Arsenal

[autumn319]

Arsene Wenger being accused ofbeing patronizing and rude to BBC Jacqui Oatley.

clicky cliky

Arsène Wenger at his best,it means as an aggresive coach and always blaming the referees.

[oojason]

Slowly starting to really dislike Arsenal... always respected them before... and yet under Arteta they've turned into a bunch of diving, moaning, injury-feigning for tactical talks, bunch of unlikeable morons.

Arteta on the sidelines acts like an utter **** too.

 

Saka could be a top player too - if he didn't spend so much time diving about the place. Or looking at the bench trying to work out if it is time to feign injury so they can have another break and tactical talk form Arteta.

Ugh.

 

Best thing about them is David Squires' depiction of Arteta (and calling them out) in his weekly comic strip...

 

[kop205]

I hated them under George Graham, the ale-house c****.

They were laughably unself-aware and self-congratulatory under Wegner but were generally the lesser of two or three evils.

They were then irrelevant for ages so easy to ignore and not really have an opinion about other than laughing at Arsenal TV or whatever it is.

Arteta is an absolute f***ing d****ead who will hopefully soon be drummed out of the game for his complicity in the worst cheating the sport has ever seen from his days at City.

They can f*** off.

And that is without mentioning Michael Thomas.

[épieur]

"Let us conduct what my dear friend Martin Amis would describe as a “thought experiment”. Imagine, if you will, that Rembrandt van Rijn, the artist known more popularly among commoners as “Rembrandt” had just set himself down before his easel, about to start work upon his masterpiece The Abduction Of Europa. Imagine, however, that before he was able to commence, peasants barged him to one side and smeared his canvas with a viscous mixture of rubble, human excrement, rancid gravy and pig urine – then asked of him that he give of his artistic best upon this mottled, grossly uneven surface. Imagine further that each time he tried to apply his brush to this spoiled surface, eleven more peasants hurled themselves bodily in front of him, hacked at his heels, and even, for sustained periods, wrested the brush from his hand and attempted to apply their own crude and base daubs on the canvas. Imagine still further that these peasants, far from being chased off and condemned to a period in the stocks by the City Fathers were actually cheered on and congratulated for their “obduracy” and “organisation”.

 

Such, such were the conditions in which Arsenal were obliged to perform today. Truly, the Barbarians are at the gates of Rome, gathered in the hope that, thanks to a series of unlucky bobbles, Civilisation will be thwarted in its tracks. It was clear that Arsenal, obliged to descend from the cultured climes of Milan to the foul, uncouth sty that is Wigan were struggling from the outset – not just upon the open sewer of a pitch but from the overwhelming stench which pervades the Northern regions in general, fresh air being as scarce a commodity in this part of the world as fresh coriander (as anyone seeking nourishment at one of Wigan Athletic's half time refreshment stands will discover to their chagrin). Phillipe Senderos in particular was suffering, forced, as is not usually his wont, into the expedient of “mouth breathing” to take on board oxygen.

 

Arsenal-Wigan – ah, quelle contraste! Arsenal are from North London, whose many alumni include Orwell, Bertrand Russell, the exiled Sigmund Freud and Virginia Woolf and her esteemed compadres in the Bloomsbury set. North London has given us advances in the fields of science, art, psychology, philosophy and literature. Wigan has given us – the pie. Yes, that unspeakable comestible the pie. And so, we see that today's fixture was more than one team pitted against the other. Do not speak of Arsenal versus Wigan – speak instead of Elevation versus Botulism.

 

One can picture M. Wenger's pre-match team talk – a veritable matrix of sophistication, graced with allusions to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Descartes and Marcel Proust whose aim was not simply to win a game of association football but to attain mankind's overall betterment, to edify, to improve. Let us hold our noses and transport ourselves, in our imagination, to the Wigan dressing room and the address of manager Steven Bruce. “Right. All of youse, take a look at my face. A good long look. That's how I want you to play football.” How perfectly porcine. As for the half time talk, thank goodness M. Wenger refrained from screaming, “BALL! NET! BALL IN f***ING NET! f***ING KICK f***ING BALL IN NET, ALSO f***ING! HOW MUCH f***ING SIMPLER CAN I MAKE IT FOR YOU GLASSY-EYED, OVERPAID LITTLE t***s?” That would have been unwarrantably crude.

 

In Arsenal's defence it must be said that they have played themselves into an existential quandary. Senderos's very countenance is at all times wracked with the vexations with which M. Albert Camus wrestled for all his life, in particular The Myth Of Sisyphus. However, whereas Sisyphus is condemned to roll a boulder up up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll down again, it is Arsenal's cruel lot to repeat, not failure after failure, but success after success after success, victory after victory after victory. This, we see, can corrode the soul in its own way. It is the reason why, in his last season at Arsenal, Thierry Henry transmogrified into Thierry Ennui. (Note for the dwellers of Wigan. I have executed a pun in a foreign tongue. If you do not understand it, it is because it is not your place to. Now go forth and wallow like swine in a puddle of your own waste products, or, as you would have it, “play football”.)

As one witnessed M. Gallas, scythed down by some troglodyte at the end of the first half, crying out for unguents, it occurred to me once again that Arsenal are simply not given enough protection by the authorities. Why, for example, are Arsenal not generously subsidised by the Arts Council, but forced instead into the ignominy of approaching base, swarthy Arabians for financial sustenance? Why, instead of their being forced to construct a stadium of their own, at great expense, are galleries not knocked through at Tate Britain and turf laid down, so that they might play there as would be more proper? Yes, all this would be a burden on the exchequer but I, for one, would be happy to pay £1000 extra a year in taxes in order to retain the services of a Senor Fabregas. What, after all, does that represent – the price of four decent bottles of wine? A small sacrifice for champagne football.

 

I must admit that, upon venturing for the first time North to Wigan, I developed a fascination, albeit a zoological one, for its native inhabitants. Travelling by public transport, a taxi, was a strain but my driver, a fellow called “Reg” offered me a trove of material in my professional capacity as Social Anthropologist. After 20 minutes in his company, I came to know more about the people of Wigan than they themselves could possibly ever know – although I do have one or two questions. What is a “reet”? A root vegetable of some kind? And what is “gum”, and why did my driver constantly urge me to purchase this particular product?

 

However, I must at this stage undertake another thought experiment. It is clear that there is a problem in Wigan and its outlying districts, one of over-population. It is not a problem of overcrowding – even if only five people lived in Wigan, that would be five too many. Here, then, is my suggestion – that several dozen pies are put out to water in the proximity of Wigan's famous pier. As they float by the pier, citizens would doubtless gather excitedly, and, driven insensible by hunger, plunge from the pier into the water and perish. One by one, their corpses could be dredged up and ground down for pie filling – a sort of human recycling, ecologically impeccable in principle, enabling this experiment to be continued indefinitely. Only by such radical, humane culling measures can the British stock be maintained at an acceptable level and Civilisation not be placed in the jeopardy in which, as evinced by today's game, it presently finds itself. Arsenal! Three points, three games! Bendtner!"

[Gethin]

And lo, The Athletic was born

[smithdown]

Such, such…?

f*** off russel brand this is your fault.

[guernseygareth]

8 hours ago, smithdown said:

Such, such…?

f*** off russel brand this is your fault.