Published: 17 April, 2014

ARSENAL by Richard Osley

FOR sure, those green eyes of envy do pierce a night sky brightly.

We saw as much on Saturday evening.

So furiously irritated by Arsenal’s passage to the FA Cup final, the critics, awful bores to a man if you don’t mind me saying, decided that there should be no celebration permitted for the winning team’s fans.

Oh no – how can you celebrate beating Wigan on penalties?

they parped on to themselves. HOW? HOW? THAT'S PATHETIC THAT IS, they insisted, before realising they had devoted two hours of their lives to watching a game in the soulless, and ultimately vain, hope of seeing a team they don’t like lose.  

It makes you wonder what the correct response to winning a place in the final should’ve been. Would rows of stoney-faced Arsenal fans silently refusing to applaud have been acceptable?

Truth is, when you’re at a Wembley semi-final, you are going to jump up and down and be happy if your team wins, even if it's against Wigan with a penalty shootout.

That’s the way it works.

You – you reading this on the bus – would've done the same if you'd have been there. Heck, they’d still be drunk with joy in the Wembley rafters if this had been Tottenham Hotspur.

Of course, Arsenal’s cup campaign can’t be drained to just one game against Wigan, as these dullards would have it. Liverpool, Everton and Spurs all had to be overcome before this.

The celebrations were for all of those wins and a bit of fighting spirit in a team robbed for the second half of the season of its best players through injuries.

When you get there yourself,  you'll understand.

TOTTENHAM by Catherine Etoe

TWO banal rumours have surfaced this week… Spurs want Samuel Eto’o and Rafa Benitez is interested in managing our club. Well, if the former comes true I might start signing my name Eto’e just as those Gooners with ‘os’ in their names started using an umlaut when Mesut Özil joined Arsenal.

Unlike those Gooners, I will not be too embarrassed to ditch that affectation if, after two good weeks, the old fella turns out to play like a pile of doo-doo.

If the latter comes true, at least I’ll never have to worry about hitting my Crow word count again because I can bung in the word “fact” after every sentence. Fact. There, I’m on 120 words already so it works. Fact. Ooh, I could really get into this. Fact. (Put the kettle on Gran, I’ll be done with this drivel in a minute.)

Sorry readers, I do take the Crow seriously, I’m just getting giddy with the season’s end in sight.

You won’t be surprised to hear that Fulham fans are behaving just as oddly – they’re renewing their season tickets. Strewth, talk about more money than sense.

Actually, I suppose it’s more loyalty than sense.

Still, good to see Fulham players like Scotty Parker rewarding that blind faith by telephoning supporters to say thanks.

I’d love Tottenham to do the same but they’d have to choose their callers carefully because some cheeky fans might be tempted to say: “Sorry, who?” if they were called up by Andros Townsend.

A forgotten man? Seems like that on the pitch these days but he’s not to the fans I know. We call for Andros every game; we wish Tim Sherwood did too.