Published: 22 November, 2012
THE CROW

I’VE been unbearable this week. A better word: childish. The office clock has been stuck at five to two. There’s just something about absolutely honking Spurs out of town, and that’s what happened folks, yes it did, which reels you back to being 12 years old. The trouble is there are few greater things in life than handing Tottenham Hotspur’s thrashed backsides back to them with a smug smile and a celebratory orange whip.

I make no apology. If you win the derby 5-2 – again – then there’s no cap on the crowing. It’s a wholly natural reaction.

In fairness to all those charged with immaturity this week, I raise a few measures of mitigation. We were all lured into even louder bragging by statements made by the opposition. M’lud, they made us do it.

Before the match Gareth Bale intimated on the internet pit of despair known as Twitter that Spurs were “#Kings- OfNorthLondon”. How can you not resort to childish crowing when he does something like that? This was incitement. Entrapment. Take also Harry Redknapp. He may not be Spurs manager any more but in this aged north London squabble he’s clearly a cockerel. There he is on Match Of The Day insisting that Spurs remain better than Arsenal. Harry, Arsenal are averaging five goals a game in matches against Spurs in 2012.

The chief strummer of our crowing hearts, however, is the new boss: André Villas Boas. He insists Spurs were in control from first minute to the last.

Even solemn-faced Arsene Wenger could not resist: “I like it if they are in control and we win 5-2.”

We all crowed, all of us.
Richard Osley

STOP worrying Gooners. Now you’ve beaten Tottenham your manager reckons your season is about to take off.

The only problem I can see is that in order to do so your lot will have to play against 10-men every week.

Only joking. Your fellas would still have got a result against us even if that chump Emmanuel Adebayor had stayed on the pitch. After all, they were right in the game until then.

Oops, I’m thinking of another game. Ok, your lot weren’t right in it until then and they probably would have lost but at least you wouldn’t have been humiliated.

Durr. There I go again. Ok, so your boys could only beat ours 5-2 when we had lost our best defender to a pointless England friendly and one of our strikers with 73 minutes left to play.

But at least they gave you something to smile about.

Aaagh. Got that wrong too.

I forgot that when Bale made it 4-2 you all had faces like well-slapped bottoms. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say bottoms.

I meant teenagers who’d just realised that the replica Arsenal shirt they’d bought in Majorca had gone in the same hot wash as their white David Beckham underpants.

Now that would be a disaster.

As it turns out, you had plenty to smile about. At full-time. On Monday. And again today.

I do hope you enjoy it because if you can’t feel happy after football’s version of beating a blindfolded man at darts, when can you?
Catherine Etoe

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