Suck On That BFS
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| Hope Joel washed it before returning to his baba? |
The atmosphere at Saturday’s encounter with Sunderland
was so painfully muted for the first half an hour that I pitied the poor couple
who found themselves sitting in front of me. As hard as I tried to direct my
incessant urging of the Gunners, up and out, over their heads, watching these
two constantly recoil every time I bellowed behind their sensitive shell-likes,
I felt half tempted to lean forward and apologize for disturbing their peace
and spoiling their sedate afternoon’s entertainment.
I watched the first half of Stoke v Man City on the
box, before heading out the door to our match and heard the remainder on the
radio, as storm Desmond blew me around to the ground. I’d tuned in expecting to
savour the silky skills of David Silva & co. and instead of which it was
Bojan, Shaquiri & Arnautovic producing the sort of Barca imitation that was
positively worlds away from Stoke’s hard-men reputation as the rugby team.
After the Potters had deservedly relieved a
shell-shocked City of all three points, one might’ve imagined the opportunity
for the Gunners to take advantage and the possibility of perhaps topping the league
by the end of the afternoon, would’ve been sufficient to enthuse both our team
and the fans.
Yet aside from the customary grace of Mezut Özil and
the determination of Koscielny, sadly the Arsenal barely resembled a side
targeting the table’s summit. And it was evident that in the absence of Alexis
and following the further depressing blow of the long-term loss of Santi
Cazorla, the majority of our morose crowd was more concerned with the funereal
prospect of being overtaken by Spurs, instead of fulfilling our obligation to try
and inspire our team to establish themselves in the box seat as title
challengers.
With it being likely that the Gunners would be devoid
of any penetration, whilst we remain deprived of the forward impetus of our
Chilean dynamo, I fully expected a frustrating afternoon of sideways football,
camped on the edge of the Black Cat’s penalty box. But it seems Allardyce had masticated
on springing an alternative masterplan (surely I’m not alone in finding the
positively bovine habits of BFS so offensive?).
Time was when an under-privileged background was
almost a pre-requisite for the hunger and the passion necessary to carve out a
career playing in the top flight. As the progeny of the FA’s chief executive
and as a bachelor of science, with his first-class honours economics degree,
Duncan Watmore hardly fits this profile. The lad caught my eye, ever since I
happened to catch his performance, coming on as a sub for England’s U21s, where
his intensity energized all the lamentably blasé looking youngsters around him.
Whether Watmore has the talent to match his obvious
drive, remains to be seen. But as part of a surprising three-pronged attack
with Fletcher and Borini, he very nearly caught us cold on Saturday, in carving
out the opportunities which could’ve resulted in us already being 0-3 down, by
the time Joel Campbell eventually stirred the slumbering stadium with our opening
goal.
Sadly, for the third successive game, the Gunners
promptly went back to sleep and failed to survive until half-time with our lead
intact. But until Giroud inadvertently ruined Petr Cech’s chances of achieving
the clean-sheet record, we once again had our keeper to thank for preventing
our goal from being breached. Borini should’ve beaten him, when he found
himself one-on-one after only four minutes. However this was a prime example of
Petr’s points-saving capabilities, as his imposing physical presence and his
reputation forces strikers into believing they need do something special to
beat him and Borini patently wasn’t up to this task.
The on pitch, half-time interview with Steffan Schwarz
had me fondly reminiscing about one of my all time favourite European
encounters with Sampdoria (1995). Yet I was abruptly stirred from such reveries
by the gob-smacking discovery that the number on the back of my programme was
only one away from winning the signed match ball, with the presentation/photos
with one of our heroes!
I was convinced that this “so close but so far” moment
was a marker of our fortunes for the remainder of the afternoon. Mercifully
Giroud managed to make up for his own-goal, by glancing one in at the correct
end. Yet I spent the remaining half an hour waiting for Sunderland to score an
inevitable equalizer and it wasn’t until we scored a third in injury time that
I was finally able to breathe easy.
It was amusing to hear Wrighty comment on the box
later that night that Ramsey was his man of the match, with “the most passes,
touches and shots”. The fact that most of us spent the entire afternoon coating
Aaron off for so many misplaced efforts, makes a complete mockery of all such
statistics.
It sounded as if the performance of Ranieri’s remarkable
outfit was far more deserving of ending the afternoon in pride of place atop
the Premiership pile, but Jimmy Dunne’s goal-scoring record survived intact. My
father-out-of-law was regaling me with tales of how Dunne refused to give the
Nazi salute to Hitler and I marveled at his recall of seeing Dunne score for
Shamrock Rovers. The Gunners could badly do with demonstrating just a little of
this Irishman’s mettle, if our understrength outfit are to achieve the
necessary result in Greece?
--email to: londonN5@gmail.com
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