It'll be a short one today.  I ran the 10k Calcutta Run yesterday with two friends; I'm still sore and I stilll ache.  Thinking of the children who will benefit from the money raised helps to ease the discomfort.  What also helps is that I completed the 10k in 58:30, ahead of my mates' 64ish.   Neither are particularly impressive times by any means, but I beat my mates, and that's what matters.

Two items circulating in the Arsenal sphere today relate to former left-back Kenny Sansom's new autobiography, entitled "To Cap It All".  The Daily Mail has a seperate article, based on comments George Graham makes in an appendix to the book:

'When I look back at my time managing Arsenal in the Eighties, I wonder how much more we could have achieved had my team not been boozing so much,' said Graham.

'Don't get me wrong, they gave their all — Kenny, Tony Adams, Paul Merson and the others — but their activities off the pitch must have had a detrimental effect on their overall performances. Tony and Paul have spoken about their battles with addiction and now it's Kenny's turn to tell his story.'

It would be fallacious to say that Paul Merson is the reason I'm a Gooner.  But it wouldn't be far off.  The Merse was an exciting flair player in George Graham's rigid and regimented Arsenal team, and I loved to watch him play.  He was unpredictable and entertaining.

As one of the old Arsenal boozers, he's had his fair share of problems and demons to deal with.  I'm happy to see him doing well as a pundit on Sky Sports.  I can understand if others, particularly non-Gooners, don't like him.  But I do.

On Thursday night the Make-a-Wish Foundation in Ireland held a pub quiz in D2 on Harcourt Street to raise funds.  An Arsenal jersey signed by Paul sold for €250.  A nice touch for a good cause. 

The return of Gladiators last weekend brought an old issue back into focus for me: homosexuality in football.  Why, you may ask?  Well, Gladiators has many connections to both the football community and to the gay community.  What connections, you may also ask?

- The original UK Gladiators was hosted by former footballer John Fashanu.  His brother Justin Fashanu, who also played, was the first openly gay footballer.  Justin was ostracised by the footballing community and by his brother after coming out, and sadly he committed suicide in 1998.

- The hosts of the new UK Gladiators are Kirsty Gallacher and Ian Wright.  Gallacher is of course a former presenter for Sky Sports News, while Wright has vague connections to football of some sort.

- The original US version of Gladiators suffered a number of scandals; two of its male performers were exposed as having worked in the gay porn industry and as strippers.

- Gladiators is rather homo-erotic.  Don’t believe me?  Read an excerpt from this blog:

"How could you possibly have been expected to stay heterosexual in the presence of a show that featured hot musclemen in spandex, running around and beating each other with pillow sticks?"

- A study carried out in 1999 revealed that the success of Gladiators had led to a 34% increase in the number of Premiership footballers waxing their chests.  As an interesting aside, David Beckham alone has caused a further 127% increase.

Back to football - A number of players, including John O’Shea, Graeme Le Saux, former Gooners Fredrik Ljungberg, Sol Campbell and Cashley Cole have been dogged by rumours about their sexuality throughout their careers, despite all five repeatedly stressing their heterosexuality.  This has been particularly apparent in the case of Cashley, who recently affirmed his un-gayness by cheating on his wife Cheryl with an absolute moonpig.  Former Chelsea full-back Le Saux was regularly subjected to homophobic abuse during games, and was taunted about his supposed homosexuality by fellow player Robbie Fowler.  In Fowler's defence, he looks like my brother, and my brother is a good guy.

Since then measures have been taken to stamp out homophobia in football, such as the FA adopting a scheme proposed by the Gay Football Supporters Network to make homophobic chanting at games a specific offence; this came into effect for the 07/08 season.  However, to date Justin Fashanu remains the only gay footballer to openly express his homosexuality.

So why is football so hostile to the gays?  Is it a collective sense of denial?  There must surely be a large number of gay football fans – I imagine it holds a strong appeal.  Speaking as a breeder, I know that if there was a sport where two teams of women ran around a field in shorts, grabbing each other, getting sweaty, jumping around together and occasionally hugging and kissing, I would definately watch it.  Anyway, perhaps if the homophobic elements within football were to get in touch with their feminine side, they might find acceptance of their inner gay and enable the healing process to begin.

A gay friend of mine loves his football.  The poor bastard; he supports Newcastle United.  When I put forward my accepting-the-inner-gay suggestion, he said:

“Shut the fuck up Van Smeiter.  Don’t be so gay.”

So there you have it.  There is much work to be done. 

I’ve been pondering two things this week.

First, how I told myself that I would never write a blog. 

Second, what is it I like most about supporting Arsenal?

Watching the games, in the ground or on the telly, was the immediate and obvious response.  However, it is one that doesn’t really ring true.  Games generally only come up every three days at best and even then, most of the game is spent being too nervous/frustrated/drunk/horny (well, maybe not horny…) to really enjoy the proceedings.  The moments of elation are, well, elating, obviously, but they are also very fleeting.  They’re like the Christmas Day roast.  What about the Tesco Finest Microwave Slop that I shovel down my gullet 364 days a year?  What represents that part of the metaphor?

It’s the news, and the accompanying comment.  It’s the sort of ‘bland, decrepit, [and] unrelenting’ stream of non-story about Arsenal and football in general that fills the hours of every day that I crave.  The Guardian’s Andy Bull complains about it.  I might too, only it is my oxygen.  I can’t get through the day without it.  I’ve tried, and I’ve failed.  So I give myself to it.

Thus I have chosen to blog, but not about the news.  That market is saturated, and even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be interested.  Others do it far better than I ever could.  Personally, the very concept of reporting the latest Arsenal news, day upon day upon day upon day, fills me with dread.  Not to mention, trying to be funny the whole time?  Christ.  Most bloggers only do the first part.  Facts, figures, and a few swear words.  Solid stuff.  Some bloggers attempt to do both news and humour, and fail miserably.  Only a select few, such as arseblogger for example, achieve both.  I don’t know how he manages - I get tired just thinking about it.  If you haven’t read his article from the 14^th of May on the Secret Life of Alex Hleb, you really need to.  It’s a fine example of humour, news, opinion and creative swear-word creation.  Did I just write ‘creative … creation’?  Yes I did.

But I digress.  I have chosen to blog about the Arsenal community in general.  I’ll write about the people writing about the action, or rather, I’ll write about what the writers are writing.  I’m not Perez Hilton after all.  Sounds pointless?  Probably.  Still, I like to write, and this is a perfectly trivial and harmless outlet for me to do so.  Nonetheless, in an attempt to retain some form of usefulness and journalistic integrity (snigger), I shall report the ‘news’ occasionally too, if not news in the traditional sense.  If it is something that would be of interest to a journo at the Times, the Sun, or even at the Why I Like Arsenal Blog by Daniel Humptydumpty Aged 7 Years, I won’t write about it.  Only the truly trivial, the truly meaningless news snippet gets reported here. 

For example, I received a tip-off last week that Bacary Sagna has been so taken by life at Arsenal that he now routinely wears red and white Y-fronts on weekdays. I bet you didn’t know that.

Anyway, enough with the introductionarying, and on to the weekly round-up. As a word of warning, it may not always be weekly.  I’m not very reliable. So -

Arsenal.com continues to slowly spool out words of wisdom from Arsene today.  Some might say the drip-feed policy of Arsenal.com is a cynical ploy to keep a steady flow of traffic to the site; I say it is considerate to those who have boring jobs and a net connection.  Besides, they’ve put up a new photo of Arsene looking charismatic, so you can’t really complain, surely?

Myles Palmer provides some interesting background on the boardroom history at Arsenal.  When he’s not telling us what Wenger is doing wrong, Myles’ articles do make a pleasant read.  He’s like an eccentric old pensioner, full of grandiosity and whimsy, factoids and fancy.  You can curl up with his column, mouse in one hand, mug of cocoa in the other, and let him wile away the minutes recounting his favourite anecdotes.  When he gets worked up and starts ranting angrily, you gently rub his belly and calm him down with a nice hot brandy and some Werthers Original. 

Arseblogger is in a good mood this morning, presumably due to the contract renewals of Clichy and co, the imminent arrival of Carlos Vela, and quite possibly, due to not having a hangover.  Just don’t mention the delicate nature of our Belarusian ballerina to him.  Saturday morning starts and primadonna footballers form a volatile cocktail over there.

Young Guns' reporter relays what his friends (at Carlos Vela News ©) have told him about, you guessed it, Carlos Vela.  The news consists effectively of what Le Prof told Arsenal.com this afternoon.  While I admire young Sanderson’s devotion to regular updates, I feel he may struggle for genuine youth news over the long summer void.  Still, the depth of information on the Arsenal child and toddler teams there is impressive, and the comment pages are worth browsing through if you’re bored, if only to see 10 year olds asking for trials at Arsenal.

A couple of other blogs talk about Theo and some other similarly uninspiring news items. A google (a verb I both adore and despise at the same time) of the words “Arsenal” and “blog” should prove illuminating. 

As an aside, the appearance of this blog - yes, I know it looks shit. It's a work in progress, as I work to rediscover my dormant webdesign heritage.  In the meantime, I trust that you, my reader(s), are more discerning than to dismiss me over such a superficial detail.  Right?

Right?