It’s a day in the Premier League, and a lot of players are having thoughts about events! To you, that may sound like a joke, but to these grim warriors, whose wills are ruthlessly fixed on the next match, whose eyes scan a horizon more threatening than you or I could imagine, whose minds, if we could see inside them, would look like a slow camera-pan up a desolate mountainside, climbing higher and higher, past walls of rock, razor-sharp outcroppings, and windswept, snow-covered goats, past the bones of forgotten adventurers, past the shattered faces of cliffs, into a bleak, snowy nowhere a stone’s throw from the sky, where a lone castle rises like a spire, eternally vigilant, eternally armed against the encroachment of any imaginable foe—these proud champions understand that sometimes the best way to prepare for an epic battle is to engage in an absolutely piss-tacular slapfight.
And so it’s been in the run-up to Manchester United v. Arsenal. First, Patrice Evra, taking a momentary break from monk-stomping the grape-vat of French football’s sacred honor, curled his lip in the general direction of Islington and declared that, because Arsenal haven’t won any trophies since 2005, they are merely a “football training centre,” like Clairefontaine, whose sacred honor Patrice Evra recently monk-stomped. In response, Arsène Wenger (“his fellow Frenchman,” don’t forget, as if the papers would let you) gave the Sun absolutely nothing to work with by countering with the passive-aggressive high-road gambit so memorably left on the table by the entire French team during the World Cup:
We are guided by the way we want to play football and not by the statements of anybody who plays against us. Personally, I believe if you are a big player you always respect your opponent and that is what we try to do. We do not want to go into any unneeded talking before a game like that.
Samir Nasri, inspired by Wenger’s positive tone, hit back at Evra with the breathtaking force of a well-executed anime-hero-confronting-injustice-with-an-open-heart counter:
We are not children and we will demonstrate that on Monday. We will show Manchester United that Arsenal have really grown.
Their heads reeling from these two successive misdirection plays, Manchester United players panicked. Evra, refusing to waver from the time-tested path of straightforward insult, garrillumphed that, “Our real enemy is Chelsea. We are more concerned with Chelsea’s results than Arsenal’s.” On the other side of the room, however, Nani was opining that
Arsenal have been doing well. They are growing up in the way we are. They are a good team. I think they are a bigger threat than Chelsea now. Chelsea have lost a few games and drawn some and their confidence looks a bit low. But Arsenal have been winning and being top of the league gives you great confidence.
Evra is afraid of Chelsea and scorns Arsenal, but Nani is afraid of Arsenal and scorns Chelsea! Arsenal are afraid of everyone, probably, but they have a good heart, and honest feelings. Chelsea are just trying to feel anything at all. At some point, a soccer match will be played. It will have a connection to all this, somehow, and by that point, if we’re lucky, the press will have figured out how to bring José Mourinho into it.
Read More: Arsenal, Manchester United
by Brian Phillips · December 10, 2010
I guess what I want to know is: who is nominated to try to clean him out in the first minute or two with one of those “Arsenal can’t tackle” tackles?
You’d think Jack Wilshere, but his Twitter says he’s Christmas shopping this afternoon and so he probably didn’t even see these comments.
van Persie is perhaps Arsenal’s finest purveyor of reckless and mostly completely pointless bad tackles in the opposition’s half while under no pressure, but does he even care about these French guys jabbering at each other? And if Chamakh’s medically required snood is ready to go, I’m not sure Robin even starts, given the way the 2 of them stared blankly at each other for 70 minutes or so the other night.
Maybe Nasri just does it himself, despite the complicated Frenchness currently going on with French players? But real subtle like, like when he clipped Joey Barton’s heels a few years back?
@Tim This is an extremely good question. The problem with RvP doing it is that he’s 70% more likely to injure himself than Evra. If only Gallas still played for Arsenal, I don’t think complicated Frenchness could be complicated, or French, enough.
I had already drawn this exchange in my head as a manga. It’s very easy to do. Especially when the taut, unpocked features of Samir Nasri are part of the story. He is an absurdly smooth person, he never quite seems like a real human being, on HDTVs he looks like computer generated, a Pro Evolution figure somehow interacting with the real people. Evra makes for a good shouty manga character. Wenger and Ferguson already pretty much are manga characters. In fact, now that I’ve drawn them in my head, I have a hard time picturing their real faces. Nani… well… Nani comes from a different kind of manga. Not the boy’s own adventure kind that the other ones inhabit.
Also, the tackle will clearly be a surprise appearance by Eric Cantona, disguised as Fabiański, avenging the monkstomp on France’s honor. Monkstomp is surprisingly fun to say. Monkstomp, monkstomp, monkstomp. Monkstomp!
This game will probably come down to whichever team has the warmest necks. Advantage: Arsenal
@elliott I think you’re on to something, though indirectly. Surely Ferdinand’s involvement in the Twitterverse Snoodygate will prove a huge distraction.
I wouldn’t rule out Cantona in a pink Łukasz (⌘+v from Wikipedia) disguise, but I don’t know what the heck a monkstomp is, so I shouldn’t comment.
Thanks for your consideration.
@Tim
Monk-stomp!
Haha. I can’t wait for the game. And I love the pre-match banter. Super post.
Yeah, i like it. Definitely to say, i like your post.