Arsenal News » Disgusting, disgraceful, appalling, shameful

Disgusting, disgraceful, appalling, shameful: I speak of course of the coverage on Sky Sports last night.

There was a moment of amusement before the game when Redknapp-the-Younger started to talk about why UEFA was so biased (in this case against English clubs) and the chairbeing nearly fell off his chair, chuffling like a steam train, grinning like a cat from south west of Liverpool, with the camera unsure where to go…

But from the Sky point of view that was it – you have had your moment of high drama, they clearly thought, we are certainly never going to talk about THAT subject again, because the topic of the evening is…

Arsenal are useless. If someone tried a clever cross-field pass of 30 yards which was intercepted Arsenal “have give the ball away again”.    It was like that all the time – until after 15 minutes I turned the commentary off.  I did try again with commentary in the second half, and that was even more amazing, bizarre, eccentric and just plain weird.

When the second Arsenal goal went in, the commentators (including once again the incredibly anti-Arsenal ex-Arsenal Alan Smith who these days seems to want to talk more about his past glories rather than today’s team) were so busy chuntering amongst themselves about how terrible Arsenal were, they didn’t even know a goal was scored.  They really did keep on chatting until suddenly one of the turnips said, “Oh Arsenal have scored”.

And the goal wasn’t that hard to see.  Radio 5 re-ran the commentary by Alan “What do you mean I am a bully” Green and for once he wasn’t talking about the pies or the ref, but was actually there, talking about the game and, like the rest of the world, could see that a goal had been scored.

But not Sky Sports. Oh no – it was as if they had read my piece yesterday evening and taken it to be an indication that one should actually travel to another universe to see this match, rather than understand that it was supposed to be a piece of mild whimsy.

And yet, let us not forget (as if I would let you) that I was not too far off with that score prediction.  I gave it 2-5 and we got 2-3 – and with the way the shots were piling in at the end we could have had 2-5.

What’s more, while the rest of the British teams in Europe have struggled to score one – yes a whole “one” – Arsenal gave us a great game and knocked in three.   And did it without most of the team.

Wonderful to see Rosicky back, of course, but we should save our thoughts for our fallen comrades…

No Theo, No Arshavin, No Van Persie, No 1st choice keeper, No 2nd choice keeper, No Denilson, No Vela, No Nasri.

And we still won 13-3 on shots.

So once again we get close to predicting the correct score: we’ve played seven and predicted five correct results, often with a score that is not so far off.

By the way – do you remember that time when Song was booed by Arsenal “supporters”, and we were told that he should never ever play for the club again?

(c) Tony Attwood 2009

My sitting room is a bit of a mess after that game what with me throwing the furniture around and all.  I’d better go and tidy up.  And if anyone happens to find my voice could I have it back please?