London Calling

One of the late Bill Shankleys’ most repeated quote is the one about football being more important than life and death. When things are going well it seems so appropriate, but then again there are times when the quote seems stupid and last week was one of them.

I have a very dear and special friend up here who I’ve been promising to take to a football match for a while and a trip to Sunderland with a five pound ticket seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So on Tuesday afternoon I drove round to hers and the plan was she was going to make us something to eat, then we were going to get the metro down to Sunderland.

The other week I had to rush back to Newcastle after a game and one of the reasons was that her Dad had been in a serious car crash and was in a coma. As she was cooking I heard a muffled scream from the kitchen and ran through to find her slumped on the floor sobbing with her phone in her hand. Although he had seemed to be improving quite well he had been rushed back into hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival. There was nothing I could really do except hug her and let her sob.

Now football is very important to me, I wouldn’t waste hours travelling to games if it wasn’t, but there are more important thing in life and there was absolutely no way I was going to leave her ‘just’ to see a football game. I’ll admit I thought of putting the radio on to listen to the game, but it was just a passing thought. In fact I didn’t even know that we’d won the game until we saw the goals on the local news the next day.

Apart from the goals I know just about nothing about the game other than reports I’ve read but one thing I do know is that winning is a habit and the younger these guys get that habit the better. It was good for van Persie to get a couple as well. Personally I don’t see him as a starter yet, more as an impact player from the bench, but it’ll come and at least he can hit a spot kick without his leg going numb (sorry Bobby!).

One other thing that should be mentioned is the low ticket prices (£5 for adults and £1 for kids). The home club is always (quite rightly) lauded when it reduces ticket prices for cup games but the away teams are never congratulated when they should be. Because of the way monies are distributed from cup games the prices can only be reduced if both clubs agree to it. An example is the Liverpool v Barnet game where Liverpool wanted to reduce prices but Barnet refused (although in their case it’s understandable). So well done Arsenal for agreeing to the reduction.

Saturday and the spuds. Jazz was still in a state so I didn’t get to the pub to watch it so I’m afraid (again) I don’t know that much about the actual match, but I do know that it’s now 13 games since the scum beat us. By all accounts we finished the game by far the stronger and it must have been a blow to the goat botherers at the lane that despite their latest new dawn they still couldn’t get three points off us (and doesn’t Bobby love playing at the lane!).

I really detest them. As far as I’m concerned supporting Arsenal goes absolutely hand in hand with hating the scum. In fact I get really annoyed when I see polls on Arsenal sites about ‘most hated club’ and the mancs and chavs are getting more votes than the scum! It’s wrong. Love Arsenal, hate scum. St Totteringham day (the day when they can’t catch us in the league) might be a bit later this year than the last few but it’ll come and despite their start I’ll be amazed if they get into the Champions league, more likely they’ll sneak into the UEFA cup. Oh how I’d love to see them get relegated again…

Lee Dixon is appearing fairly regularly on Match of the Day these days and on Saturday he was talking about the type of free kicks that fly across the box and straight into the corner without a touch. He’d been chatting to Dave Seaman about them and his answer was quite interesting. He said that as the ball came over your mind starts playing tricks on you. You can’t go for it because there are so many heads near it and you can’t cover the corner because you’re expecting someone to get a touch. In the end you almost hope someone will connect so you can make a save rather than it going through.

Personally, whilst it’s not as easy as it sounds, I think the only way to defend these free kicks is by defending a very high line so that the keeper can get a free catch on it. Mind you for that to work the defenders have to trust the lino to get it right which is probably the biggest problem!

Well, not a lot of ‘first hand’ stories for you this week but I’m back on the road for Sparta and Sunderland so normal service will be resumed next week.

Come on you Red(currant)s!