Agent Emi & the Weekend of Chaos
Agent Emi & the Weekend of Chaos
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Kick Off
chaos
/ˈkeɪɒs/
noun
complete disorder and confusion.
What a Saturday. I’m writing this on Sunday morning, before the last two games have kicked off, and I just cannot get over it all. I’m absolutely high as a kite, struggled to sleep last night and still feel giddy as a kipper [Ed. It’s now Monday and I’m still hyper as fuck, I feel like I could lift a car). To quote Ron Manager, “football, isn’t it?”
If you’ve somehow been under a rock I guess I should summarise it all for you, so let’s go in order and begin at the beginning with Aston Villa v. Arsenal.
It started well for Villa. Within five minutes Ollie Watkins was gifted a goal and my heart sank. It felt at that moment, after the defeat to City on Wednesday, like not only were we throwing away the title but that if we carried on like that we might even end up missing out on a Champions League spot. I wrote, rewrote, deleted, wrote again and then saved in my drafts a couple of tweets about it and how disappointing it was, how I hate it looked like we were bottling it and that the if we’d had these results spread out over the season it would’ve been fine but now we’ve tasted it and so on and so on (Never let it be said that Arsenal, or any, fans are rational.)
Then, 11 minutes later, after a minor blunder by Tyrone Mings (he didn’t have too many options really), Bukayo Saka volleyed a beautiful ball home to make it 1-1.
But wait! The misery for Arsenal fans wasn’t over just yet as on the half hour mark Philippe Coutinho (looking hot af with his new highlights) scored a regrettably sexy sexy goal to put Villa back on top.
So that was half time. Arsenal fucking it up again, letting loose balls get through, allowing the time and space for a team to attack. It was, well it wasn’t great. Villa fans I’m sure you were on cloud 9 and I expect, whether he’d ever admit it or not, Emery was suppressing a small snigger.
In the second half Arsenal looked much better. Things were tighter, more controlled. And then, on the 61st minute, BAM! After 92 Premier League appearances Oleksandr Zinchenko scored his first PL goal. It was one of those beautiful, low, straight shots that glides through players like a hot knife through butter and smashes pleasingly into the corner of the net.
A draw then, OK, I could work with that. Just don’t throw it away lads!
Step forward Emiliano Martinez. Hated by the French, hated by the Qataris, despised by many Arsenal fans, not particularly liked by Unai Emery. A man who’d been timewasting since 6 minutes in, who didn’t get a yellow card for it until deep into the game. An Arsenal man of some ten years, a man who won an FA Cup with us and cried. In short, a clown. And boy oh boy did the circus come to town in the last five minutes of the game.
Enter Jorginho Frello. An opportunity. The distant sounds of Julius Fučík’s Entrance of the Gladiators…
When I say I screamed.
I know many of you are based in the US and if you heard a gleeful shrieking cackle at c. 14:33 GMT on Saturday, well, that was me.
But the show wasn’t over yet. Oh no, PT Barnum was going to give us our money’s worth, when four minutes later Martinez went downfield for a Villa corner. It’s not a totally mad thing to do, goalies do it all the time, Alisson famously and delightfully scored doing it. Villa were already losing and we were already at 90+7. And yet. AND YET.
There’s a bit among a subsection of Football Twitter to talk about how certain actions and incidents in games make them bark or howl and if you think I went feral after the og, you should have seen me after this, Muldoon from Jurassic Park was loading up his T-rex tranquiliser gun to sedate me.
And that was how it ended. Aston Villa 2 - 4 Arsenal. We’d done our bit. It was over to Nottingham Forest at the City Ground to do something amazing.
For a while it seemed like nothing was going to happen anywhere in the 3pm kick offs. There was more action in Scotland and the lower leagues than there was in the Prem (big up Wrexham and Paul ‘fuck the Tories’ Mullin btw). In fact it took until the 41st minute for anyone to break the deadlock, when Bernardo Silva put City up 1-0 and in doing so killed the mood of every Arsenal fan across the world.
There was a moment of light relief not long after when James Ward-Prowse managed to do James Ward-Prowse things and put interim manager Ruben Selles’ Southampton 0-1 up against Chelsea but that was that. A tepid first half all round.
While it was true I was keen for there to be a continuation of incidents, when news started to filter through of a bad injury at Chelsea I couldn’t help but think no! Not like that! Thankfully though, after getting an accidental, but extremely forceful, boot to the face, Cesar Azpilicueta is up and well after being stretchered off at St Mary’s and spending time in hospital and is now taking time to recover.
In terms of goals, we didn’t have to wait too long into the second half for Marcus Tavernier to strike for Bournemouth against Wolves, followed 15 minutes later by a rocket from Seamus Coleman to give Everton the advantage over beleaguered Leeds. (Yes, I use that phrase a lot but it really does apply here.) On the 69th minute (nice), Eze put Palace ahead at the G-Tech and then nothing happened for a further 15 minutes until:
I found this searching for a suitable tweet/clip to illustrate Chris Wood's goal and seeing this and the fact that all 11 Forest players touched the ball before the goal has thrilled me anew about it. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. A lovely gesture after we capitulated last year and let them sail past us in the FA Cup. Anyway I lost my head completely at this and frankly I still haven’t recovered.
There was also late drama at the AMEX when Fulham managed to score a winner in the 88th minute courtesy of Manor Solomon and even more drama at the G-Tech after Vitaly Janelt equalised for lovely Brentford on 90+6.
Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted too and there are still three games to go.
The evening game on Saturday, which seems to have become the Newcastle and Who? spot fell this week to Newcastle and Liverpool at St James’s Park. I’m sure we can all remember what happened last time (last gasp winner from Fabio Carvalho, Darwin hoist on someones back yelling FUCK YOU!) but the question was, would this game have that drama.
Well friends, get comfortable.
Still high on the derby victory over Everton, it took just ten minutes for the chaos agent himself to take the lead for the Reds with a lovely goal that came from a delicious pass by Trent Alexander Arnold.
This was followed six minutes after by another goal from ‘flop’ Cody Gakpo.
But it was what happened next that really sealed the game. With Mo Salah bearing down on him, Nick Pope left the safety of his area and dived to save the ball, remembered where he was and headed it instead and then inexplicably shoved the ball away with both hands, then for good measure, tripped up Kieran Trippier. It happened, in case you missed it, outside of his area. He was immediately dismissed and then all talk turned to the Carabao Cup. Nick Pope is now obviously suspended. Martin Dubravka is cup-tied after being on loan at Manchester United. Which leaves…
✨✨The Loris Karius Redemption Arc✨✨
Hoo boy, just had a quick cold shower and we’re not even at the Thirst Trap yet!
Right, let’s get to Sunday quickly before you all start losing the will to live.
Manchester United v. Leicester. The thing is, you all know that I hate Leicester, some of you may know my history with United too. But United are a threat, a real, horrible threat and so I sat down to watch this extremely torn on who I wanted to win. (I also have Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford in my FPL side). As it turns out, I needn’t have bothered giving it any thought because Leicester were rubbish, despite getting through the United midfield and defence on numerous occasions, and the luck just wasn’t with them.
It was of course Rashford who scored first, after just 25 minutes (I felt a bit discombobulated when I read that, it felt like it was much much further through the game) and then got his brace early in the second half.
We then saw the introduction of a rejuvenated Sancho who sealed it with a third United goal.
Much has been made of Wout Weghorst and his wastefulness on goal but when your team is playing like United are at the moment and when the fans are hailing the manager as a genius… who cares? United are BACK, it’s that simple.
Finally, a mostly damp squib of a game, as was always going to be the case after the rest of the weekend. One of the fierier ‘London Derbies’, Spurs West Ham really was just a game of football. Emerson “quarter pounder” Royal opened the scoring and the game was put to bed with a Son goal at 72 mins, not too long after he came on as a sub, Richarlison being the preferred starter.
The win put Spurs, who are apparently having a horrible season(?) into 4th, pushing Newcastle into 5th with United in 3rd, City 2nd and Arsenal two points clear in 1st.
At the bottom West Ham and Southampton stay where they are while Leeds have dropped into the relegation zone. They need to sort a new manager out and quick.
OK, let’s get on a cramped EasyJet flight and pop over to Europe.
It was a full house for your dear writer, with wins for Barcelona, Milan and Dortmund.
In Germany it seems we might just have a title race on. The top three are currently equal on points, separated only by goal difference, after a 3-2 loss for Bayern, a 0-0 draw for Union and a 4-1 win for Dortmund. Of course we know what will happen, Union will tire, Dortmund will bottle it and Bayern will cruise it. Even if it stays this tight, Bayern’s goal difference of +40 is a nonsense. But until any of these things happen we have hope!
In Ligue 1, LOSC failed to hold on at PSG (though to be fair they lost to a corking Messi free kick) which leaves them out in front by 5 points. We did see the traditional Neymar Spring injury however and if you don’t understand the significance of that well, I’ll leave you to do your own research on the particular timing of it.
La Liga continues to fail to grab me this season, despite a couple of goal fests and a smattering of red cards. As mentioned, Barcelona won which puts them 8 clear at the top with only Real offering any decent chance of challenging them.
Finally in Serie A, Napoli continue on cruise control, with their lead now 15 points over the nearest challengers, Inter. Inter won their game on Saturday, in part thanks to a retaken penalty, the first try of which Lukaku completely ballsed up, because Silvestri was apparently off his line. I can tell you for absolute certain that he was not. Punish him for his braids, yes, but for being off his line? No. Roma also won which puts them third on the slimmest of goal difference margins so there’s still hope that maybe Milan’s season isn’t a complete bust.
In the women’s game it’s international break with England competing in the Arnold Clark Cup with Belgium, South Korea and Italy. England won their opener against South Korea 4-0 but other than that every game has been 2-1 so far, which might be some kind of record? (It’s three games so I doubt it but please, allow it!).
One of those 2-1s was a win for England against Italy, who gave us a scare after equalising on the 61st minute but not long after Sarina brought on Lauren James and I knew we’d be OK.
Oh and extremely briefly, European football was back last week, the UCL was mostly boring, Barcelona United was brilliant, as was Juve Nantes (Nantes’ equaliser was incredible). Think that’s all there is to say about that?
On that note I’m going to wrap up the week in ball, I expect you all have homes to go to and families and friends to see and this has been a long one! Just a few short sections left though and I promise they’re worth it, especially the Thirst Trap 🥵
Half Time
Just a couple of things I want to mention at Half Time today.
Firstly I want to pay tribute to Christian Atsu, who reports confirmed this weekend had lost his life in the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. By all accounts he was a wonderful person. I liked this from Rafa Benitez. RIP Christian.
The second is the racist abuse of Heung-Min Son during the game yesterday. Every week we hear of something like this happening. Not just here but in Spain and Italy and France and Germany and beyond. It’s never acceptable, it’s never banter, it’s revolting behaviour.
Full Time
Let’s start with a couple of gifs from the weekend:
I love you Mikel 🥰
Oh Nicky, it wasn’t Kieran’s fault.
I love the lads
Which lads? These lads
Beautiful scenes from Czechia
A wild pitch for Sweden v China
Bolton, please
I’ve lost it laughing every time I’ve scrolled past this tweet
Lastly, I know this isn’t football but please watch this gorilla farting
Shirt of the Week
MLS teams have been releasing their new season shirts over the past week and while there are definitely some ugly ones, there are some beautiful ones too. This is the full spread:
Here are some of my faves:
Portland Timbers
Seattle Sounders
Columbus Crew
Houston Dynamo
Chicago Fire
Thirst Trap
Thing is, I almost want to give this week’s Thirst Trap to every player who set foot on the pitch for Arsenal at Villa Park on Saturday but instead I’ve gone for someone I’ve tried so hard to resist. I have, but god, I fancy Enzo Fernandez so fucking much. If anyone has a hose available can you come and spray me down please because it’s getting out of hand. I don’t care that he’s got frosted tips, a load of huge religious and animal tattoos or the word B L E S S E D, vertically, by his left ear (I actually think that looks pretty hot). I just care that he’s got perfect skin, perfect lips, perfect eyebrows, a perfect nose and is just goddamn gorgeous. Tell I’m wrong, tell me!
That’s all for this week! Sorry not sorry about how long this has been, I need to expend all the energy from the weekend somehow (Enzo, 📞). Until next week, have a good one x