Arry says stuff you won’t believe, except, oh, hang on, it was said by Arry, so we don’t « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Tony Attwood
I was so enthused last night I went to bed extra late, couldn’t get to sleep, and then woke up late (thank goodness, not getting a full night’s sleep is not good when you get to a Certain Age – as we Veterans call it) and have hardly got time to write anything.
But here’s a few snips from Arry B. Envelope, manager of the Very Tiny Totts. They are all taken from Sky’s very brief interview with him last night after the game. And how strange, the national media don’t seem to be quoting them much. But then when your middle name is “Brown” you get that.
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“I had so many players who had not played at this level before, and Sandro had cramp so there were three or four of them who were going to struggle in extra time but we just didn’t want extra time and that first penalty did it for us.”
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“The young players can learn more here than they do in reserve games… The first penalty wasn’t a penalty it was a dive.”
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There was also a bit of commentary by Sky about this being Arsenal’s reserve team, but they got that wrong. Our reserve team is what you see on the pitch in EPL and Champs League games, match after match because all the big boys are injured. What you saw last night was a little bit of the first team, a bit of the reserves, and then some newcomers like Lansbury, who I thought really did his stuff, considering how new he is to all this. It showed that the quality we saw at the end of last season was really a sign of what is to come.
So what else did we discover? Here’s ten pointers.
1: Nasri can talk absolutely perfect English. OK the accent is French, of course it is, but the grammar, vocabulary and pure construction of his language is perfection. Upon retirement he will set up a series of language schools to help players who were born in the UK
2: Jack has a little way to go on this front, but with a display like that, who cares?
3: No one outside of Untold’s wonderful commentators who read every word of our post-match report seemed to want to talk about the fact that the Totts committed 23 fouls last night. (Figure from the Guardian this morning).
4: We had almost three times as many shots on target as they did.
5: The last time we did this must have been when Liam Brady scored that goal from eight miles out on the left which bent inwards in the last microsecond, and then he turned to the Shelf and trotted along in that ungainly way that he had with his arms out stretched looking at the Tott supporters who were frothing at the mouth. We won 5-1 that time, and it was a great moment to be at the dirty end of the Seven Sisters.
6: Arry B. Envelope really just can’t take it, but he’ll always be the TV favourite, even after the court case, of which of course I have no prior knowledge and would never like to suggest there was anything in the brown envelope.
7: Glen Hoddle has mellowed a bit, but Ian Wright is as changeable as the wind.
8: There is no point 8.
9: Gloating is a perfectly good and normal reaction, and should be indulged in without any feelings that maybe there is a commandment somewhere that says you shouldn’t.
10: Jack is the greatest home grown talent we have ever had.