I’ve discovered something in the last three weeks.
I’ve discovered that Arsenal is like a radio. I can turn down the volume. I can turn it down to a murmur. At the end of an endless season, that’s a big relief.
Today is the 38th game and it’s a home win against seven Fulham reserves.
Fulham v Atletico Madrid is in Hamburg on Wednesday night on C5
Van Persie has looked sharp since he came back. His touch is good, his passes accurate, he looks a very fine player. And he surprised me at the start of the season. His control and passing had improved. He was less erratic.
Wenger decided to wait a year and get Chamakh on a free. I reckon he went 4-3-3 to avoid spending on a replacement for Adebayor. That switch was as much financial as tactical.
It was a money-saver but it chucked away the 2009-10 season. He knows that Vela and Eduardo are playing in the wrong league, so he could not trust them. He played the tiny Arshavin down the middle and after that the Russian did not trust Wenger, if he ever trusted him.
Even when Fabregas was injured, Wenger never gave Arshavin the role he wanted in the middle, behind the striker. You might even argue that the way Arshavin has been treated has some of the hallmarks of constructive dismissal. Just as Reyes was undermined by Henry’s sneering attitude to him, now Arshavin has been wasted in a similar manner. When I saw that happening, I lost interest. When I saw him loan out Jack Wilshere, I was appalled. But not surprised.
The only thing Wenger could ever do to surprise me would be if he gave a British player a career at Arsenal and gave a British player as many chances as Jeremie Aliadiere, who was at Arsenal for eight years.
William Gallas is on £90,000 a week and wants a two-year contract. 90K is £5.4 million a year, so two years is £10.8 million. Wenger wants to give him two years on reduced wages. We’ll see on that one. I won’t be the first to know. I might have turned the radio off by then.
It’s a little bit weird typing this in a silent, empty house in a country with no government. I’m on my own this weekend and it’s wonderful, nothing to interrupt my concentration. I got a lot of work done yesterday and that was satisfying.
Just saw Bill Bradshaw run down the Sunday morning stories on Sky Sports News.
Rafa out, Martin O’Neill to Liverpool, Slaven Bilic to Aston Villa. That would be fine for Aston Villa, but not for Liverpool. O’Neill doesn’t take training, as Brian Clough didn’t. If he was a genius, like Clough, O’Neill could get away with that.
Sir Alex is saying that Buster Douglas was 42-1 when he knocked out Mike Tyson. Wigan are only 25-1 to beat Chelsea, sporting shocks do happen.
Alex, Mike didn’t train for that fight. He was no longer managed by Mike Jacobs and Bill Cayton, so he had lost the plot. When they looked after Mike Tyson he was a phenomenal champion, standing by ringside in a crewneck sweater, before somebody else’s big fight, saying, “I’m just a young guy having fun.”
Against Buster Douglas, Tyson was a hollow shell. He was on his knees on the canvas, with Tokyo revolving round him, trying to pick up his gumshield with boxing gloves, which have no fingers. No easy task, that.
Sunday Morning at 8.30 a.m. Shall I go out and buy some newspapers? Do I want to read about the Election? I don’t think so.
What more is there to say? We have no government. New Labour lost 30% of its votes in 13 years. It’s amazing that they didn’t lose 50% of their votes. Arrogance, waste and misrule. Indirect taxes are astronomical. The Treasury has twice as many staff as it’s ever had in its history. They’ve poured billions into NHS bureaucracy.
When Nick Clegg did well in Debate 1, the right wing press ripped him to shreds. That didn’t help his MPs on Thursday. Dopey officials forgot to tell voters to get there early because it was going to be a high turn out, so thousands were denied their vote.
For the last six months the media have been telling us that Cameron has won. But what we saw last week was that the public is smarter than the media. The public said : We want Brown out but we don’t trust Cameron, so Cameron has to behave himself.
Cameron is a PR man who won by default. A wretchedly sad business. No, I don’t want to read more about the election.
I’ll just go downstairs and watch Andrew Marr. I enjoy his cheerful cynicism.
But before I do that, I’ll let Sophie out. She has been attacked by foxes twice, so last year Michael built her a new foxproof house with a hinged door and a doorknob.We lock her in every night but I have to remember to let her out in the morning.
Doing ANR now, I’ve forgotten to let our tortoise out. She won’t be happy. She will be butting the door with her hard little head.