Up For Grabs Now

Good to meet you, Mr L. Koscielny,

Wafted in from far-off Lorient for an undiscloséd fee.

With your spiky Franco-Polish hairstyle

And your lithe Franco-Polish physique

I hope you won’t be as grumpy as our entirely French former skipper,

Or as guff as our entirely French former Silvestre.

Your red shirt will be the number six.

Oh virtuous digit of noble Adams!

Oh lofty figure of brave Mercer!

When that sixth shirt has worn your elbows in

And when at last you move among yesterday’s wearers of that splendid six:

What shall they say of you then, Mr L. Koscielny?

Other notable Franco-Poles include Roman Polanski,

Alleged child-rapist and definite film-maker.

Well, I don’t want to see any funny business from you and Tom,

The new core of our once invertebrate rearguard.

Let’s hold just one small hope today:

That you’re a more successful Franco-Polish combination

Than the ill-starred military alliance active between those nations

From 1921 to 1940.

Oh, with what language shall we speak of you in years ahead,

Mr L. Koscielny, our latest number six?

The last two days have resembled less a serious attempt by the footballing world at a convincing series of events subject to such traditional vagaries as divine providence, chance, and Sod’s law, as a spectacular forty-eight hour long play staged across a series of venues and with a cast of hundreds of thousands, a play scripted and directed by an Arsenal fan as full of wit as he is empty of compassion.

First came the dismissal of Orange Brown. One of our most belligerent irritants has been banished from the Premiership into footballing oblivion. And all because of Nicklas Bendtner’s finishing ability.

‘Gardening leave’ is the most bizarre way I can think of of telling someone to bog off, but bog off Brown has.

And Brown’s afterlife? Not so much the little Match of the Day studio in the sky as a call centre somewhere nasty up north, I suspect.

The Lord Almighty? Former Arsenal goal-getter Henry

To their credit, Hull City will almost certainly now escape plunge deeper into the relegation mire after their cost-cutting appointment of Iain R. Dowie, a man whose middle initial stands for ‘Revival‘ ‘Relegation’.

Bye Hull! Brilliant.

And then, to cap it all, said Drogba gets sent off for almost no reason, the referee conned into punishing one disgusting Mourinho-schooled cheat by the shameless skullduggery of another, Thiago Motta.

Marvellous.

Where were your flip-flops tonight Didier?

Well, what a week it’s been.

Eurozone Goal-God-cum-Scandinavian-Rhinocerous-impersonator Nicklas Bendtner smashes three past Porto to launch us into the Champions League quarter finals, then nips one past big bald (bad) Boaz in minute 93 to send us joint top.

Two days earlier, Arsene Wenger described Emmanuel Eboue as ‘the complete player’ to the derision of absolutely no-one.

These are days of strange and wonderful events.

The shoe with which the British media and large sections of the Arsenal blogosphere (to their eternal shame) have spent the last year or two kicking this Arsenal side and Arsene for building it, is now not so much on the other foot as in the process of being gleefully jammed inch by inch down the throats of those who chose to doubt and snipe when they should have hoped and cheered.

Former call-centre middle manager Phil Brown could barely get his whimpering and garbled objections out on Match of the Day, and ought to be branded a moaner in precisely the fashion in which Wenger is every time he gives his opinion on a leading question. All the attention was rightly on how big a goal that could be for Arsenal come the season’s end. Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of which Bendtner deprived Orange Brown so late on turned out to be the margin by which the Premier League was finally rid of Hull City?

Eight games left for Arsenal and the expectation, however much we try to keep it under control, is pretty big right now. When you get into this position it’s misery or glory, no mediocre middle-ground. That in itself is a symptom of success.

If we don’t win the league now, then the very same pundits and bloggers who said Arsenal couldn’t even make the top four with this team will be writing the season off as a failure, even though Arsenal have mounted the title challenge they said would never possibly materialise.

We can win this league. Maybe with the relative run-ins of the top three we should now win it. But if we don’t, let’s hope the fans can at least retain the optimism and togetherness forged over recent weeks instead of indulging the panic-button-bashing tabloids.

Too sad to joke. Another bullying from Drogba and co and we’re nine points off the top.

It’d be tempting to join virtually all the other Arsenal bloggers in plunging headfirst into a shitscreen of negativity.

Some of them really enjoy this. Le Grumble, for example, who spent the whole summer whingeing their favourite gospel of mid-table doom, only to speedily revise their assessment as soon as we thumped Everton at Goodison on day one. From then on anything short of the treble was going to be a bloody let-down. They really get off at moments like this as it gives them the chance to crow their tabloid-addled populist told-you-so crap to anyone who’ll listen. There are a lot of ways to express thoughtless, witless bitterness – it’s just a shame these kind of people choose to blog about Arsenal rather than design tea-towels for the BNP or something.

Then there’s sites who take the chance to rip off red-top scare stories about Fabregas leaving, stories surpassed for their predictability only by Gael Clichy’s singular failure once again to challenge the attacker with the ball. Sigh.

Well there’ll be none of that here, thanks.

Out with the newspapers for a week and the rashes of negative Arsenal stories that will be filling them. Not interested. If this sounds blinkered, it’s cos I am. But then being blinkered is a bad thing only if what’s around you is worth looking at. Which the gleeful media hysteria which descends on any top 4 club that goes through a rough patch is not - witness the general amazement at Liverpool’s current league position just a week or so after most match reports on them read more like obituaries.

What you won’t find in any newspaper is perspective. Here’s some. This may well be a world exclusive:

Every pundit and his dog said Arsenal wouldn’t finish top 4 this season. ‘Spurs have spent a bit of money’, they said. ‘City look good after buying a list of players voted for by Match! magazine readers’, they may have added, scratching their chubby gut. Our last two defeats have been bitterly disappointing, but our whole season so far might be best dramatised by a short play in which Fabregas and Vermaelen, supervised by Wenger, patiently ram the pre-season nonsense back down the throats of the experts (and the brainless bloggers who believed them) piece by stupid piece.

Third place is pretty good. I’m not against marquee signings. I really enjoy shirt-holding-up ceremonies, especially if the player holding up the shirt then puts the shirt on and scores a sackful of goals. It’s frustrating to feel so close to success and that the reluctance to spend the money that is (?) available is costing us championships. But that just emphasises how good the team must already be. Without spending the money. 

With a remaining set of fixtures that look easier than a pun about John Terry’s heading ability, we will make up ground on the top two, hopefully starting with Liverpool on Wednesday, who at least carry none of the attacking menace of United or Chelsea.

Hope that soothed somewhat. Chin up. Oh, and think about Alex Song. He’s so good, isn’t he?

A lot has been said and will be said about the result on Sunday, but now that some of the dust has settled I feel a bit more comfortable talking about it. On the walk (which feels longer every time you do it – weird) from Highbury and Islington to the Emirates I was saying, in a rather un-fanatical way, that I’d be happy with a point. Obviously we always want the Arsenal to urinate on United from a great height, but realistically it’s not always possible, and with the results as they’ve been this season the way we’ll win the league is by taking three points from all of the crap sides rather than duffing the big boys. Leagues are really won in this way – by consistently beating the mediocre sides – winning twice rather than drawing against crap teams is worth more than losing to one of the big sides, though the latter will invariably get the profile.

As it happened, we lost. In the event it looked comfortable for them, and we were certainly ragged at times – particularly when our heads dropped just before and after half time, but I don’t think the game was a foregone conclusion. We weren’t nearly as bad as some of the newspapers would have you believe. Arshavin had a couple of great chances at the start, and if those had crept just the other side of the post the game would have looked very different. It galls losing to a side with an entirely ginger backbone: Brown, Scholes, and Rooney, and particularly one which considers Jonny Evans to be a first-team centre back, but you must remember that this is Manchester United we’re talking about. Even the apparently rather successful advent of 3-D coverage doesn’t begin to approach the hideousness of seeing Wayne Rooney close-up. Marking him must be quite the most onerously disgusting task this side of mythology. It was also a bit unreasonable for Nani to suddenly decide that he can play football, having spent most of this season wandering around like a hapless extra in some disastrous Iberian soap opera.

Song, Fabregas, Arshavin, Vermaelen looked good. Que sorpresa. Others looked a bit off. Nasri and Clichy looked hopelessly weak – the former particularly is really not progressing as you’d have hoped from a man who arrived under the ‘New Zidane’ banner beloved of those whom the gods wish to destroy. He’s got a nice touch, but he neither imposes himself physically on games or mazily dribbles his way through them. One hopes that as our midfield makes its Singer Sargeant esque return from the Triage tent the competition for places will make him pull his socks up. I have fewer fears for Clichy – he just needs a run of games.

A note on John Terry: ha ha ha. I hate international football (particularly England) so I couldn’t really give a hoot either way, but I would say that the real question is surely whether the pleasure one derives from knowing that Wayne Bridge has been cuckolded is greater or less than the misery of John Terry sleeping with a lithe French underwear model(among others) It’s tough, but I think that the fact his liaisons varieux have come to such epic grief compromises them enough that we can celebrate. Well done John! Great cuckolding! Great morale! Great leadership! On which note, do we know yet whether he prefers to lead from the front or the back?

That’s your lot for now, and our hopes for a quick recovery against the Blue lot. It won’t be easy, but don’t despair. Remember last season how we pulled off all those great results when we were against it? Yes. There you go. Soothing. And if not, Liverpool are as self-doubting at the moment as Terry’s PR guy, so that’ll be fine.

What do you reckon?

So Arsenal can go top tonight if they duff Bolton by two goals or more. They can hit the heights, rule the roost, lead the pack, top the division and no doubt indulge in a number of other activities which make them sound like an accomplished and particularly dominant sexual partner, like Sting with more aggression.

Bolton may turn up with the vengeance mentality which saw Everton dazzle last week, and which saw Carlos Tevez mercilessly goad Ferguson and Neville last night.

For some reason Guy Mowbray kept indulging Tevez’s infantile benchward pouting by making it sound like some kind of redemptive justice was being achieved, just as he mysteriously described the pelting of Patrice Evra by City fans as ‘overexuberance’. Which is what you expect from an especially energetic bear-cub which accidentally cuffs its cuddly playmate, not some Manc bastard who throws a lighter at an opposition full-back from all of three feet away. But what do you expect when two such detestable institutions come face to face on live television? Dreadful.

Still, wasn’t it lovely to see Gazza Neville looking so pissed off? Let’s hope he gets banned. Banned from scowling on the bench beneath his revolting moustache, cos he certainly isn’t going to get a game.

In his current guise – slow, violent, hateful, nauseatingly coiffured - the Neviller would be better suited to the Bolton side we’ll be looking to dismantle this evening. What a snide and stroppy bunch they turned out to be, what with kneeing Cesc in the neck, elbowing Arshavin and all-sorts.

Coyle will surely have his men fired up, but after the callous disregard they showed toward our superstar skipper, let’s hope that our eleven are just as keen. With Denilson, Walcott and Clichy all available, I suspect we’ll start Almunia; HM The Right Back, Vermaelen, Le Gal, Clichy; Denilson, Cesc, Diaby, Rosicky, Eduardo, Arshavin.

But then, Arsene could always throw in a suprise. Like Sanchez Watt. What? Sanchez Watt. Oh, Sanchez Watt, of course. Is he available? It wouldn’t be the first time, not even the first time in three days, that Arsene has picked a young ‘un. Personally I thought Eastmond was pretty impressive, especially if you compare his performance with, say, certain of the early Outbursts of Song. Obviously consistency is the toughest thing at that age, but a very promising player I think and I won’t be complaining if he keeps his place in the side tonight.

If it’s him or Denilson anchoring then we can expect to see yet more Joyous Cesc, complemented by the throbbing force that is The Diaby Surge, which in recent months has more or less replaced the Out of Position Diaby to which we had become all too accustomed.

With Cesc back in the side, Diaby is no longer the fulcrum of our play, but he’s still an increasingly destructive attacking force, particularly when his Surge draws hapless tacklers and defenders towards him. This often creates the glimpse of space this team needs in order to break out of  the Islington Shuffle and cut through.

So maybe he is a fulcrum, of sorts. But then maybe a team needs more than just one fulcrum. Come to think of it, if we ever manage to field Cesc, Rosicky, Diaby and Nasri we will have no fewer than four bona fide fulcra, to which you can add Arshavin if he’s in the mood.

It’s all tremendously exciting.

Barring something very surprising it looks as if the great Patrick Vieira will be returning to England, accepting the luxuriant Eastlands grass as a new pasture. Who can blame him? If I was an overrated footballer (as opposed to cruelly underrated, which is the truth) with my best days behind me (this is perhaps true) I would head to Manchester City quicker than Andepaymor?’s mother can say sorry. Unlimited cash, low expectations, a new manager – what’s not to like? A team in which well-known violently misogynist moron Craig Bellamy is regarded as wizened elder is one harboring low expectations.

I suspect along with other Gooners, I have mixed feelings about Paddy’s return. Unlike Bergkamp or Pires, I don’t look back on his departure with unbridled affection - his prolonged courtship with Madrid rankles slightly. And ‘Vieira, wohohhoo, Vieira, wohohoo’ won’t have the same ring to it if he’s wearing light blue alongside Andepaymor?, Bellamy, Tevez and the whole sorry panoply of City’s overpaid, granite-idle strike force.

It’s also unclear whether he’ll be able to do a job. He was effective in Serie A, but the games in the main less intense, and he’s never hit his Invincibles-leading peaks. Having said that, with the current state of our midfield I’d welcome him back with a friendly, exposed bosum were he offered. At least for a few weeks.

But while I know that Arsene was reported to have been toying with resigning him at the start of the season, I find it hard to imagine it ever having come to fruition. As Thomas Wolfe said – you can’t go home again. There’s a reference you won’t get on Le Grove. It’s good to be back.

So mixed feelings, all in all. What do you lot think?

In other news the expected weather did materialise, and the club wisely decided to pospone the match. As I suggested below, the was a strong risk of the Bolton fans suddenly feeling at home, running amok; reducing house prices, stealing electronic equipment and brawling with one another in the road. It would have been horrible to see. There is now also a likelihood that we’ll get to play them with the ACN crew back, and possibly Cesc. Satisfactory all round – if matches must be postponed, you want them postponed when our best players are out anyway.

Nice Thursdays?

Has anybody noticed how quickly the name ‘Emirates’ has become totally acceptable? I remember all those doubters demanding that Arsenal fans gang up and insist on the rather more awkward Ashburton Grove. It probably has something to do with ‘Emirates’ not being an very recognisable brand name – more the name of a country. It would be worse were it ‘The Durex Ultra Arena’ or the ‘Mothercare Bowl’, or ‘White Hart Lane’. Emirates is neutral, and not unpleasant to the tongue. Ho hum.

You can ponder that to your heart’s content. Rather more pressing is Bolton’s visit tomorrow night, which will give us the chance of going 2^nd again, one point behind Chelsea. Not many would have given us that when we were overwhelmed by the ghastliness of Didier Drogba last month, and it’s great that we’re so competitive. No chicken counting yet, mind. He’s off to the ACN to ply his brand of muscular offensiveness over there for a bit. It’s a massive blow for them: twattishness is to the operation of that team like petrol to a large, dreadful car, and Didier is like a big fat girlie-haired tank full of the stuff. I’d be extremely surprised if they got through without dropping some points – all that matters is that we capitalise.

We’re not without our own absences – notably Alex Song, who provided a timely reminder of his excellence with a granite performance against West Ham, which should certainly have earned him man of the match had it not been for Ramsay’s  He provokes such confusing sensations, does Song. I spent so long mocking him at every opportunity through the medium of sarcastic praise that now he’s become a Talismanic Cog™ I’ve become all conflicted. He’ll be missed, and with Cesc’s injury proving troublesome there will be high expectations of Diaby and Ramsay. Ramsay I’m hopeful for, Diaby fingers crossed.

If the predicted sub-zero temperatures materialise then the Bolton fans will suddenly feel at home, like the zombies from 28 Days Later in the dark, and the Emirates will be transformed from a hospitable place with a handful of moronic Northerners terrified and cowering from the level of civilisation into an inhospitable Artic place filled with semi-naked moronic Northerners imbued with the confidence of the frostbitten mind. The midfield, in particular, will have to have their angry faces on, particularly if Arshavin’s dodginess is as bad as some fear – he and Big Tom are the only ones really cut out for the cold.

On the plus side, Bolton are unsettled and leak goals like Tiger Woods leaks credibility, and are at present staring longingly at the non-relegation part of the league like Alex Ferguson watching a video of himself when he was younger, before he was transformed into a barmy time-denier who spends his Sunday evenings wandering around complaining that the hilariously benevolent five minutes of injury time was not enough for his team of crack idiotic millionaires to score an equaliser against the Most Unpleasant Side In History.

Sorry for being so intermittent of late. Both Grabs and myself have been indulging our other scribbly personae – mine to forge a living, his to – well I’ve no idea really. But something. We’re back in force for the new year – Gingers For Limpar and others can rest easy.

Come on you reds.

 With just one more game (tonight’s) left for Arsenal to play before 2010, it’s a good time to reflect on a remarkable decade in the history of Arsenal FC. And what better way than with a meaningless cyber-gong show.

Sepp Blatter is having his hair done, and Charlize Theron had her contract cancelled at the last minute for reasons which – like everything she would have said – aren’t worth repeating, so I, Grabs, am your host for today’s merriment.  There’s loads of awards to be dished out  so let’s get cracking.

**The Bob Wilson Golden Fist for Goalkeeping**

We began the decade with legendary ‘tache and ponytail exponent David Seaman making saves like this, and we’ve ended it with Spanish English Spanish waiter goalkeeper Manuel Almunia. Almunia is much-maligned. Personally I don’t think he’s that bad, and he certainly doesn’t get the credit that he’s deserved for his best performances.

But the Golden Fist is won by the man who complained bitterly that Almunia only started playing football aged 30. Mad, (often) bad, and always apoplectic with rage, Jens Lehmann is football’s nutty answer to Rasputin. Earlier this month Jens took a piss behind an advertising hoarding and stole a fan’s glasses. His time at Arsenal wasn’t without its moments of mania either, but he was magnificent as the Invincible goalkeeper and saved the penalty which put us into the European Cup Final. Ended his career at Arsenal by sulking in a fashion so immature that I actually found something rather magnificent about it.

**The Martin Keown Boot for Proudest Defensive Warrior**

For a team which attacks with such abandon, we haven’t let in as many goals as you’d think. Always surprisngly tight-fisted in the league, in 2005/6 a defence comprising Eboue, Toure, Senderos and Flamini went on a defensive run unsurpassed in Champions League history that took us all the way to the final in Paris.

Pipping Toure to the Keown Boot is the man who returned with a goal in that final, Sol Campbell, Tottenham’s greatest ever player. The strange nature of his exit from the club shouldn’t obscure just what a rock he was for the championship wins in 2002 and 2004. We can only hope that with the arrival of Vermaelen we have finally found a successor.

**The Grimandi Gong for Midfield Endeavour**

Arsene knows a good midfielder when he sees one, and he’s seen a few. Robert Pires was the best player in the world for most of 2001/2 and was pretty handy after that too, Freddie Ljungberg was a dream of a footballer until he was knackered by injuries, and Cesc Fabregas, the latest true talisman of the club, has deserved much more success than he’s had.  The next decade should be his; the one past belonged to Patrick Vieira.

**The Bastin Prize for Goalscoring**

Thierry Henry

**The Dennis Bergkamp Award for Genius**

Thierry Henry. Highly commended: Dennis Bergkamp

**The Invincibles Award for Best XI**

Lehmann; Clichy, Campbell, Toure, Sagna; Pires, Vieira, Fabregas, Ljungberg; Bergkamp, Henry

**The Dennis Bergkamp Award for Best Goal**

1. Ljungberg vs Juventus

2. Bergkamp vs Newcastle

3. Henry vs Man Utd

**The Vic Akers Award for Manager of the Decade**

… is Vic Akers! No it’s not, it’s obviously Mr Wenger. Recently the subject of not inconsiderable amounts of thoughtless, vulgar criticism from the press and then from certain bleating fans who don’t know their Arsenal from their – ahem – elbow, the decade saw Arsene Wenger bring Arsenal two Premiership titles, two European finals, three FA Cups, one of the worlds’ greatest modern stadiums, some of the best players of this or any other era, a world-famous style of play and a decade of uninterrupted Champions League football. Mr Wenger, we salute you.

**The Professor’s Cup for Best Buy**

There’ve been a few. Buying Campbell for £0.00 was a tidy bit of business and Kolo Toure was pretty reasonable at £150k. The fact that nobody thought Van Persie worth more than the £2.75m we paid for him is pretty baffling too, but the best buy has to be Fabregas, who joined up with an alarming mullet and the number 57. I have no idea what we’d pay for him now.

**Wengerballs: Quotes of the Decade**

1. ‘I tried to watch the Tottenham match on television yesterday. But I fell asleep.’ – Arsene Wenger

2. ‘Sometimes in football you have to score goals.’ – Thierry Henry

3. ‘I am still hopeful that we can go through a season unbeaten’ – Arsene Wenger, 28 September 2002. Haha what a numpty, let’s make a t-shirt comparing the modern era’s great football visionary with the Iraqi Minister of Information. Haha. Oh.

**The Adebayaward for Bastardliness**

A hotly contested field this, with Phil Brown, Roy Keane, Ruud van Nistelrooy and assorted other dreadful people not even making the top three. There isn’t even a place for the violent madcap Togonian himself.

Third prize goes to Wayne Rooney. If he ended our first unbeaten run with a brilliant goal for Everton, he ended Invincibles’ streak with an atrocious dive over Campbell which cost us that run and the 2005 league title, and for which he should never be forgiven.

In second, because he doesn’t deserve to win anything, is Ashley Cole.

But the Adebayaward goes to a man from whom we have heard exactly nothing, but who has been more ruinous to Arsenal’s success than any other. If Roman Abramovich hadn’t shown up, the second half of the decade would have been a hell of a lot better for Arsenal. We’d have won the 2004 quarter final against Chelsea and surely gone on to win the Big Cup. Rumour has it we were on the verge of signing Terry and Lampard just days before Roman’s helicopter touched down. Players with Arsenal written all over them – Essien, Wright-Phillips, Cech, [whisper it] Drogba – might have been signed and chances are we wouldn’t have Manchester City to worry about either. We are tremendously lucky to have Arsene Wenger; it’s just infuriating that he’s up against billionaire owners who make the sport a nonsense.

**The No Prizes Prize for Tottenham**

Had Spurs written all over it until their whole squad shat themselves. Then they re-bought Pascal Chimbonda, and hired and fired eight different managers.

The last ten years have seen St Totteringham’s Day arrive each year as dependably as Easter, Christmas and birthdays. We’ve seen 20 league encounters between the teams, in which Tottenham have emerged victorious exactly ZERO times.

When they finally won a trophy it was the ickle Carling Cup, and the exuberance of their celebrations was incredible. A trophy won in recent years by teams of the calibre of Blackburn, Leicester and Middlesbrough was welcomed into the eerie White Hart Lane trophy cabinet with the kind of scenes usually reserved for the end of global conflicts, a true reflection of Spurs current standing in the game.

Let’s hope the next ten years are as successful for Tiny Totts as the ten just passed.