Letter to the Arsenal

How to get better results

Dear Arsenal,

Here's some ideas that might help next season:

1. Get at least one psycho. Not some idiot who runs around kicking people, but a real player who will not stand for an iota of nonsense from anyone. Then use him as a role model and instead of players and manager standing there with arms outstretched berating the officials, start giving it “plenty more where that came from, sonny”. If a referee won't look after us, then we'll look after ourselves.

2. We do not concede from a move starting with an opponents' foul. If there's any question that they've got away with one, we nip things in the bud with a foul of our own. The nastier the better.

3. Street smarts: know your enemy, target weaknesses and let them know we look after our own, for example, the next time we play Liverpool:

1. Agger crocked Wilshire in an international. I don't care that is was an international, that it may have been a genuine accident, that Agger is “not that sort of player”, the first chance we get, Agger's writhing on the floor in agony and someone's in his ear warning him about who he crocks playing for his country.
2. Gerrard had a go back at Wilshire after Jack gave him bit of a thump. Someone needs to take revenge for the revenge, with a huge bonus of super-added revenge.
3. Suarez can be wound up. Foul him, repeatedly and early and near the halfway line and surround the referee demanding bookings for diving every time. He'll soon crack and bite someone.
4. Flanagen loves piling into a challenge. Instead of jumping over his tackles or going down clutching an ankle, wait a fraction of a second and then launch in, too. He'll be thinking twice from that point onwards.

4. Have a similar 'black book' for every team we play and use it to the maximum.

5. Replace Sagna (it seems inevitable that he's going, sadly) with an equally determined and robust full back, one of those that think they're six foot four and therefore entitled to win every ball in the air as well as on the deck. Preferably with some psycho tendencies. See Zabaleta at City and the Chelsea bloke old racist bitey-chops at Liverpool likes taking chunks out of.

6. Someone tell Wenger it's not points per pound, just points that determine league positiions.

7. Someone tell Wenger that when he says, in an interview, that unless the financial fair play regulations come in with some effect we'll be disappointed, that just means that we'll be disappointed.

8. Someone tell Wenger that it's a beautiful game alright. It's beautiful all the time you're winning. Otherwise, there's little beauty to be beheld. Graeme Souness: show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser. Souness on how he'd've stopped Yaya Toure: I don't know. Not legally. Kolo begged us to sign Yaya, but we failed to do so.

9. Get one of the monsters playing upfront to realise that they're monsters and get them to start bullying opposing centre halves. Make them watch videos of Drogba bossing Senderos.

10. There's a move back to pace and power, away from possession football and tika-taka. How about we take this onboard before we're left behind. Better still, how about we get players with pace and power, and good feet and good technique? That'd get us ahead of 90% of the opposition.

Also, that Ivan bloke? We could do better for a quarter of the salary. We're paying civil service top management wages and getting a roadsweeper.

Yours,

Istvan