way before we shipped him to Upton Park, TH14 had to leave London because of his estranged wife, Gilli You were offered 6M euros from Panathanikos and there¿s no way Arsenal would give a 31 y.o. 2M Euros a year and a 3 year contract infact I understand that AW offered you a rolling yearly contract with the same salary due to your age and the fact that the last season you played you weren¿t really at the races¿.not your usual sharpness. As for Viera, well I don¿t think the guy has ever played a good game of football since he left, Flamoney went to play first team football (and earn more than the £90k p/week AFC offered) but he is now sitting on the bench. Loosing Edu IMO was the biggest lost to be honest but I think he went for the money in Spain more than anything else. It’s true that we have lost some experience but getting Eduardo, Theo, Rosicky and Cesc back I hope that we’ll all see a different Arsenal. Especially as we have AA cover. Hopefully though we can slightly adjust age our policy and provide some care in the community to our players when they get older…I admire the fact that ManU have kept Giggs and Scholes, it¿s something to be applauded
Nigel P – maybe Man U can afford to keep Giggs and Scholes on high wages whereas Arsenal who don’t live on the never never, can’t?
Also, when you think about it most of our overseas players are looking for that last lucrative contract, which they can still get abroad. Arsene, being an honourable man, will always let them take that opportunity late in their career in recognition of what they have contributed to the team.
British stalwarts like Giggs and Scholes would not be looking to move abroad and what else is there for them than falling down the leagues in search of more games. Perhaps the limit of their ambition is to sit on the Man U bench and be content with the odd appearance here and there.
Such a great article.