Interactive blogging would be easy if there were 34 hours in every day.
And if I had nothing else to do.
Thanks for all your questions, and all your emails. Good letters are the ones I click on to give them a yellow star, so that I can come back and post them later. But the volume means that many of those slip off the bottom of the page too quickly. I know that’s harsh, but that’s what happens here.
Today it’s good news for Arsenal : Gareth Bale isn’t playing. This Carling Cup game is one to watch, not one to preview.
We don’t know the teams, so I have no idea what will happen at White Hart Lane tonight. If I have any ideas later, or hear any whispers, I may post again nearer kick-off but right now, at 11am, that looks unlikely.
From Jeff Morrison : Messi
On vacation and actually witnessed the Messi injury in Madrid.
Looked pretty innocuous from high in the South stand of the Calderon stadium. The crowd actually whistled, thinking he was acting (they’d just watched their team get completely outplayed and felt the’d been denied 2 penalties). Seeing the replays in the bar after though, it’s apparent how nasty it was.
What a treat to see that Barca team live, albeit through the haze of a cigarette smoke provided by the Atleti faithful. Only their sensational young keeper kept them in the contest second half – forget his name.
Myles remembers name: David de Gea .Tall, fair-haired, brilliant.
Just as I was about to press SUBMIT, Rob Hughes phoned and told me that rugged Czech defender Ujfalusi did a very similar foul on Messi a year ago.
Rob feared it was another “Butcher of Bilbao” tackle. The already-notorious Basque hatchet-man Andoni Goikoetxea put the boot that broke Maradona’s ankle in a glass case with gilt edges. It was during that convalescence that Maradona first took drugs. And when Diego faced Bilbao next time, he started a war.
From Ray : Arsenal & Arsene Flatter to Deceive: That is our problem!
Hi Myles,
I know you are not regularly publishing readers comments anymore but I still wanted to share a few views with you.
I have just finished watching Arsenal concede a last second equaliser to Sunderland and I felt so frustrated that I almost cried (with anger)! Admittedly Cesc’s injury, Song’s brainless sending off and Rosicky’s woeful penalty had me in a bad mood anyway but Sunderland were so poor that I just didn’t anticipate any problems.
Before the season started I didn’t expect us to win anything, so I thought I would be a bit indifferent to some of the wins and losses. However, we have started the season nicely and as usual it has drawn us in as fans to get a bit excited about our prospects this season. Today was a reality check!
It would be easier to take as a fan if Wenger just admitted that youth development, pretty football and balancing the books are the aims of the football club.
He talks so much about winning that when the team performs (like in the 6-0 Braga beating) you remember why you are a fan and have hope. It’s horrible to have hope that is never realised. It hurts me to say this but I think Arsene is a bottler and has a team of bottlers. When the pressure is on at the end of games or when we face the big boys we often capitulate.
I guess deep down I have always known it about some of our players but in the Vieira years I would never taint the whole team with this opinion.
Thierry Henry is one of my all-time favourite players but he was a bottler. The miss in the Champion’s League final that would have sealed the game is an obvious example but I have another one that I thinks sums Arsenal up.
We played Charlton at The Valley a few years ago. There was a freekick on the rightside of the area (facing the goal) and Henry took it left footed and came very close to scoring! Confidence, arrogance, skill, talent, technique – Whatever, it was great to see! The next week he had a similar freekick in the Champion’s league at Bayern Munich. Did he take it leftfooted? No he didn’t even take it rightfooted! He completey bottled it and urged Jose Reyes (who clearly wasn’t expecting to take it) to kick the ball. Those incidents stick out in my mind because it shows me why we are now not winners. Man Utd & Chealsea generally play the same way at the start and end of games. Against the Charlton’s or the Bayern’s their mentality is still the same: Winning!
All the best.
From John Gerard : stuff
No global macro economic update for you this time.
Ridiculous game Saturday. Back to the behaviour of last season and the season before that – to concede to draw the game in the last 10 seconds is…I can’t find the words, it’s so stupid.
I read this weekend that, allegedly, Rosicky had never taken a penalty in a competitive match before – looked like it. Appalling. Malbranque is quoted in today’s papers as saying, “None of them wanted to take it. You need leaders at that stage of the game, and they didn’t have any.” And you could see Rosicky was going to miss, as you said. His body language was awful. Why not Nasri, or Chamakh?
Five minutes before the end, I said to the bloke next to me in the pub, “When I used to watch Arsenal years ago, if they were 1-0 up 15 minutes from time, you KNEW the opponent was NEVER going to score. It was just a question of whether of not we’d get another. But with this team, I fully expect the opponent to score right up until the final whistle. This team will let anything happen.” He then claimed I’d jinxed the match and mock-threw his pint over me.
I was impressed with Sunderland – they weren’t dirty at all – they stopped Arsenal playing without trying to break their legs. A well deserved point.
Clichy has been poor for ages. He keeps getting caught out in dangerous positions. What’s wrong with the bloke?
I also read that quote from Sagna in the paper. I almost spat out my freshly-ground McDonalds coffee (the best coffee on the high street – better than any of the chains). What an idiotic way to communicate. So the keeper is informed on a need-to-know-basis? What the f*ck is this, a secret mission? Or a football match you’re trying to win together?
From Steve Gorac : Your writing & daughter
Legendary site. Don’t get discouraged by the great unwashed. You understand the AFC situation 100%.
How about some more info re your music memoirs? Can I pre-order?
And you mentioned your daughter was visiting les isles de la Manche on a supersmall plane. Alderney? Got a holiday home there. Wonderful place.
Myles replies :
It’s not abusive readers that discourage me, it’s the board and manager.
It’s a bit mean to describe many of your fellow ANR readers as “unwashed”. Deluded, yes. Dazzled by spin, propelled by blind hope, maybe. If I was in Alderney I could finish my trilogy of memoirs in 10 weeks per volume, 30 weeks, bingo, then maybe write a Sixties novel about a discotheque-loving student footballer.
Book is unfinished and nobody has seen any of it yet. Not even my agent. Amusing times with The Faces, Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Traffic, meeting Paul & Linda at a party, meeting Mick Jagger at another party, going to Ian Dury’s house with Brinsley Schwarz, watching the 1974 World Cup on TV with the Average White Band, going to Pittsburgh to see Alice Cooper, going to the group’s house in Connecticut, doing Madison Square Garden with Elton John etc etc etc.
I was at Colindale Newspaper Libary two weeks ago, researching some dates. The memoir only covers the six years beteen the Hendrix Isle of Wight and punk-rock, so it’s 1970 to 1976. That should be easy. Sure, a helluva lot happened in that period but it should be easy. Turns out, it’s not been as easy as I thought. As with The Professor, the chronology is giving me problems, even though I have diaries and journals, even though I kept most of my concert tickets.But some of the tickets have the day of the week, the date and month…but not the year ! How annoying is that?
The tickets just piled up, I didn’t hoard them because I’m an anorak. They just piled up on a big chest of drawers next to the phone. These included many tickets I did not use, as no journalist had time to go to every gig. And when the time came to get married, and I had to chuck out mountains of paper in a hurry, I decided that I might want, at some time in the future, to make a collage that included the tickets of my favourite gigs, so I stuffed the tickets into two envelopes and took them with me when I moved from Hornsey to Brent in late December 1975, prior to getting married in March 1976.
Four weeks ago the daughter was home for a couple of days and I told her I was rewriting the rambling, overlong Preface as a script, so I could record it and stick it on YouTube, so it would work as a download. She said, “Finish it. Send it to me.”
Caroline’s a reader. She’s 25 and hip and I trust her judgement.
Two weeks later she phoned and impatiently said,”Send it to me.” So on Friday I sent her an attachment of 8,580 words. Sunday night she phoned and said, among other things, that she hadn’t had time to read it. .
Monday night she phoned and said the second half flows really well, the intro has too much about Rod Stewart, and the paragraphs in the first five pages are “versatile” and could easily be switched around. She also said, “I want to read the whole book now.”
So that’s where I am with the rock memoir. No idea when it will be finished. Many interruptions. As long as I think it’s funny, and adds to what rock fans know, I’ll keep working on it.
Ciao for now.