By Myles Palmer
____________________________________________________
SATURDAY EVENING we went to a footballer’s wedding party.
It was lovely, with loads of BBC people.
The striker is more of a golfer these days and he says that this season Arsenal have played the best football he has ever seen in his life.
We chatted over the barbecue.
I suggested that instead of wondering how long it will be before any other team goes through a league season unbeaten, we should make the obvious point that, if it is done again, nobody else will do it with such panache, playing such skilful, athletic, exciting football.
The Arsenal players were motivated by the trauma of the previous season.
As I always say, success is on the far side of failure, not this side. Every success contains earlier failures.
CHAOS AND STUPIDITY at other clubs makes you realise that the Arsenal board are the best.
They allow Arsene to be general manager and sporting director and Chief Scout and head coach.
Last time I looked, Arsene was employing 71 footballers.
His overheads are huge, with his large backroom staff.
BUT HE GENERATES BIG CASH FLOWS.
Arsene Wenger keeps the money rolling in.
However, his success makes other clubs look mediocre, and triggers panic among rival directors.
MOURINHO is replacing Ranieri and I guess they are still discussing whether be will bring Costinha, Derlei, Deco, Carlos Alberto.
In passing, I was churlish last week.
Porto deserved to win the Champions League and Mourinho got it right, time after time.
HOULLIER has been sacked by Liverpool.
The FA should hire him as Technical Director.
His mate Andy Roxburgh can help GH give English football better coaching.
BOBBY ROBSON signed far too many bad boys and paid a high price.
SIR ALEX finished third and reacted by signing the most pugnacious centre forward football has seen razor-elbows himself left Ibrox.
Alan Smith, pricless warrior or peroxide nutter?
Do these other clubs have boards with balls, brains and fine judgement?
David Moores and Rick Parry? Freddie Shepherd?
Have Abramovich and Kenyon learned anything from 2003-2004?
It doesn’t look like it to me !
MY BIGGEST MOMENT of 2004 is almost here.
Jan has been excited for days.
Gently singing the chorus of that Skinner & Baddiel hit from Euro 96.
“She’s coming home, she’s coming home, my baby’s coming home.”
I suppose 18 weeks is a long time for a Mum to be without her baby.
Caroline wants her brother there too, so Michael has come down from Sheffield and will be with us at Heathrow, where we waved them off on January 24.
It’s 6 parents collecting 3 gap-year daughters.
They’ve snorkelled and scuba-dived and hiked up the glacier and done the skydive and swum with dolphins and romped round Thailand-Australia-New Zealand-Fiji and fallen off an elephant and met the cast of Neighbours and now they are in San Francisco, where they have done Haight Ashbury, Macy’s, the bookshops, the music shops, the spooky night tour of Alcatraz where they saw Al Capone’s cell.
Caroline’s latest email says they rented bikes for a day and rode over Golden Gate Bridge, harassing pedestrians with their bells.
And now the girls are coming home to grey NW10.
May 30th 2004.
PS
BBC1 is showing the Clint Eastwood film Escape From Alcatraz tonight.
Reminds me of a film poster I saw in Bond Street tube station in 1979.
It was a poster for Escape From Alacatraz.
Most of the poster was taken up by an illustration of a stone prison wall.
And somebody had made a hole in the illustration of the prison wall.
The hole was rectangular.
The hole was the size of a hardback book.
The hole had been chiselled an inch deep into the wall of the station.
It made me laugh.
Escape From Alcatraz !
Witty.