Football: Deeney pillories Arsenal for lack of 'cojones'

Watford's Troy Deeney celebrates scoring his side's first goal at the weekend. Photo / AP

If Arsenal's defenders and midfielders had anything about them at all, they would have been sitting in that dressing room at Vicarage Rd saying: "Next time we play Watford, he's getting sorted out."

No chance. Arsene Wenger's team are more likely to demand an apology from Troy Deeney on Facebook or call for Watford to be no-platformed from the Premier League safe space.

Deeney had come off the bench with Watford 1-0 behind. He scored a penalty to equalise, played a part in the winner and then gave some of the best post-match analysis in recent memory when he identified Arsenal's problem as a lack of "cojones" after their 2-1 win at the weekend on BT Sport's Premier League Tonight.

On the BBC, he said his plan when he came off the bench was "the same as every time I play Arsenal. I am going to rough 'em up. I am the equaliser".

He went on: "I'm not as great on the eye, I am not a great football player in terms of what they have got in terms of quality. But I'm physical. I'm rough, I'm ugly and I do all the stuff they don't like. Soon as I come on, I see which one of their back three wants it, who is up for the challenge and I felt today none of them were."

Spot on. That performance was vintage Arsenal - fiddly, technocratic, lacking direction and heart.

Collectively, they embody so much that traditional football fans loathe about the game as played today. The tippy-tappy meandering. A faceless parade of guys from here, there and everywhere with no understanding of their club or its traditions. The lack of bottle. The pampered whining. The stupid £200 haircuts.

After Mesut Ozil's lame, match-turning miss, he wandered back vaguely towards the lost ball. In an unhappy piece of comic timing, a billboard at pitch level simultaneously screened a digitised dawdling dachshund, making it look as if the creature was trotting alongside Ozil.

The dachshund, a preposterous, fragile little German thing adept at wriggling into space but no good at running around, outpaced moping Mesut with something to spare. What a shower.

Deeney cut through all Arsenal's nonsense in seconds, which was excellent telly in itself, as well as a reminder of how much more enjoyable watching sport on TV can be if people are willing to speak unguardedly.

Some Arsenal followers feel he has been "disrespectful", as if accusing Nacho Monreal of being a bit of a wet lettuce were like belching in front of Princess Anne.

What respect can Arsenal players honestly say they deserve? Deeney clearly feels comfortable rinsing them on TV. An unlovely player who has done bad things in his past, Deeney feels like exactly the sort of hero Britain deserves in 2017. Were there a question in a referendum asking: "Troy Deeney, yes or no", you feel he would get a solid 52 per cent support. He has already sorted out one lot of gutless foreigners. Perhaps the nation needs to get behind Deeney on a wider level. He could turn the Brexit deadlock around in no time.