A Good Sporting Weekend Marred By Death Of Italian Fan

Nadal beat Gasquet after going a set down. Haye overpowers Mormeck which only begs Warren to set up a fight with Maccarinelli. Man Utd win 2-0 against Blackburn who have turned into the new Bolton; organised and tough to beat. Cotto beats Sugar Shane Mosley. It’s been a good sporting weekend. But it has been marred by the death of an Italian fan who was wrongly shot by the Italian police before a Seria A match. 

Italian football is a shambles. Teams are corrupt, fans are out of control and police have no authority at football matches. The problems in Italian football have been covered up by Italy winning the world cup and Milan winning the champions league. If Italy didn’t win the World Cup in 2006 and Milan didn’t win the champions league against Liverpool, Italian football would have been fucked. Fucked to the point where it should have been banned for months after the corruption between the Seria A teams a couple of years ago. But we’ll see what action is taken over the innocent shooting earlier today.

Moving on, Arsenal are playing tomorrow night. I predicted a tought game for us, but I’m sure we can win. We need some class, we need some strength and we need Adebayor to start scoring again. He was immense at the start of the season but his confidence has decreased over the past month or so. But Wenger will change things at Reading. He will bring back Rosicky and Toure, while Senderos is not fit enough to return even though he is not injured anymore. Expect a strong team with Theo coming off the bench.

So is there much else to talk about? No. But I will talk. I will talk as if my heart is attached to a life support machine and everytime I stop typing the machine slows down. So let’s talk. What about? I want to talk about Blackburn. Blackburn under Hughes have turned into a hard working, powerful and effective team. Hughes bought Samba for under £500,000, he turned Pederson into what he is now and he bought McCarthy for £2.5m. McCarthy is exceptional; every summer he literally begged the English teams to buy him from Porto but teams did not. Man City spent £7.5m on Samaras when they could have attracted McCarthy.

I like Hughes, he is a winner and he is tactically good. He has an eye for talent like Wenger, and talk is rife that he will take over a big team after Blackburn, aka Man Utd. I can see this happening, and if he takes over Arsenal when Wenger leaves, I will be happy. I will be happy because he will not spend ridiculous amounts on players, he will not ruin the tradition Wenger has built at Arsenal. He will be cautious and I like cautious people. I went into Ladbrokes on Friday and was standing next to an Iranian man who put £400 into the roulette machine, he put the money on numbers, all apart from 23. Guess what number came up. Yes, it was 23. £400 down the drain. He muttered, ‘Fecking machine, I’ve lost 400 on this one and 500 on the other one in the space of 2 hours’. He was not cautious, he did not show careful forethought.

Wenger is cautious. Hughes is cautious. Will Hughes take over from Wenger? Maybe. Maybe not. I have a soft spot for Scolari because he’s been successful for pretty much every team he’s managed. But it’s too early to talk about life after Wenger.

Tomorrow, we shall see whether Arsenal can overtake United and take top spot off them once again. Going into December - where we have 7 games altogether in a space of 4 weeks - top spot is the best position to be in. If we can come out of December still top, our chances of winning the league will increase to 80%; at the moment it is 60%. Christmas is when the average and the good are distinguished.

Ramin