Our Boy in the Clock End
By Nick MacWilliam
The season is young but most people have already written Arsenal out of the title race.
The Yanks and the Russians are both looking formidable at the top of the table, while Arsenal are already twelve points down at the time of writing (with a game in hand), and apparently lacking the necessary grit, steel, or any of those other traits that are valued so highly by people who really should know better (Sky Sports pundits, Times journalists etc), Arsenal, it seems, are akin to a troupe of ballet dancers attempting to negotiate closing time on Halifax High Street: a place so hardy that even goalkeepers of feisty northern teams get their eyebrows chewed off when they venture within its feral borders.
Why do some of those in the press seem to revel in the fact that Arsenal sometimes struggle against more physical (ie dirty) teams? These same ‘experts’ then moan that the Premiership is becoming a tedious affair. In that case, why celebrate force over artistry? My theory is this: the England team is useless. Arsenal have very few English players. Therefore, every time that Arsenal lose to a bunch of unskillful hoof ‘n’ elbow merchants is a victory for Ing-er-land against all those sneaky foreigners who have humiliated the national team by actually having the gall to be far better at football. Don’t all these garlic-munching, surrender monkeys know that the game was invented on this island?
So while most of the country squeals in delight as some Mackem moron shatters the ankle of a talented young Frenchman, the Arsenal continue to do things the only way they know how: by killing teams with the slickest, sickest attacking football around. Of course, it doesn’t always work and we get frustrated at the team’s inability to turn technical superiority into actual wins. Once again, it’s been a recurring theme this season, but there’s no doubt that there’s been a big improvement. Whereas last season Arsenal’s many failures in the league were usually down to a flimsiness similar to that of a house of cards under a Heathrow flight path, the main problem so far this time has been one of cow’s arses and banjos. With Henry not quite reaching his usual God-like standards of creation and destruction, they’ve tended to struggle at times in front of the big, white, netty thing. Hopefully, it’s just a phase they’re going through.
Most of the boys have given their all up until now and their effort can’t be faulted, unlike last time round when too many players were seemingly content to pick up their paycheck without getting their shorts dirty. Gallas has brought strength and experience to what would otherwise be a crèche of a defence, in which Eboue continues to defy previously accepted scientific opinion on the endurance limits of the human body. In the middle, Rosicky looks class, Fabregas and Hleb are like a pair of puppet masters, and Gilberto’s carried the water in his usual reliable way. Up front, Van Persie seems to have grown up at last, Adebayor, while being unable to shoot (a slight drawback in a striker) is made of the right stuff, and, of course, there’s Theo. Have I forgotten anyone? Oh yes…
Last, but by no means least, the official Boy In The Clock End player of the year for 2006 (everyone else does it, so why not?). Cue drumroll… Kolo Toure. Without doubt, Arsenal’s most consistent and committed player of the last twelve months. It’s been a pleasure watching him week in, week out. The man. Sorry, Jens.
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