The mighty Arsenal. The team I’ve supported since childhood so forgive me a little bias.
Alan Ball, one of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team died today at the age of 61. He was the youngest member of that team and went on to have a 22 year playing career with clubs like Blackpool, Everton, Arsenal and Southampton. He also managed seven clubs including Southampton, Manchester City and Portsmouth in the 1990s.
Alan Ball (third from left, front row) played 177 games for Arsenal between 1971-76 and scored 45 goals, pretty good for a midfielder and though the club didn’t win anything during his time, it wasn’t down to him, the club was just in transition after the high of the 1971 league and cup double.
Below are some clips of Alan Ball scoring for Arsenal during the 1970s.
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Its the big North London derby at White Hart Lane tomorrow lunchtime between Tottenham and Arsenal. Absolutely no love loss with these two clubs and sets of fans, hopefullly there’s only minor skirmishes. If trouble did kickoff I doubt Roger The Nouveau Football Fan (below) would be much help. Here’s hoping for an Arsenal win, I’m going 3-2 now that we’ve started scoring again.
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News coming in this evening that Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein has left the club with immediate effect, which I think is a bit of a disaster for the club and could have a longer term impact.
As well as being vice-chairman, he’s one of the major shareholders in Arsenal, the man in charge of the day to day running of the club, was also vice-chairman of the Football Association until 2006 and is the current chairman of the G14, the group of Europe’s most powerful clubs. David Dein had enormous influence and contacts in all the big decision making processes across European football and that put Arsenal in a strong position.
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In the last ten years the Premiership has attracted some of the world’s best footballers to London through the money the clubs pay their players. Despite the riches some players can’t settle here, Hernan Crespo at Chelsea couldn’t wait to get back to Italy and Arsenal’s Jose Antonio Reyes had about 18 months in London and swears he never wants to come back. Here’s a clip of Arsenal captain Thierry Henry on how London’s worked out for him.
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Arsenal captain Thierry Henry is out injured for the rest of the season, he’s been in and out of the team since the start with various problems and could use a three or four month lay off to come back at his best next season. Here’s a clip of some highlights from his early Arsenal career set to a Thierry Henry Rap. Funny thing about this video is the rap ends three quarters of the way through and it switches to the theme from Scarface for some reason.
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Its in The Sun and that’s about as official as it gets in the UK, the Queen is an Arsenal fan and has been for over 50 years, just like the former Queen Mother who was also a mad Gooner and a big admirer of legendary player Denis Compton who played for Arsenal in the 30s, 40s and 50s and was also one of the greatest English cricketers.
Good to know she appreciates quality football and she must have got a kick out of hosting a reception for the Arsenal team at Buckingham …
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Julio Baptista, Arsenal’s Brazilian player on loan for the season from Real Madrid, seems to be reading from the Jose Antonio Reyes script of blaming the lifestyle in England and the weather for his own lousy form.
Baptista’s nickname is The Beast and he’s a big old boy but he doesn’t have the ability to match his size. Real Madrid realised that and let him come to Arsenal after he couldn’t win a starting spot in a poor Real team. With Arsenal he’s only started eight Premiership games and it would have been less if Henry and Van Persie weren’t injured.
He’s been telling The Times how bad teams in the north of England are and how ‘the weather over here is killing me.
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London has four of the world’s top 25 most valuable football clubs according to a new report form Forbes magazine. Manchester United and Real Madrid are numbers 1 and 2 but even as a fan I was surprised that Arsenal rated as the third most valuable team in the world with a value of $915million.
If they are worth that they missed a trick when building the Emirates stadium, because its been a 60,000 sellout for every match this season and they could easily have filled an 80,000 seat stadium and made almost a million pounds extra a game.
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Came across this rather strange video today featuring present and former Arsenal players Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira, Freddie Ljungberg, Sylvain Wiltord, Emmanuel Petit and Sol Campbell along with a whole roster of other world football stars including Ronaldinho, Zidane, Totti, Cannavaro, Robertos Carlos, Figo and Makelele singing along in English to a song by Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour.
It seems to be for some charity called Love United in support of HIV sufferers, although initially I was worried it was something to do with Manchester United.
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While young English footballers like to spend their off time losing a months salary in poker games or compiling roasting videos with teammates, the Brazilian players at Arsenal have a more musical way of relaxing. Here’s a clip of Gilberto Silva, Julio Baptista and Denilson in an impromtu jam session at home in St Albans, they could have used some drums though.
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