London Calling

 

Well, it’s been quite a week!

Sol.

There’s nowhere else to start really. Firstly, he had to be substituted. He’s been directly responsible for too many goals recently and it was the only option.

Having said that for me it’s no more than an extremely self-aware person going through a very rough spell in his career. It may well be that it’s a few weeks before he plays again, or it could be next weekend, but whenever it is I for one will welcome him back (as I expect the overwhelming majority of fans will).

Transfers.

Make no mistake, Bentley and Quincey are two guys blessed with football talent the majority can only dream of, but I think Something that Wenger said about Walcott sums up why they’ve both gone.

“The basic, first intelligence is to know how to use your qualities and he has that.”

Unfortunately for the departed duo neither could harness their undoubted talents. Bentley promptly went and scored a hat-trick against the mancs (none against WBA though…) and inevitably there were comments about Wenger not trusting English youth. Walcott – 16 – English - £12m. Nuff said really.

As for Quincey, there are parallels with Pennant. He turned up horrendously late the last couple of times he was chosen for the Dutch U21’s, so late that they refused to pick him again, calling him ‘extremely disorganised’. He goes past people for fun, but there isn’t the awareness of what is happening around him to make it produce results for the team.

Beveren.

Little bit of news from our Belgian friends. Well, two bits really.

Marco Ne, who was on trial with Arsenal alongside Eboue, has joined Olympiacos Piraeus (me neither).

Slightly bigger news (potentially) is a decision their board made a couple of weeks ago to end the ‘joint venture’ with Jean-Marc Guillou. Guillou is the old friend of Wenger who is responsible for the Ivorain Soccer Schools that brought the likes of Toure and Eboue to Europe, and (I believe he) was the owner of Beveren for a while.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if Arsenal switch their attentions away from Beveren. The ‘partnership’ does seem to have been less evident recently.

Since 49’ers.

Apparently since the 49th game our stats are won 28, drawn 12, lost 13.

Emirates Approved Beer.

Scottish and Newcastle are to be beer supplier to Ashburton Grove. When I first moved up here, because I’d worked in the booze trade for a few years (hard but happy work) I blagged a job with them for a while. It was a good firm to work for to be honest. Must have been, most of the people I worked with had joined from school and were still there decades later. I also liked the way they encouraged retired staff to use their subsidised canteen.

Anyway, the point is I’m going to see if they’ve got a job going doing the deliveries to Ashburton Grove because I may as well try and get paid for driving there and back every week if I can!

£21-06.

I’ve no idea why but I’ve got £21-06 written on my page of notes (I really should have been a doctor). What on earth does that mean? Oh that’s so damned annoying…

West Ham.

Fed up of driving again, even with hire cars, so it was back on the train. I’ve got one of those portable dvd things with a little screen and it was the first time I was using it and although I had a choice of dvd’s to watch but hardly used it. I was sat one side of a four-seat table. Opposite me were two women, and across the aisle another table with three of their friends. When I realised how ‘surrounded’ I was I got ready to bury myself in my own world but they had all worked in youth services for a long time and were actually two groups going to the same place. In all honesty it was one of the most enjoyable journeys I’ve had, so to Judith, Allison, and the names I didn’t catch – thank you (not that you’ll ever read this!).

I’d got a reasonably late train so it was straight to Highbury and dropped off my Madrid application (I’m going – ticket or not. If needs be the beauty of being half Spanish, having a little flat and bank accounts and solicitors and stuff means I can pick us up some tickets as a Spaniard. Have to sit with a load of bloody foreigners though…). Then I doubled up on the freebies from the o2 Angels – nice warm scarves. Quite good timing to be honest because it was a cold night. Arsenal Credit Card people were still giving away the peaked caps they had in September. Variety guys. Make the effort – if you want us to keep inventing names and stuff give us different freebies (See Volume 19)!

I wasn’t sitting in the North Bank. My brother has no transport right now so a friend of Dr Dom was using the ticket. He’d let Dom down late but someone Dom works with came along. Now I’m not sure if Dom was worried about leaving a female that he works closely with alone on the North Bank with George and me but he seemed rather keen to swap seats with me!

Negotiations involved a hug and a double brandy and orange juice (now I know what that sounds like. Every time I say it out loud I get looked at but try it. 2:1 oj to brandy. Looks bad but tastes great – and it’s got a great drunkenness to hangover ratio. Another great one (although more for inside – it’s mine and Jazz’s drink of favour at the moment) is raspberry sparkles. Flute glass. Cap of vodka. Two or three caps of a ‘Bols’ type raspberry liqueur. A few raspberries and top up with Cava. Hmmm, nice. And you can even switch to blackberries if you like!), and the tickets were swapped.

Wish I’d had a couple more drinks before the game though! Jeez. I like an ‘end to end’ view of a game. It’s how I prefer it and it’s how I’ve watched the vast majority of matches. Having said that if you’re going to watch the game from a side view then I could hardly have asked for a better seat. Upper tier, half a dozen rows back and one seat away from the aisle next to the Directors Box. A few seats to the other side and down a couple everyone has got a laptop in front of them and there are screens showing the feed and replays. Wrong time to be there though.

We were ripping them apart. Goals were coming but when you let a couple in like that it drains the team. There have been two occasions this season when we’ve deserved to lose, and this certainly wasn’t one of them.

Like most people I was surprised when Den came on for our new destroyer. Diaby is becoming more and more dominant and has been a revelation. In his programme notes Thierry described him as reminding him ‘of someone we used to know’. The boy has hit the ground running (and tackling) as I said he would and is just what we needed.

No one fancied hanging around after this one (although if the game had gone on another few minutes anything could have happened) and we all slunk off into the night fairly quickly not yet knowing Sol had done the same.

Birmingham.

Couldn’t make this one but there was a pub in town showing a dodgy Irish (I think – there was no sound) channel and with Heskey/Sutton against our mix of kids in defence (I saw one quote that described how our defence had gone from a ‘who’s who’ to a ‘who’s left’!) it was never going to be easy, but we stood up to them resolutely after an opening spell that could have destroyed us if it hadn’t been for the German in goal.

Jens has had a lot of stick in some quarters but to be honest there’s nothing much wrong with him. Yes he loses his rag sometimes, but then again it’s not like he’s the first Arsenal player to have a short temper! As a keeper you’re always going to get blamed for virtually every goal conceded, but the truth is that there have been very few that he was really responsible for. It’s a thankless task these days and Saturday he was outstanding so whist I don’t think we should thank players merely for playing well he certainly deserves our praise.

Amongst all the kids another guy who deserves praise is Seb Larsson. I mentioned him earlier this season as a player who I rated highly because despite seemingly playing in a different position every time I see him he’s consistent – not flashy but reliable. I’d guess his best position is on the right of midfield (Freddie-like) and despite making some mistakes his three halves (so far) at left back have done him no harm in my eyes. Quite the opposite in fact – I like the guy even more. The boys got guts that will probably take him further in the game than the skill of the likes of Bentley and Quincey.

Adebayor – well I can see where all the ‘Kanu’ comparisons come from. Mind you – not sure about the hair! Now that Wenger has successfully cloned Vieira (Diaby) and Kanu you’ve got to wonder who’s next. With Brady, Keown, and Bould all being at the club he should be able to pick up a food scrap with their DNA on it. Or have I been watching too much CSI?

I really don’t understand why some people are saying Heskey was hard done by? Whilst I’m not sure I’d have agreed with a straight red for either challenge they were both reckless in the extreme, cast iron yellows, and in a match where he was trying to bully our young defence he got what he deserved. Although he was ‘watching the ball’ on both occasions you’d have to be a bit of a fool to think he didn’t have a damn good idea where the defender was each time. Heskey is a player I’ve never been impressed by – he goes down like a knackered tree and has always been the same.

Relegation.

Well it could be a North-East set this year. Sunderland would appear doomed, ‘Boro are in freefall, and no one really knows what’s going to happen down the road now Souness has gone and Mary Poppins hasn’t got to pretend he’s not running the show anymore. In all honesty I’d absolutely love to see Newcastle go down – if nothing else you’d see how ‘loyal’ their fans are, because they’re certainly not ‘through thick or thin’ fans. If I remember the figures right they have the biggest difference between highest and lowest average attendances over the last 10 years – somewhere over 20,000.

I’d also (every year) like to see Everton go down but that’s less to do with the club itself than the fact they’re the only club that have spent more seasons (total) in the top division than us!

Prediction – well, Sunderland (bet that shocked you), ‘Boro, and Birmingham (with West Brom just sneaking away again). Good news for Pompey fans, anyway.

That’s it for this week.

Come On You Red(currant)s!