“When is a door not a door? When it is ajar…”
“When is a contract not a contract..?”

It bothered me during the Great Cescape – when our club captain, with four years remaining on his contract, was allowed to throw the world’s longest, sulkiest hissy-fit – making himself useless to the Club, and forcing a move back to Barcelona.

It bothered me this week, when Alex “Blingalicious” Song slouched off to follow Fabregas to basque in golder pastures. (Our Top Deck midfielder was supposedly unhappy with his mere £55 000-per-week salary – hence the insolence? – and before you could say “WTF..?” he was gone). This despite two, maybe three years remaining on his contract.

Penis Over Brain had us bent over a barrel for nigh on a year – before he practically took a dump in it with his July 4th Declaration of Independence: the footballing equivalent of a ‘Dear John’ letter – and turned what should have been a routine contract extension into a drawn-out, messy divorce. (A divorce that left us with the house and the memories: he got to marry the home-breaking slut; and keep the kid. (Kid was a Man Utd supporter anyway, so, no loss there…)

Even as … Read More »

“Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin.
It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe.”

Hmmm. Maybe I need to find a more optimistic Tarot deck. It’s behaving rather like a black-bag-Gooner at present… The urge to ‘cheat’ and draw another card was almost irresistible, but I guess there is an Arsenal-appropriate lesson to be learned by accepting the hand I’ve been dealt, and making the most of it.

“Misery, disgrace, deception”

Do I wish that our traitorous captain hadn’t issued his foolish and ill-advised Independence Day statement? Yup. Do I regret that he backed his Manager, his Club, into a corner – forcing them to sell him to the only club that showed interest? Yes, sirree. And most of all: do I regret that that club was our sworn enemy? Of course I do.

I would have loved to have seen him be true to his many words, and only win trophies with his beloved childhood club. For a gray-haired, glass-ankled donkey, he sure had a great last season – “dragging us over the finish line” (with a little help from his friends…) But the donkey has joined the Dark Side and gone off to join Shrek at you-know-where. Too … Read More »

Arsenal’s 2011-2012 season was hell. There is no other way to put it. It was a complete inferno.

It began with months of speculation over three key first-team players: Captain Cesc Fabregas, and the two first-team regulars, Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri. The Spanish master went to his boyhood club Barcelona, while the French couple went off to fulfill their futures at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. Incoming transfers were last minute and unconvincing, with yet another two raw youngsters coming into the squad, and the mandatory Wenger Ligue-1 star signing in Gervinho.

All this was followed by a very shaky pre-season, which saw the team losing its own Emirates Cup, failing to win against lesser sides such as Boca Juniors and New York Red Bulls, and eventually losing to Benfica as well in the Eusebio Cup. After this kind of pre-season, fans already knew something isn’t right.

But even before that, things were not looking very positive at all for Arsene Wenger and the club. The team had failed to win a single domestic or international title for the past seven years, and speculation regarding Le Professeur’s future at the club was … Read More »