From Borussia with love: The Swan and only Arshavin

No reviews after the Swansea game and the Dortmund game means that this post will be an eclectic mix of the best of both reviews in the melting pot of a heady concoction that stirs the footballing soul in a delightful pot-pourri of analysis and synthesis resulting in an exciting mixed bag of veritable and multiple proportions. Meaning I am writing two reviews in one post as I have been a lazy bum over the past week. It also gives me the opportunity to make two bad puns in one title that works/fails on multiple levels.

If I were a zonal marker I would consider the Arsenal Swansea game much more interesting in terms of tactics than the Dortmund one because for the first time in quite a long while Arsenal deviated from a clear 4-3-2-1 kind of formation to some weird line up that looked 4-3-3 when Theo wasn't blindly running into corner flags. It looked 4-3-2----------1 when he did run into corner flags. But as an Arsenal fan I still consider the Arsenal Swansea game more interesting for two reasons neither of which involves drawing formations on chalkboards: one, I was at the Emirates (mandatory red card holder mention) and two, we won, after some 23 years I think.

First impressions about the first timers. Arteta compensates in his strength and physicality what he lacks in passing vision and technical quality compared to Cesc. That is not to say he is bad at passing, but just that where he falls a bit short in finding that clever ball he makes up by asserting himself more strongly in the midfield, and that is a quality our midfield has lacked in the past. Mertesacker, I thought, was more jittery than I expected him to be against an opposition like Swansea. With all due respect to them, they are just a promoted team whose strikers you would expect to be put in the pocket by someone as experienced as Merte. He was too often caught by the ball above the defence. He turns around like a sloth after ten pints of beer, and this sloth impersonation could cost us a loth when EPL's pacy roadrunners attack us. Benayoun was active, agile and mobile when he came on late as a sub (read: ran around a lot). 

Arshavin looks like he is returning to his Anfield 4-4 days and put in a good performance along the wings. We have a joke in D7 that Arshavin plays only for the stats and once done he just sulks around. Last year during long spells of the season he was absolutely abysmal. His touch was poor, his tackling was poor, his passing was poor, even his running was below poverty line. But it was during the great depression times that he had the best stats in the team! Some good number of goals and assists. It was like that during the Swansea game. We attacked and we attacked but the goal came out of a goalkeeper error. Their goalkeeper rolled the ball onto one of their defenders who had his back turned towards the ball. The ball bounded off him and fell lightly in front of Arshavin who curled it first time into the net from a tight angle. His stats had improved and he resigned himself to sulking on the left wing. 1-0 to Arsenal.

Not exactly a morale boosting victory, but definitely something that will go under the 'feel good' heading in the team spirit balance sheet. Sheet, that was an accounting metaphor. The other author's Swiss Franc joke has muggufied the blog! Yo momma is so fat she is as fat as Puyol. There, the balance has now been restored.

Next came a trip to Borussia to play against Dortmund, or was it a trip to Dortmund to play against Borussia? Basically, we went to Germany to play against some Germen. And boy were they eine paine in der arse. You don't become champions in Germany just by having truckloads of TV rights money coming just to you like some clubs in liga do. Borussia Dortmund showed their quality. You can understand why Wenger was chasing this 19 year old Mario Gotze, centre midfielder for Dortmund. He was extraordinary on the field that night. His passing and movement is amazing and dare I say almost like Cesc. Gotze was chief provider and playmaker for them and clearly the brain of the team. Almost all of their clear cut chances came from his delicate passes threaded through our defence. He could be a perfect addition to the Arsenal squad  and with many years ahead of him he would be an extremely useful long term signing. My only suspicion is he might have had something to do with the killing of Gandhi. Only time tell.

It did not come us a surprise that we were attacked in waves right from the start. But what did come us a surprise was the resilience with which we defended. It is almost a taboo to commend an excellent defensive performance given the holier-than-thou status attached to 'attacking play' but you can afford to not defend only if you are Barcelona. Then you have Busquets to roll around, Alves to be play act and Pique's ugly face among other things like Messi-get-out-jail-free card. The Arsenal back four deserved praise for having kept the attackers at bay. Mertesacker's Bundesliga experience came of use and with his towering presence at the helm of our defense we looked a lot more brickwally than houseofcardy at the back. Kos was immense and so was Sagna. Gibbs continues to be error prone and it was telling for in the first half most of their chances came from our left. Our goal was all RVP. Class finishing from the captain and an excellent ball from Theo, the only thing that he did in the whole game. In games likes this it is important the team sticks together and defends as a group, and RVP led from the front. He often tracked back lending a helping foot to the midfielders. Song was absolutely awesome. What a terrific defensive midfielder! But for him our back four would have been prised open sooner than later. Their goal came from a volley that, as Pat Rice said, if you had hit the same shot 50 times would have gone to the Z row 50 times. But I suppose they deserved the goal.

Overall, the team looked like it had added a new dimension to its existing technical quality: hard work. I would love to elaborate on that but it is now time to go watch Arsenal Blackburn at a seedy bar nearby. In any case this post has gone on for longer that I wanted it to.Dort mund me saying, but that has become quite a magnum opus of a post.

Gothic Football 2 - Mary Shellecao

La Furia are through to the Euro's after a nailbiting encounter with Castle Liechtenstein (which had to be emptied so it could field an XI). Don't let the cartoon mislead you into googling their line up in search of 10 Franks (and the 1 Brian for that matter, be it grey or white..), it was just there to take advantage of such a deliciously forbidding country name replete with phlegmy 'cht's and thunder-lightning sounds during the pause between pronouncing Lie(phlegm)ten....and stein... Unfortunately, the team (minus photo-shopped frankenstein faces) was alarmingly non-forbidding. Frankly, they sucked. Less appreciable than even the Swiss Franc. Set up shop in the corner and were done in 5 minutes, like a franky. As annoying and irrelevant as a frank-call (clearly time to give up...). For a country that probably has more people than currency notes bearing the name Franc, getting beaten only 6-0 by the reddest hottest teamest in the world right now was quite commendable. Especially when many of them play in the Swiss league and can take their salary to buy an alpine castle instead of sweating their asses off chasing Xavi/Iniesta's shadows. But scoreline apart, Spain ripped this game apart like a Shark rips a Lays packet with neatly defined tear-here marks, or without even...and not necessarily Sharks either, I'm pretty handy with those packets myself... so yea they ripped the game apart.

Not altogether unsurprising funnily enough, given a very strange formation. Even with Torres in the side, Villa used to play just behind him in the hole, not the left wing position he occupies for Barca. Villa was put on the wing without an effective false 9, Mata is better on the left but played right, and Negredo doesn't play too well as a lone striker. While Iniesta pushing back into MF might be necessary as long as useless Arbeloa starts as LB, the MF trio played way too high up to really judge the front 3 decision. Doesnt' mean I didn't judge though! Villa is way too good in the hole to waste on the line!!! (tNwss). Strictly speaking position-wise, he was way off position for both his goals! But barring him and Iniesta, there isn't anyone else on this team who can score from Mata's pass the way he scored his 1st. Spain has too many skillful players sitting on the bench, so it must be tempting to do away with the 4-4-2, but they're still trying to accommodate Torres/Llorente/Negredo on the "plan B" premise. Which is strange considering that their plan A has now become plan Barcelona, who have no plan B (do refrain from saying "hey B stands for Barcelona"...I rejected it as even worse than frank-call, so you should too..).

In other news, Torres still sucks too much to even make bench, Alonso stoically refuses to get sucked into this whole "let's play keep-ball..that too with ground-passes only" bandwagon, Busquets is very naively playing defense all too well to get re-accommodated into MF, and Albiol is forever adding to the huge smirks for us Valencia fans after we talked up a horrrrible error-ridden season as "next Ayala for Che, next Hierro for Spain" and flesh-traded him to Madrid who thought they poached our brightest star!! Slight smirk inhibitor is recent gossip that Valencia might repurchase him :(

P.S If you're wondering why there's no mention about Brazil after Selecao reference in the title, clearly this is the first post you're reading on the blog.. Not just because our titles (and frequently, posts) make absolutely no sense, but also because I wouldn't be caught dead wasting blogspace on that ugly team! A hard decision given we are endeavoring to be a populist blog of the masses (evident from posts about Euro qualifiers, UEFA Cup, Bilbao and Valencia)..

I will have one of that.. and that.. and that.

80million. 1 day to spend. No, that isn't the tagline of Arunachalam 2 starring Rajnikanth but the story of Arsenal's transfer deadline madness. 8-2 has led to a 5-2. 5 players. 2 days. No, that isn't the tagline of  Invictus starring only 5 rugby players playing a 2 day world cup but the story of what Arsenal have managed to achieve in the last couple of days. Let's get cracking with the new arrivals. 

1. A. Santosh: Those who saw the repeated violation of Armand Traore on Sunday would have been more than convinced that Arsenal desperately needed a left back. But knowing that summer is the time Wenger usually decides to put on his best Ebenezer Scrooge behaviour (Arsene, any truth to the rumours linking Arsenal with Hazard? AW: Bah humbug.) I fully expected us to end the transfer season without buying a leftback and instead pin all our hopes on permacrock Gibbs whose ankle injury is as recurring as 1/3. So I have to admit it came as a bit of surprise that we signed Santosh. Preliminary scouting reveals that he has averaged 1 goal per 5 games, which is a bit crazy for a full back. Like any Brazilian (no, not Denilson) worth his samba he is also a bag of fancy tricks and flicks. At 26, he also has some valuable experience but how good an experience provider the Turkish league is remains to be seen. Signing need at that position, signing delivered.

2. Per Moorthysekhar: As many have observed he does look like a stretched out version of Boris Becker. As many have observed he is slow, lumbering and lazy. As one person has observed, he is fvcking useless. But! But he is 6 feet 6 and that makes him the tallest person Arsenal has ever had. Immediately he increases the average height of our defence by about a km which could prove useful when dealing with all those balls from outer space. He is experienced and with numerous appearances (read cannot be bothered to loook up how many) for both club and country he adds a wealth of maturity to the team. He also has excellent leadership qualities (captain of Werder Bremen) and can work well as a part of team, is proactive, has strong analytical and communication skills and also was in the top 2% of successful candidates in German Admission Test. All in all, a step up from the Djourous and Squillacis we have at present.

3. Chu Young Parekh: Chamakh : Football as Fish: Bicycling. When all that a striker in your team can do after coming on to the pitch in a must score game is turn his back to the goal and pass it back to midfield, you know the time has come to buy a cyclist instead of relying on aquatic creatures to pedal. Chamakh when he came was a revelation. He scored numerous (that word again) goals at the start of the last season and won us some important hard fought games. But from the second half of last season he has been piss poor. No touch, no finishing, no hard work. All this has led to us buying Korean captain (leadership qualities: check) Park. Park sounds more like one of Wenger's purchases, an undiscovered gem from Monaco bought on a cheap deal. So as usual let us not hype him up or anything. 30 goals this season sounds about right.

4. Yossi Baraniyan: Our midfield lacked one thing that most midfields have: midfielders. Apart from that everything was okay really. If Yossi had been our only midfielder signing then I would have been rather unimpressed. You don't sell off Cesc and Nasri and replace them with a 31 year old injury prone midfielder. I have seen him play for Liverpool and Chelsea and know that he is classy enough to play in the Arsenal midfield. But he is too much of a Rosicky. Graceful in his passing and movement, but poor in penetration (no TWSS oneself now). He is a decent signing and with players like Wilshere and Ramsey around him he should be able to fit right in with our style of play. A lot depends on his fitness though; if he can stay fit for an entire season that it would be really awesome to watch the linkup between our midfield and attack. Will he be a starter or has the next and our final signing pipped him to the post? Remains to be seen what Wenger will do. Oh, he tweets in hebrew by the way.

5. Mikel Atreya: This was the clincher last night. The deal that took Arsenal's transfer day deadline from being a bit Meh to Woohoo. A deal story that was the stuff of hollywood thrillers (Return of the Transfer Agent). It was on, it was off and with half an hour to go it was on again! At 11.00 PM we managed to get his signature on the dotted line and fax it off to wherever these papers need to be sent. Arteta is no replacement for Cesc or Nasri. But then again read above about what our midfield lacked. I am sure no club in the world would be willing to offload their star quality midfielders for how much ever money on the last day hour of the transfer season. You cannot put a wad of money out in the midfield to play, although I suspect it could be better than Diaby. We had to make do with what we could get, and Arteta was the best we could get. A bit like the transfer season's Gillette. He has years of EPL experience and would not take the proverbial time-to-settle-in-the-fast-paced-EPL-game. He offers something new in the way of free kick and a good shot (something that we will get rid of in his first training session). Apart from all this he also is good quality and has the eye for a good pass. Let us be clear, he is nowhere near what Cesc was and I doubt, barring Wilshere, whether we will ever have another one like him. But Atreya is an improvement to what we put out on 8-2 day and that is reason enough to be confident. Oh, and he surely reduces our ugliness quotient that the other bloggerreader has been going on about.

The good and bad news is that transfer season is over. Proper football without the added trappings of "Kaka to Spurs on Loan" is back on. And that can only be a good thing for this blog. 1 blog 2 readers. No, that isn't the tagline of my sad life.

Bielsalona and the 3-4-3

My earlier Grimm post had waxed hopeful about Barca shifting to a 3-1-3-3 this season. 1st game of the season and that's exactly what they did. So obviously I must be happy.. I am, but only because I was proved right... not because the formation was their next step to galactic domination (which would be impossible anyway since they'd first have to get past ME AAAHHAAHA I AM TH..ok back to the post...). The game itself was quite bad, and I don't mean in a ohmygod it was so one-sided kind of bad...which it was, but that's for another day (a day when EPL fans have a chance to say "well..its Liga after all" without running the risk of me shoving the ManU-Arsenal DVD down their throats, although it'd be a nice change from what EPL fans usually swallow...). That bracket being said, quite a few Liga presidents did go on to say "well..its Liga after all", but that's also for another day (a day when Valencia didn't win incredibly and play incredibly and sit in joint 1st place. On second thoughts, let me rephrase, "that's for never...").

The game was bad for Barca too, they had as much an off-day as a 5-0 result against one of the best sides in Europe would allow. The 3-4-3 has the flexibility to turn talented teams into blindingly attacking teams, and organized teams into solidly compact teams. It turned Barca... into a frog... neither the ones that get kissed by princesses nor the ones that get electrocuted by dastardly iguanas using gullible ferrets, but rather the ones who are outside the purview of the only 2 famous frogs I can reference from pop culture... I trust you get what I mean somehow... They played the 3-1-3-3 that I thought would be awesome, but with Fullback width sacrificed for three tight MFs, they were forced to push Alexis and Pedro out reallllyy wide (the very reason Villa didn't start, which in itself was a transition to non-famous amphibian life forms). Not only did this completely nullify the give-and-go's the front-3 used last year, but also meant 1 MF had to jump into advanced positions beyond the false 9. Surprise surprise, this was Cesc.

Cesc played the exaaact same role Deco played in his first 2 seasons. Hover at the half line and frequently continue runs into the box beyond the forward (not to mention give the ball away 50% of the time, try ambitious through balls or blind lobs just to look smart, and fail miserably). It was after all a time when they played with Ronaldinho and Guily, who offered genuine width and hence needed a Deco, like this Barca 3-4-3 needed a Cesc. A consequence of him in the team was complete erosion of solid possession play in MF. No one had a good game, Iniesta had one of his worst games (before his 1st good pass of the night freed Messi for the goal and got him a 7.5 goal.com rating by default), Thiago struggled to control the pace what with Deco V.2 constantly choosing to surrender possession in pursuit of premature through/high balls, and Alexis was isolated on the wing after having spent last season doing what Villa usually does for Barcelona (a lesson for line-hugging Krasic if he really wants to drive Juve). Even Messi had to play a lot further up the pitch than comfortable, given the 4-man MF behind him and dispersed front line alongside.

Now here's the real belter....ready for this?...Keita....played well (THUMP...that was the sound of you falling off right? right??), he actually did. Goal.com gave him the lowest rating of all the Barca players, but for perhaps the first time in his career he did what a Barca player should and attacked players in possession rather than standing off and tracking, something I thought he couldn't change. He frequently won back possession in a game where they showed none of the intense charging-to-win-back-ball like past year. Overall, while everyone praised this change in tactic and the whole "wow he's so proactive, he's even changing what isn't broke" and Cesc-plaudits for scoring, I really felt this was a big step back from the dazzle they usually display. Even so, I'd rather not be the one to say "I just want things to be the way they were between us...4-3-3"... so if the 3-4-3 is here to stay so as to accommodate the extra man in MF, I'd really love if the width came from the MF 4 rather than the forward 3, like how Argentina used to do it with Sorin and Zanetti playing wingback. So how about Abidal-Sergio-Pique at the back. Thiago/Pedro - Iniesta - Xavi - Alves at MF and Villa - Messi - Pedro/Alexis in front. Cesc can get out his pompoms and help the crowd sing the Blaugrana song (which is for some reason starting to get on my nerves....that god awful ManU pub has ruined football anthems for me for life...)

One last word of ignominy for woeful Villarreal who woke up that morning thinking "aaah what a beautiful day, brush teeth, eat breakfast, enjoy the countryside drive, get raped by Barca, drink beer with friends, party, sleeep... what a beautiful day!" and all conspired to ensure that's exactly the way their day would play out. It was an insult to the incredible team they are, and they most obviously didn't even try, I really hope they reimburse my cable bill for this shameful night the way Arsenal reimbursed their fans... Cani is one of the few trequartistas left in football and he spent his time hugging the touchlines. Rossi and Nilmar play wonderfully off each other and they didn't once exchange a pass, instead skulking on opposite sides of the pitch. Still, Borja and Bruno were amazing and it bodes well for the rest of the season while Gonzalo and Musacchio showed how defenders can defend intelligently and skillfully by effortlessly anticipating and intercepting through-passes.... until there were 1 too many - thanks to a MF that was brutally let down by their front line. But it still is hard to see them challenging for even the runner-up. All up to Los Che now to beat the shit out of Barca/RM and win the league........

Did I mention I'm also now an official Brighter than Have Albert supporter...Did I get that right? Britain and Hove Alpine? Brighton and Hive Album? Bri...OK I give up, some random 2nd division club that Vicente Rodriguez has just joined very philanthropically to single-handedly guide them to the Premiership next year, and then to victory and beyond... I would say 8-2 against Arsenal, but he needs a real challenge...

8-2 Be An Arsenal Fan

That I copied the title from f365.com is irrelevant
That I now feel a little bad for this unfloggable over-dead horse is irreleventer still
That Wenger anyway went ahead and blamed injuries for said over-death is irrelevantest

Now that we've set the boundaries of what can be broached on this post, let's talk about the only thing left, music and movies... But in all seriousness, I used to think the Saw series was the pinnacle of violence on TV, but on August 28th ESPN would better it quite well... For the intended humor with which the game preview was compared with a horror book/movie, there was nothing funny about the horror we had to witness. I can only imagine what people who don't hate Arsenal must be thinking (yes there exists such a species apparently...at least it existed...not sure now).

1. Jenkinson : Hands down the worst fullback I've ever seen. He makes Jonathon Zebina look like Maldini. Fortunately, I was too often distracted by irritating commentators saying "Oh that's a terrible cross, but then he's a defender" "Oh that's terrible defending, but then he was attacking" "Oh he's just standing there, but at least he isn't scoring an own goal" to actively make a voodoo Jenkinson doll and throw it out my 5th floor window. (In hindsight, this explains Koscielny's and Coquelin's play through the first half - 80% of which they spent sprawled on their asses, someone was throwing their voodoo dolls on the floor)

2. Arsenal have a Minimum Ugliness Maintenance Quotient : When Gervinho, Frimpong and Song were out, I thought well but there still is the eyesore called Sagna. Then he called in to work sick, it was obvious God was striking down the ugly. So what does Djorou go and do? Why, Paint his head yellow of course! I wont be too hasty to judge him though, maybe he's actually a natural blonde and was dyeing his hair black all this time out of shame. You might find the notion ridonculous but go back and look at his offside trap, never heard no dumb-blackhead jokes...

3. Ramsey was wasted : He's no Cesc, but he's one of the few Arsenal players who can do basic things like just controlling a pass when marked. So Uncle Wenger thinks Oolala je has no garcon so i veel ask heem to do ze everysing.... For all that commentators criticized the high backline, anyone who's played football would know you have to play a high backline when you have midfielders who collect from deep and then carry into advanced positions, the more dynamic the midfield the higher a defence needs to sit. Considering his backline with a combined age of Rooney's dog (in man-years ofcourse, otherwise it would be an absurd thing to say!) had absolutely no chance of maintaining a highline effectively or recovering once broken, Wenger had to have the sense to play a much more static midfield. But obviously "dynamic" sounds a lot better than "static", quite like how assimilate sounds nicer than gawk, although the latter doesn't really mean anything in this context...or in any context...

4. Walcott still can't grow a moustache : This alone is not reason to want him on the set of a Saw Series, but throw in what a stupid brainless hamster he is, and that he invariably ends up scoring and winning some applause, and I have enough reasons. Actually just 2, but that half-moustache and his pigheaded expression really annoy the hell out of me.

5. Someone should teacher Wenger the French word for "Gym" : In May we saw this same red thug brigade come up against the tiniest team in Europe - Barca (Tommy Lee Jones' gun in MIB anyone?) and we might be tempted to say hey muscle is clearly not all important. Of course maybe Messi is just a tad better than Arshavin, Xavi marginally better than Ramsey, in fact the jury is still out on that one. Arsenal's players : Barca : : Earth : Upsilon Andromeda B. Don't look it up, take it from me its really far. Not a single Arsenal player makes his jersey look tight, in fact all the jerseys look like they're actually made for the Arsenal women's team, who probably eat these guys for breakfast during training everyday. It took all of 4 months for Kun back at Atletico to bulk up from a puny punk to the solid block you see at ManC today... Le Gymnase tres essentiel - good for the heart, great place to pick up chicks (although it might not be the best thing to hear "heyy you're that Arsenal guy who got buttf****d the other night, do you have Cleverley's number!!)

Day 5: A mountain of a Cahill

Not bad at all. As un-expected, transfer rumours have started coming in a bit like Dani Alves. Thick and fast. Encouragingly, not all of them are about Wenger having his eyes on some impoverished French 12-year old. Okay, that sounds bad but you get the idea.

1. Cahill: Hurrah, finally a defender! Wenger confirmed this news yesterday and also added that the figure of 6m that is being bandied by the bigmouthed chairmen of Bolton is way off the mark and that we had in fact bid much more. The player is in his last year of contract and Owen Coyle has himself admitted that Cahill deserves to play in the CL and would be looking to sell if the right bid comes along. All these augur well for us and increase our chances of completing this deal. Cahill would definitely add some much needed physical presence to our back four and provide a backup when the Annual Arsenal Injury Season 2011 kicks off in November.

2. Chu Young: Ha, this story is just killer. Looks like we have stolen Korean captain and striker Chy Young from right under the noses of Lille. Chu Young after agreeing terms with Lille had his first medical done yesterday, but since then he has apparently absconded and gone AWOL. The word is that he has come to London to have a medical with Arsenal after Wenger rang him up and showed interest in signing him. Either he is desperate to join us or he loves having medicals. Either way it is rather curious.

Any Given Sunday the 28th

It's unfortunate Arsenal-ManU games are no longer the eagerly awaited and harshly contested games they used to be. The kind of games even EPL Haters like me would...well.. read about later on news sites (Or on full-moon nights, maybe even watched a few minutes here and there... before disgust and neck ache from following aerial madness drove us to bay the moon for a few hours). Perhaps it is testament to the perception of Arsenal as a mid-table flounderer that the Ars-ManU game has come so early in the season, perhaps there really is "ze conspirare" since no better ruffian sadist team than ManU to kick a team that's down, to flog a dead horse, to skin a deceased feline, to consume an unfertilized hen embryo...or even to beat the shit out of Arsenal (if you're not wondering what the previous actions were about instead of beating Arsenal, you should... Moms don't scare their kids with the Bogey-ManU for nothing...). Some posts back, I'd masticated on the unappetizing possibility that Arsenal were fast overtaking ManU as my most despised team. Nothing like the beginning of a fresh season to quickly regurgitate those thoughts and exorcise any memory that separates the idea of ManU from involuntary retching and spinal fluid leakage.

I used to really like Van Persie, I guess his recently acquired big mouth could be overlooked as too much time spent with Arsene and Wilshere, he and Rosicky are the only players left who play any marginally acceptable form of pretty football. I imagine he must be welcoming the departure of Cesc and Nasri, he is now the undisputed god of this club (not to mention the fact that I always maintained him, Cesc and Nasri are twins... never could tell them apart, at least now people might recognize him on the ball). So while I have the itchy feeling he might nick it in a 1-0 Arsenal win (although the itch might just be a perfunctory warning against thinking so much about EPL... soon I'll start shedding skin and hide from silver bullets), I'm putting my money on 2-0 ManU. My only prayer to god is that Walcott doesn't score...of course if prayers would work, my prayer would actually be that a meteor decimate Old Trafford, both teams, and 70,000 EPL Fans... if Meteor isn't possible, gradual Climate change and disappearing habitat would also be acceptable, if not fiercely contested).

I won't bother going any deeper into stats or strategies or anything useful, no amount of good sense in this post could possibly redeem the initial blasphemy of drawing parallels between a crummy EPL game and the greatest gothic story ever written (Poe and Barker fans can blanch all they want..). In my defence, the Van Helsing movie bastardized and blasphemed it (admittedly in a way all too entertaining to grudge...although it might be alarming I found the byuteeful accents a lot more turning on than Kate in tights...) long before I got here with this blog. I assume the Berbatov-Dracula connections have been drawn a million times before, it is way too obvious to not draw, but has the connection about Dracula arriving in England on a ship called Demeter ever been drawn before HUHH HUHHH???? Not so blasphemous now is it. In related news (verryy related, if you knew I once thought Berbatov quite definitely played Archy in Rock n Rolla), Mark Strong has gone bald!!!!