TV VIEW:A WEEK of sporting woes, on the whole, far too many crises to count, not least for that ESPN employee who thought "Chink In The Armor" was a puntastic choice of headline for their website report on Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks's winning streak coming to an end.
The employee, as you might have heard, spent yesterday clearing out a desk, having been relieved of duties, a one-time-unthinkable fate, as it happens, that might yet befall the once-armour-plated Arsene Wenger.
Former Newcastle owner Freddy Shepherd conceded he’d be forever known as “the man who shot Bambi” when he sacked the late Bobby Robson all those years ago, and after the week Arsenal had more than a few of their faithful appear to be gunning for their own doe-eyed professor.
“That was a sackable performance for any manager, Bill,” said an aghast John Giles after Arsenal’s 0-4 hiccup against AC Milan, “absolutely awful”.
“I wouldn’t even back Arsenal with Eamon’s money,” he said, underlining just what a hopeless cause the club had become.
That was the gist of the telly verdict, then, Roy Keane, over on ITV, no kinder. “They don’t need me rubbing it in, but . . . ,” he said, before he rubbed it in. “This is the worst Arsenal team in my time watching football,” he said, quirkily putting some of their troubles down to the fact that “five or six of them wear gloves”.
The gloves stayed on, alas, for Arsenal’s FA Cup jostle with Sunderland on Saturday, and you know the rest. What the afternoon almost proved is that (a) Martin O’Neill may, indeed, be a footballing divinity (James McClean, obviously, his representative on earth – not that we want to hype Ireland’s Messi too much), and (b) there’s only so much more of this that Wenger can take.
Watching him descend from a marginally hopeful to a largely life’s-too-short-to-be-managing-this-lot fella on that touchline on Saturday was very close to being as painful as observing his defence attempt to defend, and his midfield show as much fondness for competing as Roy does for players wearing gloves.
“Not for the first time this week we brought you a dismal Arsenal performance,” said Adrian Chiles at the end, Wenger departing the scene with the look of a man who’d prefer to tend to his petunias in his back garden for the next 20 years, rather than deal with this shower of tulips.
Granted, he bought most of the tulips, so maybe that’s where the sackability factor kicks in.
Speaking of sackability. Andre Villas-Boas. “Well,” said Chiles, asking his new best buddy Roy yesterday if the Portuguese lad’s time was up at Chelsea. Roy was loath to say yes, but Chiles reminded him of what has become of Fernando Torres under Villas-Boas’s reign of error, the once Predator-in-Chief metamorphosing into Emile Heskey, a good-hearted, hard-working striker with a phobia for goalscoring.
And then Chiles showed Roy a clip of David Luiz laying his Godly hands on Fernando’s head, trying to pray away the goal-shyness.
“Ridiculous,” said Roy, “give me strength.” During his last managerial job at Ipswich Roy revealed he’s no stranger to seeking divine intervention himself. “I pray all the time – but, obviously, the man upstairs is busy at the moment,” he said.
But, it seems, God was not answering David or Fernando’s prayers, perhaps too busy dealing with Arsene? Or Rangers?
“He’s very relaxed,” said our Sky host yesterday as Neil Lennon arrived for Celtic’s 5-0 canter at Hibernian. Well, yeah. As the heartless hooped wags put it last week, “Celtic have confirmed they will be holding a minute’s laughter on Sunday after the death of Rangers’s title chances for the next decade”.
After his side duly moved 17 points clear of Rangers, Lennon praised his players for following his instructions. Simple ones, by the sounds of it.
As Roy put it, back over on ITV, Brian Clough’s directions before he made his Notts Forest debut were “just pass the ball to a team-mate”. “And the last thing you want to do is confuse a footballer, because it can easily be done,” he said, straight-faced.
Over to ESPN. Liverpool v Brighton. “We’ve had six goals in this tie and Brighton have scored four of them,” hollered Jon Champion. Seaaaaagulls! “Three of them own-goals.” Ah here.
And there was a male streaker. “We’re not going to show him, we’re doing you a favour, it’s not pretty,” said Jon. “If you want a picture,” added Chris Waddle, “he looks like Uncle Fester”.
You couldn’t but picture Arsene Wenger, the naked gunner.
