Quite the week, eh? Where to begin?
My World Cup predictions and attempts to jinx fell apart pretty quickly. France being the best team of the tournament resulted in them deciding not to turn up against Spain in the Semi-Final.
England having gone a goal up against Argentina decided to do their best impression of Arsenal – trying to hold on to their lead. The only thing is… England don’t have a solid defence. It’s the equivalent of me turning up to a Mexican standoff with a water pistol.
I watched the England vs Argentina game with the OddDaughter. Who had plenty of questions:
- Why are there adverts that keep flashing and moving?
- How do the players get off the pitch and over the advertising hoardings? (Ask Henderson!)
- What happens if the ball goes into the crowd and hits someone?
All the important questions. I made the decision she wasn’t to stay up past the 90 minutes, but as I was explaining to her she couldn’t watch Extra Time, Argentina scored their winner. Early night for everyone then.
At least it meant knackered players like Saka and Rice could finally rest, right? Wrong. They played the completely pointless Bronze final. Aside from being a bit pissed off at not giving the players a deserved break – it also showed how ridiculous it was to not bring Saka on during the Semi-Final against Argentina. Silly from Tuchel – but I’m not going to delve into it. Nothing different to what’s already been said plenty of times by pundits and social media psychos.
As for the final between Spain and Argentina – the first half was a bit boring. The half time “show” was long, cheesy and felt out of place. The second half was all Spain and also a bit dull if I’m being honest until the last few minutes when Argentina finally decided to play football, and then went down to 10 men. Merino wasn’t able to save us from Extra Time as he did in previous games. Extra time and Spain should have been a goal up but somehow Merino was adjudged to have fouled thin air. Then he himself should have put one in the back of the net through a header I would have put money on. Annoyingly when the Spain goal did come I missed it because I was having a hydration break myself. But Merino (or Zubimendi) wasn’t involved so I’m a little disappointed by that. I would like to have seen an Arsenal man get the winner in the final.
And so, Spain are World champions. I’m glad a couple of Arsenal players are able to return home as World Cup winners. And 90% of Argentina’s players are dickheads so I’m glad they didn’t win it. Outside of that I’m pretty indifferent.
Argentina were quite frankly terrible until they went down a goal. How they managed to take it to Extra Time I don’t know. Had England had got to the final I feel it would have been a better game.
But I would say that, wouldn’t I?
In Arsenal news, Trossard departs the club. His goodbye message to the fans really got me a bit teary. Surprising really, we knew there was a good chance he would leave – but what a great servant to the club he has been. He arrived for a relatively cheap price after Chelsea hijacked a move for a player we put a lot of effort to sign by paying over the odds for him.
Which is a probably a good segue to Morgan Rogers moving to Chelsea outta nowhere. Now look – I admit I don’t think Rogers is worth anywhere near £117mil. He’s a good player but I didn’t want Arsenal to pay that much for him. BUT, having Chelsea come in so quickly and steal what was reported as our main target for summer is a real bad look for us. Especially after City did the same with that Leicester teenager earlier in the window.
And that’s the frustrating thing. On the one side it’s good the club aren’t going to overspend on any player. But the manner in which it’s happening is making a bit of a joke out of our club. So, to summarise:
Fuck you Morgan Rogers. Fuck you Chelsea.
In case you can’t tell – it’s pissed me off a little bit. I hope they all suffer an itch that can’t be scratched.
And that’s where I’ll leave it for this week. Hopefully next week there’ll be more positive news on the Arsenal signings front.
