I Know Him So Well

Wasn't he good? (oh so good)

(Don’t want to show off here [I do] but there are levels to this title [there are two]. Firstly, it’s about Pep and Mikel knowing how the other works and secondly, it’s from the musical Chess and we all know Sunday’s game was a “tactical chess match”, right?? Also, if you read the lyrics it kinda sums up Arsenal’s 22/23 season [it does, I promise!!])

Kick Off

Well. It’s been a while hasn’t it. I don’t want to go on about the state of football at the moment or my mental health (which is actually fine but I know I wang on sometimes) or how Musk has ruined Twitter but these are all factors in not having sent something for a while, along with Life and motivation and all the other things that get in the way sometimes.

But, I’m here now and that’s the important thing, right? Right?

I’m not going to talk about the international break, mostly because I simply do not care (and it was ages ago). Friendlies Schmendlies. One thing to say though is I did have a dream last night that Australia beat England 4-0 in what I assume was the World Cup and in the dream it was the second 4-0 defeat in a row, so make of that what you will.

OK then, the real life football, let’s talk about that.

I’m going to start with a brief yell about the women’s game and then we’ll move on to business as usual.

As always, you know where to go to get proper analysis of WOSO and all that it entails, including, but not limited to, the spat between Eidevall and Hayes, about which I will be keeping my counsel 😌

So all that remains to be said on that then is ARSENAL WOMEN CONTI CUP WINNERS TWO SEASONS IN A ROW 🥳

I’ve been off the boil with WOSO this season, for reasons I won’t get into, so yes, I have been something of a fairweather fan this season, but it’s always nice to see the ladies win and especially against Chelsea and especially against Chelsea for two seasons in a row 😎

OK then, the men’s game, my comfort zone.

I’m going to start in Germany.

It’s not really been Dortmund’s season. Not like last year, even though ultimately they won nothing, but on Saturday, they travelled to Munich for Der Klassiker, a sort of manufactured Liverpool/City rivalry forged mainly from being the only two winners of the league in the past 14 years, with the other often being second.

Munich, despite retaining second place, are in the mud this year. Internal turmoil, poor results and the possibility of winning nothing, they’re down bad. So it seems like the perfect time to play them (please, Arsenal have them in the UCL and I’m begging for the clown show to turn up) and so it was that Dortmund went to their house and won for the first time since 2014. And more importantly perhaps for BVB, they kept a clean sheet. The goals came from Adeyemi and Ryerson, one at each end of the game, with a disallowed Harry Kane goal in between.

The result put Dortmund fourth, behind high flyers Stuttgart and, after a last gasp win from Leverkusen who trailed Hoffenheim for 2/3 of the game, only to get two quick last minute goals, put Bayern in second by 13 points. At this stage a Leverkusen Meisterschale seems a given, and possibly via an invincible season. I’m rooting for them so hard; they’re fun, they have Xabi (who has pledged his future to them) and most importantly to me, they have Xhaka. My darling Granit who I miss every day.

Over in Italy you can tell I haven’t been paying attention because I just checked the table and my eyebrows flew up off my head when I saw that Milan are second. It seems like this might be Inter’s year (boo) but there are only six points in it and eight games to go so you never know. Poor Sass and Salernitana are in the relegation spots along with Empoli, who I’m not arsed about because they always piss me off when they play Milan.

In Spain Real and Barça are predictably in first and second spots but Girona are holding tight in third, perhaps, ultimately, a shame, given their start, but to keep the momentum going is brilliant.

In France, PSG are of course top and by 12 points, but proving Brest is best(is), Brest are holding onto second. Sadly Nice have slipped to fifth and allowed Lille and Monaco to overtake them. Lyon’s dreadful season has gained some dignity with them sitting 10th and in a lovely act of karma, Lorient, who employed Benjamin Mendy after his acquittal, are currently in the relegation spots.

And so, finally (well not really, I only wizzed around Europe this week), we reach the Premier League.

In truth, it was a fairly pedestrian weekend with a good chunk of draws and a few predictable wins. Notable among the wins was of course Burnley, coming back from 2-0 and one man light against Chelsea to draw 2-2 and Fulham pulling it back against the beleaguered Sheffield United to rescue a point after trailing 3-1. Forest also got one back to draw against Oliver Glasner’s Palace.

Bournemouth and Spurs both got late winners after being rescued initially by own goals and Villa ground out a 2-0 win against Wolves. A tough game that for the neutral as I enjoy both Wolves and Villa.

Thankfully I was out having fun with the Stadio crowd during Brentford United which sounds like a dreadful game that ended in the most ridiculous fashion with both goals coming in stoppage time, 90+6 and 90+9 to be precise. I don’t even want to think about the steam coming off Ten Hag’s dome after that.

Which leaves us with three games. One, an absolute nonsense, and two relevant to the title race.

We’ll start with Liverpool who were stunned by an early goal from Danny Welbeck, only to predictably come back from behind and win. They mentioned during the game that they’d done that six times this season, seven now, and that sounded wild to me because it certainly felt like they were winning every game in that manner at the beginning of the season. Still, stats don’t lie…

The win put them back on top of the table, hoping Arsenal were unable to pull it out of the bag against City in the late afternoon kick off.

For once I felt very little in the way of nerves. This time last season I’d have been having a panic attack a week before and barely been able to get on with my day, but this time I slept on and off through most of the game and only really felt anything akin to nerves in the last five minutes. I’m mostly happy with a draw; yes, I would have loved to win and to have gone back to the top of the table, but even a draw means that we’ve played them three times this season and lost none. It means we kept a clean sheet in two of those three games. It means we don’t have to play them again (in the league). It also gave rise to this lovely stat:

There was a lot of talk after the game about how bad it was, that it was dreadful to watch and it gave me pause. Maybe it’s because I was invested, I don’t know, but it really didn’t seem that bad. Do you guys remember when we played Brentford earlier this season? Or when Liverpool played Chelsea on that Tuesday evening fixture last season? There have been plenty of much much worse games than that, like, sorry there were no goals but at least it had something about it. Maybe I am biased, maybe it’s because I slept through a lot of it.

Or maybe it’s because everyone thinks every televised game should be like the first Premier League game of the weekend, the battle of the Uniteds, Newcastle v. West Ham.

I had an inkling that this could be good, it was definitely going to go to the extremes and thank goodness we got the good one; frankly any game where you get a penalty awarded after six minutes probably isn’t going to be bad, but no-one could have predicted the ridiculousness of this one.

So yes, a penalty after six minutes, dispatched by Isak. An equaliser from Arsenal hating Michail Antonio, a second from the brilliant Kudus on 45+9 (yes, it was that kind of half, I haven’t even mentioned the injuries). At half time Areola was subbed off for Fabianski, then within moments West Ham were 3-1 up. At 52 minutes the travelling West Ham crowd were olé-ing their team’s passes. Mortifying!

But wait. What was that? A soft penalty from Rob Jones, caused by the unluckiest (worst?) player in the league, Kalvin Phillips, and suddenly Newcastle were back in it. And here comes Harvey Barnes, fresh from buying discounted hummus in his local supermarket, not having featured much this season due to injury, but needs must with such a depleted squad.

Before we carry on though, I’m just going to quietly put this here.

As I was saying, Harvey Barnes. He was calm, he was cool, he was collected and he scored the equaliser with, yes, APLOMB to send the St James’s Park crowd wild.

Then, on the 90, he did it again. A winner from the former Leicester lad and heads were no doubt banging across Newcastle on Sunday morning.

Wait a second though, remember that Gordon yellow? Well there was a significant amount of time added onto the second half, being as it was, as mad as the first half, and a couple of minutes in there was a foul, after which Gordon kicked the ball away. Now we all know refs are generally consistently inconsistent, but one thing they seem to always punish, if they see it, is someone kicking the ball away. And so it was that a second yellow was shown (after some prompting from West Ham to remind Rob Jones he’d already given one) and off Tony trotted.

Now forgive me for being a very shit pastiche of Kammy here but I wasn’t really paying attention at that point and I genuinely thought they were bringing a sub on, before I remembered they’d used all their sub windows. Comms seemed confused too but eventually we all realised he’d been sent off for the campest red card so far this season.

And that’s that for the long weekend. I don’t have time to round it all up here but the Championship is hotting up and well worth keeping an eye on and of course we’re only weeks from the play offs which are always fun.

Half Time

Again, I find myself disinclined to write about anything serious going on so have a quick packet of energy gel, get someone to rub your calves, hydrate and get ready for the final three sections.

Full Time

The way I screamed at this. There’s just something inherently amusing about ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’

This is correct. No further questions.

Atleti have completely lost their minds

This wasn’t me

A smart and noble friend going to watch non league football

This goal from Dan James for Leeds in the Championship last night made me hoot and holler and clap my hands like a seal. I really enjoyed Leeds in the Prem so want them to do well but also I’m pretty much a neutral so it was just nice to see something wild and silly and on the stroke of full time that made the crowd go wild.

And tbqh if it’s got the Fonz’s seal of approval who are we to argue?

Big up Sheffield Wednesday for wearing Football v Transphobia shirts before their game on Good Friday.

Although it took me a second to clock it, I’m surprised this tweet didn’t bang

Chris Wilder in this absolutely sent me

Maybe! Maaaaybe!

Drip of the Week

There have been so many good shirts released since I last sent a TWUTAB out. We’ve had Real Madrid’s purple limited edition shirt

Updated international shirts were release and there were some beauts.

England’s home and away are actually nice, even if the purple away kit looked black in all the pictures of it after the Belgium game.

And the track jacket is incredible

Mexico’s home shirt is elite

Peru’s away is a delight

And there were many many more, including Germany’s pair, who had by far the best launch campaigns. Please watch these videos, they’re both brilliant.

BUT (no pun intended) the best, the most gorgeous, was France Away.

Look at it! Look at the giant cock[erel]! The gorgeous stripes! Hnnngh, I lovelovelove it.

And I have just, via Dan Sandison on Twitter seen this. Omfg 🫠

Thirst Trap

An antipodean entry this week and having scoured my list of previous entries, someone I’m surprised hasn’t featured before.

Friends, it’s Jackson Irvine.

Jackson is currently the captain of St Pauli who are a well known ‘hipster’ football team. They back left wing causes! Their shirts are brown for some reason! They’re from Hamburg which is a cool city! Now, they have, like most of Germany, not been great on Palestine, but this is about Jackson, not St Pauli, and he has stood with them via his captaincy of the Socceroos, who also released a very good statement before the Qatar World Cup about LGBTQ+ rights and concerns (OK so they still went and played but at least they did something bigger than just folding and agreeing not to wear an armband).

Anyway, he’s a good egg, the epitome of East London cool and has actually amazing tattoos (look at the emu, I fuckin love it).

Well that’s it. Thanks for sticking with it to the end and sticking with the newsletter in general, despite this year’s new, sporadic posting schedule. I enjoyed writing this so maybe I’ll get back on track with only a few weeks left of the season. But! Euro 2024 is of course this season and with Twitter dead maybe this is where I’ll do my Thirst and Shirt ratings. Who can say, it’s June, that’s a lifetime away.

Anyway, take care of yourselves, do whatever you need to to stay sane in this shitty climate: hydrate, see loved ones, cuddle a dog, watch a trashy film, listen to some disco, buy flowers, enjoy the midweek Premier League games, watch nerdy YouTube videos of a Brummie playing GeoGuessr (no seriously, do this it’s brilliant); you do you.

I’ll be back when I’m back, until then au revoir! <3