Football coma

This, friends, is what you call a Football Coma. It doesn't happen all the time. In fact they can be pretty rare. It's a time just when the elements align perfectly, and collide perfectly. The result? You got it. You're left in a Football Coma. One that can steal hours like a time warp.

It happened again, for the first time in a while, on Saturday. You'll note, please, that I write 'first time in a while' with the heavy implication that I can't remember the last time a Football Coma came calling. Right, there's a reason for that.

You'll note as well that in the time Match Pricks has been around, you've yet to read much negativity toward Liverpool out of the Arsenal half. It's because I have a truly founded respect for the team. Not much they do so desperately and outwardly leads to a reflexive hate, like the Uniteds and Chelseas of the world. Top that off with the fact that I've got several very close friends who count themselves in the ranks and it's hard to generate much honest bile for the team. Should I dislike them simply because they aren't my team? Hmmm. I don't think so. Quite certainly I won't be openly rooting for them to get the hearty results they need week in and week. But that said, no, I won't be openly rooting for them to fail. In the same way I always say that a team must earn your love and support, it's just silly to detest a team just because.

That's the long way around explaining how incredible that Liverpool result over United was on Saturday morning. Again, the brilliance of those early morning kickoffs (even though with daylight savings time, 7:45 a.m. feels like a right old sleep in) lies in the fact that there were maybe three hours of sleep to prep. So there I was ("if our behavior was gross and outrageous, well it was only a matter of degree," to quote a well known idol), popping awake and ready to go. And this match was primed for it after that darling of a performance from Liverpool on Tuesday.

Job done by The Mighty Reds, well delivered to those lads. That was about as much fun as I've had watching a football game in a long time indeed. And what tops it off? You guessed it, a nice 4-nil follow up by the Arsenal. And that, friends, is the perfect mix of ingredients to induce a Football Coma. Shock win, leading to crazy party that will certainly threaten to spill across the width of the city and challenge the restrictive bubble of decent folk everywhere, and immediately followed by a goalfest for my own team. Done and dusted, a Saturday lost in the celebrations of football. Won by and awarded to the righteous.