Arsenal America

Little did the Roma players know that when they started their Champion’s league Group B match last night in Spain that the entire Valencia back four had been replaced by Man City defenders on loan from Kevin Keegan for the first half only. Valencia’s first half performance yesterday was so bad that it ranked with Arsenal’s performance this year in the Premiership against Man U and Fulham’s dismal showing against Burnley in the Cup last night.

Valencia blew a perfect chance to take an unstoppable lead in our group and almost guarantee a quarter final spot for themselves. The Valencia players this morning are battered , bruised and their legs are showing off a brand new shade of purple. This has happened not because of their valiant effort on the football pitch in a bitter scrap with their Italian rivals but because they haven’t stopped kicking themselves since the game ended in a 0-3 drubbing at home to a team that had nil points from the Luxemburg judge up until yesterday.

Valencia are riding high in the Spanish League and have been one of the most consistent teams in the Champions League during the past five years . So what happened? ” Hold on one minute!” , I hear you say. “Why is Rob spending so much time talking about Valencia the morning after his beloved Arsenal played a crucial game against Ajax?”

The truth is I am very angry. I am angry at Arsenal Travel for booking ten Arsenal players on the wrong flight Sunday morning out of Stanstead Airport. (Bergkamp drove). Apparently according to my unofficial sources the Arsenal team that played Man City on Saturday took a flight to Barbados first thing Sunday morning to celebrate and ten look-alikes showed up for the flight to Amsterdam and took to the field against Ajax. This seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me as to why Arsenal didn’t show up at all for the game last night.

I was resigned to listening to the game on the radio here at work. Many friends had gone to the game in Holland. Some had flown, some had trained it, many has bussed it. I received a really bizarre e-mail on Tuesday from a deranged Gooner who proudly announced the departure at 5 A.M of four middle aged, happily married professionals in a vintage Bristol. I imagine it was the only one parked on the streets of Amsterdam last night. I would wage a small bet that it is the only one to have ever been parked on the streets of Amsterdam. I would be interested if anyone knows of any other vintage Bristol sightings in Amsterdam? (windows with red lights on excluded, i’m not talking about those Bristols).

After ten minutes of continuous non coverage on Arsenal radio I decided to put my job in jeopardy and ran out of the office screaming “the boys need me I’m out of here. If you need me my cell’s on.” Apart from my two colleagues on either side of me no one knew what “the boys need me” meant. My boss assumed that something was wrong at home. Some contemplated mob connections and one chap accused me of meddling with underage males. This morning when I got to work my boss asked me if everything was ok. My positive response was followed by “I’m pleased because I was concerned about you yesterday because you abruptly left the office in a panic.” He obviously has never followed a football team.

I am 7 blocks from Clancy’s. I ran out of my office building, shoving grown men aside loudly muttering “excuse me, can I get through, out of my way,” and throwing in an occasional “beep beep.” The eight minutes from the office to the pub was agonizing to say the least. Visions of ” we are three nil down” to euphoria of sneaking in two away goals crossed my mind. I arrived at Clancy’s ,burst through the door ,missed paying the 10 dollar cover charge and yelled out “any score , any score?”

Faster than a rabbit being chased by a lawnmower I was dragged back to the front door by a Setanta rep who very quickly extracted 10 dollars from me and then carried on reading her book. I looked for “Loic The Frenchman” but his usual spot was occupied by an unknown gooner. I’m beginning to think that Loic doesn’t exist, that I actually made him up for this column and that he represents part of my alter ego.

Clancy’s looked odd. Overweight, smelly, beer drinking, butt smoking middle aged men had been replaced by 6 foot 2 blue eyed, blond giants also with red and white scarves on. There were clogs hanging on the wall and chunks of Edam cheese lying on plates. Men in Lederhosen were doing a jig on a table and Bass had been replaced by Heineken on tap at the bar. Have you ever heard anyone speak Dutch before? How on earth do these people learn to speak English? Dutch and English are as much alike as Mother Teresa and Stalin. The Dutch must have been pretty evil party animals pre Tower of Babel days because the good Lord in dishing out languages as punishment sure gave the Dutch the toilet cleaning equivalent of dialects.

Where were the Gooners? I ventured to the back dining area and finally found some familiar faces. The game was half way through the first half and the atmosphere in Clancy’s resembled Highbury on a Tuesday night with buckets of rain coming down against Huddersfield in the second round of the inter toto cup. I couldn’t believe how bad the game was and how awful Arsenal were. Everyone in the bar was in a state of shock. Most had witnessed the drubbing of Man City and were expecting at the very least some effort from the Gunners. The players had a look of disinterest written on their face and contagiously executed by their feet. We looked a shadow of the Arsenal we have come to expect and demand. Even Wenger arrived back to the bench 10 minutes late for the second half. I’ve read that he is so obsessed with football that he forgets what day of the week it is. After watching the first half of imitation football last night he completely forgot that a game was going on until someone woke him up in the changing room. Without any sense of urgency from the boys and no Ajax goals to spring them to life a 0-0 draw was always on the cards . Without the helping hand of Man City lending their defense to Valencia for 45 minutes we would be almost out of the Champions League. We should be ok against Charlton on Sunday as the boys should be well rested after their trip to Barbados.