Published: 18 April, 2013

ARSENAL
OH squeaky bums! After all that… will Arsenal out-squeaky-bum Spurs now for squeaky-bumminess and slip away from the top four and Champions League at the vital moment?

Spurs are the absolute grandmasters at getting super squeaky at the squeaky bum time of the season. But just when they had got things sorted the Gunners were pretty tepid too against Everton this week and Arsenal fans might just be feeling the S-Bum effect themselves right now.

The word ‘bum’ is actually on the “not advised” list on this newspaper’s rules guide, given to all new recruits along with a pencil, notepad, an apple and an empty promise that the web won’t make us all redundant by next Tuesday.

It’s a crude word reserved for three-year-olds to shout out from supermarket trolley seats in the conniving hope of embarrassing their flustered parents in the baked beans aisle.

I’m not three and you’re not three but let’s be honest with ourselves, really honest: “squeaky bum time” perfectly sums up this tense, final, part of the season like no other phrase can.

And besides, surely the editor (his name’s not Shirley… etc etc) can’t fine me a week’s wages for using the word bum here. I can’t be punished by having my Gunners’ press pass rescinded and being sent out to take pictures of scouts with big cheques instead.

Can I?

I have a mandate, a clear licence to use the term. It’s a phrase, after all, first brought to prominence a few years ago by a knight of the realm, Sir Alex Ferguson.

With one cheeky utterance, Sir Alex placed a playground phrase into a common law, if unofficial, dictionary for us all to swim in.

Now is the time for it, there is no other appropriate phrase: This is Squeaky. Bum. Time.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
I’D like to take this opportunity to wish Chelsea all the best in their quest to win the competition that Chelsea say is the best competition of all this season.

Not the FA Cup, obviously. Nope, I mean the Thursday night league that Emmanuel ‘Michael Flatley’ Adebayor contrived to put us out of last week.

But I don’t think I’ll bother, because as one telly wonk said, Fur Coat No Knickers FC merely “parachuted” into the competition after the rest of us had seen off the proper teams. 

So win it if you like. We won’t be tuning in. We’ll be catching up on the night classes we missed while we watched Tottenham play all the hard sides like Inter Milan, Lazio and Lyon.

Don’t know about you Spurs fans, but I still have a bit of work to do on the life-sized papier mâché model of Arsenal’s ‘Dave’ Giroud that I started at the Women’s Institute way back in September.

When I say a bit of work, I mean I’ve just got to glue his hands together, as if in prayer, and stick them to his face.

Still, at least “striker” Dave looked distraught after playing like Everton’s 12th man on Tuesday.

Adebayor, or Lord of the Dance as they’ve taken to calling him in Enfield, just seemed to smile after jiggety-jigging his penalty kick into space last week.

Gran put his grin down to indigestion.

I put it down to exhaustion.

Which is why I really would like to take this opportunity to wish Chelsea all the best with playing six games in 17 days while ensuring we get 10 off.

Because that, is what you call a result.
CATHERINE ETOE