There are three things I am no longer prepared to tolerate about Arsenal freezing at the sight of Manchester City’s luxury juggernaut racing past.
The ‘Bottle Man’ Phenomenon
The first is the emergence of “Bottle Man”. Last season, this odd chap apparently told the Arsenal physios his son was thirsty. They gave him a bottle of water. A normal person would have let their son drink it, recycled it, or lost it under a car seat with the rest of society’s abandoned plastic. Not Bottle Man! He kept it in his house for over a year, presumably with several thousand carrier bags “that might come in handy”. Then, with the Sky cameras upon him, he repaid the Arsenal medical staff’s kindness by pretending to choke on it repeatedly. He says drinks firms now want to use him for marketing, but give it a few months and he’ll be in a whimsical Paddy Power advert, doing brave self-deprecating comedy about his own lame viral fame. Failing that, he could be a mystery guest on Would I Lie To You? “At 57 years old, I went viral by pretending to repeatedly choke on a plastic bottle I had kept in my house for more than a year.” That can’t possibly be true, Rob.
Pep Guardiola’s Spending Power
The second thing requiring urgent remedy is the creamy devotion shown by every writer, pundit, podcast host and tactics-thread mystic towards Pep Guardiola, a man whose grand strategic answer to poor form is often: “Could someone please buy me another £150million of footballers?” We are forever invited to marvel at Pep’s ability to see the game on a higher astral plane, but when the results start to wobble, the masterplan does tend to look suspiciously like what any 12-year-old would do on Football Manager: buy Semenyo, buy Guehi, press continue.
Arsenal’s Need for Attacking Intent
And finally, Arsenal. We saw Declan Rice shaking his head and mouthing: “It’s not done.” Stirring stuff, but at some point, these sentiments do need to make the perilous journey from lips to pitch. Because whenever Mikel Arteta promises FIRE, what Arsenal often produce is the sort of safety-first, risk-managed, clipboard-approved football that looks as if it has been assembled by a committee of compliance officers. Enough now with that handbrake. Enough with the clever rotations. Arsenal do not need to win an engineering award – they need goals. Lots of them.
