Published: 19 February, 2015

ARSENAL by Richard Osley

SO, what would happen if Didier Drogba wanted to ride the Paris metro while those heckling Chelsea fans were in town?

Would he be shoved off the train to the gory strains of, “we’re racist and we like it that way”? More likely, he’d be pulled on board for selfies and thanked for all the goals he’s scored against Arsenal. Cole, Essien, Makalele, Remy, none of them would be shoved off the train. And yet a random black bloke in Paris, as shown in the video on news channels in both England and France, gets the full treatment.

Now, the easy way for rival fans to treat this horror show is to say: “Typical ol’ Chelsea, same ol’ racist bleedin’ Chelsea.” It’s an easy opportunity to smudge a team nobody outside of Chelsea wants to see win with a catch-all cliché.

But it’s a dangerous response, because Chelsea, odd as it may sound, are not an evil empire. Their spending is vulgar, their success synthetic, but their fans are not all racist.

To suggest they are, is like someone falsely accusing me, or you, of being anti-semitic because Arsenal fans I’ve met have in the past sung despicable songs about Auschwitz at Spurs fans. 

We may play an endless game of one-upmanship on the football field. We beat you. You beat us. Ha. Ha. It’s fun. But when it comes to conquering bigotry, a lazy line about how every single Chelsea fan is a raving racist will not do. So, sorry, there’s no jokes or half-baked put-downs about Chelsea and Spurs this week, as hilarious as they always are. This week, as corny as it may sound, the Gunners and the Blues need to stand together against a common foe.

SPURS by Catherine Etoe

I WAS worried that opportunities to Crow would be limited this week, mostly because Harry Kane hasn’t played. Then I spotted the “hottest players in the Premier League” headlines and knew I had the Crow in the bag. 

Oh come on. If some bright spark asks 250 women to list the hottest players in the Premier League they have to choose Tottenham; we’re too hot for most teams to handle and we’ve one of the brightest managerial sparks at the helm (Paul Scholes said it so it must be true). 

“Chuck another veggie burger on the barby Gran,” I shouted as I sat down at the typewriter, “I’ll bash this one out in a jiffy.” 

Sadly, it was not so easy. Those 250 women weren’t a representative sample of the thousands who watch footy week-in, week-out. Nor were they being asked to rate the players’ skills. 

They were American ladies being asked to select the prettiest footballers in our élite league. And guess what – they only went and chose Arsenal’s Dave Giroud as their No1 pick. Now whether they based their answers on the girth of his quiff or those blurry photos of him in his hotel room wearing nothing but a posing pouch and a broad smile is unclear. But it certainly knocked the wind out of my Crow. Luckily, Nacer Chadli (who has been known to pose in nothing but a carefully placed flannel in the interests of public health) was also in the first XI so that’s Spurs’ blushes and the Crow saved. 

I still think it’s all a bit silly, but maybe in a week when some “Chelsea fans” put the ugly back into football with their racist antics, we need all the beauty we can get.