The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II)

continued from here

 The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II) 

Uncle Albert’s surprise for me - I should say his self-serving surprise: He has subscribed to the NBC Sports Gold Premier League Pass and, with Roz’s connivance* - Can you tell I’m unhappy with this? - arranged for one of his friend Maggie’s friends to install it on our TV. That way he’ll never miss an Arsenal game though I’ll miss today’s much-looked-forward-to Chelsea-Liverpool match while he and I are watching Arsenal-Aston Villa because no more than you can serve both God and Mammon can you watch two matches at the same time. (There are laws of physics as well as truths of religion.)

I admit that the Arsenal match is worth watching.

Uncle Albert and a happy Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
(drawing - and sunglasses - by m ball)

     Aston Villa gets a shot on goal on its first attack of the game in the fourth minute - Trézeguét to McGinn, who looks dangerous throughout the first third of the first half, getting a second good shot on goal in the eleventh minute before scoring easily in the twentieth - the Villa midfielder is all alone after running straight through Arsenal’s absent defense for across from El Ghazi. In the meantime (in the eleventh minute) Arsenal’s Ainsley Maitland-Niles has gotten his first^† yellow card for tripping El Ghazi from behind.

     Less than twenty minutes (after McGinn’s goal), Maitland-Niles gets his second yellow card and (injury added to insult) hops off the field, assisted by a “physio.” Arsenal will play the remaining 50-plus minutes down a man. Still, the Gunners manage to score, finally! on a penalty kick after defender Björn Engels pulls Guendouzi down inside the penalty area. It’s Nicolas Pépé’s first Premier League goal, cracked straight down the middle as Villa keeper Tom Heaton dives to his left.

     McGinn almost scores again two minutes after that and less than a minute later the whiffle-ball Arsenal defense simply let Jack Grealish go until at the end he skips around Sokratis and slides the ball into Wesley for a tap-in. 2-1.

     Then, Aston Villa seem to go into defensive mode. It works for a while, but Calum Chambers (substituted for Saka on the left at the half) scores in the eightieth minute. Guendouzi hits a well-placed cross into the box at the six-yard line only half-cleared by Villa. Of all the bodies in the box Chambers gets to the loose ball first, poking it into the top corner of the net with the outside of his right boot.

     The final goal comes when Engels makes a second costly error, pulling Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang down just outside the penalty area. And Aubameyang scores, pushing more than pulling the free-kick around the Villa wall and past Heaton who seems never to have seen it.

     And there’s enough noise to wake Uncle Albert, asleep since before Wesley’s goal for Villa. So, he sees the replay. His eyes open with an audible click like a ventriloquiest dummy's. It occurs to me that his boxy tweed jacket, his vest and his tie, look like something Jerry Mahoney might wear. And the 96-year-old's creases that fall from the corners of his mouth toward his chin, they look like Jerry Mahoney, too. His eyes pop open.

     But he’s heard the whole thing. He was never sleeping, not at all, only resting his eyes.

In other news, Liverpool beats Chelsea 2-1, and Greta Thunberg reveals that Arnold Schwarzenegger offered to lend her an electric car.

09.26.19

 _______________

 * Collusion might be a better word. Connivance - which my dictionary defines as “willingness to secretly allow or be involved in wrongdoing” comes ultimately from the Latin conniventia, from connivere ‘shut the eyes (to).’ Everyone’s eyes but mine, I would contend,** were wide open.

  ^† Foreshadowing!

** The better word might be whine, Roz says.