ARSENAL
THIS is football: Liverpool, that famous old club which we are all ordered to look up to as football’s guardian angels, where the fans wear lots of badges on their hats and lecture us about the glory, glory Shanklian traditions.

Theirs are good, decent supporters, classy at all costs, among whom loyalty and honesty is rewarded with adulation.

YAH, *scratched record noise*, whatever.

The striker who publicly told Liverpool that he wanted to do the dirty on them, insisting he wanted to leave in front of us all, blurp-snuffling a huge raspberry at his own club…   just scored four amazing goals.

So none of that matters anymore. He had those love-blushed fans cooing again.

This may all seem a little bitter because a) Arsenal were the ones who missed out on him in the summer and b) Whatevs, Osley: weren’t you celebrating Nicklas Bendtner’s goal against Hull and hasn’t he babbled on about wanting to leave?

The difference, of course, is that one goal against Hull won’t make up for Bendtner’s curious back catalogue and most Arsenal fans understand that.

Suarez, on the other hand, is the man who keeps Liverpool relevant 22 years after their last league title, who keeps them in with a biting chance at doing well, a guy who can be forgiven for anything as long as he keeps scoring.

But there you go: this is the sport where Spurs fans were calling for their manager to be sacked at 72 minutes against Fulham and praising his heroic comeback on 84, where impatient Chelsea fans were flipping between vile curses and joyous celebrations.

This, they call, the beautiful game.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
EVERYONE has had an opinion about Spurs this week.

Robbie Savage says Spurs are boring. Sam Allardyce, who chews through his own body weight in bubble gum each match, reckons AVB has been immature.

Alan Sugar, who put George Graham in our dugout, thinks Sir Alex Hairdryer should be in the managerial hot-seat at the Lane.

Trevor at the corner shop… oh they’re all at it.

But are any of them right?

Who cares?

The point is that everyone is so busy declaring Tottenham moribund since the flukey Man City result that they’re starting to sound like sixth-formers in a common room rehashing the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.

Well listen, you might think Spurs are stunned, resting, pining for the fjords, whatever, but even toptastic Arsenal couldn’t beat the champions of England.

And in my opinion, which everyone is entitled to, Spurs definitely, almost certainly, oh alright, maybe, would have beaten Man United if they’d had the same amount of time to recover from their most recent European jaunt as the Mancs were given.

But no one is ever going listen to my theory that we’d have taken all three points on Sunday if our boys hadn’t been playing on a plastic pitch four days earlier in weather cold enough to freeze their Norwegian Blues off.

That’s because all and sundry are too busy speculating about how tired AVB is following his prolonged squawk against journos and reckoning he couldn’t manage a pet shop, let alone a football team. Well, the Fulham win and AVB’s super substitutions suggest there might just be life in us – and him – yet.
CATHERINE ETOE