ARSENALISM©

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...

Man City are being positioned as the greatest  Premier league team of all time.  Obviously any sane person knows that there was life before the premier league but let’s look at teams that have won it. Man United and Arsenal had a joie de vivre and intense rivalry that has not been equaled. Blackburn was a rags to riches story. Chelsea at least, were great villains. Liverpool were electric. Leicester was a fairy tale. Even City’s Aguero moment when reflected upon wasn’t a big deal; at home against a struggling 10 man QPR was hardly Anfield 89. Pepe Guardiola is clearly a great thinker in footballing terms, an innovator to be sure, but he’s ultimately the architect of sterility. His end product is that of a cold winning machine rather than a team clothed in endeavour.  It’s the intangible that his product struggles with; the glory, and that ultimately defines sporting achievement. I always say the best team wins the league and that’s fair enough but context is important. Ri...