From Tim Barrett : Sanchez
Dear Myles,
Once again, thanks for keeping us entertained with your blog.
I realise that I’m writing with the luxury of hindsight, but expecting Sanchez to turn up on Saturday lunchtime after getting off a 15-hour flight on Thursday afternoon is hopeful thinking at best. God only knows what time zone his body was in at OT.
I’m not a huge fan of Giroud, but he was in form before the international break and surely must have started this game leaving Sanchez fresh for PSG.
I can only imagine that your recent post was a product of the hackneyed media hype that is a prelude to all such games. And I can’t even imagine why Wenger doesn’t use the best squad that he has assembled in years.
Myles says:
Sanchez is a fantastic asset who should be playing for one of Europe’s top 8 clubs.
Sadly, Tim, Wenger has not built the team round him.
He never would. And Kroenke just wants to be in low-risk businesses. His franchises tick over and make profits and Silent Stan just plays a long game of accumulation over successive decades.
It would be insane for Arsenal to give Ozil a new contract and let Sanchez leave.
But that could happen.
From Brendan : Include me out
Hi Myles,
I loved reading your recollection of sitting next to someone on the tube reading your article. I probably would have done the same, and felt awkward about it..
But I don’t think that’s bad. I think that the internet and computers allow people to exist in their silos and fire stuff without having to confront people who might not like what they say, or disagree, or be offended, without any recourse. I think the current political madness in the western world is in no small part the effect of that.
Keep talking to people, Myles!
I loved reading your recollection about THAT game. Number 49. I don’t think I can add or take anything away from it. I know football is a cruel game and I’m not naive enough to moan about it now. But keep on telling it how it is, no matter what the received opinion and conventional wisdom is saying.
Unfortunately, while you might hope that the internet might favour the flowering of a range of equally respected views because of its inherent multiplicity, it doesn’t.
I won’t be watching / listening / following the game tomorrow, and I will give strict instructions to all those who might be following it to leave me the hell alone.
Seriously, I will not ever endure another game in which a Wenger Arsenal plays a team managed by Jose Mourinho, until well after the event, and we have won comfortably.
Enjoy it! It will take something special for it to be enjoyable, I’m sure.
Myles says:
Totally respect your position, Brendan.
A decent man like you can only tolerate so much, then he becomes a refusenik.
As Robert Pires once said, Arsenal is a French club playing in London.
That’s more true now than when he said it.
Have you ever read Thomas Frank?
I bought three of his books after encountering The Baffler in Tower Records in Piccadilly. A kind of sociological fanzine of essays by Frank and his professors and pals at the University of Chicago.
In this concise piece he talks about hacking/Hillary/the loyalties of the very rich.