ARSENALISM©

And lo, there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth as Arsenal football club lost, deservedly, a game against Bournemouth. It is not just that Bournemouth were better and had just had a three-week rest while Arsenal played a number of games, its the fact that Arsenal were terrible. I am not one for hyperbole, but it has to be said that the performance from the home team was awful. Passes didn't reach their intended targets, balls were run out of play, players were indecisive on the ball and a general feeling if ennui prevailed. The accumulation of points of the last nine months that have put the club at the top of the Premier League table and the superb form in the Champions League cannot, rationally disappear over the course of a week without some scrutiny. Every team has an off day but the time for poor performances is not now, especially not now that Arsenal are in the thick of a title race. "Cometh the hour" they say, but then again 'they' say a lot of thi...

"The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that."-John Connor To overcome Skynet was not easy, it involved time, belief and an indomitable human spirit. To beat a machine equipped with superior weaponry and a ruthless access to resources to increase its arsenal took ingenuity and a "never say die" attitude. Abu Dhabi is the ground zero of Skynet and Manchester CXV are the Terminators. The thing about Skynet is that there are no qualms about what their aim is, there are no notions of fairness.  "Listen, and understand! Manchester CX are out there! They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop... ever, until someone stops them flagrantly breaking rules"-Kyle Reese In a landscape where one team dominates it is up to a resistance to topple them, this is made hard when using resources that were ga...

  Liverpool and Manchester CXV are the ones to beat in this season's chase for the Premier League title. One, a club grown organically, the other created in an Oil State laboratory. Having taken 4 points from Liverpool and 3 points from Manchester CXV so far, you would think that our status in the challenge would be reasonably good. But there is an underdog mentality among many and a defeatist attitude from some. A lot of this is directly influenced by those voices of wisdom, the media pundits. The likes of Chris (Heaven knows I'm miserable now) Sutton, Gary (Man of the people) Neville, Jamie (Sour grapes) Carragher and Robbie (I'm a character I am) Savage set the agenda for many a football fan. The reality that it's all about creating content often gets lost on people, but it shouldn't. It's important to view comments, analysis, think pieces and the like in that context. Can the Arsenal win the league? Yes. Will the Arsenal win the league? I don't know. It...

  Football is a simple game really. All you need is a pitch, 22 players and a referee. But of course that is simplistic as football, particularly in the Premier League is a multi million pound industry where fortunes are made and reputations built, however, the game is in the hands of incompetents at best and corrupt individuals at worst. I prefer to view it as incompetence personally. Yes the referees and match officials of the PGMOL, having been given the power of life or death, much like the Roman Emperors in the gladiatorial stadiums, are holding sway. The upwards or downwards thumb has been replaced by VAR and the vagaries of interpretation.  Apologies have been given for incorrect decisions, cards have been brandished and rescinded and Refs have been banned from officiating against certain teams but it's not good enough.  When, pre VAR, a Ref made an error it was just that; human error and that, to me is acceptable, but when mistakes are still being made despite of ...

Football is barricaded inside a shopping centre with dwindling supplies but lots of product, and is surrounded by zombies hammering at the shuttered shop fronts with malicious intent. The zombies are intent on feeding on the vertebrate organs that have developed axially from the midline dorsal nerve cord as a vesicular enlargement at the rostral end of the neural tube, with centralised control over all body segments. Yes, they want to eat football's brains! The Zombies are sub divided. There are the VAR zombies, shambling with inevitability towards their intended target, then there are the media content creators looking for perceived structural weaknesses to exploit. The Sky/TNT/Amazon zombies fight amongst themselves for supremacy, to see who will get the first juicy mouthful, while the Oil money zombies have gained the upper hand over the oligarch zombies. The FA zombies are reliant on the Premier League zombies for their leftovers but all of these parts of a whole bow to the alp...

It looks as if every pundit is assuming that Manchester City* are guaranteed the Champions League before a ball is kicked, thus insuring that they achieve The Treble*. All well and good. In football terms they are pretty much the best team in Europe, and if, as foretold, they do in fact, prove the so called experts right, will anyone really care? The inevitability of Manchester City* winning stuff is like the inevitability of that meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. It was always coming and when it did, the Dinosaurs couldn't do anything about it; nor did they worry about it. Sport is all about jeopardy, expecting the unexpected, drama and, let's be honest, romance. It's all about meeting triumph and disaster and treating those imposters just the same, except when triumph is par for the course. A club whose currency is success at any cost, including fair play is hard to care about. Manchester City* are that club. Producing some of the best teams that most have us have s...