London clubs are on top as new season starts with a bang
It's early days in the 2009/10 football season but already Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal occupy the top three places in the Premier League table.
Symbolically, both Manchester clubs, United and City, lie in 4th and 5th place, underlining the North-South divide that has seen London clubs take tentative pole position after three games.
Of course, we're all used to seeing the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea towards the summit, but this is fresh territory for Spurs, serial underachievers and the capital's most unsuccessful side last year.
Rewind 12 months and Spurs under Juande Ramos were rooted to the bottom of the League after a terrible opening; one year on, and Harry Redknapp is presiding over the team's best League start since 1960 - the year Spurs were last crowned champions. Granted, the chances of history repeating itself are pretty unlikely - sorry Spurs fans! - but it must give some light relief to a sorry section of London's population usually so glum come 5.45pm on a Saturday afternoon.
Across the North London divide, rivals Arsenal are enjoying an equally resplendent start to the campaign. At the time of writing, the Gunners have played just two League matches, but are sitting pretty in third place with a mammoth goal difference of +8. Not bad for a so-called weak and inexperienced side written off by most journos at the start of the season after selling two of their star players to the oil-rich financial force that is Man City.
I was at Arsenal's first home game of the season last Saturday as the Gunners welcomed pointless Portsmouth to the Emirates Stadium. The match was a rather subdued affair, with Arsenal's free-flowing artists making they whole thing seem like a training exercise as they cantered to a 4-1 demolition of the struggling South coast outfit.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the day was, in fact, the rolling out of a new club policy of "Arsenalisation" which saw every fan given a red and white scarf in a bid to inject a bit more oomph into the habitually staid confines of the Emirates.
Now Arsenal fans have never been renowned for their bellowing chants, and while calling former home 'The Highbury Library' was a bit harsh, it was certainly no Anfield or Celtic Park. But compared to Emirates, however, the intimate, contained Highbury was a veritable caldron of cacophony.
Such is the open design of the club's current 60,000+ capacity stadium, which was opened in July 2006, any noise generated by the home fans is usually lost to the leafy Islington air. Given the fact that most Gooners prefer to sit back and enjoy their team's silky movement in silent contemplation of its existential merits, the place is as quiet as a mausoleum. On Saturday - as is the case most match days - even the 1,000-odd away fans were more vocal.
This isn't helped by the apparent disunion in the stands or by the central 'club class' ring of seats - you know, the ones which usually empty five minutes before the start of half-time and only fill back up well into the second period.
(The reason for this, by the way, is quite clear: club class spectators get free drinks during the break, which are laid out on tables in the surrounding lounge. The earlier you leave, the better chance you have of picking up a full glass which, incidentally, you can refill, free of charge, at the bar afterwards - explaining in turn the late filling up of seats as the second half gets under way.)
Club bigwigs believe that what the Emirates needs is an injection of all things Arsenal, a bit of soul in an otherwise soulless stadium. They have commissioned 12 'greatest moments' murals to spruce up the outside walls of the concrete edifice and have lined up a whole series of installations and visuals to remind fans of the illustrious achievement of their club and its players.
Inside, a trademark white cannon has been daubed onto the stand opposite the tunnel while the legendary Highbury clock is set to be installed. Laying more than 60,000 scarves on seats throughout the stadium was another bid to trigger the emotive capacity of supporters.
If I was being Devil's Advocate I'd say that the fact that the club hierarchy feels the need to go to such drastic measures to whip up a sense of community spirit amongst fans underlines the uphill struggle they're going to have. Put simply, if you have to create an atmosphere by giving people scarves then perhaps the club is never going to have that good an atmosphere at all. (It can't help matters much when your stadium is named after a Middle Eastern airline either.)
What's more, if you have no qualms about creating a word for such measures - Arsenalisation - and discuss it openly on your club website, as if it were a blend of mathematics and science where you add A to B to get C, then you're clearly bordering on the delusional.
Back on the pitch, Arsene Wenger's unbeaten side face Man United this Saturday in the season's first clash between two of the League's traditional 'Top Four' clubs.
Being at Old Trafford, the atmosphere should be pretty special - but if Arsenal do manage to maintain their 100% record then it will do the whole Arsenalisation bid a world of good. For the only way Arsenal are going to create a new community spirit amongst supporters is by giving them something to cheer about.
It's no use harking back to the glory days of Highbury and the Invincibles. The reality is that there is no history so far at the Emirates except one of emptiness and underachievement. Only the players can change that.
Thuggery mars derby clash
Say what you like about the sterility of the Emirates, but it's surely better than its polar opposite. The spectre of hooliganism rose once more to the surface of English football during a midweek Carling Cup match between London rivals West Ham and Millwall. These "planned" scuffles, which saw more than 100 fans trade blows and throw bricks and bottles, appeared to have been caused by people without tickets to the game. But the nasty scenes spilled onto the terraces with a series of pitch invasions by the home fans following their goals in the 3-1 extra-time win. One 44-year-old man was stable in hospital after being stabbed in the chest in a night which needed 200 officers in full riot gear and 20 mounted policemen to quell the violence.
Stealing the town jewels
You wait an age for a good old-fashioned jewellery heist and then, like the proverbial bus, two come along in quick succession. Just two weeks after a couple of be-suited men audaciously made off with £40m worth of jewels from New Bond Street jewellers Graff, a mob of six men on motorbikes launched a smash-and-grab on a Knightsbridge jeweller stealing gems worth more than £1m in just one minute. Three men have been charged in connection with the Graff robbery - Britain's biggest jewellery heist - although the two men caught on CCTV are still at large (presumably drinking daiquiris on a beach in Mexico). Coincidentally, the previous largest jewellery heist in the UK was a £23m robbery at the same shop in 2003. Talk about lightning never striking twice.
Busking for Boris
Commuters can allay their anger that the on-going weekend work on the Jubilee Line might run well over schedule into 2010 with news that the standard of busking on the London Underground network is set to improve thanks to an X Factor-style play-off between young musicians in front of mayor Boris Johnston. Buskers aged 16-25 have already posted their recordings online as they bid to win 20-minute slots at seven stations. At the end of the month the 20 buskers with the most votes will be whittled down to 10 by a panel of judges before a special "busk-off" in front of Boris. While it's hard to see Boris dismiss floundering acts with the same acerbic bile as Simon Cowell, it's distressing to think that the blond buffoon might have a say on what we listen to while making those annoying diversions owing to the Jubilee Line closure…
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