The thought suddenly struck me a few years ago that about a third of Arsenal’s goals come from offside positions. Not wishing to be the tit in the room pointing out that the actor’s voice is less than perfectly synched in with his mouth movements, I kept this to myself and endured a tough couple of years when the rest of the country were swooning over Arsene Wenger’s team, playing coyly with their hair whenever they were on television and whispering to each other about what a great shag they must be.I would drop hints sure, tentative and designed to encourage suspicion in others as opposed to crassly revealing the secret myself, but they weren’t conclusive enough, met with disinterested shrugs from all. “That not off…?” I would venture, leaving the “…side” absent, hoping the hanging pause would lead to somebody else posing the question, but the moment never came, my weak protests rendered spiteful and petty when weighed against the rest of the world’s infatuation. “Oh, but they’re wonderful aren’t they? Not just nice to look at but really lovely to talk to as well” appeared to be the nation’s consensus.
But I kept noticing and every time it happened it sapped away at my soul, a little bit more of me dying inside, the football equivalent of the rush hour commute or not having any milk left in the fridge and the tea already poured. Arsenal’s brand of football is to be encouraged, certainly, but at the expense of one of the fundamental rules? And Arsene Wenger noticed it as well, I’m bastard convinced he did, because every time he complained about a decision that hadn’t gone his team’s way, he let out a smirk: a smug satisfied flick of his lips, aimed squarely at me, invented sorely to encourage my irritation. “But your team is allowed to flaunt one of the game’s most crucial rules on an almost bi-matchly basis”, I stammered, my voice a wreck of quivering impotence and indignation. “Yeah, and what the fuck are you going to do about it?” he taunted me, from behind his two big and hard mates.
So I stopped watching them. Not that big of a deal really- Arsenal are of fine stock and have some great players, but their new stadium is charmless and distancing and their games run a similar pattern to 90% of the rest of the games involving the (oh Jesus, here it comes) ‘Big Four’ (ugh). Arsenal get an early goal and settle in, their opponents play alright, a little toothless maybe but never looking particularly overawed or mismatched, then Arsenal get a second goal and lots of tedious people whiter on about the hopeless gulf in quality in the Premiership and, oh dear, isn’t it terrible and, please, will somebody think of the children. It’s not a hard and fast science, of course, but if missing the occasional Adebayor happy slapping is the price I have to pay for not being enraged by their offside allowances to point of grim absolution- where I feel like the only solution is to grab one of the neighbourhood’s stray kittens and set it alight in a creepily mechanical way, all along explaining to it the bylaws and intricacies of one of football’s oldest laws, the occasional maniacal raising of my voice the only intrusion into the otherwise monotone and spookily delivered monologue- then it the least I can do. Fact: if Seven’s John Doe had never sat down to watch the ‘Best of Arsenal’ video clip on YouTube, Detective David Mills and his wife Tracy would now be raising their child in peaceful domestic harmony.
Because of all this I came into the Eduardo and Taylor incident at the weekend with an interesting perspective: denied the initial shock of witnessing it firsthand and confident on how these things get built up by people made it easier to sympathise with Taylor as well as Eduardo and I had my steely nerve armed and ready but the effect of seeing it happen was still a genuinely upsetting one. The most horrific thing was the almost shell-shocked reaction of Eduardo, his stunned call to the bench followed by immediate slump onto the ground reminded me a lot of the Solider at the beginning of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ looking to retrieve his detached arm in an almost dreamlike state. For someone like me, who cringes at the thought of catching his finger on the back gate, it was all deeply unpleasant.
The problem being, of course, that our righteous fury has been somewhat stumped by the fact that it wasn’t actually that nasty a challenge. In a season where various thugs have been doing whatever they can in the name of viral marketing for the new Rambo film, it seems unfortunate that this one will be the one we all remember. And though people pointing out that if had been a Croatian player doing that to Wayne Rooney the Queen herself would have broken Royal Protocol to register her disgust undoubtedly have a point I can’t help thinking the argument works both ways.
Look at the stills of the incident; compare Taylor’s stocky and unkempt frame to Eduardo lithe, athletic shape. Look at the names for Christ’s sake, Eduado evoking exotic images of passion and inhibition and cheap Easyjet packages if you book it now and don’t mind where you’re your flying from and Taylor, quintessentially English, the sheer antithesis of glamour. The whole incident is the exact opposite of poetry: it’s the destruction of the skilful and the beautiful and the hopelessly romantic dreamer by the functional and the ugly and the nightclub bouncer that doesn’t let you in because you’re mates got a vest on underneath his shirt. What we shouldn’t lose sight of, however, is the fact that none of this is especially Matt Taylor’s fault, he just happens to be really shit at playing football, whereas Eduado happens to be really good. Players have been forgiven more in the past.
If we are looking for someone to be rude at about the whole thing, we could do alot worse than Harry Rednapp who delivered a particularly crass and mistimed batch of his patterned casual racism on Saturday evening, jokingly reassuring the press that Kranjcar didn’t dive for his team’s penalty despite his “being Croatian”, as Croatian international Eduardo lay on a hospital bed somewhere in agonising pain, contemplating the end of his football career.
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