Published: 12 September, 2013

ARSENAL
THERE was nothing to watch on television this week apart from ITV’s coverage of England internationals.

No, no – no there really wasn't.

Don’t tell me I should've been watching Breaking Bad.

Raving on and on about Breaking Bad is odious.

It isn’t cool to be fashionably against watching Breaking Bad either, but it’s still marginally less uncool than blathering to anybody who listens about how you watch Breaking Bad – and how you adore it.

And how it’s amazing. Like you did with The Wire.

Please comprehend: you’re not American and you need to get over that now.

Stop living your lives wishing you were a Baltimore corner boy with a snapback cap and a hip accent.

You live in London. You eat cornflakes. You may like football (hopefully… after all you’ve turned to a column sandwiched by pictures of aged men in football shirts wasting away their lives in full public view by droning on and on about the game).

But you, you’re not a street hustler, more likely  a “project manager” stuck in a tube tunnel on a delayed Northern line train.

Don’t tell me to get a box-set.

I digress, just slightly.

There we were watching ITV’s coverage of the England matches and it struck me, as Adrian Chiles spoke for us, as he thinks he does, to tell us ‘oo-er there were a few heart in the mouth moments against the Ukraine’, that actually my heart had not been in my mouth at all. I’d been deadened by dullness.

The World Cup will be a lesser watch for us if England aren’t there, certainly, but the sheer tedium of this week’s international fixtures razors our enthusiasm. It’s a shame but right now England are, in one word, boring. Breaking boring bad England.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
WE’VE been choking on our bagels over the last fortnight over reports that our now-beloved chairman Daniel “flash the cash” Levy has decided to have another go at rebuilding the Lane with a new set of architects.

Word spread through fanzine sites that Danny had asked the architects behind Wembley, the Olympic stadium and – whisper it – Ashburton Grove, to look once more at the designs for the world-famous home of the Spurs.

Outrageous, was the general response.

There are three points to be made: First, honest regulars will admit that our legendary buzzing atmosphere has not been quite as raucous in the past two years. My theory is that the Europa League means we play a lot of league games on a Sunday when the hardcore are nursing hangovers.

It means instead of it being a beer-sozzled sing song, the terraces are full of groaning about what errors they made the night before. Secondly, the average age now of a season ticket holder at Tottenham is 42 (Arsenal’s is 49).

You can’t help but think if we could have German-style safe standing areas, and ticket prices went down accordingly, the average age would drop and the noise level would rise.

Thirdly, on closer inspection, the reports in the papers that Spurs are going to rip up their original plans and get the people who created that bowl of silence down the Seven Sisters Road to do the same in Tottenham is actually not true at all. Architects Populous have simply been asked to have a look at fitting out the stadium, not starting from scratch.

So, no, it won't be just like the library!
DAN CARRIER