Published: 5 February, 2015

ARSENAL by Richard Osley

IT doesn’t matter that Arsenal won 5-0 at the weekend with some goals to make all other football fans jealous. 

All you can hear across north London right now is dribbling about how good Harry Kane is. The guy should stand for mayor, he’d get enough votes from that end of the Seven Sisters Road to make things interesting. Devoid of a hero willing to stay at the club for more than a couple of years – there’s only been Ledley King since Lineker – Tottenham are grabbing onto the poor lad as if he is a messiah. No pressure, Hazza. With “he’s one of our own” echoing around the Lane, he signed a new contract with the sillies on transfer deadline as reward for being better than Emmanuel Adebayor – a sort of level one achievement in the Premiership right now – and Roberto Soldadopen. Sadly, for Tottenham and the premise of that awkward song, though, a picture has surfaced of the young Harry Kane in the Arsenal youth set-up, wearing the famous red and white of Spurs’ north London superiors. It left the club’s propagandists at Spurs TV this week hurrying Harry in front of a camera to say: “I was at Arsenal for a year and obviously I was a kid I just wanted to play football. I wanted to wear a Tottenham kit…” He is 21, so it must have been around 2001, 2002…when Arsenal were brilliant and won the league. So, we are being asked to believe that Kane looked at the team ahead of him at Arsenal, with Henry, Vieira and Bergkamp and instead dreamed of emulating Sergei Rebrov and Steffen Iversen. And Teddy Sheringham, who, let’s face it, always knew he’d have to go to United to win anything. It doesn’t make sense. Surely he would have been desperate to be a Gunner? Maybe , whisper it, he still does. 

SPURS by Catherine Etoe

TURNED out nice again, as I like to say whenever Tottenham win impressively at the weekend by scoring loads of goals without reply while playing away to a tricky team who are on the up.

It’s also a phrase I like to reach for whenever Spurs show their mettle to reach the final of one of the most magnificent cup competitions ever known despite having played 16 games in less than two months.

And I find it’s most definitely apt when your home-grown star striker has the best goal tally in all competitions of any Premier League player, and when that same young fellow signs a contract extension with a smile. 

Oh, and it’s also worth dragging out yet again when you realise that your favourite Danish midfielder is officially the joint highest scoring midfielder in the Premier League.

However, it is perhaps not the best thing to utter should you bump into Aaron Lennon in the Gwladys Street End of the Everton ground. Neither is it something you’d choose to say having drunk a good-luck toast to Emmanuel Adebayor on transfer deadline day only to then wake up and find that he hasn’t actually signed for West Ham. And I doubt it was the phrase that most women’s football fans came out with when they heard that Kelly Smith had retired from international duty either because, even though she’s a Gunner through and through, we’ll probably never see a better female player in an England shirt.

But that, I’m afraid is football. So good luck to Aaron and Kelly, and I hope you prove us wrong Ade. As for Tottenham, well, I’m just glad it’s turned out nice again as they say…