By Sir Hardly Anyone
The Toppled Bollard, home to the journalistic elite who day by day invent transfer tales of which just three percent per annum are true, is once more fully open. Journalists are all wearing face masks decorated with their favourite slogans (“Get in there” is the most popular) and spend their hours trying to drink through the gauze and plastic.
Meanwhile names there are a-flashing around and when they do flash a strange, almost unearthly light comes into the eyes of the hackneyed hacks as they see a chance of getting a bit of their own back on wayward editors by slipping through totally untrue stories which the top men, distracted by a passing female member of staff, let slip into the newspaper’s headlines. Tales like…
1: Jack Grelish (Aston Villa)
“Arsenal, more than most clubs in the Premier League, will be eager to get business done early in the upcoming transfer window.” So proclaims FoLo. But why? Surely doing that will mean no more news for the hacks. And odd approach to one’s job.
Anyway, just like newspapers need creative players who can write English so FoLo tell us that Arsenal need creative players progress the ball into the final third, and something I thought everyone knew, but still a point that Dahlia Hound-Waver proclaims is of value.
2: Arsenal have been looking at the Stade de Reims defender Axel Disasi, according to Charles Watts.
“Do you know,” said a thoughtful Bean AnGone from the Excess, “If all the players Arsenal have tried to sign and failed to sign were placed end to end, they would reach halfway down Piccadilly.”
“Further than that,’ said Eggy Chips of the Metro, and Sun and…. “Some of them were pretty tall.”
3: Smith Rowe
“Arteta names one player” says This is futbol.
“I could name several, “says Shelly Beetle of The Smudge. “Gabriel Martinelli, Joe Willock and Reiss Nelson,” and oh how everyone in the Bollard applauded.
But This is insist it is Smith Rowe of whom we should take note so note we take. D sharp is proclaim appropriate.
4 Marc Roca
According to Calciomercato, AC Milan want him. “The Spain U21 international is set to leave Espanyol following their relegation from La Liga,” said one journo whom I didn’t know. And then he uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated and I realised it was Small Bachelor of The Times.
“I may as well inform you that he turned Arsenal down,” said a passing pip squeak.
“Turned Arsenal down?” we shouted in combined amazement.
“Like a bedspread. In this very garden,” said the passer by, ignoring the fact that we were in a pub.
5. Willian
“Chelsea winger Willian has said that he is keen to stay in London amid talk of joining Arsenal this summer,” says the excitable Football London,
The reporter however then had a confusion of ideas between himself and one of the barmaids. The Fo Lo man thought for a second he was hunting wild animals in Kenya – something that had caused his premature departure from the Sun after he announced a lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t. As a result he moved to the FoLo deceased reporters section – a noisy bunch who become over excited after dark.
The Brazil international is out of contract at Stamford Bridge we were told.
Joelson Fernandes is sporty, and so Arsenal want him, according to Gooner Talk. Arsenal have offered Sporting £13.6 million for the 17-year-old. “That would be what you call news,” said a passer by, and everyone wrote his words down.
And then, as the Bollard’s Porcupine Rigoletto (the dish of the day) turned to ashes in our mouths and those of us still alive paraded into the street, all socially distanced of course, another lunchtime session ended. “Back at four?” asked Any Oompus-Boompus. “At the latest,” was the uniform reply, as we marched on our way to satisfy our editors.
- Still getting Arsenal’s history wrong, after all these years
- Liverpool and Leeds knock back chances of stadium return for next season
- When spending a fortune in football can go seriously wrong
I’d swap Grealish for that greedy vastly overrated, shocker Ozil in a heartbeat !
Rudolf
Why is Ozil greedy?
Why is Ozil overrated?
Lets just see how those 2 compare.
APPEARANCES
Ozil 184
Grealish 69
GOALS
Ozil 33
Grealish 8
GOALS PER GAME
Ozil 0.17
Grealish 0.11
ASSISTS
Ozil 54
Grealish 7
ASSISTS PER GAME
Ozil 0.29
Grealish 0.10
CROSS ACCURACY
Ozil 35%
Grealish 24%
SHOOTING ACCURACY
Ozil 45%
Grealish 31%
TACKLE SUCCESS
Ozil 68%
Grealish 71%
Ozil wins every category bar one, Tackle Success, a disciplin he gets remorseless ridiculed for and yet he only loses that by a mere 3%
All I can say is I’m Glad you’re not our manager as you don’t really seem to know what you’re looking at do you?
OT but with one last chance to screw Arsenal, Riley gives us………..Mike Dean!
Real shocker,that.
@Nitram,
How cruel to perpetuate an autopsy so publicly on poor Rudolph.
This season Mike Dean has been our best referee
Matchweek 2 Arsenal 2 – Burnley 1
Matchweek 9 Sheffield 0 – Arsenal 1
Matchweek 16 West Ham 1 – Arsenal 3
Matchweek 23 Arsenal 1 – Sheffield 1
3 wins, 1 draw no losses
Doesn’t mean that I trust him or have forgiven him for earlier sins – just saying.
I’m far more worried that the FA have changed their policy of only allowing a referee to take charge of a single Cup Final in their career. For the first time since 1902 they have changed this tradition and appointed Anthony Taylor to do his second Cup Final.
Apparently this is to ensure that a first time referee can have his friends and family present as well as a full stadium and experience the occasion as intended. This strikes me as being a load of baloney, what about players who may only get one opportunity to play in a final, why are they being treated differently! I think we will have to watch Mr Taylor at least as closely as Mr Dean.
Matchweek 3 Liverpool 3 – Arsenal 1 (5 fouls, 1yellow card, 1 penalty)
Matchweek 5 Watford 2 – Arsenal 2 (4 fouls, 3 yellow cards & 1 penalty)
Matchweek 28 Man City 3 – Arsenal 0 (7 fouls, 1 yellow, 1 red and 1 penalty)
Plus he has to atone for the wrong result in the 2017 final when we beat Chelsea 2 – 1
The PGMOL make their rules up as they go along their own stairway to heaven. The FA are so damned stoned that Riley probably looks like St Peter to them.
We have to just cope with the appointments and admire their balls for taking a knee when they are obviously amongst the most racist organisations in the UK.
Truly, I totally agree and believe that a grad plot by the PGMO Kingpin Mike Riley to screw Arsenal up in their FA Cup final match clash against Chelsea at Wembley on August 1 has in essence been hatched and put in place effectively and switched ON to start running a week to the D-day when Mike Riley appointed Mike Dean the notorious and well known anti-Arsenal match referee in football circle world wide to officiate the game playing proceedings as the match centre referee in the match. God saves Arsenal from any actualising of this grand plot that’d been hatched already a week to matchday to harm Arsenal ostensibly in the Cup final. But notwithstanding,, since to be forewarned is to be forearm, Arsenal MUST therefore arm themselves to their teeth with all the efficient high weapon grade match riggers neutralising weapons in Gunners which when are employed in the match will see Arsenal neutralized not only Chelsea in the match but as well and equally neutralized all Mike Dean’s anti-Arsenal match refereeing agenda in the match including those of his 2 match assistants too and those of the 2 to 3 VAR man referee manning the VAR device machine put in place to deny the Gunners from lifting the FA Cup to thereby stop us the Arsenals from rejoicing of getting the big price of qualifying ticket to play in European football competition next season which is what Mike Riley and all his cohorts are targeting to achieve. But NAY is what they will get next Sunday at Wembley.
Andrew,
I wasn’t aware of Dean’s recent performances. Maybe I’m as biased against him as the PGMOL are against Arsenal, lol.