Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » 2010 » June » 15
By Billy the Dog McGraw, the Old Fish Shop, Hereford.
Following the amazing revelations on the influential Le Grub web site to the effect that somewhere between 50% and 80% of Arsenal season ticket holders will not be renewing their tickets next year, Untold Arsenal can now exclusively reveal what will happen as a result of this extraordinary transformation next season.
And “extraordinary transformation” is right – because the people in the ground for 2010/11 will not be the same people as those who arrived late and left early throughout 2009/10, 2008/9, 2007/8, 2006/7 and so on.
To find out more our special mate, and publican of the Toppled Bollard in St Thomas’, Billy the Dog, interviewed statistical expert, Higgs Boson, of the Institute of Certain Things.
“I believe Le Grub is spot on and accurate as always,” said Higgs,” and that their statement (which was indeed a statement, not a warning about something that might happen) is accurate. It is based on a sample of one, which is statistically valid in such matters, and I think we should take it seriously.
Indeed Le Grub could have had no thought otherwise since they followed up their in depth and detailed research into season ticket renewals for next season with a statement (not an opinion) which incorporated a warning to Mr Gazides about the inevitable effects both of a continuation of the Wengerian Philosophical Revolution and of taking Socrates too seriously.
So at the University of the Blindingly Obvious, Cleethorpes we decided we needed to do exactly the same level of research as Le Grub did. Our team went out we combed the highways and byways, we looked hither and yon, we lifted stones and put down turnips and we listened to one man.
And a jolly nice man he is too.
Now the only problem I had was that I seem to have got some sort of reputation and so when people say, “young Billy’s out”, the streets clear pretty damn quick. But I used my charm, calling out, “I wanna talk to ye sunshine, come ere ye daft grubber,” and after several hours searching the empty highways of Highbury found a guy who had been inside the Toppled Bollard (public house to the Grub Elite) for three weeks without moving, and he told me that all the 30,000 season ticket holders who were not renewing were in fact…
Wait for it…
Yes yippedy dee – they were Grubbers. Or to put it another way, readers of Le Grub, vestibule of all that is sacred and true in the land of Gibberish (which is just off the Seven Sisters Road – up the other end.)
Which means next season and forever more
a) No one will ever block your view by turning up 20 minutes late and leaving 15 minutes early.
b) No one in block 99 will be moaning at Bendtner ever again after he has just scored his 6th goal in 7 games.
c) No one will be sitting on his/her hands (or anyone else’s hands) and refusing to sing “One Arsene Wenger” ever again.
d) The noise level will increase 8000%.
e) The entire stadium will be filled with real live active supporters instead of dummies who are often not there, or if they are, are blinking while claiming that Arshavin is leaving and it is true because they read it in the Holy Grail (or Daily Mail as it is known).
f) Everyone in the Ems will understand what an interception is, the benefit of the interception, the fact that the interception gets the ball from the opposition, the notion that the interception is the ideal way to handle Bolton, Blackburn and the rest without getting hacked to bits, and that Denilson is the utter master.
g) People will smile, laugh and chortle inside the stadium and generally have fun, commenting before the game on the relative merits of the present set up at Arsenal with that in the George Graham era.
h) The Arsenal players will realise that for the first time since we moved to the Ems the entire crowd is with them rather than having 30,000 grubbies who are moaning and complaining.
i) We will win the league and the grubbies won’t be there by their own admission, which will be rather droll.
j) The thought police that run the Le Grub web site and remove posts which don’t match their thought patterns (or change the text so that you end up saying something other than you originally wrote) will be arrested under the Protection against Silliness Act. As a punishment they will be forced to watch Liverpool and Hull City every week from now until the end of time, whichever is the sooner.
k) Everyone will recognise what a stunningly brilliant poet Oscar Wilde was.
l) The Higgs Boson will be found, hiding behind a seat in block 99 next to a pile of Dark Matter. I get the Nobel Prize for inventiveness.
m) A monument to Jack Humble will be erected in the stadium forecourt.
n) Arsène Wenger will write an article for Untold Arsenal in which he apologises for having a grave accent in his first name, appreciating how difficult that makes life for people using Word Press.
o) Fourteen Daleks levitate down White Hart Lane, past the White Hart pub, across the Great Cambridge Road, and into Tottenham, shouting “exterminate, exterminate, exterminate” at the jolly old stadium which will then fall over. The Tinies will play future home games at Hartlepool, unable to build the new ground because no one would insure the old place. Hartlepool fans will turn up and sing, “You won the league (you won the league) in black and white (in black and white)” etc. The grubbies will plan to write a piece saying, “the sad thing is these guys think they are being funny” but actually now won’t write it because to do so will mean admitting that they know Untold actually exists. Which of course it doesn’t. Unlike the Higgs Boson.
p) Harry Redknapp is revealed to be a cyberman on heat.
q) Jamie Redknapp admits that he was approached to write Le Grub but turned it down on the grounds that he didn’t know what the interwebnetbot thing was but he had heard about it and was sure it was jolly good and that Tottenham would have one soon, and the reserve league is stupid because no one tries enough, and what’s the point of a youth team anyway?
r) Jamie Redknapp insists in the same interview that he is still sure that Raffa had to leave Liverpool, because the club has £35m to spend and the board weren’t sure he would spend it properly. Several men remove him before he does any more self harm.
s) The Weeping Angels surround Le Portagrubbin where it is writ and wait for those inside to blink. (Don’t worry about it, if you haven’t watched Doctor Who it don’t mean nothing, but if you do, you might care to offer a minor chortle at this point. It’s for old people who remember the day when Kennedy got shot, not as the day Kennedy died, but as the day William Hartnell first came out of a police box).
t) Arsenal win the Euro Cup and we all say “hoorah” except for the Grubbers who gave up their season tickets and refuse to watch the final on TV because Denilson is playing.
u) Eduardo and Ramsey find form far superior to anything we have seen from them before and both are offered English citizenship. They both turn it down.
v) Man U, Man C, Chelsea, Liverpool, The Tinies, and Villa write to the EPL and FA and FIFA and UEFA claiming that Arsenal’s use of youngsters is unfair, and discriminatory against older players, demanding that no player under the age of 28 should be allowed to play in a league match ever again, no not ever. So there. They also demand each be given two of the current Arsenal youth squad to even things up, just in case the rules aren’t changed.
w) The youth squad win the youth league for the third year running, and the youth cup for the second time in three years. The sheer enormity of this achievement passes the media by.
x) The ladies team win the inaugural Super League. Those of us who occasionally go to the women’s game have a jolly time now it is played in the summer.
y) Dark energy seeps into Manchester and it (the city, although come to that, probably the dark matter too) is never seen again having fallen into a vortex made out of the accumulated debt of the teams in the north west. Upon investigation the debt is discovered to be so heavy that it has created an enormous black hole which is sucking everything in the area into an alternative reality. Manchester is named, “The Black Hole” so no change there.
z) A second man approaches me in block 99, and says, “Are you Tony Attwood,” and on hearing that I am, says he has read “Making the Arsenal” and thoroughly enjoyed it. I am in heaven.
(c) The Weeping Angels, Oscar Wilde, everyone who has ever written Doctor Who, and oh you know, all that lot.
Tread lightly.
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