26 August 2009

Arsenal vs Celtic - Emirates Stadium, London - Wednesday 26th August 2009

This was a relatively straightforward game for Arsenal, to book an all important place in the Champions League group stages. We went into the game having won the first leg 2-0, with 2 fairly lucky goals - despite that, we had looked by far the better side, so 2-0 probably wasn't an unfair score. We won this game 3-1, with a dodgy penalty to get us on our way, and 2 very well worked second half goals to round off a pretty comprehensive victory over the 2 legs. All simple and boring enough.

But of course, what this game will now be remembered for, thanks to the media's stupidity, is the fact that our penalty for the first goal should probably not have been a penalty. Did Eduardo go to ground easily? Probably. Was it the most blatant dive ever? Not really. Is he the only player ever to have done so? No. Will the media scream as loudly the next time Rooney, Drogba, Gerrard or somebody from one of their favourite clubs does the same? Of course they wont!

In the media's eyes, Eduardo became the first player in English football to dive for a penalty, since Robert Pires did so in 2003. When Rooney did it in 2004 to end our 49 game unbeaten run, they said nothing. When Dirk Kuyt did it in the Champions League in 2008, they said nothing. When Steven Gerrard does it, they say nothing. I really don't like being paranoid, but the media's reaction (along with all the talk of UEFA investigations, retrospective bans and the like), just smacks of some kind of anti-Arsenal agenda. When other players from other teams do the same, it just never seems to get the oxygen of publicity to keep the story alive for so long.

So Eduardo will now be held up as the symbol of everything that's wrong with football (even in a week where hundreds of West Ham and Millwall fans had pitched battles outside Upton Park, like something from the 1970s); and all the fuss may even provoke a UEFA investigation and ban. No problem, as long as the same applies to all other players who are found to be doing the same. The fact that has absolutely no chance of happening is the annoying thing - some players and clubs seem to be immune from this kind of treatment in the eyes of the media. Hopefully, Arsenal can use this to their advantage - to build a mentality that everybody is against us, to use that to build a great team spirit, and do good things this season. That would annoy all of the anti-Arsenal idiots more than anything else.

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