The Crow – You won’t get too many Odemwingie moments in life!

Published: 30 September, 2010

WEST Brom are to bring a DVD out covering the day they beat Arsenal at the Emirates. Tacky Tottenham did the same thing when they drew 4-4 here a couple of years ago. Imagine what they would have done if they had actually won at Arsenal. These DVD releases are comparable. The achievements are similar. The club shops at these second rung teams must do similarly terrific business.

For Arsenal’s part, some days you just have to accept that you’ve been caught out. The Baggies deserved their win. That won’t happen often - and you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth and all that. It’s like when Nick Hornby wrote about Michael Thomas’s last minute championship winning goal at Anfield for Arsenal in Fever Pitch, a moment so unscriptably brilliant that people compare it to the first time they had a wriggle, their wedding day or the birth of their children. Hornby’s Arsenal-struck character said something like: “You don’t get many Micky Thomas moments in life... you don’t get many Micky Thomas moments in football!” It’s the same in despair.

If you’re lucky you don’t get many Peter Odemwingie moments in life and, if you are fortunate and sensible enough to be an Arsenal fan, you don’t get many Peter Odemwingie moments in football either.  Arsenal dusted themselves down and smashed Partizan Belgrade in far a more important match a few days later. Again, no need for a DVD. Arsenal have too much class for that.
RICHARD OSLEY

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I AM trying to understand the unreasonable pain felt when one’s team loses. 

I know Spurs had a make-shift back four on Saturday and that they were only denied something from the game by Hammers’ keeper Robert Green, who seemed eerily possessed whilst making a string of great saves. 

But it still didn’t help come the final whistle. West Ham fans were rightly ecstatic; it was their first win of the season, against an enemy that they had not beaten since the Lasagne-Gate saga in 2006! 

The only thing that naturally made me feel better this weekend was the fact that Arsenal managed to lose at home to West Brom and that Chelsea lost against Manchester City. Though, I must admit, the ascendancy of Man City is beginning to look a bit worrying as we try to retain our place in the Champions League. 

Then I wondered if players feel the same pain we do?  Whether they get texts with annoyingly funny jokes about their performance?  And if so, how do they feel about them? 

I can only confess that if  I were in their shoes, it wouldn’t bother me. Yes I might feel a little embarrassed that everyone and their aunty had beaten the Hammers since the season began.

 But if I were going home with  £70,000-a-week for losing, it would help take my mind off a bad day at the office. Time for pay cheques only cashable on performance?
TONY DALLAS