Stay together

With the bad blood that Phil Brown has managed to generate between himself and our great football club, Saturday evening's late, late show was a pretty sweet moment. A hugging strangers kind of moment, although as you know, I was with friends and my girlfriend, so I didn't have to resort to that.

How sweet is it to know, then, that Nicklas Bendtner's injury time winner didn't just snatch the points from Hull, it has also resulted in Mr Orange being given his P45? And you have to wonder about the timing of that, don't you? I mean, losing at home to Arsenal is no disgrace. Especially not when the winner's come in injury time and you've had to play for 50+ minutes with ten men, hard enough against most teams, but against the keep ball style of the Arsenal, a very tough ask. So the conclusion I've come to is that Phil Brown was as unpopular with his own board as he is with us and they thought they would let him go through the agony of being taught another lesson in football by the Arse before giving him the boot. Phil, you, your permatan and your headset won't be missed. Maybe Hull will now be able to find a manager who can prepare, you know, a team that can play football, wouldn't that be something?

The point I went to great lengths to try and make yesterday (with an alcohol addled brain) was that whoever you are and wherever you are, your choice of football team can see you form bonds in the most unlikely of circumstances and here we are, with a football team that nobody really believed in (I believed because I live in a state of perpetual blind faith- heavy home defeats excepted) and we are 8 games away from pulling off what would be one of the greatest achievements in our history. Which I think is something we can all agree qualifies as an "unlikely circumstance". Earlier this season, I read something from a poster on Arsenal Mania's forum, saying that there were no players in our team that he liked, there was no fight in them and they didn't have the club in their hearts. Or something like that.

I think we've seen in the way we have responded to the defeat at home to Chelsea that everyone said had killed us in November, the home defeat to Manchester United that we all said had killed us and then that horrific injury to Aaron Ramsey, that these players do care, they do have fight and some of them, not all of them granted, have the club in their hearts. How could you look at the likes of Vermaelen and Sagna and not see fight? Cesc Fabregas and how he has responded to defeat and triumph and not see someone who cares? How do you look at Nick Bendtner's willingness to put himself up to be shot time and time and time again and not see a will to win? Even Gaël Clichy, a player I think, regarded as a nice guy, but not necessarily a leader of men got in on the act as Aaron Ramsey lay prone on the turf, his season in tatters. These boys have got attitude to spare, believe you me.

Speaking of that tackle, I don't want to dwell on it particularly, but I noticed in his column today a comment from Matt "Wenger should apologise to Shawcross" Lawrence that gave a very clear hint as to why he would say something like that, apart from a lack of intelligence, he said: "As impartial as every journalist and pundit should be I have to admit that I've always bloody hated Arsenal."

Less a hint and more a clear indication of the sort of media bias that we have to contend with day in, day out, with an industry infiltrated by countless affiliates of Liverpool football club and Tottenham fans in the press box. Lawrence is another of the poor souls still not recovered from that fateful day, 26th May 1989 and Michael Thomas' last minute league decider.

As I said, I don't want to linger on that, so back to the boys and the bond they have formed this season, Nick Bendtner said it best after the win against Hull;

"If you give up after 80 minutes, you cannot be a player," added Bendtner. "I always believe right until the last minute that we can do it because I've seen it so many times.
"We pass it around, people think it's over and then we score a goal out of nothing."

Two things here; one is that when you keep dragging games out of the fire, it gives you the belief to keep on keeping on, even if it all seems hopeless. Bendtner showed that in reacting to Myhill's spill even before he had made that error. The second thing is that the "ineffectual style" of football a bitter Burnley fan mentioned, after their defeat last week, can be used as a sort of football rope a dope. Pass- pass- pass, defenders get comfortable thinking that the knockout punch is never going to come, then Denilson, or Arshavin, or Vermaelen or whoever it is, launches one from distance and it is completely unexpected. Not that it should be, Arsenal have scored more goals than any other Premier League team from outside the box this season.

Here's to a few more between now and the 9th May and then, hopefully, we can all be friends again.

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