Arsenal
Confessions of a serial noodle eater and complainer
Who?
By Celine Dion
September 16 2012
After a hard week of complaining about Arsenal, on various social media platforms, it’s often easy to forget that there’s a football match to watch. Nowadays I tend to go to football more for the social element than any belief that I’m watching a glorious chapter unfold in our history, and I might even miss the odd game this season and spend my money on less important things like my wife and children. When you’ve watched seven consecutive seasons flourish then fade away to more or less exactly the same pattern, attending each and every game does tend to lose some of its urgency.
Nevertheless, September is often when Wenger is at his best. The sun is out, the fans are full of hope and expectation (well, some of them) the squad is starting to knit together, and half of it hasn’t had a chance to get injured yet. The transfer window is closed, so the better players cannot try and leave until at least Christmas. I would probably once have said that my favourite part of the football season is May, with the excitement of cup finals and whatnot. But thinking about it, it’s probably September nowadays. Which tells you everything you need to know.
I set off in unusually good spirits for a terminal complainer. I was meeting my brother in law Robert, and as he was extremely late, I treated myself to an enormous plate of assorted meat fried noodles at Wong Kei’s restaurant in Leicester Square. The restaurant has a certain amount of notoriety for having the worst customer service in the Northern Hemisphere (the waiters have been known to shout at people), but I am a miserable individual, so I cannot recommend it highly enough.
For those of you that have not enjoyed assorted meat fried noodles, which I imagine will be nearly all of you, it is a wonderful invention comprising chopped liver, fish balls (that’s congealed balls made of fish, before you ask), squid, duck, cabbage, a kind of unidentifiable white meat loaf, and anything else Wong Kei’s restaurant has lying about in its kitchen. I have been visiting this restaurant for 20 years and in all that time I have never ordered anything else. Feeling very full I then went for a walk along the embankment and spent a diverting half hour looking at some pigeons. Eventually Robert turned up and we made our way to the Emirates stadium.
One pleasing addition to the Arsenal ticketing website over the summer is the possibility of choosing your EXACT seat. So for those like me who prefer to add a further, and completely unnecessary element of masochism to their afternoon, this allows you to choose a seat DIRECTLY next to the away fans, and this was where we were today.
The game often becomes a passing distraction as the afternoon descends into running verbal battles between inebriated individuals, whilst the poor stewards run back and forth trying to stop people climbing over the metal fence and killing each other. I feel I must mention my favourite steward, I do not know her name; although she once told me she comes from Falkirk. Week in week out, this lady runs up and down the steps diffusing furious and often extremely childish disputes between drunken football fans. She does it with good grace and humour. I think she should get some kind of award.
There are two types of away fan, the ones who treat the entire afternoon as a bit of a laugh and a joke, and who you can shake hands with at the end. Then there are the ones who spend the entire afternoon incandescent with rage, screaming incoherently at you, shaking their fists. When the away team is Birmingham City, this can be a little unsettling. But when these people are 17 year olds from Southampton, with quite bad acne, it merely adds to the atmosphere of ribald amusement, especially if your team is 5-1 up and their team is playing like it only just met each other in the changing rooms before the game.
Ah yes, the football, I almost forgot about it. Well, a 6-1 victory is good news in anyone’s language. One of my favourite whinges at the moment, is that the first team is pretty solid looking, although it may not have that many goals in it, but it is desperately short of quality cover. So it was egg on face time really for yours truly, because when you analyse the line up, it was missing several senior players. What is more, the players that performed the best i.e. Gervinho, Gibbs, and then later on Ramsey, are players who certainly have their detractors. Perhaps the happy brigade is going to have the last laugh after all, I thought to myself.
The goals, for those of you who are reading my match report for information about the actual match, were as follows. Firstly Gibbs, profiting from a rather unbalanced looking Southampton back line, burst through, and a couple of Southampton defenders got into a comic mix up on the goal line and walked the ball into the net (It was an own goal. Ed).
Next, we were awarded a free kick outside the box. ‘Ah’ I turned knowingly to my neighbours ‘ Van Persie used to score these, but we haven’t got anyone who can do it now’. Step forward Podolski, our small f*cking German, who did precisely that.
Next, a surprising development. The Southampton defence, standing in a variety of novel positions, allowed Gervinho to basically walk through on the right flank. As people in the Clock End Lower dived for cover, imagine our surprise to see Gervinho’s authoritative effort nearly burst the back of the net.
A bizarre deflection then allowed Gibbs his second own goal assist of the afternoon, and the team went into half time with the game wrapped up. I could make some comments about Chesney’s error for Southampton’s consolation goal, but this would be unfair, as I was in the toilet.
The second half was a bit disappointing. We knocked in a couple more goals. The theme of unlikely heroes continued as Ramsey did everything but score for our fifth, walked into the net by Gervinho, then Walcott put the icing on the cake for those Southampton fans who had stayed till the end (which to be fair was the vast majority), by calmly placing our final effort into the net. Ah yes, a minor gripe for Mr Wenger. Why not put Giroud on, for the last half hour? You’ve spent about 12 million pound on the bloke, he’s feeling under pressure, by your own admission, the away team have more or less packed up and gone home. It was a no brainer. Too late now, never mind.
Anyway, second half meandered to a close; we spent it gently annoying the away fans. My reward, was to be informed that I was a ‘fat bald ****’. No arguing there. Outside the ground, I met another one of my friends, Stuart, who is a Southampton fan. He was in an extremely bad mood. Then it was off to the pub, to meet up with the esteemed editor of this website, and discuss who was to write the match report (me). On the way home, I gave him a lecture on sign making. This was extremely difficult, as by now I had consumed several pints of strong export lager. Later on, whilst I sat eating my own body weight in Kentucky Fried Chicken, I reflected that possibly the only thing I could really complain about, was the fact that I didn’t have anything to complain about.
Still, I’ m sure something will come up. It’s a long season.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:09:19:19:24:47 by Padre Pio.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
I fu(king well hope so!!!!
Good report CD.
Loved that Gervs, Rambo and Gibbsy all played a blinder. Can only bode well if the scratching posts fight back!
Really felt bad for Gibbsy though. He deserved to be credited at least one of those goals.
Good match. Good atmosphere.
Bad effort from Woj on the goal against, and he'll still be kicking himself today when he woke up. So i won't harp on about it. He knows full well he's the only reason we didn't keep a -new record- clean sheet.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:09:16:14:12:43 by Philly the kid.
say it ain't so
[arsenalsigs.blogspot.com]
btw Celine, last season we had Persie take over 150 freekicks and score a mighty single goal off them
A very entertaining read. Southampton will probably be relegated so the win is no surprise. What is is the way City and Utd struggled to demolish them like we did. Maybe we'll give a better account of ourselves this season and it's promising to see Gibbs, Gervinho and Ramsey put in good performances.
And surely after the game you and Boris must have found something to be miserable about to make you happy?
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