Arsenal Fans Are Fuming: This Weekend in the Premier League

It’s the first Premier League review of the year, and oh my, it’s a humdinger. As the 24-hour news cycle warps the human mind into an ever more grotesque parody of its former glory, football fans have been the worst affected by the amplified drama, rage and irrationality of following their teams.

"RUBBISH! RUBBISH! BOO! RUBBISH!"

Inscribe these immortal words on the side of the Emirates, for they are the final judgement of Arsenal fans on what they have seen since they moved to the stadium in 2006. After stretching their winless run to five games with a heinous 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth, one supporter spoke for all the fanbase when he refused to accept the apologetic applause of the team, gesturing like a manic aircraft signaller in the stands while exaggeratedly mouthing his disapproval.

Maybe, finally, this is the moment that Arsenal fans decide they are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. When we look back at the last days of the Arsene Wenger era, we may well pinpoint this as the defining image of his crumbling reign. Just as footage of protesters smashing chunks out of the Berlin Wall came to define the fall of communism, footage of a livid middle-aged man shouting "RUBBISH" at Jack Wilshere may herald the end of Wengerdom. Then again, it’s equally possible that Arsenal will fluke the League Cup and Wenger will be handed a two-year contract the day afterwards.

Yer da, Ken, woke up on the wrong side of the bed this weekend. He hasn’t been the same since Phil Taylor lost in the World Darts Championship, while yer mam has barely spoken to him since he came home steaming from the Christmas work do. Those bastard Remoaners have been backsliding on Brexit again, and now even Farage wants a second referendum. "Who will speak for Britain?" Ken asks. He knows! The letters section of regional newspapers.

After countless scribbled rewrites and literally hundreds of outright rejections, yer da finally hits upon the third-most popular outlet in Yorkshire, The Sheffield Star. They, for some inexplicable reason, decide to publish his garbled letter full of factual inaccuracies and meaningless assertions about the merits of women reporting on football.

"There’s nothing quite like relaxing on a late Saturday afternoon with a beer or a cuppa and watching Final Score on the BBC," he writes. "But I give it a miss now because it irritates me to listen to reporting coming from around the grounds by at least, on some occasions, as many as six women reporters." Six! How did we let this level of equality happen, Ken? That’s enough women to cover almost one eighth of all the weekend games in the top four tiers!

"The Premier League and other major leagues sell globally… put a woman behind the microphone and it’s killed stone dead," warned Ken. Somehow, with female commentators helping to achieve unprecedented growth in audiences and television revenues over the last decade or so, it feels like the Premier League might live on regardless of what yer da thinks.

Against general expectations, Roy Hodgson is actually doing a decent job at Crystal Palace. As it turns out, the experience of crashing out of Euro 2016 to Iceland has not broken his spirit as many predicted. Palace’s 1-0 win over Burnley propelled them up to 12th in the Premier League table, a lofty height in comparison to being rock bottom with zero goals scored after their first seven league games of the season. At Selhurst Park, and indeed all around Croydon, memories of the debacle that was the Euros seem to be fading with time and distance.

So can we, the wider population, find it in our hearts to forgive Roy Hodgson? The answer is: no, never, we must never allow him to forget Euro 2016. He could win the league with Crystal Palace and we, the people, would still be there to shout: "HARRY KANE ON CORNERS, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, YOU IDIOT?" No amount of late-career success in south London should erase the fact that he masterminded England going out of a major tournament to a country with a population of 330,000, which – for context – is only slightly more than Reading.

While many would cite Diego Maradona’s "Hand of God" against England, the greatest handball of all time was undoubtedly Thierry Henry’s against Ireland. In extra time of a decisive qualifier for the 2010 World Cup, Henry literally juggled a long ball onto his foot before teeing up William Gallas to win it. Though Irish football fans will hate Henry for all eternity, there was something beautiful about the artistry with which he played a game made for feet with his hand, shrugging the ball into position before nonchalantly finishing off the supreme act of unsporting behaviour. This is the joy of a deliberate handball: the guilty look, the affected nonchalance, the breathtaking unfairness of it, the sly glance back at the referee.

It’s fair to say that Abdoulaye Doucoure’s effort against Southampton on Saturday was not quite so nonchalant. The midfielder practically Hadoukened the ball into the back of the net for Watford’s late equaliser, windmilling over the goal line with all the subtlety of someone steaming into a 3AM fight outside a kebab shop. How referee Roger East missed it is a mystery, but that’s the brilliance of a game-changing handball. It was cruel, arbitrary, heartbreaking, baffling: everything football is meant to be.

@W_F_Magee