By Sir Hardly Anyone
A quick round up of what’s being said and considered and contemplated and basically just made up in the world of footie. Here we go.
“Do I see myself staying? Of course I do,” said Jack Wilshere after his performance against BATE. “I have always been at Arsenal, I love this club. They have been good to me over the years, I have a great relationship with the boss. He has played me since I was 17. He has put his trust in me since then. We have a great understanding and of course I want to stay.”
To which Mr Wenger said: “He had an outstanding first half. He fights until the end. He’s on his way back to his best and showed that. He’s at an age where a player normally gets to the best of his career. He’s on the way up. He’s only been stopped by a series of injuries.
“Hopefully, I just pray, he is not hampered by any more problems and that will see him getting stronger and stronger. He’s shown again that he’s not lost his football. We had a team that was a mixture of experienced players and young players and we had good cohesion and played football like I want them to play, with a good pace.
“We maintained it for 65 minutes and then the last 20 minutes were a bit more difficult. Overall I’m very pleased with our performance.”
Meanwhile, do you remember those days when Arsenal (allegedly) had more injuries than the rest of the League put together and it was all the fault of Mr Wenger? Hard to believe such a time existed, of course, but it really did.
Anyway, I wonder if the media will turn on Manchester City and their manager now. I know Sergio Agüero’s car crash can hardly be blamed on the club – the guy was in the Netherlands on Thursday night – but had it been an Arsenal player questions would have been asked about what Arsenal were doing allowing their top man to be rampaging through Amsterdam’s notorious red light district at 1am.
I don’t think the player was doing that at all, but that is where the story would have gone – had it been Arsenal. Some reports say the striker has fractured a rib and faces a long lay-off. I’ve had fractured ribs and believe me it is an absolute killer. Fortunately I was not playing for Man City at the time.
“If Agüero’s injury does prove serious it will be the second serious setback suffered by Pep Guardiola in two days after Benjamin Mendy was potentially ruled out for the rest of the season because of a knee injury.”
And of course we are now into headlines such as “City striker Aguero faces eight weeks out after car crash.”
Anyway, another day and another Liverpool tale. The club have “lodged an official complaint with Uefa” following racial abuse against their under 18 player Bobby Adekanye in the Youth League match against Spartak Moscow after he came on as a sub.
Apparently Spartak have been charged with displaying the wrong sort of banner – it said “Uefa mafia,” and with letting off fireworks in the stadium.
Of course it is right that Liverpool should protest in the strongest terms about racism, but this is Russia and this is Uefa. A fine of what… £5000 maybe for racism and £25,000 for the banner. Or maybe just a warning for the racism. This is not something that they take seriously, and it has been going on for years and years. As long as the clubs accept Uefa, they accept racism.
Moving on, you will have read page after page attacking Arsenal’s stupidity in not accepting a deal for Alexis and taking the money so that they could spend it on someone else. It’s Arsenal so knock them.
But Liverpool had a similar situation. John W Henry did not sell Coutinho to Barcelona for £90m even though Coutinho wanted to go. Instead Liverpool said that the player had a back ache, he went to play for Brazil and then carried on. And that apparently was the right thing to do – at least according to the Independent. They are congratulating Liverpool on taking a solid stand against, well, against everyone I suppose.
Elsewhere, “Ozil seeks a quick move to Inter” according to “Arsenal’s Edmund Nketiah is cast in the mould of legend Thierry Henry,” according to
Moving on again, the allocation of tickets for the Norwich City game has been called “Stupid and unfair.” But for once it is not Arsenal who are to blame.
Of course no newspaper will mention that the tickets to Norwich fans at the Ems are a fraction of the price that would be paid if the game were at Norwich, but instead there is “resentment building at the way the tickets were allocated.” Apparently the normal points system was ignored, and as a result “Norwich City fans call for more tickets against Arsenal after 5,000 quickly sell-out”.
Anyway it seems it really wasn’t Arsenal’s fault – Norwich just put the tickets on sale and let people queue up for them, which is how Arsenal used to do it, but that was way back in the last century. But I suppose in Norfolk it is still the way things are done.
And that seems about it for the moment. Have a most splendid afternoon.
- Keeping the momentum while developing the production: the Arsenal Way
- Good win, excellent kiddies, weird sprouts. Arsenal’s reserves and youngsters beat BATE
I don’t know why people are still surprised with racistic banners and stuff on the stands. It’s how FIFA and UEFA “solve” that kind of things including dismantling their own action team against racism a while ago.
When Bosnia played in Greece, there was a banner that was positive about the genocide committed over the Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995. (It has a sick rhyme that I can’t translate: “Nož-žica-Srebrenica” or “Knife-wire-Srebrenica” but I’m sure the horror of the message can be recognized without the sick rhyme.) The Greek FA apologized for it and apparently removed it from the stands but I can’t find if any action against the Greeks was started.
Surely, EUFA’s sense of perspective and priority is above approach. They know better than to treat racist abuse as being more significant than the unauthorised underpants which Bendtner wore when playing for Denmark.
Re Wilshere
Despite a reasonable post match assessment from BT there was still an exchange between Glen Hoddle and Jermaine Jenus I found very disappointing to hear regarding Wilshere.
The following is not word for word but pretty much encapsulates what they said:
GH: I think Wilshere played well. I like it when he plays like this. One, two touch, three at most. This is what he needs to do if he wants to stay fit.
JJ: You mean to avoid getting caught on the ball?
GH: Yes. He needs to get rid of the ball as quick as he can to avoid that.
Hmmm?
So what they are saying is Jack isn’t allowed to hold the ball, or dribble with the ball, because if he does, he will constantly get fouled which will obviously lead to more injuries, and of course, it will all be his own fault.
No mention that perhaps players being given liberty to foul him at will, without fear of retribution, is in anyway part of the problem.
It’s the same old line.
Yes Jack gets fouled. Yes Jack gets injured
BUT IT’S ALL HIS OWN FAULT.
Seems to me nothing has changed. I know that’s quite a leap on the back of the comments of just 2 people, but to me it just goes to show that this notion that all Jacks woes are ‘all his own fault’ and nothing to do with the abuse he receives from the opposition, is so ingrained that it’s never going to change.
Yes, thank you Sir Hardly Anyone for the “have a good afternoon” wish.
My concern now is when I am going to make my starts and bench for our home PL match against Brighton & HA that’s coming up on Sunday as I’ve deemed Walcott, Mustafi, Giroud & ElNeny game fatigued after their playing the BATE match for 90 minutes and for this reason should not start the Brighton match but be on the bench. And with Ozil looking not yet fully recovered from his keen inflammation injury and therefore may not be fully match fit to start the Brighton match, I’ll be thinking of what I should do next in my Arsenal starts and bench for the match as if I am Le Prof. So that Arsenal will not drop points to Brighton but collect all points in the game on Sunday.