November 26th, 2008
After Cesc was announced as Arsenal captain, my good friend Tres Rapide produced a brilliant image of Cesc for a piece which drew parrallel’s between Cesc’s ascension and Barack Obama’s victory in the Presidential election: at last, change had arrived.
The image proved rather popular, and I had a good few emails requesting it as a wallpaper. Thankfully, Tres Rapide is very generous with his time and his talents, and the wallpaper is now available for download in three sizes:
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1024×768
1200×900
1600×1200
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Enjoy.
Ps. That’s your Christmas present. Don’t expect anything else.
November 26th, 2008
Arsenal 1 – 0 Dinamo Kiev (Bendtner 87)
I really don’t know what to think. I had two responses to yesterday’s game:
The first was rational. We got our first win in 24 days (though it has felt like forever). We qualified for the next round of the Champions League. With all the injuries and controversy surrounding the team at the moment, a victory of any kind was quite an achievement, and of course on a logical level I recognised that.
The second was emotional. The first eighty-seven minutes were pretty dire, and as I sat in our plush new stadium I actually felt really sad. The players were so bereft of confidence, and the fans who had bothered to turn up were almost silent. It was a real chicken and egg situation, and impossible to guage whether the poor performance of the team or crowd had engendered the other.Â
That sadness turned into anger at the fact that two players like Song and Denilson are now regular starters in our team. That should never have been allowed to happen. It’s great that we’ve qualified for the next round of the Champions League, but we won’t go much further with a joker like Song in the side.
Maybe I’m being excessively negative. Maybe the combination of a long day and the cold has dampened my positive outlook.  But that’s how I felt and it would be wrong to report it otherwise.
In order to preserve a little bit positivity, I ought to reaffirm that yesterday was the start of something new. And it started with a victory, which is as much as anyone could ask – as Wenger points out, it could be a first step to better times.
Update: Arsenal have just appointed Ivan Gazidis as the new CEO. He’ll begin work in January. Yet another neccessary change has finally arrived. More on this when I know on earth he is.
