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Victory Through Harmony
Snooping Around 18, 19 & 20
By Sammy The Snake
Sammy The Snake runs a company. Well, you got me! Sammy The Snake pretends to run a company while he day-dreams about Arsenal. I have a huge football pitch in my head, and I’m constantly replaying the goals from the last game, or wondering how the next goal will be scored against whoever we’re playing in the next 27 hours or so (Fabianski distributes to Sagna, ball pushed towards Cesc, two steps forward, quick turn to lose his marker, ball sliced towards RVP, and goal!)…
Anyway, Sammy The Snake has a football analogy lecture that he keeps drilling in to his troops: “Business is just like football, it doesn’t matter if you have the best striker in the world if the rest of the team is not on par. It’s no use to have a team of stars if the coach has no clue. To achieve success, you need to have all the components of the team in the same wavelength. It’s not good enough if you have the best team and the owners keep making wrong decisions. Even the team doctors, and even the water boys, must be of the highest standard…” You can see where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop.
I’ve recently been thinking the opposite of this rule may be equally true: “You must really suck at everything if you’re at the bottom of the league”. Teams at the depth must have rubbish players, air-head coaches, mismanaged owners, and the list goes on. So it must be interesting to see if the blogs for such teams suck as hard!
Parking at 18th place on the league, and earning only 1 point per game, we find our next opponents, Wigan, to whom we gifted a point (by sacrificing two of ours) when we last met not too long ago. First on the search results, I see OleOle, which covers all teams and is not a Wigan-specific blog. On their Wigan page, and hold your breath for this, there’s nothing! They have Wigan’s basic information (established 1932, manager, chairman, league position, last/next game) and nothing more. You can see “no news found” as the only meaningful words on this site.
Wigan FC Official Web Site has a blog compartment, with one article “Wigan 0-5 ManU” written by BBC Sports on 22 August 2009. No kidding! On the right, you can see the headlines, the second of which is “Wigan 2-2 Arsenal” which refers to our game of 3 weeks ago! This is truly the land of the dead.
Not one to give up, not easily anyway, I keep searching and finally get Wiganer.net, which seems to be their only proper blog. And it is a proper blog, with intellectual articles like “Fulham Reaction: Negative Latics pay the price”. They have a message board with lots of interesting reading materials (but linked to footymad.net). Different topics (Like “If I were a rich man”) make it an interesting reading, and the picture of the cutie in bikini makes the page easy on the eyes (you may wish to visit http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php?tno=558 for closer inspection). The general mood here is one of despair that new players aren’t coming in, and even if they were, one or two players can’t make that much difference when the other players aren’t creating chances. This seems a bit cynical, but it’s probably true.
Our next target is the local rugby team called Wolverhampton Wankers, also known as “Mussolini’s favorite”. They’re sleeping so peacefully on the 19th, and they deserve their position every bit. This great team has one single blog to call its own, and that’s Wolves-Mad (I hear you, you gotta be mad to follow this junk!). But wait a minute, this is part of FootyMad again, which means this isn’t an independent blog at all.
Let’s have a look anyway… Wolves showing off their 500,000 pounds newcomer from Barnsley (Spending all that cash!)… “Wolves make survival a priority” (No Sh!t!)… And a bit of shouting about their 5-0 thrashing of Doncaster (the strongest team in pre-historic Europe). The message board isn’t much livelier, except that I like one thread beautifully titled “MICK OUT”.
At last, and of course surely least, we have West Ham: the greatest pornography football team this side of Jupiter. They like it so much in 20th place that they can’t get themselves to fire their coach, or is it that no one wants to replace Avram (who gives a new meaning to the term “walking dead”).
Hammered blog is a different kind of creature with short “tweet-like” articles on a daily basis. In one longer blog, they’re still arguing how Tevez was legally playing for West Ham (good old days, eh!). Other topics include daily roundups, transfer rumours, and such stuff. I like the style of writing, the wits of the writer and the ideas put forward, especially in a rant called “Sky Sports Understand – Very Little”:
“…Sky … “senior source” … Grant Would be replaced … Sky don’t say if this same “senior source” saying something completely different to what was said yesterday… Here’s my lack of understanding of the situation:
1. … Journalist trying to sell copy… or
2. … club are leaking this stuff to media… to force Grant to resign… or
3. … club have failed to convince any of their managerial targets to take over… or
4. … disagreement on the board… to replace Grant or not…”
Quite an honest approach, I’d say. Up next, Hammers In The Heart blog, which goes to show the Porno team have a bigger web presence than the other W teams. Again, this is an “outside-the-box” kind of blog, somewhat refreshing. They expose the fact that the West Ham leak is none other than Avram’s agent, a Barry Silkman, who happens to be doing all the wheeling & dealing at the club as well. To top it off, he’s pre-releasing their news on a betting channel! Well, well, well… What else is new?
They seem to be overly preoccupied with their managers plight, claiming “We love you Avram we do?” I’m not best pleased with them saying “And he’s finally shut-up those Gooners singing “Sacked in the morning!”. Yeh, right! Happy stay at “20th Place Inn”!
Isn’t it interesting how all the bottom teams are alphabetically last too? They all start with W! Is the opposite true? The team starting with A should be on top, right?! Another topic for another time.
Come on Gunners, tear Wigan apart on Saturday. 3-0 to the Arsenal!
Sammy The Snake
The new George Allison season on the Arsenal History site.
Play Nasri i say and then rest them – but i think roasiky and Walcott be starting for us….need to go full throttle against wigan and get the resukt without taking them lightly otherwise there could be unwanted pressure
Apparently there is this one:
http://www.cockneylatic.co.uk/
Blame Newsnow for me finding the link!
Wham have a fair and sometimes funny site at Knees up Mother Brown. http://www.kumb.com/ Much better than average and well supported. (To my shame, I bred a Hammer so sometimes keep an eye on him)
I followed the link, DC, and found the site, and then the message boards. There is a discussion in which one person is slagging off the owner. I had a thought to add to the discussion and tried to add something to the site – but in the registration process the site utterly refused to recognise Tony.Attwood@aisa.org as a valid email address.
So, can’t go and offer some words of sympathy – but it is a site with some activity – although the discussion is mostly at the “five words express everything I need to say” variety.
Am I not right in thinking that Wigan was the team that applied to join the Scottish League after the Football LEague kept rejecting them?
Ah Toy, that will teach you to try and follow the registration procedure. It is your inquiring mind that gets you into trouble. Wigan supporters don’t have that problem…
My recollection is, and at my age that is nothing to rely upon, they certainly did apply to join the Scottish league. Their application was rejected and I think we deserve an inquiry as to why the Football League caved in?
Sorry Toy, that should have said Tony!
This is a vital game. A classic “sandwich” game between Cup Ties that could be overlooked if not careful. Play the strongest possible team and get the 3 points, then worry about Ipswich and Huddersfield afterwards. I am confident that Ipswich, like Leeds, have shot their load and given everything they could already. And we should be able to rotate freely against Huddersfield. We then have another League match shortly afterwards against Everton.
The fans are getting their monies worth in this period aren’t they? From now until March 5th we have the potential to play 11 games, of which 8 are definately at home, 1 potentially a Cup Final (coming when we would otherwise play Spurs away), and another a potential home 5th round FA Cup match (depending on the draw). The one thing we dont want is a replay against Huddersfield, because that is our one week off during this unbelievably hectic period. It could be that our only away match during this period is Newcastle on 5th February.
This is a defining period of the season. Our home form could put us in a great position or screw us.
Sammy- I have made attempts to read blogs on other teams in the past, and was amazed at the paucity of such on most PL teams. I count myself fortunate that there is so much information to be found on Arsenal, especially with living in the US.
@ “Paul C”- You make good points about a slew of games, 4 between Jan5-15(11 days), and 4 between Jan19-30(11 days)! I only hope people keep this in mind when they chastise Wenger for rotations.
Byo – yeah, in recent years the criticism was that our squad wasnt big enough and that our frontline players were getting fatigued. Now the criticism is too much rotation of players!!!!
Sometimes you cannot win.
“Sometimes you cannot win.”
Isn’t it just? We wanted Wenger to solve the terrible injury problems and he found the solution: Rotation. It’s worked well so far – we have a ‘normal’ amount of injuries and are still in all four comps, and it’s keeping our key players fresh, and our second string sharp.
The whole Blog sphere is an interesting one because we often slag off how bad the opposition sites are lack of activity and negativity etc.
The strange thing is there is probably only 3 Arsenal sites I would visit there is an awful lot I would not go near.
Can anyone tell me how many decent Arsenal sites they think they are because ive visited quite a few and the negativity and rubish spouted on a lot didnt make us look much better.
we are lucky to have Untold and Young Guns maybe Arseblog for a light hearted approach out side of that theres a lot of crap.
@RG
Desi Gunner; Goonerholic and “A cultured left foot” especially all retain pride of place on my favorites link. The Gunning Hawk also a good blog.
Untold, Desi, A cultured left foot, Young Guns.
Sammy… Also see Jesus was a Wiganer http://wigan.illarterate.co.uk/2011/01/22/arsenal-3-0-wigan-not-even-al-habsi-could-save-us-from-van-persie/
Very fair report and what looks like a lively blog.
I guess you guys didn’t mention the famous AndrewMangan over at arseblog (which doesn’t open in China, presumably because it’s a blog about arses?) because it’s too obvious.
love the awesome, vocal and like minded arsenal fans one can find online!
thanks Tony for being responsible for a big part of it!