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And so, another season without trophies. This is meet. Not for Arsenal the base bauble, the vulgar, oversized pewter trinkets with which the likes of Mr Alex Ferguson, whose bulbous proboscis bespeaks a Scotchman wholly lacking in cultivation, see fit to fill their cabinets. I should like to think that were M. Wenger presented with the Premier League trophy, he would don the mask of politesse to placate the halfwit who handed it to him. Inwardly, however, he would shudder at this crudely fashioned aesthetic offence masquerading as “silverware”, and, upon boarding the team coach home, open a window with a view to hurling it into the first available ditch. Has one seen the Premier League trophy? One has. A giant tea urn with the tap removed and toby jug handles attached, upon which sits atop a replica golden crown which might excite the admiration of a negro rap star but no person of refinement. It screams, in coarse, rasping tones, “Tha's done reet well, 'ere's a reet big bit fancy soovineer for tha's mantelpiece.” Can one imagine presenting Moliere with such an ill-wrought excrescence upon the success of his Tartuffe? He would surely glower at your impertinence and demand satisfaction of you the very next dawn if you did. Contemplating this welded monstrosity, I am suffused with relief, and understanding, that Arsenal deliberately forfeited the Premier League. I have witnessed the Emirates trophy cabinet. It is a masterpiece of contemporary minimalism, rendered in teak and glass. To add a single silver cup to its shelves, resplendent in their emptiness, would be as gross and working class an act as pebbledashing the exterior of a piece of Le Corbusier architecture, or covering an Eames sofa in cellophane.
Howay! “Tommy Toon”, Newcastle United fan here. Well, Tommy Sunderland, actually. I've a funny story to tell you about that being my surname, but I won't spoil it by getting ahead of myself. Well, the naysayers doubted it but we in the North East never did – the “Kevolution” is in full swing, our fortunes have turned around at last and a series of wins late on has shown that the little acorns of the £438 million we've invested these past few seasons have all been worth it. Aye, thanks to “King Kev”, maybe, just maybe, Intertoto Cup qualification within our lifetime could be more than just a magical, far-off dream. We've even set our sights on a Big Four placing. I share Mr Keegan's optimism on that one, me – by my reckoning, the way we're heading, we should be ready to break into those Champions League qualifying places by the season 2049057/58, or thereabouts. Of course, continental drift could well mean that Europe's become welded with Africa by then, which would be a bit of a headache for UEFA, what with opening up the field to new teams, but, like the man said, at the end of the day, that's plate tectonics for you. As for now, a big Tommy round of applause to our lads, especially Mark “Mr Effort” Viduka, Joey “Hands Off, He's Ours!” Barton and Damien “Washed Up Here Like A Monkey In A Crate” Duff.
The final fixture of our season took place at the godforsaken, Northeasterly location of Sunderland, accessible, one supposed, by b-roads, dirt-tracks, pony and trap and, eventually, piggybacks across swampland courtesy of the local peasantry for a handful of brown coins. In the end, I took no risk and chartered a helicopter, its rotorblades running throughout the duration of the match outside the stadium, with my bodyguards instructed to shoot the curious on sight. The venue went by the nomenclature of the “Stadium Of Light”, doubtless to herald the arrival of electricity to this part of the world a few short years ago. The stadium was substantially full, with many of the unspeakable home supporters here to marvel as much at the spectacle of light bulbs, rather than the balletic spectacle of Arsenal's football. Quite honestly, an impresario might as well have staged a performance of Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring before a herd of interbred goat-swine painted in red and white stripes as attempt to display to these stupefied, evolutionary stragglers the subtleties of Arsenal's game. It is telling that when Arsenal's young Prince Theo Walcott scored a goal, the fact had to be explained by loudspeaker system to the Sunderland supporters, much as one attempts to explain to a drooling imbecile the purpose of a napkin. These were odious, odious people, a veritable lower order of people, who do not live as we do – the sort of people, one surmises, who wash and launder their own clothes.
Hey, I'll tell you what, it's not just Newcastle whose fortunes who've turned around but me, too! See, I do the local lotto thing and, well, you'll never guess it, I won £40,000! At first I thought it was just £40 and I was cock-a-hoop enough, but when they told me, they had to bring me round with a swig of brown ale. £40,000! I'd never have to work again – not that, what with adverse economic conditions and the like, I've ever found work in the first place. I went down my local, to celebrate, a bottle of Babycham, the works, and got talking to this stranger – well, I say stranger, but like the man said, at the end of the day, a stranger's just a friend you haven't met, and so it turned out. He was most impressed at meeting a man of means. “You should meet my sister,” he mumbles, and I sort of yammered a bit, you know, well, I, er -.
“Wait there,” he says. “I'll go get her.” Well, off he stomps, and, just half an hour later, in steps this vision of a woman, in the most gorgeous floral patterned below-knee length dress I'd ever seen. I'll say this for the lass, she looked a lot like her brother. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same way of talking, the same shoes, the same mullet, even the same facial hair growth. And, she had the same name as her brother – Lee, which must have been a bit confusing. Still, same as Lee Bowyer, which was a good omen. Well, I've not had a lot of success as a ladies' man, but I seemed to be a hit with this one. “Let's get married, like,” she says in her sultry, almost masculine, voice. My heart was beating 'cos, despite that facial hair, which I know is a problem with some ladies, I've read about it at the dentist's, this was love at first sight. It was such a gorgeous floral patterned dress. All the same, I've always thought me and my lifelong soulmate should share mutual interests, so I tried to engage her on the subject of car parks and d'you know what? She was just as fascinated in them as I was! “Yeah, yeah, car parks. Sound,” she says. “Let's get married. You, me, like. Down registry office. Tuesday.”
So, there it was. We talked a bit more, Lee told me she wanted a Civil Ceremony, same as the one Elton John had, 'cos he's her favourite pop star, I expect, what with his pop star looks and I said, fine. Also, she said we should sign one of them Pre-Nuptial Agreement things, which is the fashion these days and I said fine. I didn't bother reading it 'cos I knew me and Lee getting divorced was a bit like an Obafemi Martins transfer request – it was never going to happen. And so, with the registrar giving us both some funny looks at Lee in her dress and Dr Marten boots and then fluffing his lines - “Do you take this man?”, he says about Lee – we were formally husband and wife.
It is said that, what with the crop of young players that master fermier M. Wenger has brought through, that they are much sought after upon the transfer market by other clubs, in order that their own stadia might ring to the tumultuous clamat which is the hallmark of the Emirates. I am sure there many association football teams, home and abroad, who would join the bidding for our young – well, not us not speak basely of “players” but of living, dynamic body sculptures, hewn according to the idealistic contours of M. Wenger's philosophy which, were men to understand it fully, would enable humankind to grow wings and emulate the very angels themselves. What is sad is that our British Art Galleries, such as the Tate and the National have, as yet, not joined the bidding for any members of our team. I am not the only one, for example, who, following some of his performances in the Champions League in particular, would like to see Emmanuel Eboué nailed to a wall and left to hang there indefinitely.
As for Herr Lehmann, no base fee can be extracted for his services. However, he is yet another of Arsenal's number who transcends mere football, into the realms of master psychology. It is in this field that he has excelled and could be a model not just to fellow professionals but to students of Behavioural Analysis, be they of the Freudian or Jungian persuasion. Take, for example, the deep understanding of human nature he frequently exhibited when jostled by opposing players, addressing them thus: “VY? VY?? VY DO YOU INSISST ON PROVOKING ME IN ZIS VAY?? YOU KNOW IT IS INTENSELY ANNOYING TO ME AND CAUSES ME TO BLOW MEIN TOPP! THEN I HIT YOU, I GET A YELLOW OR RED CARD, YOU GET MAYBE A PENALTY AND IT IS TOTAL DISASTER! SO, KNOWING ZIS, VY DO YOU DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN? IS ZIS FAMOUS ENGLISH HUMOUR? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND ZIS! I AM VARNING YOU! DO NOT JOSTLE ME IN MY SPACE AGAIN OR IT IS A RED CARD FOR ME AND ZEN YOU VILL BE SORRY, MEINSELF ALSO!!”
The honeymoon in Spain was fabulous – first time I'd been abroad. Just one little hitch – immediately after the wedding, Lee had run off to the toilets, saying she was sick, poor lass. I suggested being at her bedside but Lee, her brother, said Lee, his sister, my wife, had insisted I go off to Spain anyway, taking Lee, her brother, my brother-in-law, with me instead. So, that's what we did. I must say, I didn't see an awful lot of him, except when he ran out of cash a couple of times, but it was nice to see him on the beach, in the bar, with his lady friends, living it up. Not for me of course, being spoken for to his sister, my wife, the lovely lass in her floral below-knee length dress.
By the end, despite all the paella I was longing to get back to Newcastle and my Lee. Unfortunately, she'd sent word that, having thought long and hard, she'd decided it wasn't to be between her and me, and – lady's prerogative – she thought we'd best divorce and would I mind never trying to contact her again. Well, I won't say this didn't sap my spirits a bit but, like the man said, easy come, easy go. I'd always have the memory of that night in the pub, seeing her in that floral below-knee length dress and what's more, it showed that, though he never thought it, Tommy Sunderland was a man with sexual magnetism. Much as every car park has a silver Mondeo, ever cloud has a silver lining.
There is talk, of course, of an “Arsenal exodus”. Mathieu Flamini has gone, alas, fled like Byron for warmer climes. There is talk that Alexander Hleb may follow – to Inter Milan, perchance. This must not be allowed to happen. Hleb's princely season's total of four goals (do not speak of “goals”, speak of a tetralogy) make him too vital a commodity to Arsenal, to England, to Civilisation. And yet, one understands – this England, o base nation of shopping trolleys and pre-packaged comestibles, of Enfield and Essex. Small wonder that Hleb's artistic soul pines for Italy, with its distant scent of Tuscan groves, the golden glow and elegant desuetude of its cities, the arcing coastlines, the piazzas, the palios. There is but one solution. Make an Italy of England. Import the finest breads, olives, mozzarellas, cured hams. Clear vast swathes of the South East, dispatching the present human incumbents humanely but above all swiftly. Replace them with ersatz Italian peasants, farmers and gesticulating youths on Vespas, recreate across vast areas in replica form the old town of Siena, the undulating landscapes, the orchards, the fresh foodstuffs, the Chiricoesque belltowers, the cafes, all beneath giant domes simulating the southerly warmth of Italy, generated on the national grid. Then, perhaps then, Hleb will be persuaded to stay – and, if not, this remains sound urban policy nevertheless. Arsenal! On a winning streak when it mattered, right at the fucking end! Let's go!
Of course, one of the little side effects of me and Lee parting the ways was that pre-nuptial agreement, in which I had to pay her out £4000 per year for the next ten years. Well, it was lucky I'd won that lotto money, otherwise I'd have been stumped as to how to shell out. So there's another blessing. Anyway, I have to register, down at the bank, you know, set up a standing order for Mrs Lee Sunderland, my ex-wife, sadly, but I'll always remember that floral, below knee length dress. The bank's a bit crowded and the mood a bit testy, what with this credit crunch thing and all. Anyway, I explain things to the bloke behind the glass screen, foreign he was, nothing wrong with that, and he says I've to answer a couple of questions. The lady I'll be providing maintenance for – what's her name?
“Sunderland!” I shout. He doesn't quite hear me. That glass is thick, it has to be, I suppose.
“Sunderland!” I repeat, louder. At this point, there's a bit of a rustle behind me, like someone's cutting up rusty or something. Ah, Sunderland, grasps the feller. So, I can confirm that's the lady I'm providing the maintenance for, he says?
“Yes!” I shout. “I support Sunderland!”
Well, I don't remember much about what happened next except I get a blow to the back of the head and several fellers in Toon stripes set about me. My theory is, they heard me talking about Sunderland, my ex-wife and thought I was talking about Sunderland the football club. Which would make sense. Just before I blacked out, I noticed one of the guys whaling at me was my brother-in-law, Lee! Pity I didn't get to ask him how his sister was doing. Well, I hope. It's a shame he joined in beating me up but I can forgive him in the heat of the moment and for introducing me to the love of my life, Lee in the floral below knee-length dress. I'm taking meals through straws at the minute but thinking of her is like drinking sweet nectar . . .
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