Untold Arsenal » The only blog to predict the Everton Arsenal score accurately

If you are a regular reader you are going to get so bored with me on this, but let me have my day. This is, after all, my finest hour.

At 10am Saturday I predicted Everton 1 Arsenal 7 Click on the score to see the whole article.

No one else came anywhere near that. BBC Radio 5 Live had Mark Lawrenson on Friday at 5.20 telling us it would be an Everton win. He said Arsenal had too many players injured to win.

And yes, you can see his point. No Theo, no Nasri, No Rosicky. Two big players sold, and even the reserves not being available. Diaby out, Wilshere not ready to play (I got that right too), the reserve keeper crocked, Djourou injured.

Worse we were picking that so awfully lightweight Denilson – all he did was score the first, save a certainty off the line, and play some nice passes in between.

And probably the most awful bit of all is that ESPN didn’t even know how pathetically stupid they were. They chose an ex-Evertonian as the co-commentator, and then spent most of the match saying “is this the worst you have seen Everton play?” and “is this Everton’s biggest ever defeat at home?” They might as well have said to each other, “when did we ever make such a huge mistake in terms of the way we set a programme up.”

So where do we go now?

According to the media, down. We won’t make the top four, because the squad is too thin, the defence too weak, and that Denilson is so lightweight. So let’s enjoy it while we can and see if we can give anything other than the result as evidence that something rather good is going on.

!: The Lord Wenger said, this is it, my project is ready. So he’s come out and said, after four years work, here we are. Not the first time he has done such a thing. I still have the tee-shirt of Wenger saying, “We can go the whole season unbeaten.” Did we do that? I can’t remember. (And yes I know he said it one year early – but that is not the point, it is that he announced a team as ready, when at the time others were not at all sure).

2: We won 15-8 on goal attempts, which shows that Everton were not just rolling over and stopping – they were trying through the game, and were simply snuffled out by the defence.

3: If you count shots on target we won 9-5 – do not forget all those Almunia saves. And nine shots producing six goals!

Of course I personally will never forgive Ramsey for taking a wild shot when he had players he could pass to who would have scored and made it the 7-1 predicted here, but you know, you can’t be greedy.

One other little thing – this injury lark.

Theo was picked for the England game on Wednesday last week, and sat on the bench, and came back with a back injury which kept him out of this game. How do you get a back injury on the bench?

But I would say it is not just us that has injury worries – Villa had 3 injured, Manchester Arab had 3 injured, Manchester IOU have 5 injured, Liverpool have 2 injured and four “doubtful”, while Birmingham have seven injured and one suspended. I am sure it never used to be like this at the start of the season.

Maybe we should have an injury league table, like a height league table and a weight of player league table, and an age league table. Oh and then we could do one based on points and goals.

Still there are worries. The News of the World today says that we are going to sell Cesc next summer. The Lord Wenger says, “We are not in a weak financial position, we don’t need to sell anybody. Cesc has always been very committed, this is his sixth year, what he wants is to win trophies for the Club.”

And now on to Celtic Park. 60,000 but not always as noisy as you might expect. As for the score, I was planning to do a series called “All Tomorrow’s Parties” (named of course after the Velvet Underground song) just like on saturday morning, giving the score of each game before it happened. But having got the first one so right I wonder if I can do it anymore.

But you don’t write blogs to hide behind the cushions, so I’ll consult the crystal whatnots and see what the score is going to be and then let you know before the game.

Don’t forget to go back and re-read the first “All Tomorrow’s Parties“ – the greatest triumph in the history of Untold Arsenal.

PS: Seen any backtracking from the Doomsayers yet?

(c) Tony Attwood 2009 – read it all again in half an hour under someone else’s name on Team Talk.