The Secret of Cesc’s Success

Tongue-twisting titles aside, a recent quote from the mini midfield maestro has revealed that there may be hope for all fast-food fatties yet. When recently asked how he likes to relax, Senor Fabregas responded with the following verbals, suggesting that not all footballers are nutrient-shake-drinking, calorie-dodging ladies after all:

"Sometimes on a day off I go to the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. When we play at home, I go there after the game and it's like a doughnut party! Everyone is eating doughnuts inside their cars - it's like a disco!"

No doubt Homer Simpson would be proud of his influence, but one has to fear a little for the Arsenal man’s social life if this Doughnut Disco excites him as much as it appears to. Sure Krispy Kreme’s are pretty banging on a Saturday night, but please Cesc, for the love of God, take advantage of your money and fame already and start sleeping with strippers!

Football Stadium Food

In a recently published survey which collected together data from traveling away team supporters throughout Europe, many sweeping generalizations were made about the quality of club’s grounds and their home supporters. For example, Liverpool fans were voted as the most passionate, while Old Trafford was voted officially the best stadium in Europe. Now I don’t claim to be any kind of expert but how anything other than Munich’s incredible Allianz Arena can take that crown is beyond me…the exterior changes colour for God’s sake! Anyhow, the point is that many of the ‘conclusions’ drawn from this survey are completely worthless, except for one: the crucial matter of which ground in Europe serves the best food.
Obviously no-one expects to be able to buy a steaming hot plate of duck a l’orange with dauphinoise potatoes at half time, but so often the choice is limited to just lukewarm burgers, frankfurters that are still frozen in the middle, indiscriminate ‘meat’ pies who’s fillings often look like they came out of a hospital bin, or if you want to play it safe, single slices of plastic cheese. However, away supporters have now spoken with their digestive tracts to say that officially the best three food services in Europe are, in reverse order…drum roll please…Norwich, Barcelona and Arsenal!

Kudos then to Norwich City, who would be once again enjoying a European tour of destruction, if only UEFA just dropped about their ridiculous obsession with footballing ability and instead started to rank clubs based solely on the quality of their food. However, given Delia Smith’s involvement in the club, and more specifically, involvement in the pie recipes, this is hardly surprising. Apparently the new Rabbit Ravioli-Ragout of Wild Mushrooms-Chicken Consomme-Tarragon Foam Pie, and Tuna Carpaccio-Marscopone Cream-Antichoke Hearts-Ocra-in-a-Cup, took some time to get used to though.

Barcelona keep it simple with simply enormous hot dogs, served up cheap and hot (like their women), while poll-winning Arsenal really do pull out all the stops when it comes to half-time refreshment. Very much from the American school of thought, the Emarites Stadium offers everything from nacho platters to chilli dogs, all served drowning in a variety of flavourless coloured sauces. That’s the way, at S-T-T, we like it, uh huh, uh huh.

Week 1 review, team of the week and awards

Happy Monday, hope everyone had a good weekend reveling in the return of the football season and not talking to any girls whatsoever.

I personally was treated to a trip to the Emarites Stadium to see Arsenal’s first game of the season against Fulham. Now because it is not often on this website that much positive will be said about Arsenal, for personal reasons, (no I’m not a Spurs fan, I just hold grudges) I felt it was necessary to just say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it’s a cracking ground.

Anyway, welcome to the first weekly wrap-up here at STT and rather than just re-iterate what you’ve already read about in three different newspapers and been told by all your Stato-esque friends, our approach intends to be a slightly more irreverent. Ok, so its basically a lot of lists but in these days of probiotics, easily digestible seems to be the way forward…

Premier League Team of the Week (based on OPTA stats, Fantasypremierleague.com ratings and my own expert eye):

Keeper – Tony Warner (excellent throughout, only beaten in the end by two unstoppable finishes)

Defence – Richard Dunne (more rock-like than The Rock watching 1996 action classic ‘The Rock’), Zat Knight (flawless), Michael Duberry (marshaled Ronaldo and Nani expertly despite being more than twice their combined size and in completely the wrong league), Paul McShane (gutsy, even with an early contender for worst haircut of the season)

Midfield – Stevie Gerrard (as good as you’d expect), Salomon Kalou (better than I’ve ever seen him before), Elano (impressive debut), Leon Osman (pick of the bunch in a decent team performance)

Up Top – Obafemi Martins (exxxplosive), Rolando Bianchi (deadly)

Weekly Awards:

Nutmeg of the Week – Torres on Laursen, adding further insult to the hapless Swedish peg-boy

Goal of the Week – Martins’ bicycle kick (speed of shot was officially clocked at over Mach 1). See Paul Scholes’s Ballbag

Whinge of the Week – Gerrard (to win his last minute free-kick when Petrov clearly got the ball and could never get out of the way)

Save of the Week – Villa’s back-up keeper Stuart Taylor clawing Gerrard’s first half shot out of the sky / Friedel slamming his legs shut faster than the Olsen twins at a Jack Nicholson sleepover to keep out Wheater’s late header

Trick of the Week – Man City’s young prodigy Onuoha running the length of the field and then masterfully ‘doing’ two West Ham defenders to set up Giovanni’s clinching strike

Coolest South American of the Week – Roque Santa Cruz, for so many reasons. Just check out the size of that pimp cup. Not to mention the rack on the ugly one

Nearest Lampard came to Contributing…er, of the Week – Mistimed an unnecessary backheel to almost ruin the move for Malouda’s goal

Speculative effort of the Week – Drogba’s shot from just inside the Birmingham half almost embarrassing young keeper Doyle

Most convincingly-bought dummy of the Week – Andy Griffin expertly falls for former teammate Benjani’s stepover in the build-up to the second Pompey goal

Superman of the Week – No really great ‘simulations’ this week, (unless you ask Lawrie Dirty Sanchez Viccarrio) so the award goes to Andy Todd for his cracking diving header to earn Derby their first point of the season

Nickname of the Week – Roy Keane amusingly referring to pint-size hero Michael Chopra as ‘Chops’ and also ‘the fox in the box’

International blow of the Week – Briana Banks in that scene where she fel…wait, no, sorry wrong blog. Seriously though, Rooney breaking his foot again. Someone buy him some steel-enforced boots and tell him to stop playing with rough boys like Dubes and Carvalho

The Do Not Fuck With Me moment of the Week (sponsored by 50 Cent) – Van Persie for shelling his penalty through the roof of the Fulham net and into orbit

The best impression of a horror film extra of the Week – Benni McCarthy

Gaff of the Week – Lehmann obviously. He’s an idiot. Avoided ‘Zero’ status this week only because it ultimately didn’t cost them the points, and because Kitson somehow re-wrote the laws of physics by managing to actually be on the field for less time than I’d last in the sack with the all of Girls Aloud

Paul Gascoigne award for Testicular fortitude / Hero of the Week – Villa’s Gardner taking one for the team and blocking a Gerrard blast with his wedding tackle. Hope he’s cryogenically frozen some swimmers for the future cos surely he’s barren now

Zero of the Week – Kitson; after all the pre-season build-up and expectation, he lasted just 37 seconds on the field after being sent off for a pretty horrendous tackle on Evra, that was bursting with ginger fury. Good contribution Dave

Personal Highlight – Being able to buy a chilli dog at the Emirates…they truly are the nectar of the gods