Arsenal Reserves v Very Fat Sam’s team: the view from behind

by Sir Hardly Anyone (complete with new names – see below).

I was a little surprised to hear that prices were not reduced for yesterday’s game, given that Arsenal put their reserve side out.  I mean, normally speaking reserve matches are free at the Emirates.

And I know it was the reserves because just before the game the Telegraph told us that Arsenal have the worst injury in Europe.  So if everyone is injured Arsenal naturally had to put out a reserve team, and I must say, I thought some of these reserves were jolly good, considering that they were reserves.  In fact I shouldn’t wonder that we might not see some of these lads in the first team soon enough.

I was also at the game to see the famous Fat Sam Bus.  Indeed it was there for all to see, but I have a bit of advice for the Very Fat Man: really you ought to consider letting a few of your players out of the bus.  Arsenal had 74% of possession, and allowing the other team that much of the ball isn’t, in my humble view, very clever.

But Fat Sam knows a thing or two about time wasting and the like, so perhaps he has a plan – but just failed to tell us, or his team, what it was.

So bemused was I by all this I got out the injury chart so beloved of Untold just to see how far ahead Arsenal “more injuries than any other team in Europe” actually were ahead of the rest and this is what I found (source as always, is Physioroom).

 

	TEAM	TOTAL INJURIES
1	Newcastle United	10
2	Bournemouth	9
3	Manchester United	8
4	Arsenal	7
5	Manchester City	7

Now I fully admit that while I work assiduously on my job at Untold in covering all those jolly transfers that the bloggettas tell us each day have just happened, I am not completely au fait with the business of match reporting, which I have been handed this weekend, so on the journey home after the game I sneaked a quick listen to Talk Sport.

According to the station they have been nominated for six awards this year by the Sports Journalists’ Association so they know a thing or three, I’m sure.  Anyway, there is this bloke who works alongside Stan Collymore whose name I don’t know, who played the Arsene Wenger interview in which he praised Özil, and this fella whose name I don’t know said that Özil was rubbish.

Given that those around me who know about such thing said that in the game we saw Özil’s ninth assist, (and he has scored four) in his last 13 games makes me think that my own amateur assessment that he was brilliant, running the whole show as it were, was right on the what-not.  But I was slightly hampered in my analysis because my main source of information – a 14 year old who sat behind me in the East Stand, said nothing about Özil through the game.

Now this 14 year old who sits behind the Untold Front Row in the East is a remarkable fellow.  He knows everything there is to know about football – and with an absolute certainty.  He told everyone within earshot that Ramsey was useless, that Bellerin wasn’t fast enough, that Campbell wasn’t good enough, that Wenger had got everyone playing in the wrong place, and that the movement was far too slow and that we were going to lose (that after Sunderland scored).

I was at one stage about to turn around and tell the young chap that these were only the reserves, and therefore needed to learn their trade, and he should show respect for his elders, but other members of the Untold Uppers (as our group in the Upper East Stand front row is known) restrained me saying the lad himself ran a rival blog called Elle Grovier or some such.

So what of the hearty roughs from ‘tup norf?   “Hard working” was the phrase I caught when I meandered over to the press room after the game, although the man from the Guardian told me that Mesut Özil “looked at times like he’d wandered in from some superior parallel universe.”  Maybe the Talk Sprout chap is simply on the wrong planet.

But what of Allardyce?   I watched him towards the end of the game and was, well, “wild” is the only word I can use, although the phrase “acting like a demented cow on heat during the windy season” might be a better description.  He was waving and shouting and pacing as substitutes, the physio and the rest of the support team backed off in alarm, eventually taking cover in the tunnel.  The phrase in the press box was an “energetic menace” although that might have been Storm Desmond.

Actually after the match Allerdyce said, “We exploited the weaknesses of Arsenal very well apart from putting the ball in the net,” which I thought was rather good.  A bit like saying, “we’ve dealt with Islamic State very thoroughly except for the fact that they are still there.”  Maybe Allerdyce should be a politician.

Sunderland were actually rather funny.  At the kick off they put six men along the half way line, as if this was a game of rugby, and then, all of them ran backwards as they took up a 5-5-0 formation.  But they were wearing all green.  And the grass was green, so it was rather difficult to see which was a player and which was grass – although I think I eventually got it sorted.  The grass moved around more in the Storm Desmond than the Allerdycian players who were, well, stuck in the bus.

In fact the grass turned out to be very important in this game, because not only did Giroud tap in an own goal from one particular blade of grass, he chose exactly the same blade of grass from which to score from Ramsey’s cross.  Symbolic or what?

At this point the boy who knows everything sitting behind was quiet although he did mutter “useless” a bit later in the game and told everyone around that Theo Walcott wasn’t fit and that he was going to injure himself.   By then I was getting rather annoyed with the youngster who knows everything but the rest of the Untold team held me down as I attempted to put the lad right on a few points of detail.

Anyway a jolly time was had by all and having written my report I now have the honour to present the league table with a few new names.  Mind you I think the editors have published this upside down, because I fully understand how useless Arsenal are (thanks to the boy in row 2) and so clearly they must be relegation fodder not one from top.   I do wish Untold would sort itself out.

POS	CLUB	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Vichay Srivaddhanaprabha	15	9	5	1	32	21	11	32
2	Arsenal	15	9	3	3	27	13	14	30
3	Partly Chinese	15	9	2	4	30	16	14	29
4	Let’s boo our own team	15	8	5	2	20	10	10	29
5	Tiny Toots	15	6	8	1	25	12	13	26
6	State Aid for pornographers	15	6	5	4	25	21	4	23
7	Liverpool!	14	6	5	3	18	15	3	23
8	New Jersey Devils	14	7	1	6	19	14	5	22
9	Gino Prozzo	15	6	4	5	17	16	1	22
10	Rugby	15	6	4	5	13	14	-1	22
11	No state aid so no new stadium	14	5	6	3	27	19	8	21
12	Is Katharina Liebherr eating pies?	15	5	6	4	21	18	3	21
13	Kick n kick n kick n	15	5	4	6	14	19	-5	19
14	The wonderworld of Cesc	15	4	3	8	17	24	-7	15
15	Mr & Mrs Martin Morgan’s mob	15	3	5	7	14	22	-8	14
16	TV cameras as weapons	15	3	4	8	17	27	-10	13
17	Maxim Demin’s fatter than Fat Sam	15	3	4	8	18	30	-12	13
18	Very Fat Sam’s team	15	3	3	9	17	29	-12	12
19	The chubbiest owner of them all	14	2	4	8	14	30	-16	10
20	Remi to the Rescue	15	1	3	11	13	28	-15	6