Qarabag v Arsenal, and cabbages in the stand

By Bulldog Drummond

One of the many annoying things about Arsenal having slipped out of the top four for the last two seasons is that when one looks for news about the club on the websites of the English newspapers one finds the articles dominated by pieces about last season’s top four.  The week’s European games are not over as the Europa ties are still to come, but already the media is focusing on the weekend’s league games while still looking back to the latest cock ups.

By-passing the Europa has one benefit of course and that is that fewer column inches are spent knocking the Arsenal, and indeed if one looks a little closer there is something to warm the heart, because quite a lot of the talk is not about the failure of foreign referees to understand English rules but of English clubs to keep up with European standards.  Of course we used to get that once we came to play Bayern in recent years, but at least that held off until the knock out rounds.

These days the way the media works is to find excuses for their favourite chums.   They don’t have Arry to lionise (or was that dogise) of course, and Tottenham’s defeat is excused by the fact that what the journos saw was “a Messi masterclass” which somehow almost seems to mean that the Nomads didn’t lose at all but rather, well, I couldn’t quite work it out.  But they didn’t lose.  I am sure of that.

The place of Arsenal as the club in eternal crisis is now taken by Manchester United with headlines like “Jose Mourinho’s 45-minute hotel rant at Manchester United players sinks club deeper into crisis”.  Although to be fair, even Liverpool!, normally the absolute darlings of the media have lost a little of their sparkle as revealed in “Lacklustre Liverpool unlocked by Lorenzo Insigne’s late strike.”  Eight words, four starting with the letter “L”.  It’s all good stuff in the media these days.  Not quite alliteration, but they are trying.

Defeats like these cause a great problem for the newspapers that have for years considered the Premier League the “greatest league in the world” with the best refs in the world.    Even that shine has gone a little with the headline “Manchester City reassured by police there will no repeat of team bus attack in Liverpool”.   Ah well, it was all the police’s fault then, and not that of the raging fans.

And speaking of which (well not actually speaking of which, but one might have been speaking of which) there is the cabbage story. “A cabbage was thrown at the dugout from the stand,” confirmed a spokesman. “We are working with the club to identify the culprit.”   The target was Steve Bruce who has now been sacked as manager of Aston Villa.  He said, “Unfortunately, it sums up the society we are in at the moment.”

It is now being tipped that Thierry Henry might go and manage Villa.  As Tony Adams might have said, “What does he know about West Midlands cabbages?”

The question is, who goes to matches with a cabbage?  Have you ever seen someone go to to a match with a cabbage?  Don’t they have vegetable checks on the gates in the Midlands these days?  I mean, Tony always has to get his half time apple out of his pocket and show that it is an apple, when entering Arsenal Stadium.  What on earth would they say if he went in with a cabbage?

Anyway speaking of cabbages here is the champions league table for one of the groups…

Group B

More anon…

• Tottenham complain about fixtures, but Arsenal have it worse. And Barce have no cash.
• Qarabag v Arsenal: bizarre squad spotted by national newspaper. We can’t be that daft can we?
• 8 utterly extraordinary Arsenal stories circulating this morning