By Daniel Finton (Deputy Editor)
What up, Pimps?
Welcome one and welcome all to the Finton’s Frolic right opinion zone. It’s been a while. And there’s really no excuse from my end for once. I’m sort of just a lazy piece of shit.
Today, however, the ol’ FFs return. So have no fear, you three that actually read these, some mediocre comedy and undercooked takes are coming right up. I hope you like your blogs served cold because this is going to be far from fire as I'm rustier than the Emirates Arsenal logo was before the refurbishment.
That was awful. Anyways, the newly started season is going pretty damn well and I’m way better at criticizing things than waxing lyrical about them, so we’re gonna talk about the recently fully published Amazon Prime original: All or Nothing. I’ll keep this one short because I want to, and also .. well .. read the last sentence of the first paragraph.
I’ll start with the bad parts of “AON” (that initial makes me think of Manchester United’s old shirt sponsor and when I think about them these days I’m happy, so I’m gonna keep referring to the show by that.)
First and foremost Josh Kroenke. Boy is he annoying. And fake. And his beard is weird. He looks like a wizard on crack. But keep having daddy give us money for players, please.
I don’t dislike Joshy for his looks, mind you, I’m not THAT superficial. I just absolutely despise people in the professional world that are that disingenuously bubbly. You just know damn well they have a pitchfork behind their back waiting for the smallest of slips from their inferiors — while wearing their creepy smile — and they’ll impale you if you trip. All while maintaining that ear to ear grin.
Along with the man donning a stray cat on his face was an overall theme of fake-ness too. Some — not including Arteta’s "fuck filled" vocabulary, by the way — always seemed so aware of the cameras, which is fully understandable. This, strangely enough though, wasn’t really the case with the players, but the corporate folk as they seemed to act even more artificial than usual. I bet that was down to the massive recording devices down their throats.
The other bad things — and by the way, I’m sure there’s other parts I’m missing — was the forced “plot.” They predictably puffed up a lot of nothings and tossed away a few somethings, and that was annoying. But it’s TV so we all expected it.
Notice I pluralized that word “thing”. One other part that pissed me off, and honestly this the most, was the big blockbuster Lacazette vs Cedric fight. The whole show built up this “massive” bust up between the two. On like 12 occasions they showed 3.7 second clips of it and then they cut to black to dramatize what could almost be described as a “trailer” for the altercation. When it was finally shown, the scene lasted about one minute. Lacazette then admitted he apologized afterwards because he got a bit too fired up. And then that was that. Some fight.
Enough being cynical. As you all can tell if you’ve got this far reading, I’m a brainless idiot. I actually liked quite a lot about AON.
My favorite part hands down was their zooming in on the Auba situation. It was really fascinating to see Arsenal act with such desperation and Amazon did a fine job at catching it. When Barcelona called and decided to strike a deal up, saying “congratulations” at the end of a phone call because even they knew it was stupid from them, I genuinely wanted to "kith" (get it, instead of kiss because Barcelona, got 'em) that man on the phone. On the lips. With tongue. The scene also showed how much Arteta is clearly trusted by our board. Although I knew how it panned out I found myself feeling nervous about the outcome.
The genuine passion and personalities of the players was my next favorite part. We have a team of pretty good dudes for the most part, and that was also captured well by the Amazonian flies on the walls. The likes of Xhaka, Tavares, Ramsdale, and Tierney in particular really grew the emotional bond I feel with them in spite of never meeting face to face. And the passion, you know, that word Arteta always said so juicily in the intro, “That’s called PASSION.” Well, it oozed from the players. And as fucked up as it sounds I almost liked to watch their reactions to losing more than I did to winning as they were more telling. They care just as much as we do and get equally bent out of shape after a poor showing. How many cleats were smacked against the ground, for crying out loud? What was AONs xCSOG (expected cleats smacked on ground)?
And finally, because I said I’ll keep it short, and I most certainly haven’t by my standards, maybe Mac Johnson’s, but not my lazy ones, I loved the fact that they made one of these about an actual interesting club.
Tottenham are Tottenham and City aren’t even a football club. So being delivered genuine culture and heritage of a massive club from some of the best producers in the world was really special. And kudos to all involved in AON’s production because it was phenomenally well shot, edited, and narrated.
Let me draw this bad boy to a close. Oh yeah, I’d be remised not to mention, Arteta is absolutely shocking at drawing and those strange team talks made me understand Arteta outers a bit better. I’ll probably drop an Arteta doodle FF at some point in the next decade. Stay tuned, you three.
There was other stuff I forgot. It’s fine, I suck, “when I lose a duel, I’m upset”, and my life is a lost duel. Stu the photographer for president.
Toodloo…!
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