Who Should We Whack First?

"When Pop had troubles, did he ever think that maybe by trying to be strong, and trying to protect his family, that he could lose it instead?"

- Michael Corleone, from The Godfather, Part 2.

To be strong for his family, Michael Corleone had to whack his brother. Fredo had betrayed him, and the sentence for that was whacking. Anything less would've been a sign of weakness. To survive as Don Corleone, Michael had to be strong - no matter what the consequences. And anyway, Michael had prior history. If Michael could whack his brother-in-law and make his sister a widow, why not his own brother?

Actually, Michael Corleone has a penchant for mass whacking. At the end of Godfather, he must've whacked half of the Mafia heads of New York. At the end of Godfather Part 2, he whacked half the criminal elite of America. And at the end of Godfather 3, he took his mass whacking to international levels, taking out a Catholic priest/businessman and assorted European legitimate businessmen.

We need someone like Michael Corleone at the Arsenal. Michael Corleone would look at Arsenal with clear, dispassionate eyes, and he'd have the strength to do what was necessary. Michael Corleone would be strong for the Arsenal - he'd whack off half the playing staff and repopulate it with hungry, effective, experienced players who'll give good performances against the big clubs.

Instead, we have Arsene Wenger, who's afraid of killing his players. He doesn't have the stomach to be strong for the Arsenal, because he's afraid of killing the Fredos of our squad. Michael Corleone wouldn't care about killing Denilson or Almunia. He killed his fucking brother just because he was weak and stupid, so why wouldn't he whack Denilson for being diffident or Almunia for being shit?

0-2 at Stamford Bridge doesn't make me angry anymore. It makes me sick and disappointed. Things have to change. We're defensively naive. We have a shit goalkeeper. We are over-indulgent. Wenger expects this team to rise like a soufflé, but maybe it's time to accept that they're just a sodden pile of deflated soft pastry. This was supposed to the year that we delivered, and if we don't deliver this year, maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board? Maybe even buy some choice players and euthanise some of our Fredos and Hyman Roths?

I hope so. As Michael Corleone once said "If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone."