I watched a number of matches yesterday. I have found myself watching the highlights of those matches just now.
Last night, I saw something about David Luiz that I couldn’t properly place a hand on. And this morning, it hit me hard on the face.
You see, I know David Luiz well. David Luiz is a Chelsea legend. A warrior! A lion! A champions league winner.

What i saw in David Luiz’s face, rather eyes, reminded me of an imagery in Peter Abrahams ‘ ‘Mine boy’.

I read Mine boy many many years ago. I think 20 years ago to be precise, so i could be forgiven for forgetting many things in the plot. But this particular scene remains fairly vivid.

The setting is apartheid South Africa. Blacks do menial jobs and hard labour for the whites in the gold mines of South Africa. The white supervisors are so feared!

So through the eyes of Zuma, we see how the miners look so scared when the supervisor arrives or barks an order here and there. I don’t remember if they also whipped them in the back side but a lot of atrocities happened in that system and that could as well been the case.
So Peter Abrahams writes that the miners looked so scared like sheep that had seen a menacing dog barking at them when a white supervisor approached or happened by.

That is what Arsenal has reduced a legendary championship league winner to. David Luiz looked so scared and he had reason to when Tottenham Hotspurs players walked onto the pitch.

The rest of the squad weren’t as scared. A Chelsea player who played for both Chelsea and later Arsenal made a distinction between the two clubs. He said that at Chelsea, winning a match was a matter of life and death. There would be much tension in the dressing room after a loss. No one spoke to the other. At Arsenal, it didn’t matter whether they won or not. If they won, they won. If they lost, well, they lost. The dressing room was always a place for happy banter.

Anyway, that is that. We all hope Southampton is not conceding any penalty tonight. They can look back at their victory over city last week to draw from it the necessary confidence and inspiration to prevail over great adversity. Even if who you are!