Gunnerrific

Hi. My name is Will. And I’m addicted to Arsenal.

It started the first time I saw an Arsenal game, when Thierry Henry pulled off the goal of the season against Manchester United on September 20th 2000. At that time, it was hard to get your hands on Arsenal because in the States it was still a new thing. There weren’t a lot of places that you could go for an Arsenal fix. Not like today.

Anyways, that feeling I got from that goal was a rush I had to feel again. My eyes rolled back into my head and I just laid back on the floor. Seeing that game is something I’ll never forget, for better or worse. The camera angle at Highbury was unique. the crowd was right there almost on the pitch. And the noise was immense but comforting.

As I said, at the time it was hard to get your hands on Arsenal. There was only one dealer around, and they weren’t reliable. Sometimes you’d get the fix, other times they’d deliver weaker stuff. Like Leicester City. That’s not the good stuff. With Arsenal, when your eyeballs witness a perfectly passed play ending up in a brilliant strike, it’s like having your pupils dilate. Light becomes hard to look at. Your brain races a mile a minute. And you can feel your blood pulsing through your entire body. And all you want is for it to never end.

As time went on, more and more Arsenal games became available. More and more matches were being broadcast live, despite the time difference. I remember the first time I woke up at 4am for a match. That’s when the addiction really hit full steam. If you are out a bar late and then waking up at 4 or 5am for an Arsenal fix, you know you’ve got a problem. But sometimes it’s a problem worth coping with.

Nowadays, Arsenal is easy to come by. Pretty much every match is broadcast live. And when I really need a fix, there’s YouTube and Arsenal TV Online. It’s not quite the same as watching things unfold live, but it gets the job done. I just have to make sure I don’t get caught at work… just stepping out for a quick highlight or two. It helps me concentrate, what can I say.

Sometimes I feel so filth-ridden in this addiction that I have to take a shower at halftime. Then it all sets in again. Don’t judge me, you’ve done it too.

I think my family and friends might cut me off. I keep telling them that if they love me they’ll let me watch whenever I want. And that I just need a little bit more. But they know that after this season, there’s another one right around the corner. My wife knows know that until I get help, I’ll be waking her up with loud cheering at all hours. And that in every single conversation I’ll find a way to bring up football. Hell, every time we go out that Arsenal crest will be somewhere on display. It prevents the shakes from setting in.

Fortunately for me, I’m going to get another fix tomorrow.

Hello.

My brother’s girlfriend has started to use the more-southern pronunciation of terrible as turrible. It’s a great way of saying that something is terrible while simultaneously trying to eek out a laugh at the situation. I think it’s an apt way to describe Arsenal’s performance against Ipswich. It was turrible.

Had Djourou not been playing, the entire squad would be at fault. Save for him the over-all performances were far below average. Fabregas looked like he was not invested in the game at all. Denilson was sloppy and gave up possession regularly. Walcott provided some significant spark through his speed, but he continued to make the wrong decisions when choosing between passing and shooting. Bendtner… not quite sure what he was up to. Chamakh looked promising when he came on, and even pulled off some decent shots. Eboue was unconcerned. I can’t be bothered coming up with negative descriptions for each player, it’s laborious, and you know the story already.

But enough ragging on the team. They know what they did. Arsene surely hasn’t let a performance like that go without a decent helping of criticism aimed at each player. It’s important that they get over this and move on, yadda yadda, blah blah blah. Upwards and onwards so they say.

Rumors continue persist about Upson, who I think would be the best pick-up we could manage. I certainly hope we don’t sign Joleon Lescott. Cahill, sure.

Fortunately this period of 2 games a week is still in full swing. I can’t get enough of watching this side play, even when they are playing terribly. It’s all part of a great story and I can’t wait to see what happens next. As long as its winning.

Come on Arsenal!

So I haven’t written a post in what is pretty much forever in blog years. I thought I would head things off before it got out of hand and I really hit the 1 year mark. Don’t insult me too much, but don’t disappoint me either.

The season has ended in a rather spectacular fashion. We bombed out of the Champion’s League in a nightmare match against a team we know really well, and we are barely scraping by with yet another fourth place league finish. I am really frustrated with this. We are an amazing team and have some good players, but I shouldn’t be that upset… back at the start of the season I had a feeling we were in for this again.

We really didn’t make any significant signings last summer, and we have no real veterans on our team that are well established. I have been, and will continue to be, on the same page with Mr. Wenger when it comes to the notion of breeding young talent into exactly what you want. However, that’s not going to work if you don’t have any all-stars on your team. The closest players we have to that are all players that have gotten their start at Arsenal. I don’t have any faith in a squad that has finished fourth for this many seasons AND has a manager that continually says the team is strong, and he doesn’t need to buy players.

That’s right… Arsene just proclaimed, again, that he won’t be buying any players and that his squad is strong enough. I know of no better example of a broken record. In other shocking news, Dick Cheney disagrees with Obama’s policies and Andy Samberg makes funny music videos that people feel the need to share with each other, over and over again. Now I’m really worried, because he can’t keep saying this every season and expect the board to be happy with it. Maybe if he finally said that 4th place is pretty good, and that finishing there is higher than 16 other teams is also pretty good, it’d be easier to swallow the same medicine. Otherwise, the board simply can’t tolerate this forever.

Anyways, I’m beating a dead horse. I would like to see Arsenal spend a boatload of cash this summer on a boatload of really good players. I think that sums it up.