There were gasps of horror and amazement yesterday in the dim and distant north east as a bunch of men dressed in zebra outfits assaulted Arsenal players who were attempting to play a game of football.
In one incident Arshavin was smashed in the face, while in two others Clichy was twice pulled down, once in a rugby type tackle. None of the incidents resulted in a yellow card.
Of course the gasps of horror were not for the events themselves, but for the way in which journalists, the ref and the linesmen conspired to reduce the events to the normality of playing in the wild north east. And probably they were right.
In truth, apart from the assaults, it was a fairly jolly game, but any of those assaults could have resulted in serious injury, and in the case of Arshavin, loss of teeth. It shows just how low the EPL has fallen as the broadcasters desperately try to keep up audiences with their endless encouragement to players to rough the opposition up a bit.
But that is now 2,857 games without defeat (I may have miscounted that but it is quite a lot), and we have scored just one goal less than KGB Athletico Fulham, Manchester B, and Liverpool I. To be clear, those three teams have scored 49 and they are joint top scorers in the EPL. We are one behind – (which by my calculation is 48) which when you consider we had 38 consecutive 0-0 draws (again I need to check the maths here, but it’s not far off) is quite amazing.
Considering also that Bendtner can’t ever hit a barn door (according the to the guy next to me), that Adebayor should be given away (according to his mate), Eduardo will never recover from injuries (his mate’s girlfriend) Vela is lightweight, (his mate’s girlfriend’s mate) and Van Persie is leaving for WC Milan (the guy who went to get the beer at half time and never came back) it is astonishing that we have scored any at all.
It is also interesting to recall that when we lost to Fulham Mohammed, blogs were running stories along the lines of “this is exactly what I predicted” and it all led to the Gooner (as in “GetYerGooner, new edition out today”) to run its Meltdown theory.
They’re not melting now! (Actually that is a meaningless phrase but I thought it rather amusing.)
Of course even though Manchester B lost to Fulham M we are still 10 points behind (although I think the guy who went to the bar at half time misheard me and thought I said we were ten pints behind), but my point is the gap is not huge in terms of an ability to get results. The league has changed – 90% of the clubs will play the rotational game and take a 0-0 as a victory, and the club that will emerge victorious from these dark times will be the one that finds a way to defeat these new systems, and the increasing level of violent assaults from other players.
It is, as I say, dark days in the dim and distant dismal domain past Doncaster.
Still, it was fun, weren’t it?
(c) Tony Attwood. 10 Points Later.
I’m effing sick of people calling bendtner arrogant (it’s bull****) and moaning whenever he makes the slightest error. People are clearly too stupid to make up their own minds and see that he’s performed very well, and this is not only in the past few matches. They seem to prefer to listen to media sources are cleary sensationalist and who have only ever given us the most profoundly idiotic insights into the beautiful game.
The most distressing thing as that it’s not just football fans who are ridiculously lazy in their scapegoating, assumptions and abuse. It’s so common as to be a national pastime. Why bother actually thinking through a problem when you can just complain and appear all the smarter for it?
I would now list incidents in which i’ve been subject to people forming unjustified opinions of myself and using such opinions as reason to try to undermine me but the list would be so vast that sorting through it would be too difficult an undertaking. I’d rather just hope that people could draw from their own experiences and see how this type of idiocy is a genuinely horrible thing, something which they should avoid at all costs.
will – completely agree about bendtner
did they show the taylors’ fouls on motd by the way?
the thing on clichy was just really bad spotsmanship, resorting to extreme measures to block clichys run but the first should come with a ban
when steven taylor got injured i felt a bit sorry for newcastle as they had to change their defence twice in one game, but not for steven himself
hi Tony,
just came across this interesting piece of info from the tiny totts.
the spud’s forums are awash with news of building a stadium without incurring any debt!!!
BUILDING A FOOTBALL STADIUM WITHOUT ANY DEBT!!!
I could not make any sense of it,sounds too good to be true…
so tony ,since u are the man of finance,could u tell us what all this actually means….,here are the links-
http://www.spurs.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=7500538
http://www.spurs.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=7500545
Well I don’t know about this Tiny Tott stadium. The most noticeable thing is that it is going to be a lot cheaper than the Ems – but why? Is it going to be built to a lower spec? Is it because there is less site clearance? Do they have to do less social housing and regeneration work? Without details we don’t know.
What is clear is that a lot of the funding will come from Enic, the somewhat obscure owners of the Tinies. Enic always seems to declare a profit for the club, and obviously last year they did it by selling some of their best players. But they do it all the time. So either they have loads of dosh, or else….???
If they have loads of money then of course like KGB Fulham they can indeed pay for their new stadium themselves by having ENIC create more shares, which they buy, and which thus pumps more money into the club share capital. That money is used to build the ground.
Arsenal did not have such money, so needed to finance the whole thing.
Just one thing though, if Tottenham develop their own ground for apartments on the Arsenal model, I wonder if they will get the same income as Arsenal – I doubt that.
All very hypothetical = as is the issue of whether they will fill the ground each home game. We’ve debated this before – they don’t have the same sort of waiting list that Arsenal does.
Thanks for bringing these articles to my attention King H – much appreciate it.
Sorry to bang on about the Hull spitting thing – old news now, but reading the Sunday papers wound me up. Typical was Andy Dunn in News of the World. The gist of his piece was ‘I’ve known Brown /Horton for many years and they aren’t the sort to lie’. Therefore the implication is that Cesc lied.
I don’t for a minute believe that Dunn is racist, but there is a kind of institutional racism in the press and media. It’s called the old pals act. The way it works is middle-aged white englishman writes for a national paper. Over the decades working as a sports reporter he becomes friendly with people in the game who are now white middle-aged english coaches and managers. White English hack has a dilemma – one of his old mates is lying about an incident or a young 21-year-old foreigner is lying. It couldn’t be my mate, he thinks, because well, he is my mate and my mates don’t lie. So it must be the foreigner. Therefore Cesc is guilty of spitting and lying – even though there is no evidence to prove this.
Refs and FA members have also come up together through the game, so foreign players are always up against it.
By the way did you know that the last time Rooney was sent off in the Premier league was 198 games ago? Says it all really.
You have something there Ian. However, it is not racism although it might be xenophobism.
Loved the Rooney stat by the way.
Ian, of course it’s racist double standards. There’s no question that’s why it is perfectly OK for a good old English boy like Brown to get up on national TV and publicly defame Arsene Wenger and Cesc Fabregas — even when he’s been proven a filthy LIAR about AW at least. Now, imagine if AW had put on the same act as Brown did. Imagine if Arshavin or Cesc had deliberately assaulted an English player the way Taylor assaulted Arshavin at Newcastle. We’d never hear the end of it. Brown and Horton are good and honest and saintly because they’re English. Cesc? Of course not, he’s a lying Spaniard.