Ian Tanner
An eternal optimist, I always try to find positives. Yet even I am struggling after Sunday’s fiasco, if that’s not too strong a word. Had we won, the queue for the tube after the obligatory celebrations would have been awful. Despite staying for the final whistle, I was back on a Southbound Jubilee Line train at 6.01pm. Not bad, huh? I refer to my athletic exploits, slaloming around the early-leavers, rather than this weak attempt to accentuate the positive. Good job the tournament is no longer called The Milk Cup. Can you imagine the ridiculously easy job of every sports headline writer, who’d employ a multitude of combinations of bottles and bottlers to describe our players? Still unconvinced? Then I give up; I wash my hands.
And wash my hands was what I also attempted 90 minutes before kick-off. No soap! Incredible. Charging eye-watering prices, Wembley still treat us to cattle-class service. To be fair, the Wembley Official to whom I complained got my isshooo resolved PDQ. Lest we forget, it’s not just public sector services that cost a fortune (the most expensive things in life are free) yet fail to deliver; it’s endemic. There really is no point taking one’s seat “early doors”. The noise – noise, as in unwanted sound – borders on the painful. These attempts – it’s not the first time I’ve been blasted out at our National Stadium – to create an atmosphere do not work. Only those interminable vuvuzelas – so beloved by our Esteemed Ed (why?) – fill me with greater dread. Thank goodness they’ve not caught on this season. Ah, there I go again; trying to look on the bright side.
Szczesny, whom I’ve bigged up constantly, had his worst game by far. During the second half of the Stoke match, it was music to my ears to hear a faint chant of “Arsenal’s Number 1”. More and more pundits are citing him as the real deal and one hopes his mistakes, two minutes after the start and before the end, will neither affect him long-term nor see him replaced by Almunia. I may have told you before that to a hammer everything is a nail. Well, to a linesman, virtually every player is offside. So much for favouring the attacker. They are all petrified of a goal resulting from not flagging when they should, and so play it safe. I’m pleased that Birmingham City do not have to rue that huge error. There I go again. One should not be too harsh on linesmen as it’s a tough job at the best of times, and sometimes physically impossible – albeit not on this occasion. The technology exists to make the officials’ jobs easier and the game’s outcome fairer. It beggars belief that the archaic powers that be in the various footie hierarchies show such intransigence.
So it’s congratulations to the Premier League’s least potent team who, unlike Lionel Messi, average less than a goal-a-game this season.
