He Not Busy Being Born is Busy Dying: Like in a dream, when someone wakes up and screams

On Sunday for the first, and hopefully last, time in my life I supported Arsenal. As a football fan and having grown up in the 1980s you were always taught to hate Arsenal. They were boring and their fans were dull. All the cool kids supported teams like Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton because they were, at the time, playing attacking, beautiful football and Arsenal were dull as shit winning 1-0 all the time.

Of course that has now changed – Arsenal play attacking football now and they have gone all continental on us, but I still hate them. Football is about irrational love/hate, and my relationship with Arsenal is no different. Yesterday I felt sick to my bones that I had to support them. The reason why I was supporting them? Because they were playing Chelsea.

Chelsea is the new team to hate in English football. It’s because they have come in and just bought their way to success, playing relatively dull football (I mean it’s not as bad as Arsenal were doing the eighties and early nineties, but close). And i'm not the only one who hates them, a few weeks agao the entire pub wanted Man Utd to beat them and yesterday the entire pub was 'rooting', as the Yanks say, for Arsenal. They represent all that is wrong with football. A Russian billionaire with a murky past comes in and spends all of his “hard-earned” billions on a football team, buying superstars at a whim as if it were his play thing. There is one player who is especially reviled. He represents all that is wrong with Chelsea and modern football. He is Ashley Cole.

According to the Observer newspaper yesterday, Ashley (or Ca$hley, as he is fondly referred to) is paid £13,000 a day. That’s right you read me right, a day. (Incidentally, Chelsea’s total wage bill is a whopping £315,068 a day, in case you were wondering). A staggering amount of money. It’s the fact that he met in secret with them while he was under contract at Arsenal, spent the rest of that season complaining that he wasn’t loved and then moved on, insisting that it wasn’t for the money, that makes him such a hate figure. He is simply the epitome of what’s gone wrong in football due to too much money.

His autobiography has thankfully bombed – no one was interested in hearing about his problems and his excuses for leaving Arsenal because we already know the real answer. Quite who thought that Ca$hley would have an interesting story to tell is beyond me. Every single non-Chelsea football fan hates him. Whoever decided to buy his story should be fired immediately. He is a pampered and spoilt football star who doesn’t know the meaning of honour or what it’s like to support a football team.

Ca$hley also has a famous wife. Cheyrl Tweedy of Girls Aloud. Below is a photo that they released at the time of their wedding for the media. Note the lovely matching clothes and the fact that he’s got his fingers crossed (probably in tribute to the national lottery, seeing as he’s won his millions). I love the ‘DREAM’ number plate on the rolls, a nice touch. That photo and his person makes me want to puke. Also who in their right mind finds that photo acceptable - it’s the tackiest thing in the world ever. God, I hate him. I even hate him enough to support Arsenal for a match.