Wir Sind Wieder Die Scheiße.

Eskimos have 50 different words for snow or, more correctly, eskimos have words for 50 different kinds of snow. I am put in mind of this as I review Arsenal’s season to date.

By near universal accord, we have been shit. On occasions we’ve been utter shit. And on other occasions, we’ve been a bit shit. On the average… we’ve been shit.

But it is not just a matter of size or scale that can describe the shitness of one match as compared to another, say, Anderlecht or Hull or Sunderland or Galatasaray. The variety of shitness is abundant, and plentiful, wonderous in a David Attenborough sort of way. I can hear him now suggesting the word “teaming.” Yes this rich diversity of shitness requires a classification for quality and feel to be conveyed and the subtext to be captured.

Hull was a shit result and a particularly poor 2^nd half. But, I would say, we had a really good first half, and a strong last 6 minutes. If it were compared to a poo in the toilet bowl, it would look…well…you can work that out yourself, no pun intended.  Anderlecht was a totally constipated performance with a last minute explosion, deeply satisfying. Sunderland was more like straining to go for 90 minutes unsuccessfully while the bloke in the next stall soiled himself twice by accident. Against Galatasaray we were only great because they were apparently shit. So we were shit. (That one confuses me.)

At the Stamford Bridge toilet, after holding it in much better than on previous visits, we kacked our pants twice within mere feet of getting to the loo.

All shit but not all the same, not all equal.

And taking a further step back, we might need a collective noun for a run of bad games: may I proffer the term “streak.”

Look, if we suddenly hit a run of good form then I grant you, this effort at turd denomination becomes redundant. But if, as I postulate here, we face a further run of shit games, perhaps streak then we need the means, the vocabulary to express to each other the scale, the quality, the nature of the shitness. Because currently telling me we played “shit” against XYZ FC doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already guess.

Toward this end I have reached out to one of my Eskimo followers (@NanookOfTheNorthEnd.) And apparently we are in luck. Eskimos have a lot of free time on their hands and a bit of a sense of humour. So when they’re not regaling each other with stories of the day’s snow encounters they are, like the rest of us, often sat on the bog, doing a poo. And the culture that has categorized 50 different types of snow has also come up with 57 different categories of poo. Given we’ll play about 50 matches this season, I’d say we’re covered. Covered in…Atwana! (My eskimo followers will be LOL-ing at that.)

We will inevitably turn things around and start playing consistently good football of course. And even in this “Run Of Shit” that we are on, there is still much to be enjoyed if you look hard enough (you may need to look really, really hard.) In the meantime, all we can do is take it game by game, poo by poo, until Arsenal is once again “The Shit.” Poldi will let you know when it is safe to come out. He will tweet our safe words:

“Wir sind wieder die Scheiße. #Aha #Poldi #DieScheiße #Hashtags”