How John Terry's Immorality Explains Arsenal's Shortcomings

Well, yesterday morning was weeks of dread materialized into a 90 minutes of soccer.  Manchester United 3, Arsenal 1.  It sucks having to drink one's troubles away before breakfast.  But then again, I probably should have seen it coming.  

Denilson spent much of his 60 minutes on the pitch hiding from the ball.  Arsenal fans should be pleased that he was mostly successful; his passing was erratic at best and he was a conspirator in all three Man United goals.  Meanwhile, Bendtner looked oafish, Nasri looked short of creativity and everyone else just looked short.  

The easy answer when sourcing the deficiencies with this vintage of Arsenal is a lack of maturity.  It’s probably the correct one, too.  The performance spoke for itself, but I think this comparison can summarize the relative maturity at Arsenal:  the last bust-up between Arsenal players involved shoes.  Emmanuel Adebayor didn’t like the fact that Nicklas Bendtner refused to take his off in the locker room.  And Robin van Persie didn’t like that Emmanuel Adebayor shipped a pair of his boots to a charity in Africa without asking him first.  The ensuing locker room unrest became so untenable, Emmanuel Adebayor was sold to Manchester City.  A team torn apart by shoes.  SHOES.  At Chelsea, it’s extramarital affairs with bastard love children being aborted.  

As far as I can tell, the chief interests of Arsenal players aside from soccer are shopping and video games.  With Chelsea, it seems to be shopping and intercourse with French lingerie models.  I think that says quite a bit about the respective teams.  Denilson is a boy: he likes cools sneakers, is probably really good at FIFA on Playstation but disappears in the big moments.  John Terry is a man: he cheats on his wife and scores game-winning goals.