Kaffirs kick arse

By accident I’ve deleted the press release I was sent following the Kaffirs’ gig at Barefoot on Sunday last week.  It was stuffed with worthy quotes from our very own Jesse Hardman, most if not all of which he probably didn’t actually say.

I have it on good authority that he’s never used the word “strife” in his life, especially not when immediately preceded by the word “ethnic”.

It was a cracking night, marred only by some pillock on the door refusing to let people in because the STF-enforced legal threshold for Fun in Colombo was being breached.  If you were one of those turned away from the heaving, writhing festivities, head on over to Jesse’s blog linked above for photos.

England 2 – 2 Czech Republic

Back from the pub and I stumble across a football match on some previously unwatched satellite channel.  Turns out to be England vs Czech Republic, 7 minutes in.

First 20 mins: England look bright, creative, aggressive and organised.  I’m impressed.  Defoe looks great.  The midfield is working.

20 mins: Sorry to have to say it, but Beckham just cost us the first goal.  He followed play from the right wing over to the left touchline, but never got near making a tackle or getting in the way of the Czechs.  As soon as they put the ball back over to their left, they had acres of space, and could run straight at our defence.  Barry did his best to cause an obstruction, but you could see him looking around, thinking “where the fuck is my right midfielder?”  Baros ended up with a shooting chance that Ashley Cole deflected past James’ save.

38 mins: Beckham keeps drifting over to the left, leaving Brown all alone.  The Czechs nearly have another chance out of it.  England keep looking lively, and fashion four shots on goal, including a hot one from Defoe inside the box that Czech does well to parry just before it fizzes past his head.

45 mins: Brown scores at one end, then makes a crucial defensive header at the other.  Beckham’s delivery first from a free kick and then from the subsequent corner looks as awesome as ever; Brown anticipated that whipped delivery, got the run on his marker and pinged in a firm header at the near post.  Moments later, he beats Baros to the ball on the six yard line and England come away with the ball.

First half summary – well I missed the first seven minutes, so I can’t comment on those.  From what I saw the body language and attitude of this England side look a million miles away from their weak, unsure previous incarnations.  Beckham is as frustrating as usual, Rooney is dropping too deep from time to time and Gerrard is doing the opposite; but they all look confident, keen, ambitious and energetic.  It looks like Barry anchoring the midfield has given the rest of the midfield the confidence to play their natural games.  Too much confidence when it came to the goal – what the fuck was Beckham doing?

They look like they know what plans B, C and D are, and they like them all.  They look like a ton of stress has dropped off them.  I’m afraid of typing these next words in case I jinx something, but: they look like a real team.

Second half: Heskey’s coming on.  I sense long balls.  Good luck to him, I like him, I always thought he should have tried out as a super-middleweight and got some of that niceness knocked out of him.

46 mins: soft free-kick given away, Jankulovsky bends a dreamy left-footed finish from outside the D.  Czechs are a goal up again.  Let’s see how England can respond.

47 mins: Just watched replays of that free kick.  I’ve seen them more dramatic, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one better.

54 mins: Apparently John Terry is the captain.  Apparently it’s a huge honour and a much bigger deal for English players than it is for their Italian manager.  For the record, I couldn’t care less.

57 mins: at what point in the last 12 mins did the Czechs become the home side?  They have possession and control.  Subs – Joe Cole on for Gerrard, Woodgate on for Ferdinand. Useful tinkering.

76 mins: Bored now.  England are back to circling around and prodding passes at each other like wary strangers.  Jenas and Bentley on, Downing already getting his boots wet and scuffing crosses at the first defender like a good ‘un.

83 mins: we now have a bunch of individuals all trying to use the last 10 mins to impress the boss.  It’s brown-nose football, and it’s ugly.  We have Downing on the left and Bentley on the right, both lauded as great crossers, and they haven’t landed a single ball on big old Hesk’s noggin.

87 mins: Hesk finally gets his head on a long doozy from Wes Brown all the way back in his own half, and fouls the defender in the process.

90 mins: Boos and whistles of dread as announcer tells us we have four more minutes of this turgid rubbish to watch.

90+2 mins: what a bloody ugly mess of a goal.  Czechs have a limpet-like fear of getting rid of the ball from the six yard box  after an England corner, bodies tumble as the blocks go in, Joe Cole pokes it in off a falling Czech’s noggin.

Full time summary:  frankly I can’t be arsed, you’ve just read all of this so you draw your own conclusions.  I’m off to bed.  G’night.

Week 1: Arsenal 1 – 0 Baggies

Well, it may not have been convincing but it was a win.

Bright sparks: Nasri, Clichy, Sagna, Djourou, Denilson

Damp squibs: Eboue, Adebayor, Walcott

Wenger put Eboue and Denilson in centre midfield, a combination that always looked short on creativity. With injuries, Arsenal’s only available playmaker was Nasri, placed somewhat stubbornly out on the left. Djourou and Gallas got to know each other better in defence, Bendtner started up front with Ade.

First half saw Arsenal start brightly, keeping possession with some crisp passing and opening up the Baggies on 4 minutes with a nice flowing move. Clichy put a short ball through onto the byeline for Denilson, who then cut it back for the arriving Nasri to clip it beyond the keeper from six yards. The defence was scrambling, so it was a neat finish. A typical Arsenal goal, with short, swift passes into space and lots of movement.

And that was basically it for the next 86 minutes. Arsenal were epitomised by Denilson’s performance – tidy, good work rate but largely uninspired in the final third. Eboue had chances to shoot but repeatedly missed the target. Adebayor was indecisive, and was caught offside too many times when there was no need to be. When he had the ball, Walcott refused to stay wide and use his pace, instead running straight at the defence and swallowing up all the space his strikers wanted to use. Arsenal looked more dangerous after van Persie came on for Bendtner, prompting Adebayor to drop out more to the left, and allowing Nasri to push inside and link up play.

Apart from one moment when they were split too easily, and had a little tiff as a result, Djourou and Gallas were fine. Clichy and Sagna were their usual excellent selves, Clichy providing one of the few thrilling moments when he went on one of those barnstorming ball-carrying runs from his own goal line. Almunia had one save to make, and made it well.

West Brom were very solid. Tony Mowbray basically got it right. He played the hardworking Miller up front on his own all game, and then put on a couple of chunky, athletic and skillful young players at the end in MacDonald and Bednar who linked up well to try to pinch an equaliser. If his midfield hadn’t switched off for Nasri’s run in the fourth minute, they could have got a result. They should stay up.

–

Other…

I said that of all the other sides I fear the Chavs, and they certainly looked the part on Sunday.

Kudos to sub-editor at the Grauniad for use of phrase “derring-do” in headline of the Man U – Newcastle match report. Was Errol Flynn on the scoresheet?

I was waiting to post this after I’d seen the Mancs’ game but I seem to have missed it on ESPN.  Latest rumour is we might be signing Silvestre from the Mancs for a cut-price £750,000.  This sounds like good business to me.  The article suggests that Silvestre would be first-choice partner for Gallas, replacing Senderos – which says to me that Toure is moving up into midfield.  If this is true, I’m not so sure how I feel about it.  Toure has not looked comfortable playing there the couple of times I’ve seen it, and with Eboue in there as well we basically have two defenders where two attackers should be.  We’ll see.

Tragedy

Shock and sympathy here at is this thing on.

I don’t know quite what to say. It’s at times like this that we need to draw on our strength, compassion and humanity. I just wish I had the words to express my feelings of deepest sympathy and support.

It seems that HSBC have reported that their first-half profits have slumped by 28% to a paltry £5.2 billion.

Pray for their souls.

Premiership gut-check follow-up

Comment from Fucking Arsenal’s Connolly’s Agent on the last post:

I must be one of those spoilt, joyless, arrogant son-of-a-bitch fans you’re talking about. I can’t see us winning it:
1. Flamini and Hleb out, Vela and Nasri in – we’re still a couple of experienced players short. And Vela and Nasri will need about half a season to adjust to England.
2. van Persie and Rosicky are injury-prone; unless the just-departed Gary Lewin had been paid by Man Utd to injure those guys on purpose, they’ll miss half the season each.
3. Ramsey, Wilshire and Coquelin shouldn’t be anywhere near the first team sheet. Give them a couple of cameos when we’re 3-0 up, maybe, but otherwise they’re firmly for 2009-2010.
4. I think the most important thing is whether we can keep a winning mentality. We had it the first half of last year, and we lost it over Christmas. If we can get it back again and keep it despite the inevitable setbacks, we’ll go a long, long way.

First up, just so he knows, he’s not one of those joyless, spoiled, etc  supporters – he doesn’t take success for granted and he  has a sense of humour.  Second, he’s more than entitled to disagree with me.  I mean he’s a football agent, he should know the game better than I do…

I agree that we’re looking short on experience – hell, even Wenger said that yesterday. Ramsey is good enough and old enough, Wilshere and Cocquelin he’s probably right about.

I don’t agree that van Persie is injury-prone, I think he’s been unlucky and impatient, coming back when he wasn’t fully recovered. I see no reason why he shouldn’t last the season. Rosicky was injury-prone due to a muscle imbalance which he’s had surgery to correct, and all the signs are that the surgery was successful. Likewise, no reason to think he won’t be available.

On the winning mentality: no doubt that success breeds success. I think this is partly why Lord Ferg has had the edge for such a long time.  His teams know all about how to win, ours less so, and when you look at the lack of proven winners in the Arsenal squad, no wonder this makes supporters nervous.  But yet, look how close we came last season.  And now we have one more proven winner than we did a couple of months ago: Cesc, our most influential player, has just won his first straw donkey with Espain.

There is every chance I’m fooling myself.  When it comes to football, I’m a Gallas-half-full kind of person.  There’s not much room for optimism in the rest of the world, so I get my fix of hopeful wishery where I can.  But I don’t think I’m just asking Daddy for a pony here:  last season when we lost Henry and were written off from the top four, I said we would win it, and we nearly fucking did.  This season I think we’re in better shape than we were last.  We’ve trimmed some fat, we’re older and hopefully a little wiser.

Arsenal are currently 11/2 at Lasseters for the title, with Man Utd at 6/4 and Chelski at 11/8.  In other words, an £8 bet on Man U wins you £12, on Chelsea £11, and on Arsenal £44.  That’s got to be worth a punt.

Premiership 08-09 gut-check.

ArseNole thinks we’ll win it. It’s refreshing to see a fellow gooner having a little faith.

Some fans either view success as something that can be bought, or something that you have a divine right to. Either way, you’re in danger of ending up a spoiled, joyless, arrogant son-of-a-bitch who can’t truly celebrate success when it comes your way because you don’t understand your own good fortune.  These types tend to be the ones spreading gloom around right now like a bad smell.

Arsenal have as good a chance as anybody.

It’s all relative of course, but Man Utd are weakened – Ronaldo will miss the start of the season even if he stays at Old Trafford, and he had an unprecedented season last year. They would not have come close to winning anything without him, and both he and the rest of the team will struggle to hit those heights again.  For sure it’s still one of Red Nose’s strongest squads, but my water tells me they’ll come up short.

On the other hand, with a new manager and new players in the form of Deco and Bosingwa, Chelsea look stronger than last term, especially if Drogba stays and is fit enough to see the season through. They have the proven winning mentality and the killer instinct. If I fear anyone, I fear the Chavs.

Liverpool, with the addition of Robbie Keane and a decent Italian left-back, continue to build a monster squad that has so far failed to be the sum of its parts. Their stubborn refusal to die in the big games is their main strength – as we found out to our cost – but this year they might finally succeed in marrying that with the consistency that will allow them to challenge for honours. There are signs that even Rafa is getting sick of rotation.  Also after their Euro win, one can sense a confidence in the Spanish camp that wasn’t there before.  Liverpool are the high-profile and therefore not-so-dark dark horse.  Call them the grey horse.  Although that means white, doesn’t it?  Never mind.

Turning to the Great White Satan, Spurs have lost Keane but gained Modric and Dos Santos. Berbatov may yet stay. Hutton is a great full-back. They also have King and Bale back from injury, and in Ramos, a very good manager who should be able to get the best out of his side – including underachievers like Woodgate. Gooners love to knock their chances, but Spurs simply can’t be as awful or as inconsistent as they were at various times last season, and they have to be in with a shout.

Of the rest, Portsmouth look the most promising, which probably means a mid-table finish.  Everton will continue to be Everton, stubbornly stalking the top four or five and picking off the weak.

And so to the lovely Arsenal.  Our strength as always these days is the marriage of our frighteningly talented young squad to Wenger’s philosophy of domination through possession, speed and fearlessness.  But we are surrounded by questions right now, ones that we won’t discover the answers to until the season is underway.  Here are five of the issues I’m most interested in:

1. Who will partner Fabregas?  This is the first time in a long time that a midfield slot has been this wide open, so I hope and expect to see some fierce competition amongst Diaby, Denilson, Ramsey, and even youngsters such as Lansbury, Cocquelin, Randall and Bischoff if he comes.  One of these players has to prove he’s good enough to nail that place, otherwise Wenger will buy.

In the end, this is one of the least troubling issues precisely because it’s the most important.  Wenger has no option but to find a solution.  I don’t know who will get the slot, but I have no doubt that whoever it is will be good enough.

2. How good is Samir Nasri? And what kind of a player will he be when he settles in? Most players adapt their style in some way or undergo some kind of transformation after Wenger becomes their boss, making it hard to predict a new signing’s impact based on his past performances. Nasri will be put on one side of the midfield, wound up and let go – and I don’t have any kind of clue what will happen next.  My guess is a Hleb-like settling-in period where moves break down and passes go astray.  My hope is that he’s a big bag of awesome.

3. How good is Carlos Vela?  Although not at Arsenal, he’s been trained up the Wenger way as a striker who can play on the left or right; so unlike Nasri we know what he’s all about. He has the potential to be as good as Torres. He gave Sergio Ramos a lesson when he took on Real Madrid single-handed. He’s hungry. He could be a 20-goal winger or a 30-goal forward. Or he could discover that things are harder in the Premiership than he thought.

4. How lucky are we going to be with injuries? If RvP stays fit, he’s deadly and could be top scorer in the league this year. If we keep everyone else healthy and get Rosicky and Eduardo back before Christmas, then we have a deep pool of talent.

5. Have we really learned from last season how not to choke? Can our attack-minded side learn how to defend when we face the other 3 or 4 teams who can take the ball off us?  Has Gallas put his mental weakness behind him?  Can Wenger instill the discipline and win-ethic required to close out the championship?  OK so that’s four questions, but they’re all related.  Steve Cram once said that at the start of each 1500 metres, there are ten guys who think they will win, and one guy who knows he will. We have to be that guy.

We’ll start strongly like last season, we’ll be in the top two at Christmas and then we’ll see what happens.  Overall, the squad has more than enough raw talent to win.  Whether we have the balance or the killer instinct remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic that we’ll find both.

An optimist is someone who believes the future is not yet decided, and I can’t wait to watch this young Arsenal side decide it for themselves.

The Wisdom of Crowds?

Happy News from Norf Lahnden.  It’s been reported on the Arsenal website that 1300 children at Emirates Stadium just raised over £100,000 for charity by breaking the World Record for a game of Chinese Whispers – that game where you pass a message along a line of people and see how much it can change through tiny misunderstandings.

…the Chinese Whisper started with the message ‘Together we will make a world of difference’  highlighting to the children that by working together they can help others lead happier, healthier lives… after 500 children it was recorded as ‘Everyone is evil’. By the time the message reached the last child, it had changed dramatically and was read out as simply; ‘Haaaaa’.

I think this says it all, really.

Arsenal

Crap.  Connolly’s Agent at Fucking Arsenal (link on sidebar) has got me linked as an Arsenal site, so I guess I’d better write something about them.

Here’s a quick overview of the wisdom of ignatz. There is a bizarre idea going around at the moment that other people are entitled to their own opinions. This is clearly nonsense, and all other people’s opinions should be directly replaced with the following:

“ARSENAL ARE A SELLING CLUB” / “WE SHOULD BUY STARS” / THE GREAT GOONER INFERIORITY COMPLEX

The Great Gooner Inferiority Complex, or GGIC, is a big problem this summer with Arsenal having just gone three seasons without a trophy. We’ve been up to our arses in whining, sulky, spoiled-child Arsenal supporters, threatening to throw their toys out of the pram if Wenger doesn’t buy them a big-name player for their birthday, preferably someone who just had a reasonable Euro 08.

I could explain why this is so wrong, why supporting your club is not about being able to wear the name of some superstar on the back of your shirt, and why we should feel privileged that we are Gooners at a time when we have one of the most exciting young teams on the face of the planet to support.  But I can’t be arsed.  If you can’t get excited about supporting Arsenal right now, I don’t know why you bother.

I’ve supported Arsenal since I were a nipper, through the wilderness years, on the basis of some feeling that Arsenal were somehow bolder, cooler, braver and more determined than the others.  Since Wenger joined us and started to build teams that could rip the opposition apart, that vague feeling has felt more and more like reality.  That stuff is more intoxicating than mere success.

HLEB / NASRI

Hleb is one of the most individually gifted players we’ll ever see in an Arsenal shirt.  He’s in that tier of players just below the greats.  There’s something holding him back from greatness, and I wish I knew what it was; I would have loved him to stay and win trophies with us, I know we’ll be fine without him, but I’m still sorry to see him go.

Nasri looks less skillful than Hleb, but more direct and unorthodox.  He’s another dodgy-finishing low-scorer though, so we shouldn’t expect more than 5 a season from him.  I’m lukewarm on this one – I’m just not sure he’s got what we need.  I will be delighted to be proved wrong.

ADEBAYOR

I veer between thinking that we should keep him and that we should cash in on £30 million. On the one hand we won’t find anyone as good to replace him, and on the other we have a good-looking forward line even without him.  The whole situation is doubly frustrating because if Eduardo and RvP had stayed fit last season, I think Arsenal would have won the Premiership, with those two scoring a higher proportion of our goals and Ade probably not reaching the 30 mark.  This means we would have won the Premiership and no-one would be offering £30 mil for our main striker.  Neither of those things being true however, on the whole, I think sell now, we won’t get offered that much for him again.

If he goes, I’d like to see Roque Santa Cruz as his replacement.  Remember the four Ps: Proven Premiership exPerience is Priceless.  I just made that up, can you tell?

FLAMINI / BISCHOFF / RAMSEY

Flamini was our indispensible player last season.  A box-to-box engine, imparting pace, bite and energy to the midfield to complement Fabregas’ craft.  The conventional wisdom was that we needed a Flamini replacement as a top priority this summer. A defensive midfielder, someone famous who had a reasonable Euro 08 and who preferably costs a hundred and twelve gazillion pounds.  This despite the various facts that Flamini  was 1) not famous, 2) not really a defensive midfielder and 3) didn’t cost a hundred and twelve gazillion pounds.

Instead of following conventional wisdom, Arsene has chosen a player called Amaury Bischoff and another called Aaron Ramsey.  Neither player is a famous defensive midfielder, neither cost a hundred and twelve gazillion pounds and also neither played at Euro 08, so I’m optimistic that they are both exactly what the squad needs.

USMANOV

Keep that bugger away, far away, from anything you hold dear.

AND FINALLY…

OMG!!!!!! I CANT BELEIVE WENGER WONT BY NOTHING BUT KIDS!!!!!! HES A IDIOT!!!! WE NEED TO SELL ALL OUR SHIT PLAYERS AND BY DAVID VILLA SO HE CAN FALL OVER LOTS.

That’s me done, until the season starts.  Promise.

“Incredible.”

Much side-clutching going on here as a result of Harry Pearson’s fantastic piece at the Grauniad today. Harry’s targets for gentle mockery are close to my own heart – the Sports Journalist and Football Pundit. He waxes lyrical about their unnaturally low disbelief and amazement thresholds:

Incredulity is the default setting of our nation’s experts. To them everything from rain to a Ronaldo step-over is beyond the bounds of the rational.

Spot on, Pearson. The sheer bewildering complexity of life, as expressed through the game of football, often has philosophers like John Motson stumped. Even the full-time whistle, generally a 1-in-1 chance occurrence, can invoke awe-struck incomprehension.

In contrast, Harry goes on to recall the joys of Jeux-Sans-Frontiers, “a game show invented in the mid-1960s by Charles de Gaulle.”

The General was determined to ensure there were no more outbreaks of the sort of pan-European gunplay that had marred rather too many long lunches in his lifetime. He decided that one way to prevent a third world war would be to encourage young people to spend summer evenings shinning along a greasy beam, wearing huge papier-mâché heads, while other young people dressed as medieval servants pelted them with giant vinyl strawberries.

Noting that many of Britain’s finest commentators cut their teeth on this event back in the seventies, Harry sees a cure here for the perpetually incredulous British punditry – bring back Jeux-Sans-Frontiers and send Lineker, Hansen, Shearer, Lawrenson et al off to cover it.

After a few evenings in Ghent and Grenoble watching half-a-dozen 10ft foam-rubber frankfurters trying to force their way through a gap in a polystyrene wall before they are knocked to the ground by a giant bread roll, surely even Alan Hansen would start to recognise the entirely plausible when he saw it.

Scolari’s Glittering Performance

The more journalists blog, the lower my esteem plummets. There’s something about the blog medium that undermines all their normal journalistic rhetorical tricks and techniques for making themselves sound authoritative.

Blogs encourage you to reveal a little more about your personality than you otherwise might – and the problem with many journalists is that underneath that rational, analytical facade lurks a starstruck teenager desperate to be in the gravitational orbit of the powerful, rich and famous.

There are always exceptions – those journalists who just make you more impressed with their dedication and ability.  The BBC’s chief football writer, Phil McNulty, is not one of them. He just posted this fawning account of a press conference by Big Phil Scolari, the new Chelsea manager that reveals more about little Phil wot wrote it than it does Big Phil himself.

Chelsea’s new coach … capped his coronation with a glittering performance of charm, passion and a command of the English language that made mugs of us all

Made mugs of them all indeed, if they all went off to file starry-eyed, 1000-word man-crushes like this. Made mugs of them all, if they all let slip how much they had been looking forward to painting him as a big, crazy, foreign buffoon.

No chance of perspective if these “mugs” are so susceptible to glamour; so caught up in the perfect deliciousness of their insider status, that they could even consider describing a football manager’s press conference as a “glittering performance”.

Good luck Scolari, you’ll need it if you ever upset these idiots and they decide it’s time to punish you.

As for me, I’m only bitter because I’m jealous.