As you probably all know, I absolutely love my kits! I love my Arsenal kits, I love my Deportivo La Coruna kits (that’s where my Dad’s from) and I love making the kits on my laptop! Here you can see I’ve created the new kits for the 10/11 season so see what you think.
It’s apparent to me that most Arsenal supporters don’t care about England and to be honest I can totally understand why. We haven’t had many English players under Wenger and when he buys English they don’t turn out to be worth it. But we all know that Wenger’s philosophy is if they’re good enough, they’re old enough, and he doesn’t look at where they’re from, just as long as they have what it takes to make it at Arsenal. Also, why would you want to support 11 players (10 players if Walcott’s there) during an international tournament that you would otherwise hate during the Premiership season? It’s a perfectly logical question and I always ask myself that.
But then when England qualified and Walcott was involved I was lapping up all the success from the qualification group and I was well up for seeing Walcott possibly help England to win the tournament. Especially his hat-trick in Croatia. I was in a Spurs pub with my Arsenal shirt on, Walcott printed on the back and I was going MAD! No matter how much I hate all those players, when they come together as England I just support them. Because I’m passionate about football and my country.
Well, what a fucking let down that was!!! Walcott wasn’t even included in the fuckin' 23 man squad and not long before he was axed I had ordered my fuckin' limited edition England shirt. I was gutted. More for the fact that I didn’t think I’d be able to support England as much without a single Arsenal player involved. I got over it and watched all the games with my mates and had a quality time watching them. And when I say I had a quality time, I don’t mean the actual football England played, if you could even call it that, but just getting pissed up with my mates and singing the songs and chanting for 90 minutes. The atmosphere was brilliant.
Another reason why I love supporting England in the big games is because it gives me that knock-out round feeling. That feeling where if you lose, you’re fucking gone. You’re going home. There’s no way back. And that is what football is all about. I feel it for Arsenal in the Champions League and the big games in the Premiership and I feel it for Spain in the World Cup and the 2008 Euro’s. Plus, all my mates are Spurs fans unfortunately so because they’re my mates and I get to support a team with them it feels even better. I'm awlays desperate to support something or someone with my mates and because they're all scumbags (no offence boys) it's quality that we're rivals until we watch England.
Anyway, England were shit. Cappello SHOULD have taken Walcott in my opinion, not that I think he deserved to be there as he was inconsistent during another injury plagued season, but because he would’ve been another brilliant wild card. Lennon deserved to be in the first team as he was very effective for the scumbags down the road for the first half of the season before his bad injury, but if Lennon is ineffective (like he was for the whole fuckin’ tournament), who are you going to bring on? Wright-Phillips? Are you fuckin’ joking? That’s like for like therefore will STILL be ineffective. Joe Cole? Ok, maybe for the games where England have to try play football and not just run round people. Milner (unless he’s already on the field)? Yea, maybe, again for the same reason as Joe Cole, therefore another player that is too similar to make a real change to a game.
Walcott can play in the big games, he’s proved it. Not consistently enough I know, I can admit that, but he’s shown plenty of flashes of pace and precision and on the big stage. He scares defenders and as shown in the Japan and Mexico friendlies teams stick 3, sometimes 4 players on him and shut him out of the game. So when there are 4 players hovering around Theo, USE THE SPACE AVAILABLE PROPERLY AND YOU WIN GAMES!!!
So Theo wasn’t taken, he got a well needed rest and England were shocking and all those players I hate in the Premiership that I supported for England, I hate even more! So that’s what you get for supporting England. NOTHING! Get rid of them all! No more big egos, no more players that are ONLY successful for their clubs. We now need competition for places, make Lennon, Joe Cole, Milner, Walcott & Wright-Phillips compete for ONE place, not just include them all for the sake of it. If Lampard and Gerrard can’t play together, no matter how much they’re fuckin’ paid, get rid of one, better yet, both. Forget Barry, play a different system. Forget Heskey, which was an absolute joke pick, and to be honest, forget Rooney, not a single world cup goal to his name. Use Crouch if you’re gonna take him, use Bent if he’s the second highest English goal scorer, or whatever his stats are, get a team of 11 players and stick to them.
What does the future hold for England? God only knows! BUT, I do like the fact that Capello apparently mentioned Wilshire and Gibbs. This got me thinking, we have a few more youngsters at Arsenal that are English and are good prospects, then it got me thinking deepers, we have LOADS of young, English quality waiting in the wings in the reserves or lower league loan spells.
I will always watch and support England in the major tournaments, even more so with Arsenal players in and I would lov’ it (Kevin Keegan style) if we won England the World Cup at the Emirates and Wembley in 2018, LOV’ IT!!!
If you ask me, I’d say keep him, not just for this season, but until his contract runs out. Seriously! Let him rot on the bench (ok, maybe ‘rot’ is too strong a word, let’s use ‘look beautiful’). Not to spite him, but just to fuck Barcelona over. Cesc can save his well earned pennies and buy out his own contract if he wants, I just don’t want Barca getting their own way. AGAIN! And yes, if you can’t already tell, I am the sort of person that would cut my nose to spite my face. No nonsense mate, regardless of the consequences.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Cesc, I love him! I got his autograph after he won the FA Cup in 2005 and my love for him has grown every day and every season since. His passion fills me with so much confidence that he really does love us and the way he acts is so mature considering he is just under a year older than me! The fact that he’s Spanish, as well, makes me love him even more. Plus just watching him play football is almost as good as... erm... well, it’s better than anything!!! I just hate Barca and I don’t want them getting their way just because they think they can get away with it.
We all know the move is inevitable, and if you don’t, you’re in denial. However, I just want him to give us one, possibly two more seasons, to help us lift a trophy. Because let’s all be honest, we’re better off with him in our team pulling the strings than warming the Barca bench as he does with Spain. And I genuinely believe that he is absolutely desperate to win something with us. I reckon he will probably leave the second we win a major trophy. It’s probably a personal goal of his to end his Arsenal career with a great squad that dominate the Premiership, the Champions League or equal Man Utd’s record of 11 FA Cups.
I personally believe that we’re not that far away from a trophy winning squad, whether it’s the Premiership or Champions League I’m not sure, but I’m confident we’re not that far away from winning something. We’ve already proved that if our squad was larger last season we could’ve possibly coped with the injuries we had. We were in the title race for a lot longer than people believed we could be and we had so many important people missing in big games that I thought we did well considering.
Fabregas is probably at legendary status with Arsenal, if not officially, then in my opinion it’s a definite. And I know that word gets thrown around too often in football but not with me.
With England out of the World Cup I have Spain to follow. And although Fabregas is not being used they’re still doing the business and I think the same will happen if he went to Barcelona. He is a similar sort of player to Xavi so when he becomes too old then that’s when Febregas will probably go! But until then, I hope he stays and helps us achieve things that I haven’t seen Arsenal achieve for a while, TROPHIES!!!
I started this blog towards the end of last season and I never really got into a proper swing of it. I think what happened was I started writing it just as we entered a slump. To be honest, since I started writing this blog (Wolves game, 1-0, Bendtner last minute) I think we only won one game (if you don’t include the Wolves game that we just about scraped anyway) and even that was the very last game against a Fulham side that were just about to contest the Europa League final.
And because Arsenal couldn’t even buy a win I just got fed up of trying to predict games and give my opinion on games that deep down I knew we didn’t stand a chance of winning. Arsenal pretty much make or break my weekend to be honest. If Arsenal win, I’m as happy as a pig in shit, when they lose, I’m as sad as a human in shit! So when Arsenal lose 3 or 4 in a row I just roll up into a ball and don’t leave my bedroom until Monday morning arrives and I gotta take stick from everyone at work. Sometimes when it’s bad I reminisce with old DVDs of the invincibles or the Henry Legend DVD.
Ahh well. It’s all well and good chanting and singing and shouting when you’re winning, it’s what you do and how you act when you lose that’s the most important thing. Similar to when footballers and managers learn more from defeat. That’s what splits the true fans to the ones that are just in it for the glory. Not that anyone is supporting Arsenal for glory at the moment due to the lack of silverware in the last 5 years. Again, ahh well! I don’t care! I’m a Gooner for life!!!
So yea, this is a little taster for what I’ve got coming up next season. It’s probably a worse read than my last few blogs but I don’t care because when I get writing about stuff I just can’t stop. People don’t even read this anyway because I’m scared to put the blog out there. So I’m my only reader and even I’m not fully satisfied. Haha, what a twat!
So now that I’ve explained why my blog disappeared as quick as Hleb’s career the second he left us to warm Barca’s bench, I’m not feeling as guilty anymore! I can now continue my posts that only I read and carry on rambling on about the team I love so dearly!!!
I’ve got more posts coming up so stay tuned.
