Hirshey: Arsenal Off To Sister-Kissing Start

Is it too early to award Chelsea the Prem title? I mean, why not get it over with and wrap (or even better, garotte) a Portuguese scarf around the Special One's neck, bronze John Terry's captain's armband, apologize for all the mean things we said during the World Cup about Frank "Totally Frank" Lampard, Herr Ballack and Comrade Sheva and stab ourselves in the head with a commemorative Thierry Henry fork? And while we're at it, why don't we also call up Fergie and tell him how sorry we are for betting $100 that ManU (or ManUre, as we like to call them around our water cooler) won't finish in the top FIVE, and that Sir Alex would not see out the season in a vertical position.

What else can an Arsenal fan do after the soul-crushing performances that the Blues and Reds turned in on the Prem's opening weekend while our beloved Gooners gave us a shit-ass debut against a Villa team that we tore apart 5-0 last season? If, as they say, a tie is like kissing your sister, a 1-1 tie against Villa is like having your sister put a ball gag in your mouth and drag you around by a studded leather dog collar. At this rate, how long will it be before the inevitable chant of "Wenger is a Wanker!" is heard around Emirates Stadium — the shiny new Arsenal home that plunged the club into a staggering $500 million of debt, leaving only a few pence for Arsene to play with in the transfer market.

Yes, he bought Rosicky — I'm not saying I love the Czech midfielder, but I do carry around his FIFA trading card in my wallet — but the rest of his acquisitions amounted to a big bag of gruel. If we're to take away anything positive from yesterday's dismal start, it's that we now know that Theo Walcott, the Suri Cruise of English soccer, really exists and can even play a little, as evidenced by his seeing-eye ball in the 84th minute onto the instep of Gilberto whose cracking volley salvaged a point from the dreary afternoon. But whatever vindication Wenger must have felt at the emergence of Walcott — after all, he talked Erickson into taking him to Germany only for the 17-year-old prodigy to spend the entire World Cup in some sort of Witness Protection Program —- it was tempered by the lovefest at Stamford Bridge. That's where the newly shorn but still odious Mourinho was trotting out his latest edition of The Best Team Money Can Buy while whining about all his injuries and lack of match fitness. Yes, Ballack, Cole, Cech and Makelele were all sidelined, but who needs them when you have ELEVEN other World Cup players in your squad?

And yet, as comprehensive as was Chelsea's 3-0 vivisection of Man City, it paled next to ManU's 5-1 carpet bombing of Fulham. You've got to hand it to that wily old geezer Fergie for fooling everybody into thinking he was a bitter and desperate has-been when he showed the club's horse-faced assasin Van Nistelrooy the (barn) door and backed up the Brinks truck for Carrick in a craven attempt to make Old Trafford forget Keano. As long as Sir Alex has his pit bull (Rooney) and his show pony (Christiano Ronaldo) on the field at the same time and not trying to claw each other's eyeballs out, he can do pretty much what he wants and look like an effin' genius. Rooney stuck in two yesterday, but it was the goal he made for Ronaldo that was truly ominous, coming as it did in their first appearance together since their famously testy World Cup dust-up over Ricardo Carvalho's testicles.

Then again, maybe I'm making too much of ONE game, when there are 37 more to go and we have Man City to fatten up on next Saturday. C'mon, you Gunners!

Deadspin's World Cup columnist David Hirshey will write about the Premiership throughout the season. He is also a New York Giants fan and would have written something excellent about them had Will Leitch not been an idiot and screwed up the schedule.