There are many ways to skin a cat.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean, other than for the sadistic felinaphobes among us? Have you ever skinned a cat? Ever thought about it?? No, can’t say its uppermost in my thoughts most days, but that’s the expression we’re stuck with so, like all good students, we must stick with it until something better comes along. Many ways to eat an aardvark. Many ways to hate Nick Clegg. Many ways to skin Nick Clegg. Many ways to start the universe.

And, of course, there are many ways to play football.

Arsene Wenger, stroppy, aggressive, violent, don’t-fuck-with-me, tough guy manager of Arsenal, has for years condemned teams for ‘not playing properly’, or saying Frenchisms like, ‘ahh, but that’s not football’, normally after a Stoke match. And true, those events can be a touch more orthopedic than regular sport, but that’s not the point. Wenger has always had faith, belief and total commitment to ‘the beautiful game’, to one-touch perfectionism and walking the ball into the net. He’s obsessed with never ever having any kind of ‘plan B’. That beauty will conquer all. That is his philisophie (note the foreign spelling) and it has not been without its successes. In terms of possession, Arsenal lead the league, always. Its what they do. Ok, sometimes its not best productive, like in the Spurs match, which begs the question of what’s the point of all that possession if you don’t do nuffink with it? Its chewing gum. Just goes on and on, is vaguely pleasant for the first half hour, but then just becomes something you do that leads to no satisfaction, no end point, no nuffink.

Chelsea are different. Morinho is different. He’s what we call a ‘pragmatist’. Which is like a ‘pugilist’ but much more so. You simply can’t beat teams like Arsenal (and there’s only really one or two others in the world who play in such a precise, definite and limited way) on their own terms. Which is what Wenger believes should always be the case. You have to find other ways to beat them. Namely; you have to break their rhythmn. You have to stop them passing the ball around so tidily. BUT, you’re not allowed to kill any of them. Which makes it more tricky. And Chelsea walked that fine line yesterday. The line between stopping them and killing them. Cahill almost crossed it, but there again so did Danny Welbeck for the Arse. And on Match of the Day last night, they spent 45 seconds drooling over the sublime skills of Eden Hazard and 7 minutes looking at really really horrible fouls that Chelsea used to ‘break up the play’. And you know what: its football. Every much as when Barcelona pass the ball 7,436 times without intervention.

Then there was Fabregas. Who applied the coup de gras to his old club with a(nother) sublime pass over the top for his new best mate Diego Costa to run on to and (obviously) score. We’ll never know whether (as Arsenal say) Fabregas didn’t want to return to the team wot spawned him and had signed the deal with Chelsea by January. Or as Cesc maintains, that Arsenal didn’t want him back. Either way, I wish he’d come to Spurs.

Talking of which. We won yesterday. Hooray. First for a long time. Deserved, undeserved? Who gives a shit. Not I, that’s for sure. And in highlights we looked great, breaking with speed and movement. The other 86 minutes apparently we weren’t very good. Never mind. One step at a time.

Oh very happy Monday

A xxxx