Published: 6 September, 2012

YOU won't believe me about this next anecdote but it’s true.

I was holidaying in Majorca this week and every time I told somebody I was from London, they responded by asking if I supported Arsenal. Hear that? Not Chelsea or the Spuds… Arsenal. However much money Roman Abramovich wheels into Stamford Bridge it is still Arsenal who are known as the London club abroad. All this even after Chelsea won the Champions League. Maybe the rest of Europe regards Chelsea as a little vulgar in the transfer market, a little lucky in their success. I know that several of you will be reading this and thinking at this stage: Look at his picture: this shouldn’t be a surprise!

But denseheads, I do not walk around all day wearing an Arsenal shirt. It is just a picture. I have other clothes.

I do not, like the majority of the football-watching public, feel the need to wear club colours whenever I’m on holiday, as if supporting a football team is like a game of Risk in which territories need to be taken through the weapon of wearing a replica shirt.

Although, if it was, Arsenal have taken Majorca. There was genuine affection out there for the Gunners.

Maybe it’s a way of saying thank you for pumping the talents of Fabregas, Song, Vela, Hleb, Overmars and Henry, into Spanish league football over the years. More likely it is admiration for the club’s passing game and ever-present status in the Champions League.
Richard Osley

SO Arsene Wenger is hoping some boffin can build a machine to measure how much love his players still have for Arsenal.

In times gone by he worked it out by the number of times they kissed the club badge after scoring against Tottenham.

More recently it was by counting the number of hankies they got through in the dressing room after losing to Tottenham. But today’s Premier League footballer is a fickle beast whose love is not so easily quantifiable.

Particularly when clubs that pay more and win more come calling. And if stalling over a new contract isn’t a big enough hint that they no longer think of Wenger as the prettiest wife in town, then maybe a love-o-meter would be a good idea for the Emirates.

Over at White Hart Lane we don’t need a machine to tell us when the love is on the wane. We’ve got our chairman to do that. And the boo boys of course, who let us know at half time, full time and anytime. The thing is, when it is this early on in the season, none of these is the right time.

Let’s face it, on Saturday morning we were enjoying a better start to the season than this time last year when we had no points from two games.

So suddenly to run out of patience, because by teatime the same day we only had two points from three games, makes very little sense at all.

But then this is the Premier League, and nobody said it had to make sense.

Just ask Arsene.   
Catherine Etoe