Short Round

Over the last nine days we've all been beaten over the head enough with how bad international breaks suck, how the team must bounce back against Southampton at the Emirates this weekend, how much we are looking forward to the returns from injury of Theo and Poldi (among others), who we should be buying in January (does that rumor cycle ever end?). When the biggest news of the break is that Flamini cut the sleeves off his top, that tells you all you need to know.

If you're anything like me, you've just about reached your breaking point while waiting for 10am on Saturday morning. Having been awash in two weeks worth of Interlull dreck and infinitesimally detailed team analysis, how about a little distraction palate cleanser before we reassume our title campaign?

Football as Football

How clever is this? American football logos redesigned in the German, English, Spanish and Italian football logo styles.

Carolina Panthers in the German style (Credit Football as Football - footballasfootball.com)

Shrunken Footballers

Does what it says on the tin: pictures of photomanipulately-diminutive footballers.

Not So BFG (Credit Shrunken Footballers - twitter.com/shrunkenfooty)

Have fun passing some time with those two.

Up the Arsenal. Bring on the weekend!

Alliteration

A wise man once questioned why Lukas Podolski was not seeing more minutes or a regular spot in the starting XI. After the Manchester United tie, a wiser man answered in a studious French accent, "Zat's why, dummee." Lukas looked lethargic and limpy.

It's a chicken-and-the-egg sort of scenario where he won't be match fit until he gets some matches, but won't get matches if he's not fit. Feels a bit Chamakh-y or Arshavin-y. Fortunately for Lukas, the Handsome French Bloke earned that silly red card and the team is without its only out-and-out striker for the time being, so The Boss looks set to hand Poldi the central forward role again this weekend for our match at QPR. I certainly hope that Lukas is able to take better advantage of this opportunity and that the injury he so clearly is carrying will not affect him too badly.

Whither Walcott?

Why not feature Theodore down the middle against a Hoops side with feck all to play for? My money is not only in Theo's pocket, but also on the fact that he spent large swaths of time against Man U just standing around, his goal aside. About that goal: with 12 weeks between goals, at £100,000 per week, it cost us 18.15 billion Indonesian rupiahs (since the club is so interested in that region; I'm not bitter over another summer without seeing our Gunners travel Stateside or anything). Let that sink in for a bit. If you didn't do your job for 12 weeks, could you look forward to receiving a six-figure pay packet every week regardless? Madness. I certainly don't excpect any of our players to score goals every week, but I do expect a player who held the club over a barrel and crowed so loudly about wanting to score goals to find the back of the net more regularly.

Southern Hospitality

On to more positive pursuits. Many have and will write better reviews of the Man U match and previews of the matches ahead. I would like to take some time to instead turn an eye locally and praise our Charleston Gooners. The show of support on hand at Moe's Crosstown Tavern for brunch on Sunday morning was phenomenal. My recollection is that this was our biggest turn out since the first Chelsea match earlier this campaign, which itself set a recent high water mark for Charsenal. We saw many new faces mingling with the more familiar, and we hope to see everyone who attended come back out for the remaining matches of the season.

Shirts

There have been rumblings of getting t-shirts printed with the Charsenal crest on the front and the art deco badge on the back. Would you get one? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook so we can gauge interest!

Cracked Rear View

You win some and you lose some. That’s how I’d describe the Tottenham result in the pragmatic light of the rearview mirror. We came up against an in-form team on their home ground and betrayed our lack of form by crapping the bed in defense. To be fair, Spuds were much less dominant than they appeared by scoring twice in rapid succession. They could easily have fallen victim to the same silly mistakes that we did - if you don’t believe me and haven’t already viewed Gary Neville’s excellent dissection of the North London Derby, give it a look:

For the first 20 minutes we appeared solid but ultimately we chose to play a high, disorganized defensive line and paid for it, full stop. Also, as has happened so frequently this season the usual suspects forgot their shooting boots; more on that in a minute. To say that this result has shifted the balance of power in London is perhaps a bit hasty, what with our 13 league titles, 10 FA Cups, and record 49 domestic games unbeaten streak. Have you ever seen Tottenham win the league?

You win some and you lose some, but then you win some but actually lose some, like in Munich. It’s a rare treat to come to Bayern Munich and not only win but hold the Bavarians goal-less. Much like against AC Milan last campaign, though, we created a situation where even a big win amounted to an aggregate loss by being so porous defensively in the first leg.

This fixture put Wenger into a Catch-22 of sorts. He could have rested most of the first team knowing that it was a dead rubber match in order to prepare for the top 4 fight (Wild, right? Throw a competition match to try and help qualify for said competition next season...). Alternatively, he could have fielded the strongest possible team in the hopes of overturning a 3-away-goal deficit. As intimated in the previous post, my preference would have been for the former. Give the younglings some experience, give the senior squad time to rest and get their handbrakes tuned up for the rest of the season, and let’s get on with the run-in. Either choice would have been frowned upon by one clique of supporters or the other.

Thanks to injured, cup-tied, and “rested” players, what we ended up with was a weird hybrid of these two possibilities, with a memorable but meaningless result as the prize. My hope is that this win will restore a bit of pride and put some fire in bellies to round this campaign out properly, starting with some Swan-hunting at the Liberty on Saturday. Come on you Gunners!

PS: I’m pleased that €hel£ki and Spuds are still in the Who-ropa League (that slight will bite me in the ass when we are in the competition next season), mainly because it offers them more opportunities for weakening and fatigue. I’m a bitter, opportunistic old man.

Interlude On Theo Walcott:

http://espnfc.com/player/_/id/67507/theo-walcott?cc=5901#ui-tabs-2

Young Master Walcott signed da ting on 18 January 2013. Notice anything about his production after the ink dried, particularly when February rolled around? I had to glance at the team sheet periodically during the NLD and remind myself that he was in the starting XI. Perhaps typical. Definitely frustrating.