When does a football club have just too many vibes?
ROWE FORWARD
There’s a lot to like about Arsenal. The retro kit launches, the $exy football, Gunnersaurus, the videos of Ian Wright being Ian Wright. But when does a club have just too many vibes? Can someone be too much a top, top, top bloke? Content might be king, but not when it gets in the way of the football.
The tipping point for Arsenal surely came at the end of last season. Shortly after getting pumped 3-0 by Brighton to further derail their Premier League title challenge, Mikel Arteta called a press conference on 19 May to announce the “newest member of the Arsenal family” at their Colney training ground, a chocolate labrador named Win. “I carefully chose the dog and in my opinion it’s the perfect representative of who we are right now. Her name is Win, we all love winning and Win needs a lot of love. So the love for Win, that was basically the feeling.” The following day, Arsenal lost at Nottingham Forest, gift-wrapping the title for Manchester City.
The point is, there’s a time and a place for va va voom. Not everyone needs to be Thierry but in recent years, especially under the leadership of Arteta, it has felt like anyone that is not able to board the Vibe Train would be left behind at Drayton Park station, or worse, sent on a night out with Emmanuel Eboué at Rowan’s bowling alley to rediscover their “passion”. Thank goodness, then, for Emile Smith Rowe, who is perhaps the antidote for all of this. A young outrageously talented, apparently normal man, who happens to suffer from prematch nerves – as well as some unfortunate knack – but still has the world at his feet, even if Wednesday’s Carling Cup appearance in Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Brentford was his first start in 499 days.
“I have changed a bit of my mentality … just to go for it,” Smith Rowe said after the game. “I have not really got anything to lose. I have tried to change that inside me. I used to have a lot of doubts. I used to question my confidence, at times. But now I am really strong. I am feeling really fit and I am taking that into now.” At a club where PR can sometimes feel as important as points, ESR’s approach feels a bit more genuine than the rest of the bluster. Football Daily hopes it doesn’t take as long for his next start.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
12.06pm: “The club will vacate Glanford Park after the Brackley Town fixture and fulfill [sic] the season’s fixtures across at Gainsborough Trinity … falls in attendances will undoubtedly mean further cuts and this will inevitably impact the playing squad and promotion aims” – before a spectacularly snippy piece of fan-blaming, the future of Firewall FC takes another bleak turn after owner David Hilton decides to withdraw his funding, forcing them to declare that they’ll soon be playing National League North games elsewhere.
2.04pm: “This statement was issued without the knowledge or consent of Gainsborough Trinity. Whilst the club has always been clear that any requests from [Firewall FC] to play fixtures at the KAL Group Stadium would be considered, this would always have to be done by due process which would involve both clubs and the ground owner” – oh.
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