Search the Community

The first home game of the season then, and it’s being played on the Monday night. Both sides go into it with something to prove, with Vieira’s charges unable to lay a glove on Arteta’s flaky Gunners in the league season’s curtain raiser last Friday night. Our performance at Fulham has already been pored over ad infinitum, with many of our fans having already written the season off as we lie 2 points behind City with 37 games still to play. For some, it’s already all over bar the shouting. Thankfully, neither our players nor the coaching staff thinks that way. Nous. Intensity. Nerve. Effervescence. Nuisance factor. Intelligence. Luck. I don’t ask for much. Our biggest Premier League win in this fixture came at the end of November 1992. We were miles off the pace in the league as United and Villa (and for a while, Norwich!) led the way in the inaugural football season (© Sky Sports). Souness had assembled a squad where the old guard had seen better days, the youngsters - though game - needed those around them to display more consistency in order to truly flourish, and we had more than our fair share of bang-average. The club in practically every regard had fallen into the pack of also-rans that they’d managed to keep at arm’s length over the previous couple of decades. Against Palace though (who were wearing the colours of Brazil), the team displayed something that showed the fans that there might be some promise this season. Barnesy was back after a lay-off and he looked sharp. For the opener, he teased the Palace defence down their left before lofting a ball into the centre of the six yard box where Macca of all people was waiting to bullet a header past Nigel Martyn. Macca turned provider for our second, playing the ball back to Marshy 40 yards from goal.He strode forward into the space and smashed a 30-yard rocket into the top left hand corner. Great goal that one. Palace’s day went from bad to worse when a misplaced header back to Martyn was prevented from going behind for a corner by the scrambling keeper. Unfortunately for him, he gifted the ball to Macca who cut into the area and picked his spot as a couple of Palace defenders funnelled back to the goal line in vain. Macca then set up Ronny was a tap in from six yards on the hour mark for number four, and Hutch controlled a Marshy cross and cracked a low volley into the bottom corner for 5-0. There were still 15 minutes to play and another 9-0 hammering was possible, but the players took mercy on their opponents and the rest of the match petered out into a training session with the players playing keep ball and not looking to boost the goal difference. Here are the goals from this one. The big film in November 1992 was the sequel to the hit Christmas film of 1990, Home Alone. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York sees Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin actually make it to the airport for the family’s Christmas vacation, only to lose sight of his dad when faffing about with batteries for his recording device. He boards a flight to New York while the family are headed for Paris. Cue shenanigans at the 5-star hotel where Kevin checks in and toys with the suspicious hotel staff, especially Tim Curry’s concierge. We also see the return of small-time burglars Harry and Marv, this time dubbed the Sticky Bandits. This ultimately leads to Kevin turning a brownstone undergoing renovation into the latest multi-storey booby-trap. Yet again, Kevin’s mum seems to be the only one really arsed about Kevin’s safety and wellbeing as she frantically makes a dash for New York after Kevin’s dad learns that his credit card was used there. Not as good as the original but still a very good film. You can tell that Stern and Pesci were having a blast as the hapless burglars, just as they had in the first film. The traps are again inventive, and the director never loses sight of the heart aspect of the story. Nothing of significance happened on November 28th 1992, judging by a trawl of the internet. Very much a slow news day by the looks of things. I turned 14 on this day, so I suppose that’s of significance. Exactly two years earlier we had a seismic event in the House of Commons when Thatcher stepped down as PM in the wake of challenges to her leadership. She saw the writing on the wall following Michael Heseltine’s challenge, barely scraping the first-round ballot and requiring a second. She no longer had the authority she had commanded for over a decade, and several of her key allies had already jumped ship or been openly critical of her stance on issues like the European Monetary Union. She chose to stand down of her own volition rather than face the humiliation of a successful leadership challenge by Heseltine. Her departure would signal over half a decade of infighting amongst the Tories, and the UK’s departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism was one of the key disasters of British politics under her successor John Major’s premiership. Jurgen read the riot act to his players after the Fulham game, judging by his demeanour after that match. He was not happy and clearly intimated that the players did not go into the match with the right mentality. A rocket up their arse, more than a week to stew on it, and a baying home crowd should see us put things to rights. We might be short of options in midfield, but barring a couple of exceptions in other departments, we do have a good squad to pick from. One that is well capable of getting a result against the Eagles. Sadio used to score against this lot for fun, but we have plenty of attacking threats that his departure should not matter. It is simply a case of approaching the game with the right focus, attitude and application, and doing all the things we know we can do. Get that bit right and we stand a great chance of grabbing the 3 points. Get out there, don’t be complacent, and get the job done.