Some of you who have been here since Day One might well remember a little feature we ran way back in August, offering an exclusive look into the propaganda campaign orchestrated by Arsene Wenger to put words into the mouths of all Arsenal fans around the world. Well,after almost 6 months undercover within the organization, our sleeper agent has finally returned from the Emarites with yet another installment which we can exclusively print once again for your benefit. Arsene has hinted at the contents of his weekly Email in his interview with both the BBC and Sky. Please understand that we are not Spurs fans, nor Arsenal haters, and just post what we receive without any editorial bias…
Dear all Arsenal fans,
I wish to let you in on a secret. I have long felt sorry for Tottenham Hotspur, languishing as they do in our North London totalitarian shadow, and thought that after 21 consecutive victories, it was time we ‘threw them a bone,’ to use your common English vernacular. That’s right, we lost on purpose, but only this once and in the most pointless of all competitions. I am telling you all this to ensure that no cracks appear in the armour, and to instill strength in this perceived time of need, as rumours of a crisis at the Emirates ring around the press. This is of course absurd, and you must meet any accusations of this with steely glares and passive aggression, such as leaving offensive notes around the accuser’s house and hiding his wife’s clothes.
Perhaps the most crucial point I wish to impart to you here is to not however, under any circumstances, be gracious in defeat. If anyone is to say that we outplayed, the obvious response is that we still created the better chances and Spurs were simply lucky. Five times. The passing and movement of our attacking players was mesmerizing, and as Manny showed with his late wondergoal, if we wanted to score, we could at any moment.
If this fails to convince anyone, the next line to fall back on is that we fielded a ‘B’ team, despite telling everyone all year that they were all good enough to play in the ‘A’ team. The likes of Gallas, Fabregas, Hleb, Bendtner and Walcott were all told to operate at 20% of their actual ability, as to play any better would have undermined my intent to throw the game. Good old Nikolas (bless him) even went one step further scoring Spurs a goal to keep their confidence up! He is a true professional.
It was in fact this incident that led to Manny’s enthusiastic, not to mention affectionate, congratulations of Nikolas that so many people seem to have mis-interpretated as fighting. They squared up to each other only to hug, and the so-called blood that some might have seen coming from Nikolas’ face was in fact strawberry syrup that Manny had smuggled onto the field, knowing how fond his young Danish friend is of the sweet condiment. They are such lovely boys off the field.
At the end of the day, the Carling Cup is rubbish anyway, and we still have the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Premier League to win. The best reaction to baiting Spurs fans is to simply ask them when the last time they were in the Champions League, and as they try to remember, goad them by saying things like “before your time was it?” and “your grandfather might know” etc. If they ask what that has to do with anything, simply ignore them and walk off.
Finally, a couple of other suggested responses. We were categorically NOT thrown off our game by playing in a stadium with actual crowd noise. Again, such a suggestion is crazy. “If anything, White Hart Lane was too quiet compared to the deafening cauldron of the Emarites,” is a glib rebuttal I suggest. Also, if asked about the number of fans who appeared to be leaving after an hour, I am reliably informed that they were all either rushing off because their wife was going into labour, or hurrying downstairs to the refreshment area where free beer was being distributed by page 3 models having an impromptu wet t-shirt competition.
Until next week.
I remain truly,
A.W.
