14.03.2003

Choose Arsenal.
Choose overbearing arrogance.
Choose systematic dirty play and calling it "competitiveness".
Choose the most staged, contrived, up-your-own-arses goal celebrations ever witnessed.
Choose having the ugliest man on earth as your centre-back and the second ugliest as your manager.
Choose winning two championships in eleven seasons and acting like you've won seven in nine.
Choose drawing 99% of your fanbase from the ranks of the suburban English middle classes.
Choose Patrick Vieira whinging about having to play too much football even though he gets six games' rest every season due to suspensions.

Choose paying £9 million for Francis Jeffers.
Choose being "the bank of England club".
Choose Dennis Bergkamp and his carefully-timed elbows into the side of the head.
Choose deliberately disrespecting and belittling the other team by playing keepy-uppy in their half with a few minutes to go.

Choose forcing merchandise vendors out of business because they might deprive you of a couple of hundred quid on match days.

Choose fancying yourselves as better than Real Madrid, then having Auxerre run rings around you at home.
Choose Sol Campbell continually tripping over himself.
Choose turning the sports section of the observer into a Gunners fanzine.
Choose getting away with light or delayed punishments at FA disciplinary hearings because you've had every possible string pulled by David Dein.
Choose a persecution complex nonetheless and never shut up about it. Choose gamesmanship.
Choose embarrassing yourselves in a Renault "va-va-voom" ad and then disgracing yourselves further at the World Cup finals.

Choose David Seaman and his public mid-life crisis.
Choose watching an opponent miss a last-minute penalty against you, then running after him and jeering him.
Choose George Graham grinding his way to the dullest championship win of all time.
Choose stepping forward in a four-man line with your right hands all raised in the air, then screaming abuse at the linesman when he has the audacity to keep his flag down.

Choose to see yourselves as one of the giants of continental football when you've never even reached a European Cup semi-final in your entire history.
C hoose picking Ray Parlour for over a decade.
Choose having the quietest stadium in the world ("the library") as your home ground, and then having the cheek to slag Man Utd about their fans.
Choose having Nick Hornby as the mouthpiece of your supporters.
Choose making umpteen lists of reasons why arsenal are so great, and then admitting you didn't bother following them for a few years in the 1980s when they were getting shit results.

Choose Tony Adams coming out with his usual dreary "I am a recovering addict" spiel every time a Premiership footballer blots his copy-book.

Choose pretending that five or six years of playing in a watchable fashion makes up for inflicting over a century of ultra-defensive dogshit on English football watchers.

Choose Igor Stepanovs, Nelson Vivas, Kanu, Pascal Cygan, Davor Suker, Gilles Grimandi, David Grondin, Remi Garde, Kaba Diawara, Junichi Inamoto, Jeremie Aliadiere, Oleg Luzhny, Luis Boa Morte, Richard Wright, Stefan Malz, Christopher Wreh, and all the other turkeys that nobody ever mentions when creaming themselves about how great Wenger is in the transfer market.

Choose 58 red cards in seven years. Choose lying to the media that you didn't see a single one of the incidents that caused all these red cards. 
Choose being a bunch of smug, self-regarding w**kers who are well on their way to being even more unpopular than Man U in less than half the time.

Choose Arsenal.

06.07.2001

Following a Spurs centre-half's defection up the Seven Sisters Road, this is how one fan felt ...

(To the tune of "I Will Survive")

At first I was a yid. I was deified.
If I'd walk in to the red sea it would move aside.
But then I spent so many nights thinking how to do you wrong
And though It took two years of planning I've finally strung you all along.

And now I'm back. Just up the road.
It doesn't matter where you're from to see that I'm a toad.
I've stabbed you in the back and lied right to your flipping face
If I knew my mum I'd shag her and I'm feeling flipping ace.

And so I'm off. Please don't be sad.
Ten years to some means nothing - so to a million it can't be bad.
The way I see - you owe me so bow down and worship me
And now my kit looks like a tampon it should be easier to seeeee...

That I'm a twat. A flipping slag.
I wonder who-of my teammates I will be the first to shag
Whether youthful looking Freddie, or the Gallic rear of Pires,
Of course there too is Arsene I hope he likes my bondage dress.

Right, "Up the Arse!" They're all at it.
It's just a shame that last year we sold Overmars and Petit,
I've heard many things about them -That Marc squeals just like a girl
But I'll have to take them backwards 'cos their faces make me want to hurl.

I've joined a zoo. I'll fit right in.
Donkeys, chimps and monkeys are where I've been trying to get in.
I'd just love to meet "new chimp boy", and the ape thing called Keown
I just love Kanu's weird boat race - I want them for my very own.

But I'm in shit. The fans just are not great.
This move to the Library might have just sealed my fate.
The Yid firm is all angry and Denton's dangling off a bridge
I'll need round the clock protection even when I look in to my fridge.

And I - I won't survive.
Violence, hate and fire will send me screaming down my drive,
I'll be begging for forgiveness, I'll be down upon one knee,
No matter where I go they'll hate me - I'll have to play for Germany.

And so I'll go. Walk out the door.
I'll just tell them ... that they should have won the war.
I'll just trample on Saint George and say "it really wasn't me
By the way what are you paying? And what is my sign-on feeeeeeeeee?

Thanks to Paxton Girl

Arsenal players show off their new shirts for the 2007-08 season.

Thanks to Glenn Weaver