Arse’n’al Stuff

(With due reverence to “Trainspotting”)

Choose overbearing arrogance.
Choose systematic dirty play and calling it “competitiveness”.
Choose the most staged, contrived, up-your-own-ar$es goal celebrations ever witnessed.
Choose winning two championships in eleven seasons and acting like you’ve won seven in nine.
Choose paying £9 million for Francis Jeffers.
Choose Dennis Bergkamp and his carefully-timed elbows into the side of the head.
Choose deliberately disrespecting and belittling the other team by playing keepy-uppy in their half with a few minutes to go.

Choose fancying yourselves as better than Real Madrid, then having Chelsea run rings around you at home.
Choose turning the sports section of the observer into a gunners fanzine.
Choose getting away with light or delayed punishments at FA disciplinary hearings because you’ve had every possible string pulled by David Dein.

Choose a persecution complex nonetheless and never shut up about it.
Choose embarrassing yourselves in a Renault “va-va-voom” ad and then disgracing yourselves further at the world cup finals.

Choose David Seaman and his public mid-life crisis.
Choose watching an opponent miss a last-minute penalty against you, then running after him and jeering him.
Choose George Graham grinding his way to the dullest championship win of all time.
Choose to see yourselves as one of the giants of continental football when you’ve never even reached a European cup semi-final in your entire history.

Choose picking Ray Parlour for over a decade.
Choose having the quietest stadium in the world (“The Library”) as your home ground, and then having the cheek to slag Man Utd about their fans.

Choose having Nick Hornby as the mouthpiece of your supporters.
Choose pretending that five or six years of playing in a watchable fashion makes up for inflicting over a century of ultra-defensive dogsh*t on English football watchers.

Choose Igor Stepanovs, Nelson Vivas, Kanu, Pascal Cygan, Davor Suker, Gilles Grimandi, David Grondin, Remi Garde, Kaba Diawara, Junichi Inamoto, Jeremie Aliadiere, Oleg Luzhny, Luis Boa Morte, Richard Wright, Stefan Malz, Christopher Wreh, and all the other turkeys that nobody ever mentions when creaming themselves about how great Wenger is in the transfer market.

Choose 58 red cards in seven years.
Choose bottling the treble despite having all the luck in the world.
Choose Arsenal.

What’s the difference between an arsonist and Arsenal  ???
An arsonist wouldn’t lose his two most important matches !!

What’s the difference between an alcoholic and Arsenal  ???
An alcoholic would not let go of their trebles and doubles as easily !!

FOR SALE:
Arsenal Radio – loud volume, lots of bass … no treble.  Offers invited.

Thanks to Mick Kenny

Arsenal crash 0-3 to Internazionale in the Champions League and it introduces their new shirt sponsorship deal.

Thanks to Mel Gomes, Graham Betts, Jonathan Hayden.

Because they stay on top for ages and come second …

14.03.2003

Another version of the Trainspotting mantra “Choose Life”.

Choose Arsenal.
Choose overbearing arrogance.
Choose systematic dirty play and calling it “competitiveness”.
Choose the most staged, contrived, up-your-own-arses goal celebrations ever witnessed.
Choose having the ugliest man on earth as your centre-back and the second ugliest as your manager.
Choose winning two championships in eleven seasons and acting like you’ve won seven in nine.
Choose drawing 99% of your fanbase from the ranks of the suburban English middle classes.
Choose Patrick Vieira whinging about having to play too much football even though he gets six games’ rest every season due to suspensions.

Choose paying £9 million for Francis Jeffers.
Choose being “the bank of England club”.
Choose Dennis Bergkamp and his carefully-timed elbows into the side of the head.
Choose deliberately disrespecting and belittling the other team by playing keepy-uppy in their half with a few minutes to go.

Choose forcing merchandise vendors out of business because they might deprive you of a couple of hundred quid on match days.

Choose fancying yourselves as better than Real Madrid, then having Auxerre run rings around you at home.
Choose Sol Campbell continually tripping over himself.
Choose turning the sports section of the observer into a Gunners fanzine.
Choose getting away with light or delayed punishments at FA disciplinary hearings because you’ve had every possible string pulled by David Dein.
Choose a persecution complex nonetheless and never shut up about it. Choose gamesmanship.
Choose embarrassing yourselves in a Renault “va-va-voom” ad and then disgracing yourselves further at the World Cup finals.

Choose David Seaman and his public mid-life crisis.
Choose watching an opponent miss a last-minute penalty against you, then running after him and jeering him.
Choose George Graham grinding his way to the dullest championship win of all time.
Choose stepping forward in a four-man line with your right hands all raised in the air, then screaming abuse at the linesman when he has the audacity to keep his flag down.

Choose to see yourselves as one of the giants of continental football when you’ve never even reached a European Cup semi-final in your entire history.
Choose picking Ray Parlour for over a decade.
Choose having the quietest stadium in the world (“The Library”) as your home ground, and then having the cheek to slag Man Utd about their fans.
Choose having Nick Hornby as the mouthpiece of your supporters.
Choose making umpteen lists of reasons why arsenal are so great, and then admitting you didn’t bother following them for a few years in the 1980s when they were getting shit results.

Choose Tony Adams coming out with his usual dreary “I am a recovering addict” spiel every time a Premiership footballer blots his copy-book.

Choose pretending that five or six years of playing in a watchable fashion makes up for inflicting over a century of ultra-defensive dogshit on English football watchers.

Choose Igor Stepanovs, Nelson Vivas, Kanu, Pascal Cygan, Davor Suker, Gilles Grimandi, David Grondin, Remi Garde, Kaba Diawara, Junichi Inamoto, Jeremie Aliadiere, Oleg Luzhny, Luis Boa Morte, Richard Wright, Stefan Malz, Christopher Wreh, and all the other turkeys that nobody ever mentions when creaming themselves about how great Wenger is in the transfer market.

Choose 58 red cards in seven years. Choose lying to the media that you didn’t see a single one of the incidents that caused all these red cards.
Choose being a bunch of smug, self-regarding w**kers who are well on their way to being even more unpopular than Man U in less than half the time.

Choose Arsenal.

Arsenal introduced a new shirt for their last season at Highbury.

Thanks to Ivan Cohen.

Arsenal players show off their new shirts for the 2007-08 season.

Thanks to Glenn Weaver.

But then, Campbell began reading about how this would end any chance he had for playing for England again and he panicked.  And he did what he’s always done when that selfish gene kicks in, he walked.  A livid Sven Goran Eriksson, who had expended a lot of personal effort to land Campbell. talked of feeling ‘let down’ by the player.

He said, “I don’t know the real reason he left, but he didn’t like the training ground or the dressing room and things like that.”

Oh, really ?

What you didn’t like was everybody laughing at you and saying your remaining England prospects had just gone pear-shaped faster than Kerry Katona’s backside.

Arsene Wenger says Campbell is a ‘strong man’ and that’s why he tore up his County contract.  With the greatest of respect Arsene, he’s not.  He’s just a selfish git.”

Piers Morgan (Arsenal fan) pens a feature in the Mail on Sunday of 17th September 2009.

Did Wenger ask her for her number hoping she would be a decent number 5.

That’s

0800

won nothing

won nothing

won nothing.

Poor little Charlie got a nasty shock when he tried this Harry Potter hat on in late 2007 …

Next day he was on BBC Breakfast TV with his brother and sister and parents proudly wearing his Arsenal shirt.

Surprised ??  Me neither !!

…  The ARSSE … behind combat stress ??

Most of them don’t have the bottle for the battle !!

Thanks to Eric Savill.