Last night I found out that Mexican restaurant chain Chiquito’s sold Admiral Old J’s spiced rum and, well, I feel a little blurry-eyed this morning. Thursday’s the new Friday and all that. 

Except it’s not Friday. It’s still very much Thursday and that’s a shame, because Friday is in fact better than Thursday because for many like me, it means the weekend and the football.

Sure, if you’re a United fan, perhaps you want some respite from the dreary performances that your multi-million pound team are serving you, but we have no such quandaries. For we are doing the football well. Especially man-of-the-moment Theo, who seems to have become the latest ‘stats’ magnet for all to pour over, this season. I’m losing count of the different websites telling me about the number of tackles he’s already made compared to the whole of last season, or the number of goals he’s scored, or the minutes per goal, etc, etc. I wonder if he’s always been made aware of stats? After all, last season, or the season before when he was t on form, we all seemed to use stats with Theo more than any other player. Number of touches in a game is one that has been oft used, to demonstrate that he really doesn’t do much, but now that he’s tackling and scoring, I haven’t seen an articles talking about the total number of touches he’s had. 

And you know me; I’m certainly not about to go digging around t’interweb to find you some information that either does or doesn’t tell us something. It’s too early in the morning for me and the Admiral is still circulating through my bloodstream.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that sometimes you can analyse the stats until your brain melts, but sometimes you just have to appreciate that players play well and ultimately, that’s why we’re here to see them, because football should be about enjoyment.

I bet even Arsène will enjoy his presser today, because he’s probably not going to have to fend off comments about transfer speculation, he’s not going to have to worry about questions around fan sentiment, or bin bags of bed sheets with writing on. He’ll hopefully be asked about our opponents on Sunday, what we have to look at tactically to beat them, as well as where their threats lie. Yep, that’ll be all he’ll be asked about…

Or we’ll have 15 minutes of “so are you going to take the England job?”, “what do you think of Sam Allardyce again, Arsène?” and “Is it a dream job for when your contract expires in June?”, blah, blah, blah. Arsène will tell the. He ain’t breaking no contract any time soon, so they’ll just carry on speculating until the FA makes some kind of announcement. 

From Arsène’s point of view though, the timing is pretty decent, because if he does do well this season and we win either the Premier or Champions League, then he’ll be sought after by England and the Arsenal board will probably fall over themselves to give him ‘one more deal’. Between now and the end of the season, with Southgate in on a temporary basis, the carrot is there for Arsène if it all goes wobbly for Arsenal come the end of the season.

I’d be surprised if he took the England job, even if he does walk away from Arsenal, because it’s a hands off role other than for certain points in the season. We’ve all heard the comments about how he loves the day-to-day detail of being a club manager, which he simply wouldn’t get as the England manager. Plus he’d have the press on his back the second England dropped any kind of points or had any kind of bad game.

Nope, just can’t see it. Much like I can’t see Ollie G in the starting line up this weekend, or the problem Chris Coleman has with Arsenal, given his injury that’s keeping him out at the moment. The comments he’s made are a little bit too much of a dig for me, from a manager who doesn’t know what has happened with a player and who should probably just keep his own counsel. Arsène loves Rambo and although he probably should have brought him off at half time during the Liverpool game, for Coleman to suggest that our injury record is a reason for him not returning, is out of order and wide of the mark. If he really knows the Welshmen so well, he’ll know how injury print he has been, and sometimes it does feel like those hamstrings could snap like a piece of balsa wood at any time. International managers should stick to what their best at – taking money for ‘advisory’ services to supplement their paultry incomes…

Anyway, that’s enough rabbiting from me. You enjoy your Friday, I’ll enjoy mine, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Adios amigos.