None!

Wulan Butong Grassland

Photograph by Van Hanwood

"This place seems like an ancient battlefield in the morning," says Van Hanwood of this picture taken in Wulan Butong in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and submitted to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. "The fog floats on the grassland."

This photo and caption were submitted to the 2014 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

Download wallpapers &raquo

Fields of Old

Photograph by John Qu, National Geographic Your Shot

"This land symbolizes the rhythm of the people, as it was formed through generations of farmers shaping it with irrigation," says John Qu, a member of our Your Shot community. "It is a rare phenomenon of man-made beauty disguised as a natural occurrence."

Qu captured the photo of the Yuanyang rice terraces while traveling in China's Yunnan Province. "I've traveled to this place multiple times, purposely in the winter, when the rice terraces are flooded. I've gone through the entire area and observed that the light at sunset, with the reflection and high angle, would make the terraces look more like a piece of abstract art, yet with real trees and huts. The shot was taken from a mountain above. I waited a few days for the perfect moment."

The picture recently appeared in the Your Shot Daily Dozen.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot. Check out the new and improved website, where you can share photos, take part in assignments, lend your voice to stories, and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe.

See more pictures from the Daily Dozen &raquo

Arsenal 1 – 0 West Bromwich Albion

1 – 0 Giroud (14)

In the end, the result proved irrelevant beyond providing Arsenal with their fourth successive win. West Brom’s Premier League’s future was decided by Norwich’s failure to win at Stamford Bridge later in the day. Arsenal can finish no higher than fourth barring a miraculous turnaround in goal difference on the final Sunday of the season; mathematical possibilities and football are not comfortable bedfellows; the phrase tends to be arbiter of forlorn and lost hopes. Fourth on International Star Wars day? There’s a joke in there somewhere, begging to stay in.

It’s always good to finish the home season with a win and Arsenal duly obliged in languid fashion. Olivier Giroud lost his marker and headed home from Santi Cazorla’s early corner and on any other Saturday when the points were required to achieve the season’s objectives, a sense of urgency would have driven the side forward in search of more goals. Arsenal threatened rarely afterwards. Podolski hit the post, his usual unerring finishing skills deserting him, whilst Özil and Cazorla caused nothing more than brief consternation for the visitors defence.

As it was the burning desire wasn’t there and nor was Aaron Ramsey to inject the drive, allowing the match to adopt an end of season tone. Three points served to create a gap to fifth place and another crack at qualifying for next season’s Champions League. Whatever the sporting merits, financially Arsenal crave the company of Europe’s top table and the club’s seventeenth consecutive season in that competition depends on the familiarity of two matches in August. That sums up the end of this Premier League campaign; it’s all very familiar.

The gates have closed on The Emirates for the last time this season and from the most wretched of starts was a successful home campaign forged. The lowest number of points dropped at home since 2009/10, equalling the third lowest goals conceded in his reign, only one game lost, a feat bettered only five times since Bertie Mee retired. Had three of the six games not won been victories, how different would we be thinking this week? An outside chance, waiting for City to slip before pouncing? Waiting for them to drop points to consolidate?

Post-match, Arsène let it be known that the top four finish was the decisive factor for him in his contract situation, giving him a sense that he would still be “useful” to the club. The players, he revealed, had pleased him with their application,

“I’m happy with the attitude, the behaviour and the consistency of my players. I’m frustrated as well because we were 120 days top of the league. When you look today it’s very tight and then comes through your mind here and there the points you dropped that we should not have dropped. The regret as well is at the most important period of the season we had two important players out. We have many players who have only played between five and 15 games. That’s where we want to improve for next season.”

It is a matter of opinion about how that improvement can be achieved and whether the manager has the plan to do so. He believes he has, the board clearly do and that will be the case next season. There is much for the manager to do with no clear signal either way from Bacary Sagna where his future may lie. As with Vermaelen and Podolski, you can read anything into the photos from the ‘Lap of Appreciation’. Was it a final farewell bade by the Sagna’s captured for the family snap treasured for years to come? Was Lukas taking it all in one last time, sitting in a timeless parental repose on the Emirates turf? Or were they just moments in a season?

The solution, he believes, is inside the club when it comes to injury. It wasn’t a time for regrets as far as not signing a striker was concerned, skewed logic at work. Giroud did not get injured but his form deserted him on the pitch as his dalliances away from the turf caught up with him. That Arsenal went into the season with a shortage of proven strikers is baffling, especially with the theatrics of last summer. Is that too isolationist in outlook? After all, it wasn’t just another forward Arsenal needed and more problematic was a winter window when a midfielder with a back injury was the only signing, particularly when two of the club’s best players were long-term injuries. If lessons have been learned, the prospects are much improved for next year but the fear is that we haven’t learned the lessons of the past previously, that the same failings have dogged the squad, almost as if they are institutionally ingrained, so why believe that this summer will be any different? Hope is a four-letter word.

The defeat at Anfield was the moment the wheels came off Arsenal’s Premier League season. Not just in the opening twenty-minute salvo which saw the game gone but the repetition of a heavy defeat, the same as suffered at Eastlands. Has Arsène identified the causes, is he is able to pinpoint a sole cause. It wasn’t the tactics as far as he was concerned, pointing out the changing fashions of footballing philosophies,

“We want not to lose the match and of course as well you want to win the games but when you lose, you’re always wrong. I go long enough into management meetings in Europe with the best managers and every year you analyse the teams who win the Champions League. When Barcelona wins everybody comes to the conclusion that you have to have possession and the team who has possession wins. When the team who doesn’t have the ball wins, everybody says maybe you should not have the ball and play a bit more on the counter attack. I think it’s always the same conclusion but in a club you need a philosophy and maybe of course we have to adapt in some games but we lost some games before we could start after 10 minutes it was 2-0 and it’s difficult to defend or attack, that can happen as well if you play with 10 defenders.”

As supporters, we find it easier to deal with defeats when we don’t have to rationalise them. Compartmentalise them as one-offs and we are happy. When it becomes obvious that such tags and labels do not sit comfortably with the truth, it becomes harder to accept them. When they happen four times in one season, something is fundamentally wrong. Wenger points that the club needs a philosophy, a style of playing from top to bottom that allows players to seamlessly transition from one level, one team to another. Admirable and utterly correct. The problem comes when the flaws in the philosophy are ruthlessly exposed.

Arsenal sit four points from the top, closer than they have been to whomever the eventual champions may be, than they have been for a number of seasons. Progress and stagnation in one season, still missing the X Factor when it comes to making the transition from top four to serious title contenders. Wenger believes you can count the number of signings he needs to make on one hand and afford to have a couple of fingers missing. It’s a tally which is not hard to believe if he keeps the squad together, or certainly those who he doesn’t want to leave, stay. But that seems an unlikely outcome and as busy a summer as the manager has even known beckons. That is where the concern kicks down the doors with such a level of activity at odds with Arsène’s philosophy, his optimum level of transfer business without destabilising the squad. Something has to give in that respect.

But that is for the summer months to reveal, the future is more immediate than that. Norwich City host the final Premier League match of the season for Arsenal and then it is on to Wembley. The FA Cup might not decide the manager’s future but you sense it will set the tone for the summer.

’til Tomorrow.

Wolffish Den

Photograph by David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, National Geographic

In this picture originally published in the May 2014 issue of National Geographic magazine, a pair of Atlantic wolffishnamed for their fangscozy up in a den in Bonne Bay, off the west coast of Newfoundland. The female departs after laying eggs, leaving their care to the male.

See more pictures from the May 2014 feature story "The Generous Gulf."

Hear David Doubilet speak about his passion for underwater photography &raquo

Rings of Fire

Photograph by William Kerdoncuff

"[This is] the main attraction on the beaches of Kho Phi Phi, Thailand, at night," says William Kerdoncuff, who submitted this picture to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. "A lot of bars hire young people to put on fire shows to attract tourists."

This photo and caption were submitted to the 2014 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

Download wallpapers &raquo

Cliffs of Svalbard

Photograph by Stuart Chape

"The high cliffs of Svalbard drop steeply into the sea," says Stuart Chape, who submitted this picture from Norway's Arctic archipelago to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. "The eroded green cliffs, remnant snow, and aquamarine sea create an abstract visual impression."

This photo and caption were submitted to the 2014 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

Download wallpapers &raquo

The Wizard: The Life Of Stanley Matthews

by Jon Henderson

It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter whereabouts in the world you are. If you are a football supporter, there is a strong chance that you will have heard the name Stanley http://www.aclfarsenal.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=14945&action=edit&message=10Matthews and know his place in the pantheon of English football. The oldest player in a league match, finally hanging up his boots when most Sunday League players had done so years before. The 1953 FA Cup final. How on earth are you supposed to distil a thirty year playing career into a peak and prime when the player in question was still being capped by his country at the age of 42, twenty-three years after it had begun, and winning promotion with Stoke City when older than I am now as I write this. It was a unique and most likely, unparalleled career.

With his almost mythical status, much of Stanley Matthews life is already know. Certainly from the playing side at least and it is to Jon Henderson’s credit that he brings a freshness to the prose when relaying those stories and tales of derring-do on the football pitches of the world. Matthews was ahead of his time in dietary awareness and probably ahead of a few players nowadays, eschewing the stereotypical football lifestyle of beer and steak for almost monastic existence in terms of nutrition and supplements. Given the longevity of his playing career, he obviously did something right in enhancing his biological disposition toward fitness.

The 1953 final is often people’s most vivid – only – memory of the footballer and Henderson brings other matches to mind when assessing Matthews best 90 minutes. Pele observed that the winger “taught us the way football should be played” and with that, the contention that the 1958 meeting with Brazil at Wembley was one of the finest, gains traction. Does it really matter what we think were the best moments of a playing career? After all, there are many matches which mean different things to different people. A dispassionate football report does nothing to capture an individual’s mood and more often than not, that is what makes the occasion special.

As with most talented footballers, management proved the opposite. Matthews stint at Port Vale was most notable in Arsenal minds for his rejection of Ray Kennedy. Thankfully he did and Arsenal reaped the benefit. Indeed, during his reign, the Potteries club were banned from the Football League due to financial irregularities and it was up to him to use the persuasion of his name to have Port Vale re-elected. For a man who was astute in exploiting his financial worth whilst playing, it stuck in his craw to be taken advantage of whilst being owed thousands of pounds by the club in unpaid wages. Having reached a settlement with them, he vowed never to work in English football in a managerial capacity again. All the while this was going on, he stayed to help Vale’s youth footballers; the love of the game was too strong.

With so much familiarity, there is a refreshing burst of, well, if not revelations, certainly adding more colour to the man himself. It seems somewhat fitting that having lived and played through real and political wars, Matthews second wife turned out to be a former spy for the Czechoslovakian security services. It was about the only thing missing from the tales and would make a wonderful if somewhat improbable Hollywood tale. It’s an enjoyable read on a life less ordinary.

Click on the link to buy the paperback or Kindle versions of The Wizard: The Life of Stanley Matthews.

Procession of the Mysteries

Photograph by Willem Kuijpers, National Geographic Your Shot

Your Shot member Willem Kuijpers captured this shot during the 24-hour I Misteri procession in Trapani, Sicily, during which the stations of the cross are carried through the city on the Friday and Saturday of Holy Week. "I came across this situation on the morning of Easter Saturday," Kujipers says. "The participants were getting very tired and I had to wait a lot because of the slow movement of the procession. The heavy stations are carried by the guilds of the city, each accompanied by a music group playing funeral music and a group of women and children."

Kujipers has been attending such processions in Sicily since 2002.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot. Check out the new and improved website, where you can share photos, take part in assignments, lend your voice to stories, and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe.

Not much to do this morning but thank Southampton for their 2-0 win over Everton yesterday. Or even thank Everton for scoring two excellent headed own goals.

Whoever you want to thank it turned out to be a fantastic result for us. Is it, perhaps, a sign that Everton have been feeling the pressure, the weight of expectation? I know a lot of neutrals would love to see them secure a Champions League spot, and I understand that.

If it were Everton battling against anyone else I’d be right up for them myself, just to add a bit of variety to Premier League – and European – life. But it’s not against anyone else, so I’m obviously happy they cracked. If that were us, you wouldn’t be able to move for the ‘self destruct’ headlines this morning, and we now have the chance to put a bit of distance between us and them tomorrow night.

If we beat Newcastle, we’ll be four points clear with two games to play. The fact that Everton conceded two without reply means the goal difference is exactly the same as well, so there’s further motivation for us before we face Alain Pardeaux’s team.

Meanwhile, Arsene Wenger says Jack Wilshere won’t be rushed back into action just because the World Cup is looming. His last game for us was on March 1st before he got his foot broken playing for England a few days later. The boss said:

I don’t want to rush his fitness. If he wants to come back he needs to be fully fit, for that I believe it is very important that we don’t rush him. We want to do the basic work on his stamina so he can support the demands of the Premier League and the World Cup. This time we will take the needed time to build the basic fitness up on a very strong level.

Interesting comments, because Jack’s injury had nothing to do with fatigue or basic fitness, he got crocked in a 50/50 challenge. Perhaps he should have known better than to commit himself like that in a meaningless friendly, but there you go. Other than that I think he’s had a reasonably successful campaign in terms of his fitness.

He’s started 30 games in for us in all competitions, and between club and country has made 41 appearances. I always said this season was one of consolidation, where he needed to play regularly to feel more confident, and despite this latest absence, I think it will prove a positive one overall. Nagging doubts would be fair enough if he’d had a recurrence of his ankle knack, the fact Daniel Agger banjaxed him in a tackle makes it much easier to deal with, and I think we’ll see a much better Wilshere next season.

The only proviso I would have is that he has to be 100% if he’s going to the World Cup. I know it’s a huge deal for any player, but if he’s not fully recovered from this latest injury and declares himself fit then he’s doing everyone, especially himself a disservice. The manager has long said he’d be back before the end of the season though, so let’s see what happens.

Other than that the papers are just full of transfer nonsense this morning. Alex Song could return to Arsenal says one paper. No, no he could not.

Have yourselves a great Sunday, back tomorrow with a full preview of the Newcastle game and all the usual bits and bobs.

Happiness Is a Warm Sun

Photograph by Kersti Kalberg, National Geographic Your Shot

"It was the first beautiful winter day in over a month, and the sun came out and everybody just stopped," says Kersti Kalberg, a member of our Your Shot community. "The world almost stood still, and the silent happiness just poured in."

Kalberg went for a walk to enjoy the day, as did many others, including the pony, Rainbow, found standing in the sunlight. "It looked like he was just feeling the sunlight and fresh air. I found it something remarkable, as if he were there for me to finally understand how similar people and animals sometimes are."

This photo was submitted to Your Shot. Check out the new and improved website, where you can share photos, take part in assignments, lend your voice to stories, and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe.