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Moan United still not in touching distance of Wenger’s ‘Invincibles’
SLUMDOG Millionaire won a record 73 Oscars this week – or something like that.
Can a film really be that good? I haven’t seen a good film at the flicks since Trading Places – and that didn’t win any Oscars. Eddie Murphy was robbed, Denholm Elliott even more so. I thought Hot Fuzz was worth one too, but again somehow ignored.
In the absence of anything truly amazing, Slumdog won all the prizes: Best Cinematography (whatever that means), Best Lighting, Best Boy, Best Bus Stop Poster, Best use of child actors since Stand By Me, Best money-making use of another country’s poverty etc etc.
Its elevation to greatest film of all time has a footie parallel. In the absence of anything truly amazing, Manchester United look set to win all the prizes this year. It doesn’t mean they are as good as the Arsenal team that went the whole season unbeaten. It doesn’t even mean they are as good as the triumphant treble winners that Moan United gave us in 1999. By calling them “The Untouchables”, a team beaten by Derby has been elevated to an elite status it probably doesn’t merit.
If they were that good, Arsenal wouldn’t have scored two past them at the Emirates this season. No team has left a league match at the stadium since with such an embarrassing number of goals in their net.
THIS week a very rare and unusual thing happened: Arsenal and Spurs both won. It seems so long since this last occurred that I pictured wild, spontaneous celebrations with opposing fans hugging each other and weeping.
All our worries were cast aside, for a few hours at least. The truth is, however, that neither win was particularly impressive and the gloom over north London still lingers.
Spurs won with yet another underwhelming performance, while Arsenal won in what has long been their traditional have-20-chances-and-maybe-score-one style.
The long-hailed genius with a chequebook, Professor Wenger, seems incredibly good at spotting terrible young finishers – Arsenal’s first choice, best striker ever Nicklas Bendtner, in particular.
The rare win for Spurs had its encouraging moments, but unfortunately Carlo Cudicini wasn’t one of them. Our ineptitude from set-pieces this season has been truly tragic, so let’s hope we can keep it together for our trip to Wembley this weekend so nobody has to watch a certain petulant Portuguese poser prancing about celebrating.
We now have a good squad, but we are yet to play as a team. To use the timeless metaphor of Jose Mourinho, we have bought our eggs from Waitrose, but our homelettes just aren’t any good.
Let’s just have one beautiful homelette this Sunday, please. |
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