Cats V. Dogs

  I am a dog person. I love dogs, their goofy earnestness, their seeming loyalty (based on a regular meal, as it may be), their ability to sit on command, and chase a ball for hours on end without boredom.

I've always had dogs in my life. Currently, I have two dogs.

Guennivere IV (or Gwennie;). Yes, this name gets a lot of mileage in my family. The first 3 Gwens were named after Princess Guennivere in the Court of King Arthur, which my dad read to me when I was a child. When the first Guennivere died, we were so heartbroken we tried to beat death by just naming the next one Guennivere. The pattern repeated. When the 3rd Guennivere died, I think we got a male dog and the sad pattern of denial was defused.

ANYhow. When I told my daughters this story, they insisted our new puppy be named Guennivere. Fortunately, she has lived a long life - beating a cancer scare 4 years ago - and we have forestalled the need to christen a Guennivere V.

Gwen is a Labrador-pit bull mix. She is a beautiful, sweet dog. More neurotic than a barrel full of chihauhas, but a sweetie.

Pedro is our labrador-Rottweiler mix. He's a couple of years younger than Gwen, but also a pound puppy. We picked him up from the shelter when he was about 10 months old. I think he came from an abusive family; he had some definite abandonment and fear of males issues, but has adjusted beautifully. He, too, is a real sweet, loving dog. Whereas Gwennie is hyper-anxious , Pedro is an absolute dork with no personal boundaries. I have been hit in the face with his club of a tail more times than I can remember (the memory problem is probably related to the drubbings I've received.)

The topic of my dogs comes up because I was once a dog and cat man. I was reminded of this when I stumbled across some photos recently. These photos are of a cat I owned when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Jackson was the coolest cat to have ever lived. In fact, he was so cool, I think he was part dog.

Jackson dressing up for a night on the town in his fancy Dan ribbons.

This would of course, lead to a night of hard drinking!

Though he could handle his liquor, Jackson often drank to excess and passed out on the couch.

And that was followed by a prayer session with the Porcelain Gods.

Rest In Peace, Jackson. Wherever you are.

England in the NYT

The World Cup is finally news in America as the New York Times has an article today about the England team's prospects (not good). The article is featured in the Sports section but this is more about the media circus that is the English team rather than about soccer.

US Team Beats Latvia...Ho Hum

I watched the US team's friendly against Latvia last night. If I was looking for a reason to believe this team would get out of the group stage, I am still looking this morning. The US dominated posession, but it wasn't like they were playing Brazil. I didn't even know Latvia was still a nation. They certainly aren't in the WC next month.

What I'm suggesting is that 1-0 result against Latvia (combine that with a 1-0 loss to Morocco) doesn't inspire confidence in the US side.

The US didn't look to have much speed at all up front. That'll be a killer in the group stage. If they're not able to put pressure on opponents' defenses, they are going to spend a lot of time watching shots sail at their goal. Our frontline is beginning to look to me as impotent as England's (excepting the explosive but fragile Michael Owen, of course).

Landon Donovan looked good and had a number of good runs through the middle, both vertically and laterally. Steve Cherundolo had some great runs, bringing the ball up from his right back position. Latvia invited this, though, as their defense seemed to be on some court-ordered detention near their own 18. I kept looking for the electronic ankle monitors!

The Czech Republic, Italy and Ghana are unlikely to give the US midfield the lazy room to roam the Latvians were providing. We're going to need to come up with more craft and creativity and physical ability than I saw against Latvia, if we are to advance past the group stage.

Bird Flu's Worrisome Signals in Indonesia

Disturbing reports from Indonesia on the bird flu. Investigators are trying to determine whether a series of H5N1-related deaths within families may be signs that the virus has evolved for easier human-to-human transmission.

That ability is the starting gun to a likely pandemic. Once the virus (or any other new strain of influenza) adapts to easy human-to-human transmission, it spreads rapidly among the human population, which has no immunity against the new strain.

X-Men: The End

I took the kids to see X-Men: The Last Stand Friday. I was really pumped to see this movie. I grew up on comic books, and the X-Men was my favorite of all. Like many of the comic-reading kids in the 1970s, I was attracted to the theme of persecuted, misunderstood teenagers. Plus, the X-Men (X-kids, really) were unlike any other "heroes" in the comics then. Cyclops. Wolverine. The Beast.

And the first 2 movies delivered the goods. X-2 was the best movie version of a comic book yet made. So, needless to say, I had high expectations. Well, I was disappointed...and that's an understatement. New director Brett Ratner (wasn't he a character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High?) emphasized perfunctory (but assuredly expensive) bangs and bright lights over character and plot.

The result is less than a badly drawn comic book. Characters that the audience have become invested over many years, are treated with little respect. Cyclops is killed off without any explanation or even a chance to fight back. Great characters like Angel and Juggernaut are introduced and then thrown away without any development. Scenes that were obviously intended to be weighty are devoid of emotion and heft. Even the incredibly awesome Ian McKellen is reduced to little more than a Shakespearean trained cardboard cutout. Someone stop Ratner before he directs again.

John Hartl's MSNBC.com review sums up my thoughts exactly. Even more to the point was my 17-year old daughter's review. "That movie sucked."

Pat Robertson's Feats of Strength

Watching TV last night I blundered across Anderson Cooper's show and piece on our good old friend The Right Rev. Pat Robertson purportedly doing 2,000 pound leg presses with a weight sled. See the video. (or go to CBN and get Pat's shake recipe.) But much has been said by critics about his technique. On Cooper's show a champion bodybuilder pointed out the Rev was not only getting help from Jesus, but also using his arms to push his legs, sort of a bench press/leg press/calf raise combo. Other doubters weigh in on Wonkette.

I have to agree with the critics that these are not really leg presses. But on the other hand, the dude is 74 years old. Give him some props for keeping active...even if it means he'll continue to plague us with his rantings on the Middle East, terrorist attacks and predictions of locusts and tsunamis.

I almost forgot, in my post yesterday about Brazil's WC fortunes, to add Bobby McMahon's 10 Reasons Brazil Won't Win the World Cup. Check it out and see what the Scottish Prognosticator has to say.

World Cup. More World Cup

We are getting closer! Closer to the beginning of the greatest tournament in the world of sports. Just sixteen days and then the best national teams in all of soccer will go head to head in Germany for the World Cup.

32 teams. 64 games to determine the World Cup champions. I've got the DVR in the shop getting fitted with a turbo booster and extra memory, and the reinforced buttons on the remote control. I'm going to record every match possible and watch soccer until my eyes bleed.

I'm already on record with the obligatory patriotic statement that I'm cheering for Team USA first and foremost. Should a miracle occur and the team suddenly conflagrates into a side of Rocky-like underdog overachievers (on 2nd thought, I probably shouldn't use Rocky as a metaphor, since he lost to Apollo Creed in the 1st movie; oh well, that's what you get on a free blog) I will cheer them against all-comers.

However, in the more likely event that they fail to make it out of group stage, I will be rooting for everyone's favorite overdog, Brazil. I fell in love with soccer during Brazil's victory over Germany in the 2002 WC. Their creative flair with the ball is like a form of dancing, and not ballroom dancing, Samba! Brazil's biggest challenge is that they are so good, they're ripe for an upset.

Why is Brazil so good? I found an interesting article over at the BBC football page. One of the most interesting points in the article is how creativity is encouraged in the Brazilian system by not forcing players to play specific positions at a young age.

More Arsenal news. My favorite midfielder, Robert Pires, is gone; off to Villareal, where that team appreciates men of a certain age. Arsene Wenger would not bend his policy of only offering 1-year contracts to players over the age of 30, and the 33-year old winger found the Spanish side willing to give him a 2-year lease on the sporting life.

I'm sorry to see lanky Frenchmen go (especially with all the #7 jerseys I own! Looks like I'm going to need to buy some Ljungberg strips). He was an exceptional midfield player for the Gunners - 2002 Footballer of the Year, he owned the EPL scoring record for midfielders until this year, and sealed some incredible victories for the Gunners. But you could see the writing on the wall. He had gone from 1st team player to part-time starter this season. My favorite moment from this season was the out-of-his-socks tackle and strip on Patrick Vieira in the Juventus game that led to a crucial score and helped Arsenal advance past the Italian giants (although they may have been helped by the lack of an Italian referee in that game, eh?!)

You lose some, you win some. This week Arsenal added Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky from Borussia Dortmund. I've never seen this kid play, but the word is that he will be Arsenal's replacement for the Dutch Master Dennis Bergkamp. No pressure, Tomas!

Franklin Foer (How Soccer Explains the World) writes in Time about his painful choice between Arsenal and Barcelona for the Champions League final. Foer is a Barca fan and rooted for the wrong side, but I can't blame him. Barca is 1 of my favorite 3 teams and it was tough watching them match up against my Gunners.

For the record, here is my list of teams I root for, in order:

1. Arsenal
2. Celtic
3. FC Barcelona
4. Whoever is playing against Chelsea
5. Whoever is playing against Manchester United

Back on the Pitch

Last night marked my return to the pitch after 3 months off due to various injuries, colds, kids' colds, work conflicts. I had a knock on the front of my left shin - from walking into a 2-foot tall metal post sticking out of the ground at Gig Harbor High School - and it hurt like heck to wear shin guards, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. It had been too long on the sidelines. Funny, how soccer gets under your skin.

It was great to get back out there and run after a ball! And my team is still terrible. Some things don't change. We played with a man advantage the entire game and still lost 3-0. That's our team - the Poverty Bay Coffee Bald Eagles, by the way - in it for the love of the game, not the glory.

I made it through the game without injury, though my calves cramped like hell at the end of the game. I'll be back out there next week, and the next.

My team isn't the only one that had a bad night. In the first of 3 warm-up friendlies prior to leaving for Germany, the US Mens team stunk it up against a Morrocan team that didn't even qualify for the big show, losing 1-0 on a 90th minute, brain-cramp defensive blunder. These guys are not going to make it out of the group play. I'll cheer for them until they're out, but they do not have the look of a dangerous squad.

More World Cup. A growing number of politicians and other dangerous types are calling for a ban on Iran participating in the World Cup, due to their development of a nuclear program. This is Baskin Robbins idiocy - 31 flavors of stupid. Keep politics out of the World Cup. Who gets to say who is excluded for what wrong? Couldn't nations argue to keep the US out for an unpopular, and many would say, illegal war? China, for its human rights abuses? The Dutch for introducing orange jerseys to the world? The list could go on and on. Hey, here's an idea. Let's address the Iranian nuclear issue with...oh, I don't know...international diplomacy. We could even try that nonproliferation treaty the Bush Administration dropped like it was hot.

Besides, if we're going to get our soccer shorts in a knot about Iran, let's take a stand on one of the cruelest human rights abuses...the exclusion of women from watching soccer matches. If there is one thing that worries me most about Iran, it's that they don't realize how ridiculous they are for banning women from watching soccer matches. It reminds of the reverend-without-a-clue types that get all excited about teens dancing becuase it leads to sin. Let 'em watch some football, Ayatollah. Geez.

Impending Doom?

Ever since I've turned 40, I've become finely tuned to the possibility, nay, probability of impending doom. Fortunately, the right-out-of-his-mind Rev. Pat Robertson has received a communique from the Big Guy telling him that the Pacific Northwest (where I live) will be hit by a tsunami this year. The question is what did we do to deserve this? It's not like we rejected intelligent design for evolution. Heck, Seattle-based Discovery Insitute invented intelligent design. Shouldn't that get us a disaster pass from God? (BTW, I certainly don't mean to impugn the Rev's relationship with God, but Dover, Pennsylvania is still awaiting the end).

Then there's this report of the further erosion of American society: the Northwestern University mascot was fired and swim team was suspended for hazing. Isn't hazing supposed to be the rightful province of rich, snotty white kids and the football team? Mascots?!

Tonight, I'm listening to the Supersuckers, Seattle's punk, rock, cowboy country band. I saw lead singer/guitarist Eddie Spaghetti live last year, opening for Los Lobos and totally enjoyed his acoustic set. I picked up several SS CD's last week, after hearing the hard rocking "Evil Powers of Rock and Roll" on KEXP. These guys make great, raw rock and roll and heartfelt, but humorous country music (plus, they cover Jerry Reed's Eastbound and Down from Smokey and the Bandit; can't get much cooler than that). If you haven't heard the Supersuckers, grab a disc and slap it in the CD player. You won't regret it. If you do, you probably belong at the ballet, instead.

And finally, Clarabell the Clown has died. I was too young for the Howdy Doody Show, but hey, it's a sad day when a clown dies.

Heartache...and Redemption!

Wow, what an incredible Champions League Final. Incredible play by Arsenal, questionable and just plain criminally bad refereeing, and a bitter loss for the Gunners.

For the first 17 minutes, Arsenal outplayed in commanding fashion, the Catalan Kids. Henry had 2 very close to goal shots in the first 3 minutes. And then, a huge defensive blunder and Eto'o was through  1 V. 1 with Jens Lehman. The German missed the ball and did the only thing left to him, pull down Eto'o. Out comes the red card, off goes Lehman. Arsenal down to 10 men. But then Barcelona flubbed the free kick (the first of many disappointing plays by Ronaldinho, who had an off night). In the 37th minute, a sure-to-be Oscar-nominated flop by Emanuel Eboue earned a free kick, which Sol Campbell drove into the goal with a soaring header. Elation! We were down a man, but up a goal. The game was in hand, it was ours to lose.

The Gunners played a heroic game. The defense turned back attack after attack. Emergency GK Almunia made some great saves, including a fingertip deflection near the end of the first half. Arsenal mounted several lightning quick attacks that nearly paid off. Henry and Llungberg played as if their lives depended on the outcome.

And then disaster. Larsson played a ball off to Eto'o who drove it past Almunia into the back of the net. A few minutes later Larsson set up Belletti for the game winner and Arsenal's dream of European glory came crashing down.

Much has been written on this game and you can read here and here and here and here. I'm going to focus on two aspects of the game that were critical. First, the refereeing. Not all bad, but the bad was disastrous and only flowed one way, against the boys from North London. Replays showed that Eto'o's goal should've been disallowed for offsides. But the linesman did not raise his flag, and the referee didn't bother to check with him anyways. To miss an offsides call that raised the equalizer is a game deciding error. If the correct call had been applied, the cup would've come home to London.

The card on Lehman was the correct call, though the referee could've played the advantage and allowed the goal and lehman to stay on (though if he had done so, I'm certain Arsenal would've won, given the dominance they were showing in this game).

And, finally, coaching. Arsenal outplayed Barcelona, but Frank Rikjaard outcoached Arsene Wenger. In the second half, Barcelona desperately needed more attacking power. Rikjaard astutely called for Larsson, who it turned out was the difference (and should've been man of the match), and Belletti, who scored the winner.

At the same time, Arsenal was getting tired playing down a man and their defense was sitting deeper and deeper, giving Barcelona dangerous room to build on. Wenger resisted making a substitution until it was too late in the game to have much effect. Throw out the refereeing mistakes and that was the difference.

The defeat was tough to swallow, particularly when the team's performance suggested they were the true champions. But the loss was washed away the day after when Thierry Henry announced that he would indeed be signing a new contract with the Gunners and wanted to stay with the team for the rest of his career. With Henry at the top of his game and staying with the club, the future is incandescent for Arsenal. By the way, for my money, Thierry Henry is one of the classiest soccer players currently playing professional football. (Forget the whining at the end of the Final). Arsenal will win the Champions League final with him as their captain.

Flotsam

Do you ever get the feeling that our social fabric has not only become tattered but now has more holes than fabric? It seems quaint these days to talk about a social safety net. Recently deceased John Kenneth Galbraith's article at Mother Jones describes incisively the nature of the American government and society under the Bush Administration. Our country has become an economic jungle in which those that hold power are the predators and the rest of us are prey.

And this is a bit weird. The fastest growing name in the baby naming trade is Nevaeh reports the New York Times. The name apparently arose from POD singer Sonny Sandoval, a Christian, who in 2000 appeared on MTV with his daughter Nevaeh and explained to the audience that the name is heaven spelled backwards. You just know there's a boy named Lleh out there somewhere.

There's a nifty service on the Social Security Administration web page that ranks popularity of baby names. The site allows you to look up the popularity of a specific name over a period of time, as well as see the most popular names by groupings by time period. I ddin't realize how popular my name was. When I was born it wasn't even in the top 20 (23rd, actually), but became very popular during the 70s through the 90s, enjoying a 15-year reign at no. 2! Looks like the shine has worn off as Christopher has been hovering around no. 9 for the past several years.

One more item, one of rock's greatest musical geniuses is coming to Seattle and I am finally going to see Mr. Roger Waters in concert. Waters was the driving force behind Pink Floyd until he split with the band after The Wall. As an aside, there are two types of Pink Floyd fans, those that realize Waters was the genius that made Pink Floyd a great band, and the rest of the wankers who are too stupid to understand that basic truth.

He was instrumental in creating the concept album, on Pink Floyd outings like Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Animals. Though The Wall was considered one of the great concept albums of all time, it was as a solo artist that Waters created what is, in my mind, the apogee of concept discs, Amused to Death (itself based on Neil Postman's mordant analysis of why humanity is going to hell in a handbasket. Hint: think idiot box).

Waters' October 23rd show will feature a first half of his solo work and early Pink Floyd. After an intermission Waters and his band will perform the entire Dark Side of the Moon album.

Champions League Final...Almost

It's almost here - the Champions League Final. Arsenal v. Barcelona. Two of the most fluent offenses in the world of football going head to head, and boot to boot, for the most prestigious professional tournament title.

This match has so many subplots it's hard to track them. Will Barcelona's high-octane front-line overpower the young Arsenal backline (though bolstered by Ashley Cole's return), that has somehow managed to keep 10 straight European clean sheets? Will an Arsenal win be enough to convince Thierry Henry to stay with Arsenal or conversely, will a defeat send him packing his bags for Barcelona? Can Barcelona's defense do what Real Madrid, Juventus, Villareal and others failed to do, contain the superb Thierry Henry? Can an underacheiving EPL team win the Champions Cup 2 years running? Will Wunderkind Lionel Messi return to inject the Barcelona side with even more brilliance?

For Arsenal fans, this match is a dream come true. A chance to taste European glory that has so long been denied; and, against the team that defeated them in the last finals match they appeared in, back in 1999. I'm a fan of both clubs (though Arsenal is tops in my book), and either side is deserving, but I strongly favor Arsenal in the head to head and am looking forward to a Gunner victory tomorrow.

More match commentary can be found here and here and here and here. And some silliness

Go Gunners!

Liverpool Does It Again!

And this just in from Wales...

Liverpool won the FA Cup Final in an insane game of soccer decided on penalty kicks. The Reds conceded the first goal on an own goal and never held the lead, though fought back to tie the game twice, the crucial equalizer being a Steven Gerard goal in the 91st minute. No goals in the extra 20 and the Reds made 3 PKs to 1 for West Ham.

After last year's amazing Champions League victory, the boys from Liverpool are becoming the EPL's cardiac kids.

Tramps Like Us...

Baby We Were Born To Run

I've been a runner for most of my life, starting as a teenager trying to increase my fitness for basketball. I stopped for running for awhile in my adult years, as I got busy with kids and work, but picked it up again in my mid-30s. I started running again primarily to get back in shape.

While my reasons for running have always focused on physical fitness, I've always enjoyed running. I love the feeling of motion. When I miss a running day, I feel a sense of withdrawal. I get fidgety, as if my body knows I've been stationary too long. When stress is piling up, running gives me a release. The act of running feels as natural to me as breathing.

So, I was intrigued by Ingfei Che's article in Discover Magazine about a new idea on the origin of running and human biomechanics. Scientists have theorized that the descent of man from the trees to the Savanna, and all the evolutionary hooha that came with it - large brains, opposable thumbs, language - was all about walking.

Walking around the Savanna gave us access to resources we could exploit in ways that we could exploit resources in the trees. But the new thinking spotlights the role of our ability to run. Humans aren't terribly fast - when compared to 4-legged sprinters. But we're designed to run relatively fast over long distances, for long periods of time. This gave humans the ability to outlast faster species - basically, run them to ground - and to exploit the spoils of other predator's catches.

Chen's article goes into great detail about the unique biomechanics of humans, and how that translates into our special running abilities. It's fascinating reading.

And the article supports what I've always felt, that I was born to run.

How are the elite soccer players made? American Soccer dads and moms spend (waste?) untold riches trying to turn their Darling Daughter into the next Mia Hamm or their Prodigal Son into the next Ronaldinho. Economist Stephen Levitt suggests some of those well-meaning parents may be wasting their money. They'd be better off timing their offspring's conception! Read Stephen's provocative thoughts at the New York Times.

A correction to yesterday's post about Theo Walcott. The kid does have some 1st league experience with Southampton, his former club. Still, he's awfully green for the World Cup. And, Peter Crouch, is not England's great hope on the front line, it's of course, Michael Owen. But Owen, like Rooney has had a serious foot injury, and is still recovering. He played some the week before for Newcastle and experienced some soreness, so it still remains to be seen what he can bring to the WC.

All that aside, I don't believe England will go far without Rooney. And it's all academic anyways, because the Boys from Brazil are going to take their 2nd consecutive World Cup.

More World Cup

Here's another handy World Cup tool available at the BBC's Football Section on the Web. It's a PDF file for printing out and tracking progress of the Cup.

As long as I'm on the topic of World Cup, I have to say that I'm absolutely amazed at some of the choices England coach Sven Goran Ericksson made in picking his provisional squad. In particular, the inclusion of untested, inexperienced 17-year-old Theo Walcott.

Now, he's a Gunner, and Arsene Wenger thought enough to scoop the kid up before he turned 17, so I'm sure he's got a lot of promise. But aren't there more experienced England strikers with some actual international experience, let alone significant top flight experience? (Theo has yet to play in a Premiership game).

Reports are that Walcott is lightning fast, and Ericksson desperately needs some lightning on a front line without Rooney. I mean, come on, Peter Crouch as your wheel man? Yikes. With his tenure ending after this World Cup, what does Ericksson have to lose? Nothing. But England...England's got the Cup to lose, don't they.

World Cup Tracker

By the way, the World Cup is coming. Matches start June 9^th. If you’re in to following the standings closely, you can get a spreadsheet from Microsoft’s website.

Fatal Contact Mixed Bag

I just watched the ABC attempt to dramatize the bird flu, Fatal Contact: Avian Influenza. There were some good parts to the movie but a lot of Hollywood nonsense that was hard to ignore.

The good parts: The movie did a pretty realistic job of portraying the impact of a flu pandemic replete with a lack of a vaccine, shortages of anti-virals, the effect on the economy and availability of goods, and ham handed government responses.

Oh, yeah, and a ticker on the screen kept showing an increasing toll. The death toll climbed up to 24 million but used individual stories to dramatize the toll. Numbers like 24 million deaths are just too large to really grasp. So, it was a good strategy to focus on the small deaths of individuals to carry the emotional weight.

The bad parts:

But being it was a major television studio’s attempt to portray an issue with scientific and political veins, there were some really ludicrous elements. Towards the end of the program, the tide starts turning when neighborhoods start self-organizing to help each other. What it is they do exactly, to replace failed public health services or failed food and fuel delivery systems, for instance, is never really explained.

Shades of the federal government’s own pandemic readiness plans. The updated report released in early May says: "Local communities will have to address the medical and nonmedical impacts of the pandemic with available resources." While there are naturally limits to what the federal government can do to respond to an influenza pandemic, it has a huge role in helping sustain health systems, and vital economic services, as well as other functions. And, the local response that’s needed, particularly in the health services, has been eviscerated by continued federal funding cuts over many years.

If you want local communities’ health care system to be able to respond to a flu pandemic, you’d better be funding a public health system and be sure there are plenty of hospital beds available.

I’m heading off to work soon, but I’ll get some more numbers up here about the decline of the public health system in the near future.

Another really ridiculous piece of this movie was the killer flu strain at the end of the show. After the 1^st wave of illnesses and deaths a new strain pops up in Angola. The CDC investigative team flies out to assess and finds that the virus kills 100% of its victims. The final shot cuts away to a flock of birds flying across the sky (presumably heading to your town!)

First of all, an influenza virus that developed a perfect kill ratio would burn itself out before it could spread far. The flu is effective because it makes most people sick but not so sick they can’t spread the virus around. If all your victims drop dead, your spread will be self-limiting. That’s one of the reasons influenza is a more effective virus than say Ebola.

Secondly, a flu virus that develops human to human transmission is going to spread by that pathway. Forget the birds; it’s now a human virus. The movie should’ve closed with someone getting on an airplane headed for New York.

All in all, though, the movie was better with the science than The Day After handled global warming.

Was it designed to scare you? Yes. Should avian influenza scare you? Yes.

One of these days I’m going to get around to posting the article I wrote in 1997 about the coming flu pandemic.

Gunners Secure '07 Champions League

What a great day Sunday! Tottenham lose their must-win game with West Ham and Arsenal take the Wigan match 4-2 to leapfrog Spurs in the table and secure 4th place and a place in the 2007 Champions League tournament.

It's been a disappointing domestic season for the Gunners, but the finish to the season was exciting and showed the squad's resiliency.