Morning all.
West Ham is tomorrow. I don’t want to talk about West Ham today. Because it’s tomorrow. I also don’t dare to dream that Brentford might do us a favour later when they visit Man City. I won’t be watching. I will hope for some phone buzzing a la Everton, but I think I’ll go [somewhere] and do [something] or indeed [anything else].
An evening at the cinema would, on paper, be a good idea but unfortunately that’s an unpleasant experience these days. The Saturday evening cinema crowd who sit there and play Wordle on their phones while rustling their bags of sweets and crunching nachos make it an interminable proposition for me. The last time I tried this was for that Nosferatu film which was all quiet and moody and dark, and I get the film maker was trying to create a mood, but it doesn’t really work when the actual soundtrack is the discordant noises of people eating and nyomping and slurping.
I am not a violent person at all, but if I can hear the sound of a person and/or people eating, I want to take up arms and lay waste to all around me. I don’t do it, obviously, but if I were a judge and a person was before me in court on charges of battering the crap out of a cinema full of people who ate crisps louder than a jet-engine taking off, I would be lenient in my sentencing [“Say three hail marys and off you go”].
I’m not saying that act of violence should be allowed, but it ought to be understood. The one act I would allow is if someone is wearing those Facebook glasses that record you and livestream you and stuff. I believe very strongly it should be legal to smack them off the face of whoever is wearing them, and if they have a headache afterwards, that’s their own fault. Don’t wear skeevy-creep wanker glasses in the first place.
Anyway, I left Nosferatu after about 20 minutes. So, the cinema will be no refuge for me later on as Brentford get to the 89th minute with a one goal lead thanks to Igor Thiago and the referee then indicates there will be 78 minutes of added time. No thanks. I’ll find another way to pass the time.
I see Bruno Fernandes has won the Football Writers Player of the Year awards, with Declan Rice second. Here’s what I think about that. Nothing. My give-a-shit-ometer is not even flickering. I suspect some Arsenal fans might be annoyed, but don’t be. I’m sure Rice isn’t. He has actual prizes to play for over the next few weeks.
One thing we never really talk about at Arsenal is the way Mikel Arteta has, publicly at least, created a squad whose togetherness and unity is a real strength. There are always things that happen behind the scenes, little training ground scuffles etc because of the dynamic of a competitive environment, but they’re not public. Not like the old days when we had a mole. Remember the mole? I think we all know who it was.
But long gone are the days when stories about Eddie Nketiah fighting with Dani Ceballos leaked from London Colney. What I think we can say with some certainty is that despite not developing into quite the player we wanted him to be, Eddie is a fine judge of character. You look around this week and at Real Madrid, there are stories of players scrapping, players needing stitches, internal investigations, Rudiger posting a list of teammates he’s going to assassinate on the dressing room door (/sarcasm), and you realise that managing a big club with big egos is a difficult job.
I’m not saying Arsenal don’t have any issues, but there’s no question in my mind that when you see how these players behave and interact with each other, whether they’re on the pitch or supporting from the sidelines, that Arteta has cultivated an atmosphere conducive to getting the very best from them as individuals and collectively.
I heard a story from someone who told me that he insists the players get together for nights out, to socialise together to help build bonds, and one time they decided on a cinema night at one of the lads’ home cinema room at his fancy house and he told them ‘If anyone arrives with popcorn, I will make you all do shuttle runs for three hours straight on Monday morning. Have your dinner like a normal person then sit back and simply enjoy the film without disrupting anyone with the sound of chewing. What are you, some kind of ravenous dog who has been rescued after being tied to a post by some bastard owner? That dog is allowed make whatever sounds it wants before it finds its forever home, but you can be sure the bloke who left him there is in the cinema right now eating a crunch wrap and shaking his giant cola drink to ensure maximum noise from the ice cubes’.
And that bloke? Yes. It was Dani Ceballos. There’s a lesson there for all us folks. Have a great Saturday, whatever you do or don’t do today.
