The End of Happy Hour?! What the Hell?!

I awoke today to the news that a group of MPs (the acronym being more suited to Military Police than Member of Parliament) have called for an end to Happy Hours. Apparently banning cut-price alcohol will reduce the burden drink fuelled behaviour puts on police. I am becoming more and more infuriated by the Orwellian nature of our Government, who having already sneakily eroded our civil liberties while nobody was looking and raised the taxes on all the things we like doing, are now contriving to prevent the population enjoying themselves at all. The Home Office Affairs select committee (those who have come up with this ‘solution’)  need to realise that foremost in the Governments mind should be a happy population, not just a happy Police Force. It isn’t as though the vast population have a lot of joy at the moment is it? For the love of God at least let people go out and enjoy themselves. It makes the burgervan livid. Revolution baby yeah!

Phew, I’m glad I got that off my chest. That’s the kind of poison that if kept locked up tight can create a bonafide loon! Today is, of course, Monday and that means that we are all returning to work and getting back into the routine of our mundane lives…………or does it?! No! Not this week as we have the joy of our 2-1 demolition of Manchester United to reflect upon! Ahhhhhhhhhh yes, it still feels good two days later. How I enjoyed having a nice lay-in yesterday, then getting up, tootling down to the paper shop, buying some milk and a newspaper and then settling down in my living room to pore over the mostly glowing reports about the Arsenal with a nice cup of tea and a plate of hot buttered toast. Mmmmmmm.

So, having digested the response to our victory, what is the general consensus? It seems to be that the Arsenal aren’t at a crisis point after all, but that the result doesn’t paper over the deficiencies in the squad. Generally the press and the fans are fairly certain that the league is beyond us this season, but that we should, once again, finish high enough to qualify for the Champions League. There has also been a lot of castigation of those that were overly critical of Mr Wenger, sadly Tony Cascarino was not explicitly named in the roll call of dishonour, but we know he’s on there so it will suffice to name him here. Phil Brown wrote an article in the Telegraph today about the qualities of le Boss and how, in the Hull managers early coaching career a sit down chat with Arsene inspired him to be the successful manager he is today. Good man. Now give us those three points back you scav!

Nice one Calzaghe!

Arsene has come out in the press to say that the Premiership race will be the tightest it has been for a long time. While I agree that there is no great side in the Premier League this year and from that perspective it will be tighter, I cannot envisage the Arsenal pushing for the title beyond February. It is possible that this result will galvanise the team as has happened in previous years but we have lost three times already without playing Chelsea, Liverpool, or Man Utd away. It would take a monumental effort to bring the Premiership back to Islington after the start we’ve had. As long as this isn’t one of those years where come May we are 20 points off the pace. It’s just plain embarrassing when that happens. I still think we can get a good run together in the Champions League. Those teams don’t bully us like the Stoke’s of this world and we are able to play our game effectively against most teams we come up against; and as we know, when we get to play our own way there aren’t many teams that can stop us.

Hopefully the cup competitions will all give us a bit more joy this season. Obviously the European Cup is the most important but I would like to see Mr Wenger show the FA Cup more respect this season. I was ashamed of the performance that saw us eliminated last season. The club really disrespected the fans that day. The Carling Cup, while obviously a bit pony, would be nice to win as well, particularly if we can do it with our oiks. The teens will get their chance against Wigan this week, and I am looking forward to seeing a bit more of Rameses and Wilshere. There should be some team news on that game as the day progresses.