Arsenal v the Hoovers. Background to Sunday’s game at Arsenal Stadium

By Lady Market Dominance

In English culture, and maybe elsewhere, the domestic vacuum cleaner is often known as the Hoover, the Hoover being a dominant make of the product dating back to the early 20th century.  So dominant did it become in the market that the word passed into the language as meaning “to take everything”.   Thus a company can hoover up the market.

Such a dominant position in the market, where one’s product becomes the generic name for what it does can lead to arrogance, and ultimately huge mistakes as was the case with the Hoover “free flight promotion”.  Here, to sell more washing machines the Hoover Company offered free air tickets to destinations in Europe to anyone who purchased over £100 worth of product.

Lots of people bought, few people used the tickets, so the company was quids in.  They then upped the promotion to include tickets to some USA destinations, thus offering £600 worth of tickets for a product costing £100.  Customers starting buying Hoover stuff they didn’t need just for the ticket.   Hoover could not get the tickets its customers wanted, and the majority ended up suing the company which was brought to its knees.  The legal johnnies made a fortune.

It always ends in tears – although sometimes it can take a while.  Take Manchester City for example, the FC BATE Borisov of English football.  BATE Belarus have just won the Belarus league 11 seasons running and undoubtedly J Edgar City expect to do the same.  Just like Bayern Munich, Celtic, Juventus, PSG etc.   As my old chum Sir Anyone would say, “It’s hardly worth running the race”.  (Actually he would probably say “mine’s a double” but that’s a different matter).

With the arrogance of the super rich comes the arrogance of the press, as many newspapers and the computer generated blog sites produced in their name now run “All you need to know” columns, as if they – those tedious drainpipes – could know what we need to know.  I mean!  I most certainly don’t know what I need to know, because if I did I would know it.  So how can they know?

Take Sports Keeda with its headline “Arsenal transfer news: Martin Keown reveals Unai Emery’s deadline day plans – EXCLUSIVE”.   Those plans were revealed to be “Arsenal boss Unai Emery is unlikely to add any more players to his squad this week.”   And that was an exclusive.

And of course the would make a lot of the fact that Mr Emery has never beaten a team run by Mr Guardiola. Speaking of such things Mr Emery said, “His career as a player is bigger than mine and his career as a coach is also bigger than mine. But I like to play more against him because it’s demanding for your preparation, to try to win against his teams. When we were in Spain, each match against Barcelona was very exciting and demanding. It’s for that reason that Sunday is the same for me here. My first message is clear. Enjoy the challenges of each match. I am looking every day and the players are smiling in training with a big collective spirit. They are working and finishing tired but with a smile also on their face. My message for Sunday is optimism.”

I thought that was rather nifty, as they say in the saloon bar.

We shall all be at the game of course, doing our best for Arsenal, but when I asked my butler to go and put a fiver on Manchester City winning the league he came back red faced saying that no one would take the bet.

Of course I had the man horsewhipped – he expected it and the lower classes like such things (as indeed does my husband) but really, what is the world coming to when one cannot even get a bet placed with the man in the village shop?

But one has to laugh.   The Guardian says this weekend “Arsenal were walloped 3-0 at home by City twice in one week last season”

Will you tell them that it was Tottenham that played at Wembley as their home ground last season, not Arsenal?  No on second thoughts, I’ll do it.

Anyway, to quote our review on the supporters of other clubs from last season…,

“A football supporter who professes allegiance to Manchester City (for such people, I regret to say, do exist) made the nasty remark about an article in Untold Arsenal recently saying that it contained ‘all the old excuses using different words.’

“He has probably by now been arrested and put to work in a salt mine or whatever it is they have in Manchester these days but if he survives he will not be able to make a similar remark about the commentaries that will follow.  For with the superior intellect that comes from being a follower of Arsenal, we have out-manoeuvred him, putting in all the old excuses using exactly the same words as last time.  Pretty stupid that will make him look, I rather suspect.”

If you have been, thanks for reading.

• Arsenal Women take a small squad to Tolouse
• Eight years late a TV station finally confirms the referee bias against Arsenal
• After Deadline Day August 2018 – The full Arsenal Squad that remains