Andy's Glasses

… about Mesut Ozil.

Not: because he earns 340k per (fucking!!!!) week and doesn’t play at all. (Arsenal’s problem is my joy and pleasure).
Not: because he’s an inflammatory fucker who left the German team due to alleged ‘racism’ after he posed in a photo with President Erdoğan, the horrendous, undemocratic, abusive, restrictive, nasty, shitty boss of Turkey. Germans? Racist? Never heard that one before.
Not: because he has a reputation for footballing excellence which is only ever deployed against Wigan, Leyton Orient and Shrewsbury, on the domestic front, the Faro Islands, Madagascar and Fiji in internationals. Against any decent team he hides for 90 minutes or until substituted.
Not: because he was either never taught to tackle or feels it beneath a man of his stature (5 foot 3) to deploy such a clumsy and lowly tactic.

But because he just avoided a driving ban.

Was traveling at 97 on the motorway in his G-wagon. To his credit, he admitted his guilt straight away (like he could deny it with 13 speed cameras and 47 policemen witnessing). But then came his ‘mitigating circumstances’.

Firstly, ‘I was thinking in kilometres, not miles’. I mean… I mean… how is that a fucking excuse? ‘I’m too stupid to realise that Luton is part of England and not in the Sudetenland’.

Secondly, that he ‘needs his car for work every day’. Why? He doesn’t play football any more, why does he need to be there?

Thirdly, that he’d otherwise have to use public transport and with coronavirus…
Like for 17 million quid a year, he can’t afford an Uber? In fact in its current state he could probably afford to buy Transport for London. Save the tax-payer a fortune.

And lastly, that he has a non-driving wife and a little baby. That was when the judge started tearing up and asked for the Kleenex. Just before fining him £1000. Holy shit! A thousand (English, in case Mesut was wondering) pounds!!! No ban, a few points and a grand.

He should be imprisoned. In Germany, after we deport him. Or better still, in Turkey. For his very own Midnight Express experience.

Does make you wonder though, in those lovely moments when considering Arsenal’s results and corresponding league position, why they don’t actually try playing their most expensive player. Just, like, for, kind’a, 10 minutes. See how it goes. It really couldn’t make things any worse, could it?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

It’s deal day. For some, fairly arbitrary it must be said, reason, today is deal or no deal day for Brexit. Either we skulk away into self-imposed isolation never to eat a croissant again, or we skulk away into self-imposed isolation eating croissants which cost £320 and can only be made with produce sourced at a fair (European Union) price, baked by (European Union) approved bakers whose contract of employment has been ratified by some nonce from Belgium. Or a tosser from Latvia. Obviously the insulting of Europeans will have to stop as from December 31st if we do get ‘a deal’. In case of war.

I don’t know why tomorrow is too late when, for my money (and it is MY FUCKING MONEY!!!, and yours), all this deal avoidance could have taken place any time within the last 3 years at least giving transport companies the time to get 426 lorries into the queue at Dover and to build a few more shipping containers, which are in short supply where they’re needed (ie: China) whilst they’re stockpiled in every British port, empty.

Here’s a Christmas quiz for you. You have 19 minutes to complete it:
Make a sentence which must include these words and phrases, and hand it in at your local Coronavirus test centre before Tuesday at noon.

Boris
Brewery
Piss up
If his life depended on it
Couldn’t
Fucking (x3, at least)

Neatness WILL count towards your final mark in the event of a tie-break.

There’s no way we will get any deal whatsoever, even one not worth having. It would be politically suicidal for Boris to agree to anything whatsoever which might be construed as ‘giving up our sovereignty’, however minor such sacrifice might be. Because he and his band of far righters have always and only really wanted simple and total dislocation. The rest was so much posturing and appeasing to the 49% of us who thought leaving to be the most stupid thing since… since Chamberlain thought Hitler might get better with time.

I don’t ever go fishing. It’s boring. I leave my fishing to the French. Who love it so much that 85% of fishes caught in UK waters are eaten in Paris and Toulouse, Montpellier and Biarritz. Presently, and for a further 15 days, they pay us nothing for this privilege. But as of 1st of Jan we can charge them what they want. Cod and… chips, peas, mash, cod and everything will be off the menus and they’ll just have to eat more horses instead. Fucking savages.

Because to keep the fishing rights they need to give us trade agreements. Which they’re happy to do, as long as every box in every trade, for every worker and company and every deal, is according to strict EU terms. If not, for now and into an unlimited future, we may be liable for tariffs and fines imposed. Motherfuckers.

And, much as I’d love to blame it on that little shit Macron, on the big lump Merkel, on Barniers, Von Der whassername and all. I actually think this one’s on Boris. Who, despite making unlimited noises for 36 months, has never wanted any deal worthy of the name.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Here’s some breaking news!!! If you bang your head repeatedly against a really hard object (brick wall, wooden floor, heavy old football, car door, someone’s fist or an 18 stone prop forward), its going to fuck up your head. Holy shit!!! Who’d’a known that????

I’m not making light of head injuries, they are horrible. And for those suffering from long term concussive blows, like boxers, like footballers and certainly like rugby players, the future is not looking great.

This week Kenny Sansom has been confirmed with Alzheimer’s. A footballer, even though he only played for Arsenal. Possibly just ‘random’, because at about 60 there is a percentage of the general population who do develop this horrible disease. But coming after Geoff Astle and Jackie Charlton and now brother Bobby, a pattern starts to emerge which is somewhat at odds with expected probabilities.

Boxing has long been under scrutiny, as should any sport where ‘victory’ comes in the form of a serious concussion. What we call ‘a knockout’.

And now rugby player (and brilliant World Cup winner) Steve Thompson has been diagnosed at 42 years of age, with ‘early onset dementia’. Probably caused by Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is, basically, getting beaten around the head every day for several decades. The poor man now has no recollection whatsoever of that glorious day in 2003 when he, Johnny Wilkinson, Matt Dawson and me (vital role in my lounge) won that World Cup final in Australia.

What’s doubly cruel is that so many old Spurs players can still remember every match, every loss, every tragic disappointment and every failure over entire careers.

But rugby has ‘beefed up’. No more 5 foot 9, 10 stone weaklings. Only BIG boys need apply. Heavyweights but blessed with lightweight speed. Thus tackles now involve earth-shaking collisions at amazing speeds. The scrum has been softened in that no longer do the front rows ‘engage’ with a mighty fucking crash. But still… but still…

In America the NFL suffered a massive class action lawsuit about ‘neglect’ of players who ended up permanently injured or brain-damaged. But that’s America. Litigation Central. Cynics (errrr… that’ll be me then) can’t help wondering whether those players would have heeded health warnings before they signed their multi-million pound a year contracts to play.

Rugby is not a rich sport like Gridiron. And if it changed sufficiently to remove injury potential it would no longer be rugby. Same with boxing. And this is not America where someone is always ‘to blame’. No-one signs up to early onset dementia, it is possibly the worst thing ever. But similarly, no-one plays top level rugby without appreciating its inherent dangers.

I had lunch one day with Ledley King, one of the Spurs Gods. He’s lovely. And has no knees left, so to speak of. No cartilage in any knee-like region. He’ll doubtless be plagued and debilitated by this more with each and every year. But would he sue? Sue Spurs? Sue the League?? No. Because he chose to play and chose to continue playing when any common sense would have dictated otherwise. His choice. Bless him.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Look, I never wanted to be a tv critic, but as this dire, dreadful, despicable disease destroys and devastates, causing death and destruction and… diarrhea? (sorry, needed a ‘d’ word), then I’m given time to observe televisual entertainment, provided for the masses because its cheaper than giving us all drugs, in a way I’d never previously had time for. 

And our latest ‘fix’, now that all the marrying Australians have divorced each other, was Queen’s Gambit.  Have you seen? If you haven’t, then put down your phone/pad/pc/sexbot right now and watch it. Because there’s never been a better little series, ever, in the entire history of… of Netflix. And other than Match of the Day, on all of tv, ever!! 

Its about a girl. That’s controversial in itself. I normally only watch programs with boy heroes. Yet this girl is controversial. Because…  (pause for drama) she plays chess!!! Which, apparently, in the late 1950s and early 60s, women weren’t allowed to do. At least, weren’t encouraged to do. Obviously due to biological constraints and differences. Rooks can be heavy. Or due to social standards and appropriate behaviour as bishops can be phallic (ever seen The Thomas Crown Affair???). Or possibly due to the other biological fact that women aren’t really clever enough to be involved in such cerebral activity. I’m makin’ no judgments, just sayin’ like they did in 1961. 

The girl is definitely odd. But her oddness just grows on you throughout the series until you’re truly madly deeply in love with her. Even when she takes a knight with her pawn when she should have exchanged queens. But this isn’t about chess. Although, its all about chess. Because its about attitudes, its about amazing fashion, wonderful cars, superb cities (although according mein Berliner daughter: ‘it was all filmed in Berlin!’) and it definitely about the revenge of the woman scorned. Scorned by her parents, by society and by her own sheer weirdness. OMG its wonderful. 

But as its finished I have to be thinking forward. Like a shark, I must keep on moving. Well, keep on changing channel, possibly. Movement optional. And I want to see the Tottenham documentary on Amazon. Which I admit, for any ‘normal’ person, switching to a tv network that is installed on their tv, would not be a massive problem. Yet, for a superstar techno-spaz, it can be challenging. But I got there in the end. And in Tottenham  Hotspur; all or nothing, I think I’ve found my next big love. Yes, I am that fickle. 

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When Mauricio Pochettino was sacked by Spurs I was devastated. And later, that very same day, when Jose Morinho was appointed new manager, I was… even more devastated. Distraught. It was ‘the worst day of my life’ (pre-covid). It was ‘the end’.

Well, ‘the end’ ended yesterday. And has metamorphasised into a new beginning. As even the most die-hard, stick-in-the-mud, obsessive, resistant-to-change, Spurs-flamboyance devotee (that’ll be me then), has ‘seen the light’. The Morinho light. And now, like the team, like players and fans of all the clubs he has so successfully managed, I’m starting to get it. Because it is working. And never has the Morinho way been exemplified better than it was yesterday against Arsenal. We’d seen it against Manchester City, seen it working well. We endured it against Chelsea. And yesterday the Morinho Method was definitively deployed against Arsenal. Who are either haplessly inept or simply made to look so by a tactician so masterful, and a team so ‘on message’, that if it had been anyone but the Arse I’d have felt embarrassed for them.

Here’s a statistic for you. Remember, only football statistics have any validity. Morinho has managed Premier teams 11 times who have ended with less than 30% possession. And won 9 of those games. Drawn 1, lost 1, if you’re interested.

Thus his preferred method of play is ideally suited for Arsenal. A team who, in every match, have more possession, more shots on goal, more passes, crosses, more fucking EVERTHING, without ever actually scoring a goal. They’re so busy admiring their elegant passing and flowing moves that they can’t actually be worried about something so trivial as ‘end product’.

I described such a method as footballing masturbation when deployed by Man City the other week. Arsenal have elevated it to become the absolute ultimate wankers in the League. Bless ‘em.

Mikel Arteta is obsessed with crossing the ball. That’s all they do. Very un-Arsenal, but that’s his plan. So Arsenal yesterday produced 34 crosses. Better than the 30 last weekend when they also lost. They cross the ball without having any attackers capable of heading it. Spurs 2, then later 3, centrebacks, all big boys, had just no problem clearing every single one.

But the defend, defend, defend plan only works if you can produce something at the other end. Otherwise every game ends up at nil nil like last the Chelsea one. And there is currently no strike pair on the same planet at Son and Kane. Obviously aided and abetted by a host of other talent, but more ‘planet Earth’ talent. Those two turn 1 point into 3, week in, week out. If either gets injured, we’re fucked, but for the time being 30% possession feels like just where I want to be. Oh, and top of the table, I almost forgot (AS IFFFFFF!!!!!!)

Happiest Monday ever

A xxxx

Roald Dahl was an anti Semite. He wasn’t a neo-nazi, wasn’t really politically affiliated at all. Didn’t hold extremist views, wasn’t a ‘white supremicist’, he just didn’t like Jews. Any of them. He didn’t know me, specifically, but he wouldn’t have liked me if he had done. On principle. Not the principle that I’m not a very nice person, but the other one, that I’m a member of ‘that club’. That ‘tribe’.

Oddly, I really like him. As a writer. And having read virtually everything the man wrote, often repeatedly, again and again as the kids (when they were kids) went through their James & the Giant Peach phase, or their Matilda phase, or The Twits, and even through the critical hypersensitivity of knowing the author was an anti Semite, there are no tropes, no references, no allusions to anything of that type in any of his work.

Dahl was no Jeremy Corbyn. Because he admitted openly his dislike of the Chosen People. Whereas Corbyn proclaimed (and is still proclaiming) his innocence whilst doing everything short of nuking Stamford Hill or organising his own pogrom.

The Dahl family have in fact published an apology. Sincere and heart-felt. As this version of Jew-hate was so out of character with a man so brilliant and cuddly. Even though his ‘kids books’ are all exceptionally dark and sinister, they are also exceptionally funny and clever.

The apology is, apparently, buried quite deep in the Roald Dahl website. You have to search quite hard to find it. Adhering to the theory that when something wrong or bad is published, it is a banner headline, but the apology is at the foot page 17, just under the article about the birth of a new panda in Xendong.

Dahl actually stated in an interview that Hitler might have had a point. You really can’t get more antisemitic than that.

But Alexa can.

Yes, everyone’s favourite link to music, news, weather reports and the Chinese secret service has been accused of antisemitism too. And with good reason. Because if you ask her loaded questions about ‘Jews controlling the media’ or ‘the protocols of the elders of Zion’, she will find an answer that google selects for her on the closest available website. Which is often www.nazis-live.com or www.no-bagels-for-me.net. Or she stalks the dark web for extremist right wing answers. Like Donald Trump does.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Alexa’s a bitch. I just wish I could bring myself to hate Roald Dahl, but I find it difficult. Particularly when reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

He remains my absolute favourite anti Semite.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I come to bury the Essix Gels stereotypical image, not to praise it. But while I’m here I might as well clear the air? No. Possibly just use an example of the terrible injustices perpetrated on the maidens (not in any virginal sense, trust me) of that county. Merely to show you how terrible the implications have become so I can tell you how they should and must be banished. So here’s a joke. My favourite- NO, the most awful Essex girl joke, but typical of many.

What does an Essex girl say after sex?
“Do you all play for the same team?”

And that is just terrible! And must be stopped. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary, no less, is breaking with centuries of tradition and changing an entry. Normally, as words change over generations through nuance and context, they simply add. But for Essex Girls they’re actually going to remove the bit that says, basically and in OED-speak, that they’re all slags. Very generous of the OED. They’re probably leaving the bits about whining, dressing as slappers, being thick, stupid and talking loudly, because they’re perfectly acceptable? They’re accurate??

And this is a subject very close to my heart as I grew up in Essex. And as my heart is only about 2 feet from my penis, Essex Girls were that close to my heart for most of my ‘adolescent years’. The OED doesn’t mention the terrible ‘estuary’ accent, the glottal stops, dropped Hs and witch-like cackling but you only need to watch ‘The only way is Essex’ to fully appreciate the nature of the beast. Not that they’re all beasts, lots are real babes. At least until they start speaking.

So whilst this whole topic really is way beneath my normal standards of equality and diversity and positively reeks of misogynistic sexism, for which I can only apologise on behalf on the total bastards who first did the whole ‘Essex girl’ thing, the female inhabitants of my favourite home county, and the one with which my cricketing devotions lie, deserve a better press. A better reputation. A mere mention of your home town should not invite scorn, derision and possibly rape. However earned it might be. Some Essex girls are delightful, demure, puritanical, speak ‘RP’, dress neatly and spend hardly any time sitting in a gutter in Romford with their mates holding their hair back as they vomit.

We must all join ‘snapping the stilleto’, (“snappin’ da stilleh-oh”), the organisation intent on protecting this vulnerable group of women, and make every endeavour to stamp out ‘Essexism’ as I shall now call it. It’s wrong. Like all ‘-isms’. Except perhaps modernism. Dadaism. Whatever.

Je suis Essix girl, innit!!!

A xxxx

I used that title in a pure act of word association. Eton… mess? Eton… nothing. Only ‘mess’ and rifles. Brilliant song by the Jam in about nineteen seventy-something during Paul Weller’s ‘angry phase’. Which has so far lasted for over 40 years, and counting.

Anyway… so as I mentioned previously, Eton have sacked a teacher for offering an alternative ‘perspective’ about sexism in a class about ‘perspectives’. Thus begging the question: why would you have a class in such an illuminating and open, gloves-off kind of paradigm if you then censor it? But this is Eton. Who the fuck knows what they do and why.

The sacked teacher, very contrary (and controversial) to any kind of wokism (immediately elevating him in my eyes) proposed that the patriarchal nature of society and in fact societies, is rooted in pure biology. Holy shit!!!! You can’t say that!!! Your wife’ll beat the crap out’a you for less. Again; he didn’t believe or condone such a sentiment but its kind’a out there and thus should or could be discussed. It’s called attacking a straw man and was there to invite thought and disagreement.

Everyone knows that the ‘biological superiority’ of men begins and ends with throwing a ball and pissing out of car windows (for Dom). That’s it. In some biological traits women are greatly superior. Having babies springs to mind. Engaging in meaningful lesbianism is another. And ironing. I’m not prepared to talk about football at this juncture in case I get sacked from Eton for doing so.

Having a proper debate is always and only a good thing. Unless discussing something I can’t stand, then I’ll listen to no arguments whatsoever. But otherwise, it is enlightening, it is engaging and it is definitely educational.

But Eton is (apparently? allegedly??) so woke and open minded that its mind is totally closed to anything else. PARTICULARLY, it would appear, where blatant sexism is concerned. Possibly other forms of equality too, but that noble institution has a zero tolerance for such outdated and outmoded and unzeitgeisty thoughts, even just to make a point.

And all this from a college that has never and probably will never admit girls. Which makes the entire episode set my teeth on edge. But in a good way.

Happy Friday

I know, its late, I’ve become very sporadic, but sometimes even I get busy.

A xxxx

Any American people reading this: close the page now. You simply won’t get what follows. (I’d normally include those northern Americans, what they called?… errr… oh yeah, Canada-people, in that generalisation because they share their sports, but the only Canuck likely to read this, actually and controversially, will get it).

Yesterday’s nil-nil draw at Chelsea was brilliant.

There. I’ve said it. A Spurs fan drooling over a goalless draw. I’ve been Morinho-ized. Taken away from my lifelong values of ‘beautiful football at any cost’, of ‘I’d rather lose 4-0 playing with superlative style than draw 1 all as pragmatists’, even ‘but the game needs luxury players, though never more than 6’.

Yet its one thing to have a manager who not only likes to park his bus but more importantly knows precisely how and where it must be parked. It’s quite another to appreciate the genius that is Jose Morinho when you were weened on Jimmy Greaves and Glen Hoddle and Paul Gascoine and David Ginola and a host of ‘mavericks’ who liked to leave the pitch at the end with clean boots.

Frank Lampard grew up, as a player if not totally as a person, under Morinho’s guidance. They know each other. And Lampard’s team are good and score lots of goals, like we normally do. Yet the stalemate endured. Because it was more important to not lose than to win. Not by agreement, not by design, but just out of necessity.

So to the ‘neutrals’ watching the match, it was probably a disappointment that two of the most impressive attacking teams in the country couldn’t find the net between them. But what went on during those 95 minutes was probably much more impressive. The concentration and work required was immense. The desire to push up constantly into walls of defenders. The sheer resilience shown was fantastic. And I say that realising I sound like an Arsenal fan when George Graham was in charge there.

Without getting smug about this, any draw which keeps us top of the table can only be a good thing. For Spurs. For the Premier League. For the world. And beyond.

Bizarrely and unusually for a match between Spurs and Chelsea, it was played in really good spirits. No violence. No brawls. No red cards. Yeah, I missed all that but must look at the big picture here. I’m not saying we could win the league but I’m not saying we can’t. I’m just…

Actually, as I think every day of my life, I’m just happy not to be an Arsenal fan.

Deliriously happy Monday

A xxxx

I love a Prime Minister.

Just, not necessarily this one. But Boris was, in the real world, a journalist and more, a right wing, overly verbose, reactionary, quite eloquent journalist with a penchant for metaphorical references drawn from his degree in classics and his love of history. In other words; he was just made for writing in The Mail. Where you can’t be too right wing or too pretentiously snobby for that rag. So they let him have his own page today. And this, unless some eager sub-editor with a love of Attenborough documentaries penned it, was the ‘heading’. He could have entitled it ‘shit-storm, part 943’, I know I would have. Or even ‘stay calm’ or ‘protect Christmas’ or even ‘Christmas is the new NHS’, but instead he chose to stretch a metaphor invoking beautiful images of animals running free across the African tundra. Because such imagery really resonates with unemployed steel workers from Sunderland. And shielding octogenarians in Croydon.

Boris continues his piece with a reference to the vaccine. ‘Coming to our aid with the morale-boosting, bugle-blasting excitement of Wellington’s Prussian allies on the afternoon of Waterloo’.

Tosser.

I think, in his defence, Boris is stuck in Churchill-land. Someone made that reference and its stuck. So rather than just, kind’a, ‘talking’ to people, he has become Mr Motivator! Mr Uplift!! Mr ‘we’ll fight them on the beaches…’

For future reference, Boris, you can only use metaphors which allude to football or episodes of Britain’s Got Talent. Coronation Street at a push. Otherwise you just sound like some kind of upper class, over-educated, ex-Etonian fat-boy showing off his excessive erudition.

No judgments, just sayin’ is all.

And his old school is not doing so well at the moment either. Eton school sacked a teacher. For being too… well, that’s interesting. Eton has a ‘diversity’ commitment, obviously, they even allow black kids there (only 1) and poor kids (1). But they basically have to pretend to be massively ‘woke’ in all respects. Even though it is very probably the least woke place on the entire planet.

So a teacher put a (covid-era, obvs) video out for those studying ‘perspectives’, a brilliant concept in which they look at established values from (doh) other ‘perspectives’. And this teacher questioned the radical feminist concept of ‘toxic manhood’. Not as a ‘lesson’, not because it’s what he believed, but true to the spirit of ‘perspectives’ he was playing devil’s advocate by questioning the accepted doctrine.

And they sacked him. For being… well, I’m not sure. Not right-on enough. At fucking Eton??? I despair. But then again, desperation seems to be my new norm.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx