Bollocks to Cake

from the factory floor

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Ashburton Grove

Referee:  Mike Dean

Arsenal 0-0 Chelsea    21 April 2012

For the past two seasons, my birthday and the Arsenal tend to mean one thing. Or more specifically, one point. A few seasons back it was a drab nil-nil versus a Man City side clearly uninterested in getting off the bus, so they just parked it in our ground. Last year it was a shambolic display against Spurs, where we dropped a two goal lead and I ended up sharing a slice of the cake the Kaiser brought with some of the spudlings there after spending a good chunk of that match screaming obscenities at them. Not a lot was different this time around, except there was no cake.

I arrived at the Factory for the early kick-off and made my way downstairs, a Dogfish from Liam in hand, to discover about a dozen chavskis huddled around and not an NY Gooner in sight. In trickled Barry, Ed, the Captain, Rashida and Chandler one by one, the last two opting to take in the match upstairs to avoid the chavs. Probably a good idea and had I remembered properly at the time, it was upstairs with Liam when we tonked them 5-3.  We must have used up all the goals in that game.

Chelsea were finding a worrying amount of space in the channels between our center-backs and fullbacks, while the officiating crew was clearly under direction from Mike Dean to flag anything remotely close to an offside for the duration of the match. He also ensured our record of not getting penalties at the Grove remained perfect with a no-call when Cahill took Van Persie down late on. To be fair on him though, neither did he succumb to the ridiculous spate of decisions in Chelsea’s favor by awarding one for the visitors early doors. Still that didn’t stop the chavs on hand from whinging for every possible decision for the full 90 minutes, with a typical lack of self-awareness [says the author with full understanding of the implicit hypocrisy].

Come to that, one bright bulb amongst them, sporting a Yankees hat to go with his Chel$ki kit [how charming] thought it appropriate to dredge up that old chestnut about RVP being a rapist. The dour nature of the match, our lack of energy in the performance, and a number of frustrating crossbar/post ricochets had me in a bit of a state at that moment, and  I began a shouting match with this knob over whether he really meant to say ‘racist.’ I wouldn’t let it drop and it sparked about a 15 minute period of me quite frankly being an unbearable arsehole.

In my defense, I do find it highly irritating that on the one hand you have a man wrongfully accused of rape with no evidence sitting in jail for two weeks, and on the other you have a well-documented cunt like Terry on video mouthing racist epithets to a fellow professional, remaining as yet still untried and will go away with his country to compete in an international tournament this summer.

Any rate, NY Gooners on hand rallied around and tried to calm me down to limited effect, with me regrettably giving Barry some undue abuse. Really sorry about that one, Bazza. As is best in such times, the situation was diffused with some humor. Firstly, Barry pointing out that our problems could stem from having a shit car sponsor like Citroen. I wonder if they come with a permanently engaged handbrake? I pointed out that at least with a name that evokes the word ‘lemon’ they could hardly be accused of false advertising.

Though we looked like getting a goal as the opening period wound down, we entered the break scoreless. Given the opening of the match I thought we might be lucky there. We spent the interval cajoling Chandler and Rashida to join us downstairs, and with a lack of any football worth discussing, resorted to the old fallbacks of Mel Brooks and Monty Python.

The second half started a bit like the first, with Chelsea putting themselves about and looking just about like scoring. I think somewhere around then the announcers, with nothing else to occupy them, began to wax poetic about the state of our pitch, noting the groundskeeper of the year award we received earlier in the week. They probably also mentioned something about the 7 years since our last trophy, no doubt because it is a stipulation of the commentator’s guild, but we didn’t hear it because at last we finally found our singing voices.

“We’ve got the besssssst surface in the league, we’ve got the bessssst surface in the league…”

“It’s green, it’s fast, it’s only natural grass. Our pittchhh our pitttchh”

And our favorite---“it grows on it’s own, it grows on it’s oooooowwwwwnn. Our football pitch, it grows on it’s own.”

It was riveting display of football, all right. Van Persie was trying manfully to pull off another match-winner but it’s clear that the number of games played is catching up with him. Theo as well suffered from such a long uninterrupted run by doing his hamstring with our now customary player-not-wearing-proper-boots-and-slipping moment. He winced, hobbled a bit, and then stayed on, probably because he wanted to do the job properly. He did just that a few minutes later. Done for the season.

He was replaced by Gervinho, soon followed by Diaby for Rosicky [cue Scooby Doo question-sound], and then Dos Santos for the Ox, who had a quiet game. All showed effort but none were effective.
We tried to will them on. Stop looking down at the badge, we'll read it to you. FORWARD! Near the death we probably should have been awared that penalty on the Cahill/Van Persie incident, but given this is the man who skipped like a little girl when Spurs opened the scoring on us in February, you knew it wouldn’t come.

A point in the end, wouldn’t be such a bad thing, especially after Spurs dropped three points at the hands of a former player [usually our thing] and United twice coughed up a two goal advantage [also usually our thing] to re-open the title race. Chelsea remain at arms length, and Newcastle climbed to fourth but have a hell of a run-in. So it’s the Arsenal still in third, and still in control of our own destiny.  Wins against Stoke and Norwich, depending on other results, could achieve what at one point was a dream this season: we just might celebrate St. Totteringham’s Day afterall. 


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