I have tried not to write. I have.
I tried to collect my thoughts, get over the sick feeling, take the bump in the road and my little bag of vomit from the journey so far, and instead just keep looking ahead to the imagined destination. But then, so far down the line that I have often forgotten that this is meant to be about growth and experience - and one is meant to savour all the components within and around it. I realise that I have never more than fleetingly questioned the competency of the driver.
I want to get off. I want to travel by another method or wait for another vehicle. I can still take in the landscape, just at a different speed. You can all join me. No doubt this driver will still be paid. He will do just fine and can go where he wants with the length of the journey he has taken us all on. But we should not feel sorry for him. He has made up his own route and gone off-road before it was de rigueur. But he refused to countenance the new roads and vehicles coming past and tempting those on board with a faster and more luxurious mode of travel.
Now I am not stupid. I know I am not on my way to paradise. I have paid over the odds for an up market package holiday. Actually scratch that, I am stupid.
Let's talk Arsenal.
On Sky yesterday, they barely spoke about Manchester United as some fairly inept thinkers tried to dissect the remainder of the roadkill that lay before them. It was like watching critics and analysts of the recent riots come up with horrendous and wild theories of the causes. It was not needed. You can see what happened in the game and anyone with a bit of viewing (yes viewing), or spectator experience could tell what was happening.
Arsenal were decimated. They were not tired. They were tactically untrained. The players might as well have been playing table tennis outdoors during a hurricane.
I shall not dwell on the inept performances. Those players are not to blame as they were following instructions by a mad Colonel whose own family long since turned on him. The remaining faithful tried to pass and move. They tried.
Instead, we can look at everything around the players on the pitch. The away fans were staggering, but they were singing for their club, their history (of which Wenger is a massive part), of their heroes. They were singing for the badge and the shirt, not the men and not the manager. They sung to show we are still here, independent of this mess. We are Arsenal. We buy it, we verbalise and contextualise it, we take our disappointments and in the height of summer, like Groundhog Day, revert to excitement and optimism that this coming season could be our year. Except not this year and not this time.
We had the broken sleep of all broken sleep summers. We have lost Henry, Vieira, Overmars, Anelka, Hleb, Flamini and more. We know the insomnia of being a feeder club to bigger ones. This year was no different except that the inner workings of Arsenal Football Club had not been looked after. It was like having a major heart condition, and on the operating table the 'top, top' surgeon (on a whim), decided to do a penis extension and shape the patient's eyebrows.
So Liverpool, Man Utd, Newcastle, Udinese have all proven something to us. With a season that is 5 games old, and began with 2 injuries (Diaby and Wilshere), our squad has injured and indisciplined itself to its bare bones in 1/8 of a season.
Therefore it is down to the manager and the board. We must look at them. The investment made in the Arsenal 'experience' has been second to none. The money spent on Club level and Arsenalization has created a slick, Upper Class lounge feel to a holiday riddled with the runs. We cannot rid ourselves of the dead wood any more than we can the manager. Both are paid too much and have contributed little in the recent past.
We have players on our books who could not get in yesterday's side. Professional ones who commanded several column inches of turgid media lies. Yet they could not play owing to being THAT bad.
So what can the club do? They have no balls, no strength, no heart, no proactivity, no risk. They entrust they running of the empire to a man who deserves help, yet rejects it.
I have called for Wenger's head because it cannot get any worse. Us fans would like to win the league but we can't. We would like to win anything but it is unlikely. But we sure as hell don't want to lose by 8. That is a given. A fucking axiom that the most indignant and impetuous and malicious scumbag would have to work very hard to break.
Who cares who would come next? We are a wealthy and elite club. We will employ someone with skills. Virtually all coaches in the world have tactics except ours. Our pitches will remain excellent. Diets and player fitness won't worsen. The marketing of the club (disgusting), will never cease. What will really go wrong here? Transition, Tony Adams once said, is an excuse. Only if you are a massive club like Man Utd or Barcelona.
What will happen is that Wenger will buy two players. No stars and workhorses who believe in his methods. No big name players will now come because Arsenal are crumbling and everyone knows Wenger has a short time left. We will show 33% fighting spirit and demonstrate in a few games that, in the words of Wesley Snipes, "the sun shines on even a dog's ass some days".
But next year, there will be no new contract. And the management of the management will prove that like our manager, with no plan B, we can sink lower and lower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next manager, (and he has been waiting so patiently for his chance). With no further ado, I give you Pat Rice.
