Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » 2008 » November

Arsenal one goal down at half time twice

Funny old game. At half time it was Bristol 1 Arsenal 0. Or if you were watching the other one it was the Russians 1 Arsenal 0.

Given that Arsenal had won every single game this season, and last season the score at Bristol, where I was, was a bit of a shock.

You know those games where Arsenal attack, attack, attack, attack, and then the opposition get a couple of breakaways, and score in one of those; well it was that. The Ladies mimic the Men.

Fortunately the ladies game kicked off at 2pm, so I was able to get to the pub for the men’s game, and having seen a fine recovery in the game I went to, I was prepared for what happened.

At Bristol, Arsenal made a change at half time (which I spent queuing for a hot chocolate, only to find out that they had sold out just as I got to the front of the queue). And then it all turned around. 3 great goals, followed by a funny own goal, and Arsenal Ladies maintain the 100% record and saunter off 4-1. Watching the bench after Bristol took the lead, no one seemed worried. It was as if they knew what came next.

So, then into the pub to watch the men repeat the same trick, although the men only managed two in beating the Russians.

Probably we won’t hear too much in the next day or two about stubborn Wenger, and how he (very strangely) refuses to take the advice of all the knowledgeable bloggers and instead insists on going his own way, not buying defensive midfielders, not doing the same as the clubs higher up the league, and in fact not doing much at all except what he believes in.

Of course the win against the Russians was one game, and the only thing that is really proven at the moment is that all the bloggers who said that we would slip into mid-table mediocrity as soon as we started playing the other top clubs, were wrong. “If we lose to Hull and Fulham,” they cried, “just think what Manchester Bankrupts and the Russian mob will do to us.”

Not too much as it turned out. “Chelsea never concede a goal in the second half,” said Radio 5 at half time. Ah well. Sky weren’t much better in their pontificating.

There’s no denying the season has had its disappointments – none more so than the game against Aston Anti-Football, but today was a highlight, a real up-turn, and let’s enjoy it.

I would say that this team really is on the move, and although we have seen, and may well see again, some disastrous performances, this is getting exciting. What’s more it can get better because of the players who are currently out, and the players who are maturing. Of almost the entire team we can say for sure that they will certainly be better next year than they are this year.

And maybe we should have a moment to say a special word to those who said we should be out buying centre forwards because van Persie would never be able to play more than one or two games at a time. I can’t think what the special word might be, but I know there is one. Maybe its Eduardo. On the bench on Tuesday? Wouldn’t that be fun.

All in all it was a jolly day. Bristol 1 Arsenal 4. Watching in a tiny ground, open to the elements, it was bloody cold. Russia 1 Arsenal 2 in the pub. Rather good.

Now for Burnley.

Time for something different

The point of life is to keep changing.

(OK no one else has to follow my dictum of course, but that’s what has kept me going all these years, and it seems to serve me well).

So today I am venturing (in an hour or so) to do something very different. Instead of sitting watching the CSKA game on TV (I choose not to go to that match since getting done over some years back), I am going to watch Bristol Academy vs Arsenal Ladies.

That is, I will watch it if I find the right ground. I found the Academy’s web site, and there were details of a couple of locations there, so I thought I would phone them up. After 3 fruitless calls I got hold of someone and said, “can you tell me which ground the game against Arsenal is being played at?” and the person at the other end said, “Is this football you’re talking about?”

I don’t say this because I am having a go at Bristol Academy – far from it. As far as I can see, they were Bristol Rovers’ club, got disenfranchised, changed their name, and have managed to keep going without sponsor, and without a league club’s support, largely through the devotion of a local college. Now that’s what I call grass roots.

Anyway, with our team still with their 100% record in the league, we’re hoping for a jolly afternoon out. After which it will be a drive to a pub to watch the second half of the gentleman’s team on Sky.

Like I say, time for something different.

All football ticket prices down as VAT reduced…

Well, that’s the theory. VAT comes down on Monday from 17.5% to 15% and there is, of course, VAT on ticket prices.

So will we see a decline in prices?

If Arsenal applied the discount then £50 tickets would be priced £48.94. Since they won’t do this then the club is in effect raising prices by 2.1%. The same is true of everyone else.

Arsenal could cut prices, because as noted before, Arsenal are in fact the only one of the upper crust clubs that doesn’t have money problems. The borrowing for the stadium is completely covered by the match day income and the marketing is getting better year on year, thus bringing in bigger and bigger returns.

CSKA meanwhile have an owner who is losing millions a day as his stocks sink lower and lower. Manchester B and Liverpool I both have strategies based on selling the club on because of ever rising interest in football, and neither have possible owners queuing up.

Which brings me onto one other matter. Manchester Bankrupts have relentlessly followed the approach of Real Mad in touring the world at every opportunity to enhance the image and brand. CSKA Fulham try much the same approach and are looking to develop their position in countries as diverse as Russia and the United States.

The idea is that the tour (somewhat to the detriment of the players’ build up to each season) will develop more fans, simply by the club being there.

As a strategy it is ok, but ultimately it is doomed, simply because if you don’t have a major megastar WHO IS LOVED, then ultimately the image fades. Whatever we may think of David Beckham, he was loved by billions and seen as the great icon. Whoever owned him, owned the rights. The same was true with Zinedine Zidane. The anti-French British press focus eternally on his final game but for the rest of the world, he is rightly remembered as the greatest of players, a player of majesty, the scorer of world cup final goals, a man of staggering brilliance. With him in the side, marketing took care of itself.

Now think of Manchester B. Who is the great god? Christiano Rolando? Wayne Rooney? Neither have the depth of image and sheer power of being that Zidane had, or the icon quality of Beckham.

Think of CSKA Fulham. John Terry? Ashley Cole? Nic Anelka? None seems remotely to fit the icon bill.

So what of Arsenal? The fact is that Arsenal is playing a different game. What it is doing is building a double reputation – the most gracious flowing football on the planet, combined with the most audacious use of young players. One after another they come, and just as soon as one child becomes a household name, another comes along behind him. Cesc is the youngest ever. No it is Jack. No, there’s this kid in the under 18s who is 12…

Those two facts of elegant football and young players are not just known in the UK. Mention Arsenal anywhere, and they know about these things. Yes, the icon of Henry has gone, and no other has emerged thus far. But that is not what is noticed.

The fact is that doing strange things with money in the style of CSKA, Manchester and Liverpool is not very appealing to a world-wide audience. People turn to the club that is working on completely new strategies.

What this means is that the marketing momentum year on year is with Arsenal. Year on year the marketing operation pulls in more and more.

We won’t see tickets at £1 cheaper in December, but we will see more and more money pouring into the club. And we know that the stewardship of the club is in good hands. No matter what the results are tomorrow, that is something to be proud of.

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Eduardo plays, Gazidis is signed, the injured returned, Flamini is a twirp

This week Jonathan Neale forwarded me a great article on the new man Ivan Gazidis and from reading that it seems that everything about him is good. It is doubtful that after all this time Arsenal would have done anything other than get the very man they want, and that could mean some significant success in transfer arrangements, whether it is with younger players or more experienced players.

All of which is very nice, and made nicer by the fact that several players (Ade, Nasri, Sagna) should be back for the game against the Russians.

But what really attracted me yesterday was the game at Portsmouth against WC Milan Reserves. Poor Flamini, only picking up the odd game when they won’t risk the first team. Senderos too is hardly getting a touch of the ball – he played the whole game last night – but that’s not his fault. And then on left midfield for Pottymouth we had Traore, who has been getting some positive reviews – and is, wouldyou believe, a defensive midfielder.

Flamini – you will recall – wanted to go on to higher and better things – well if WC Milan’s reserves against Portsmouth in the UEFA cup is bigger and better, then he got it.

And overall I thought that was that, until I suddenly read on the ever excellent Young Guns web site that EDUARDO played in a friendly against Nottingham Fawcett. According to the web site (of whose news gatheringI am eternally envious) Arsenal put out the Carling Cup team for a game (as a warm up presumably for the trip to the wilder parts of the far north where the polar bears roam, and the icebergs grow and …. sorry, Burnley).

And thus I make my prediction of the week (or put it another way I make a wild guess) that Eduardo might just perhaps could possibly maybe be on the bench for the Carling Cup game. Wouldn’t that be something?

You can now get these wild and bizarre ramblings on your mobile phone without it costing a single penny. There’s an advert on the right hand side – just click there and you get this, plus news updates from other slightly saner sources. Buy now while capitalism lasts.

And not that anyone would want to copy this, but just in case it was mistaken for a real news service, it’s Copyright (c) Tony Attwood 2008. So there.

Arsenal and the world tomorrow

Consider this:

Manchester Bankrupt draw two games 0-0, and even Sir Alex F-Word wakes up to the reality of rotational fouling – commenting on the way it is done on C Ronaldo

Milan’s star player says he wouldn’t mind moving to the EPL to play for Man City, while the same C Ronaldo as above is still demanding more money and talking of a move.

Liverpool Insolvency find themselves booed by their own fans despite being top of the league.

CSKA Fulham are finding it hard to sell tickets, and are stumbling through the Champions League, while not being quite so all-conquering in the EPL

These issues all reflect matters that concern Arsenal supporters. The booing that went on at the end of the Aston Anti-football game, the fact that every six months all our players are apparently on the way to Real Mad, BabaBarca and WC Milan, and the way that rotational fouling is now the first thought of most teams in the EPL – all these things affect us.

It feels like these problems keep hitting Arsenal alone, but that is not the case.

In Manchester (to take one example) the tickets for games now tend to go on general sale, the waiting list for season tickets have evaporated, and some supporters are suing the club, and despite what we all have to admit (at least when no one else is listening) is a frighteningly good forward line, they aren’t guaranteed to score every game.

Which for no particular reason made me think of Italy. I can remember watching Milan sometime around 1995 and seeing a full stadium, passion, excitement, and by and large very good matches. It was the best football on TV. Now you can’t get Italian football on TV in the UK – even Bravo (which had it for a few months) don’t want it. Even Eurosport seem to prefer underwater bob-sleigh championships to Italian football.

In 3 years time I suspect English football will be different, and may well be a long way past its high point. Nothing stays at the top forever, and when the decline comes it is worth asking, who will be best placed to cope?

Arsenal, because it will still have wonderful young players and a manageable debt

CSKA Fulham, as long as one man stays interested and keeps the money flowing

Manchester City, if they can actually make a team out of the big name signings they will get

But not Manchester U and Liverpool whose debts will have overtaken them. Not Everton, and West Ham who are all likely to be very close to extinction because of debt.

Just because the world looks as it does today, does not mean that is how it looks tomorrow. I find that rather reassuring.

The French agree, the British journalists are after Arsenal

It has been a regular theme here that British football journalists make up stories morning, noon and night. I say that because in an earlier life I worked as a journalist.

During this time I worked for a year in Algiers where the main source of news for me was the French papers. From day one I was surprised how very different the French media were in reporting football. Instead of making it up day by day they actually tried to make sense of the stories, and to a far greater degree than the British.

This wasn’t just an issue of degree – this was a wholesale difference. Instead of talk about crisis, meltdown and the like, they would deliver reasoned argument and debate.

I haven’t thought of this difference for a while – until Manu Petite spoke up about what the British press had done to Gallas. This was followed by an article in Aujourd’hui Sport in which it was commented on the way the British press had gone out of their way to attack and destroy the credibility of William Gallas.

The British press, where they have picked up on this reasoned commentary, have treated it with their typical “silly Frenchy” approach, and laughed it off, but for me, the story is certainly true. At the very least it deserves a reasoned answer. None has been forthcoming.

It is not that the press are in essence anti-Arsenal, they are anti-French, and because Arsenal has a French manager and he chooses to employ a significant number of French players, the media looks for every way to boost their standard strategy of showing that there is something odd about the French.

This has been there for a long time – remember the way they treated Anelka? Or the way they treated Pires with the accusations of diving? Or the way they handled Vieira with the endless talking about his cards rather than his performances. Only Henry escaped – until they hit on the idea that Henry was a second rate player because he couldn’t hack it on the European stage.

And when that started to falter, they had a go at saying every few seconds that he would leave.

If that is not enough proof, think also of the way Wenger is treated, and compare that with Ferguson. He won’t speak to most papers, and never to the BBC, but he is treated with respect, while they run stories about Wenger not seeing things etc etc.

Arsenal plagarists rampant

It has come to my attention that some people have copied some of my ramblings on this site and posted them elsewhere under their own name as their own work.

I can’t imagine why anyone would bother to pass off my work as their own on the internet – it just seems daft – I mean if you want to get yourself in print, just write a comment. Why take my work?

Maybe those who do it think there are no rules or laws about such things. Actually there are – it is called the 1988 Copyright Design and Patents Act. It doesn’t protect ideas, but it does protect the actual text. Anyone can quote a bit, but it has to be just a bit, and the source and author has to be given.

If you feel like me that taking someone else’s work, and then putting it on a web site as your own is not quite cricket, or football, and you spot anything from this site appearing elsewhere under someone else’s name, word for word, please do let me know. I will hound the perpetrator to the ends of time, and other stuff like that.

Sorry to be a bore with such matters, but I thought I’d just put up a notice about the situation, in case anyone really thought it was ok to copy hundreds of words of my work, and then put it up under their own name.

Chelsea v Arsenal, a tiny problem

It was deeply shocking to find that some 800 seats were unsold for the game last night. Arsenal meandered into the knock out stages for something like the sixth year running, using mostly a reserve team (Ade, Sagna, Kolo, Eduardo, Rosicky, Nasri, Theo, Eboue… none of them could play). It does seem that it is hard to sell 60,000 consistently for the reserves. Shame that the early leavers missed a wonderful goal.

But we are not the only club to find this problem of poor attendances, as Jonathan Neale has kindly pointed out to me, by sending me the web link
http://www.chelsea-mad.co.uk/news/loadnews.asp?cid=TMNW&id=418941

If you read that you will see that the tickets for CSKA Fulham against Arsenal remain unsold – and that is within their capacity of 42,500.

This is not the first time they have had these problems – they had similar difficulties in the past selling tickets for European games and in recent years the average attendance has been 41,900 – not far off full, but still, not full in a modest sized ground. (The lowest was 3000 against Lincoln City, but perhaps that’s a bit unfair – the record attendance was 82,905 against Arsenal (of course) in October 1935.

Anyway, because I love arcane and stupid information, I want to reveal just a little more. Chelsea want to have a 55,000 stadium, so that Mr Abramovich has more room to spread his bodyguards out on the empty seats, but it is going to be tough to do that within the confines of Stamford Bridge. Like Arsenal the ground has got unmovable railway lines around it, but unlike Arsenal the area is not one that can readily take extra people under current health and safety regs. So a new ground looks more likely.

But, and this is the funny bit, in Chelsea, the Official Biography (2006, pages 91/2) there is the revelation that under the Chelsea Pitch Owners articles of association the football club (I use the phrase in its broadest sense) would have to give up the name ‘Chelsea Football Club’ should it move from Stamford Bridge

So maybe CSKA Fulham will actually come to pass officially. Or Chelsea Russia? Chelsea Finance? Money Money Money?

Negativity is everywhere, but it shouldn’t be at Arsenal

Liverpool, it pains me to say, are jumping around in first or second place in the EPL/

Yes I know this is an Arsenal blog, and if you have ever read it before you will know that nothing will ever shake my belief in Arsenal, but I mention this thing about Liverpool Insolvents because of something rather curious.

There is an article in the Guardian today in which the Carragher fellow (the one who was banned for throwing a coin at fans at Highbury) asked fans of the I’s to be patient, after the Scousers booed their own team during the weekend’s home game against Fulham.

Fulham, of course, play negative football. They are more interested in negating than creating. Survival is the idea, and who cares what it does to the crowd. We all know that. It is true of many EPL clubs.
The Guardian says, “Jeers greeted both the full- and half-time whistles at Anfield, which has not witnessed a league defeat for Liverpool in 2008, while the midfielder Lucas was targeted by supporters as the Brazilian made his sixth start of the season in place of the in-form Xabi Alonso.”

That is interesting, because since most of us spend our time thinking about Arsenal we can lose track of the fact that the lack of faith we see among some visitors to the Ems is found even more volubly in the backwaters of the north west.

Such a report does show the need (if it ever needed to be shown) for Arsenal supporters to be positive about the team no matter what. Especially as at the moment we are giving our even younger youngsters games because 20% of the team have been injured, not while playing or training for Arsenal, but while playing around for pathetically stupid international requirements. (At least when I say that this time I can’t get a load of abuse from people calling me a racist for criticising Togo, when I am simultaneously criticising England).

The demand for success-success-success is a constant among the larger clubs in England, and it is never going to be possible to meet all the time. What we must not do is be seen to be the same as the people from the wild badlands where the hub cap is currency and “Calm Down” is the standard greeting.

Gallas needs support, our new captain needs support, whoever is at right back needs support, and whoever is playing alongside Van Persie needs support.

Tell you what though – can you imagine the reaction on the day that Eduardo is announced as a substitute for the first time – even if he doesn’t come on the pitch.

It is not so easy to do an Arsenal

I’ve always believed the Mr Abramovich is a complex man – loads of cash, of course, no worries how his businesses do business, obviously, but something else too. My view (and of course I have no inside information from his psychiatrist) is that he not only has to win at his game, he has to win at your game too.

Arsenal’s game, as we all know, is the youth policy to end all youth policies. A youth policy so amazing that there is now a football expression, used by clubs like Newcastle Zebras and Everton-Bolton that they will achieve success by “doing an Arsenal”.

CSKA Fulham have had this aim too – they have had success by buying everyone under the sun, and then keeping the ones that work out while throwing the rest on the scrap heap. The famously played in the -1.5 euro cup final (in which the two teams owed £1.5 billion between them). They bought the league too.

But that was not enough – they wanted to do it again by using the Arsenal system. So Frank Arnesen was nicked from the Tiny Fantasists to create the new CSKA Yoof. And it flopped.

Big time.

So in true Russian style Mr Arnesen will be sent to Siberia. Roman Abramovich sees the work of his chief scout and director of youth development as a multi-million-pound cock up. It is that because while they were stealing the likes of that thoroughly moral and nice A Cole, and other players right left and centre, not one youth signing that they stole made it to the first team.

Mr A, boss of the CSKA crowd, has already sacked the whole of his scouting staff – an amazing 15 people. Mr Arnesen then said it was because Mr Abramovich was running out of dosh (see Weekend Avisen, in you speak Dane).

Arnesen moved from the Tiny Fantasists to CSKA for £5 million, and Arnesen said he was producing the best youth programme in the world. It is interesting to compare what they have got there with the players that have come through at, oh I don’t know, who shall I choose, well, err, Arsenal?

50 CSKA scouts wander the planet looking for young boys. Many earn £100,000 or more. It is massively bigger and infinitely more expensive than the arrangement at Arsenal.

And just as the way in which Mr Arnesen was got from the Tiny Fantasists (highly dubious) and the way they got A Cole (high dubious) so the way they get the kids is highly dubious.

So what? Well, first it means Mr Abramovich can only do things he can buy. Second it means that maybe just maybe he is getting a bit fed up. Which would be amusing.

When lots of blogs say the same thing about Arsenal…

I do find it interesting when a theme emerges and lots of blogs, or indeed lots of journalists, all go down the same route, saying much the same thing.

One of the key blog themes at the moment, in seems to me, is the issue of the Lord Wenger’s “stubbornness”. In that everyone in the world can see it is all going wrong, everyone can see the solution (which often involves buying lots of players), but Wenger won’t budge from his line.

The point is that when such things are said over and over again, they take on a life of their own. Arsenal are in trouble because… well everyone says Arsenal are in trouble.

Of course the league table this morning makes poor reading, (unless you look at the bottom bit). But then so does the injury list, not helped by the fact that a poor run of injuries has been made worse by the maniac activities of the Lord Kitchener of football – the England manager. While the generals of 1917 sent a whole generation of young men to their death in the space of a few weeks, the England manager (and come to that the Togo manager, and last year the Dutch manager) work in different ways, but the parallel is there. Crass idiocy, and we have more players injured.

But back to the Stubborn Wenger episode. I recall many people saying that Wenger was impossibly stubborn when he played the new Thierry Henry in every game, having just signed him. It looked bizarre to many supporters (and I must admit I was bemused – a centre forward playing on the wing, a centre forward who couldn’t hit the clock, let alone the goal….)

I remember all the moans and groans about Gilles Grimandi – an unknown French player who meandered around mid-field and never seemed to do much, but was so vital to Arsenal that on one occasion he had to play two games in two days.

Part of the current argument is that Wenger is not only stubborn in playing Denilson instead of an enforcer in the middle (ie a Gilberto instead of a Flamini) it is that when players are not playing well he keeps playing them. Bendtner is an example at present.

The same was true of Pires who had a very ordinary first season – so ordinary indeed that we wondered why he didn’t go out and buy a much better player. Pires went off to the European championships and came back to win EPL player of the year and be one of the most staggeringly brilliant players we have seen. TV often failed to pick it up, but Pires could take the ball under close control and meander along the half way line, waiting for the definitive pass. If he didn’t find it, he’d wander back again, until the pass was there and Henry was off. He’d then trot down the middle while Henry took the defence off left, get the pass back and score.

So my point is that such skills from Henry, Pires, and indeed Bergkamp were not in evidence at first – we had to wait. We remember Dennis scoring goals with balls that seemed to be heading towards the corner flag before changing course and going in the goal – we forget the first season or two.

If Wenger is stubborn, then he has always been stubborn, and it has served him well. The difference we have at the moment is that

a) after years of automatically being in the top 2, we have slipped, and people have forgotten how to wait

b) the competition has intensified through clubs risking bankruptcy (I think particularly of Liverpool) just to win this year.

Of course I would like us to win things this year – and although the EPL now looks out of sight, I am anticipating some interesting cup games to come – but I also want my Arsenal to be playing football in the top division in five years, and challenging for honours. I suspect that some of the teams we see near the top will not be there at this time. The model that the owners of Manchester U and Liverpool have used has fallen short, and they are left with the debts from which they cannot recover. The model of Chelsea depends utterly on the well-being and long-term interest of one man.

In due course the notion of the Euro Final being played between two clubs who together owe over £1 billion will be just a note in history, an oddity along with the maximum wage, Robert Maxwell, and Tottenham winning the double. Those who engaged in such silliness will have gone, either removed totally from football, or just a dim memory. But we will still be there.

I guess in the end I believe in the future more than many other bloggers. But I suppose it takes all sorts.

New Arsenal management committee makes changes

The Arsenal Management Committee made up of blogmasters from the around the world (except me – they wouldn’t let me play and took the ball away), has made radical changes to the club.

As I exclusively revealed just before I had the last drink, Arsenal supporters now run the team and the club, in the style of Ebbsfleet. Thus in a move that has been dubbed Hamstergate, all the players have been told that they may no longer bring pets on the team bus. Morris Dancing outside London nightclubs has also been banned.

As a result of this Arsenal will today play their under 3′s side at Manchester City, being as they are without Fabregas (who is playing with his collection of football cards), Walcott (who was attacked by Lord Kitchener’s foot soldiers), King Kolo who has an injury, Gallas who is, in the words of Monty Python, obviously not the Messiah but simply a very naughty boy, and Eboue, who is, as we noted during the week, Eboue.

In a radical move everyone will be captain, each ordering him (or her, in case we draft in any members of the highly successful ladies team) self about in a peremptory manner. All except Djourou and Cliche who will remain utterly calm, cool, and by and large the sort of people you wouldn’t mind having a chat with in the pub on a quiet night.

Again as previously noted, the match will finish 15 minutes before the end to let the Management Committee get away before the rush.

These developments at Arsenal must be for the good

This blog is about supporting Arsenal, deifying the Lord Wenger, and saying what a load of silly people all the other football teams are. (Apart from Torquay United, who I also support for reasons that will not become clear at this time).

But of course a quick glance at the EPL table will suggest that things are not as fine as they could be.

What is amusing at the moment however is to read even the supposedly serious papers talk about “meltdown” and “crisis”. As we know, if a week is a long time in politics (Harold Wilson) then its a bloody eternity in football (me).

So, what I says is, if we are going to have a problem or two, let’s have them all at once, sort them out and then move on. Let’s deal with the Gallas issue, deal with the thieving of gloves from the locker room (or whatever it is all about), deal with the fact that we have lost to Fulham, Hull, Anti-Football and Stoke, deal with the fact that the EPL – not content with letting Birmingham cripple our brilliant striker, has now arranged to do it again themselves. In fact, one massive sort out, and we’ll be fit.

This will be particularly good for two reasons.

First, a lot of other teams can’t deal with their problems that easily. Manchester Bankrupt and Liverpool Insolvency are, well, bankrupt and insolvent. And no one wants to lend them money. Newcastle can’t find a buyer, and nor can Everton. The Tiny Fantasists are in the bottom two despite Harry Hots, and the entire existance of CSKA Fulham remains dependent on the whim of one man.

There is a real possibility that within a couple of years some of those teams will not be around in their present form.

Second, we have a wonderful set of new players coming in at the time of the January transfer window. Eduardo will be up and running and playing, Rosicky seems finally to have found the problem with his knee and should be back, Wilshere will start getting a game or three, and so will the wonderful Ramsey. Bischoff has come through his rehab and he is looking increasingly promising. Song is looking better each game and so is Djourou.

So there it is – all the problems that have been nagging at us, all resolved in one big bust up in the next week, and a great bunch of new arrivals coming in through Xmas and the New Year – plus of course lots of money if the Lord Wenger wants to buy.

Looks quite a bright future to me. Of course there are 2,594,984,392,090 fans who think that the newspapers are right, and that we are in a deep crisis, the world is about to end, and Arsenal in “meltdown” as the Guardian said today. (Shame on you Guardian writers, trotting out old hack words). We’ll end up 9th and won’t win any cups.

That of course is their view, and fortuantely for them they also have 2,594,984,392,089 blog sites to write up that negative story. (One guy had a connection via Usbeckistan and that got switched off yesterday because they hadn’t paid their power bill). Everyone is welcome to write on my blog too (unless it is to call me a racist or a **** ****** *** ***** ******** ************ ****).

Oh look. It’s nearly saturday. Did anyone come back unhurt from the internationals?

Meet Mr Usmanov

Alisher Usmanov owns about 24% of Arsenal, which makes him close to being the biggest shareholder – Danny Fiszman has just about the same level of shareholding. Mr Usmanov is what the newspapermen (in that funny sort of shorthand way that they have) a “metals magnate” which presumably means he’s made of iron or something like that. His fortune was once said to be $5.5bn but what with these pesky bankers screwing up its probably now 4p. Well, maybe a bit more.

The shares he owns came primarily from David Dein after he was kicked off the board for holding negotiations about the future of the club without the rest of the board knowing. In company terms this is the equivalent to high treason – as a board member you are answerable to the board and the board of directors alone. Except of course you don’t get hanged.

So at this moment Mr Usmanov is a shareholder – almost the biggest one – but he is not a director. Mr Kronke has a smaller shareholding but is a non-executive director – so Mr Kronke is within the club, attending the high table, and Mr Usmanov has no more rights than the average red member, although I think he has a box which must be nice when we win.

Arsenal’s position as a club is that there is no need for a wealthy individual backer, and they have made various efforts to ensure that they don’t sell to Mr Usmanov – something that is perfectly legal. While no shareholder could legally say, “I don’t want to sell to him because he is a Jew or a Muslim”, it is perfectly legit to say “I am not selling to him because I don’t like him” (although of course I am not saying that anyone has actually or would actually ever say such a thing).

So where does this take us?

It is often said in the papers that if Mr Usmanov got 25% of the shareholding he would have enormous power – but I really don’t think that is true. In my real life beyond hyperspace I am chairman of a plc – not a very big or important plc, but a plc, and as I read our rules nothing much happens at 25% apart from the ability to call an emergency general meeting of shareholders. But having called such a meeting what then? Just because he you 25% it doesn’t mean you can win any votes – so you can’t start demanding dividends based on the profit of the club, you can’t choose the team, you can’t change the colour of the strip, and in fact all you can do is be heard.

Now of course my company might be different from that of Arsenal – in fact I am sure it is, but I would say that in law nothing much happens at 25% ownership and I doubt that Arsenal have anything special in their rule book.

If Mr Usmanov was to get 30% of the shares he would have to launch a formal takeover approach, which would mean he would have to offer to buy everyone’s shares at a certain price. That is a legal requirement.

But then people don’t have to sell him any shares. And by the time he gets to 30% he will have eaten up all the little shares lurking around which are owned by people who either disagree with the board’s stance, or who have no interest in the club. If he did get 50% control he would obviously be able to vote through a lot of stuff, and eventually we move up to a position where he can forcibly buy all the shares at a set price, once he is near the 100% mark. But my point is 50% is a long way from where he is now, and unless one of the big owners sells to him it is difficult to see how he will get there.

Meanwhile, the other long term story about Mr Usmanov is that Schillings, his lawyers with the most unfortunate name (to me it makes them sound like accountants), have over the years been “in touch” as we like to say, with several websites and blogs (like this one, but not including this one) asking them very nicely and politely to take down articles that relate to allegations made against Mr Usmanov by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Mr Usmanov was put into prison by the USSR, which can’t have been a pleasant thing. Mr Usmanov says that he was a political prisoner and that when the very nice Mr Gorbachev became president Mr Usmanov was pardoned, they found the key, and let him out.

The last I heard of the former ambassador it was in a news report earlier this year in which he says that “he has contacted Schillings to ensure they know where to send any writ.”

Quite obviously, I have no inside information on Mr Usmanov, I have no knowledge of what happened to him under the USSR, and I have a hard enough time trying to come to terms with how the FA have allowed Theo to be crippled in training, and then just walk away from the situation so he is not even mentioned in their press briefings. So if I can’t make head nor tail of that, I certainly can’t give real insights into anything good or bad about Mr Usmanov.

But I can say that the finances of Arsenal (and finances are more my thing – for although my job within the company has always been that of a writer I do have to chair the board meetings that look at the numbers) look very solid to me. The club receives so much money per game that the match day income alone pays off the mortgage, and leaves a lot left over. In other words even taking the mortgage into account we are much better off than we were at Highbury.

The money from the apartments has never been accounted for as potential income. We’ve paid for the work to be done, so that is gone out of the club. But when the sales money comes in, is pure profit, and will probably be used to reduce the mortgage even more. Unlike every other club Arsenal makes a profit on its transfer dealings most years, and unlike clubs such as the Tiny Fantasists down the road, it owns and has paid for its training ground.

True some of the redevelopment around the Ems is not selling, but the purchases of those old sheds and buildings has been paid for. It will be good when they sell, but we are making more than enough to allow them to sit there until the recession ends (I am told that will be June 30 2010).

Of course if the club suffered a terrible slump in its playing fortunes it might suffer financially, but the club will break even by getting into the group stages of the Champions League once every four years, and selling 50,000 tickets per match. It is obviously doing far better than that and with 40,000 on its waiting list for seasons, I think such a slump is a long way away.

If Mr Usmanov did come into the club big time, it seems certain the Lord Wenger would not want much to do with the money that Mr Usmanov offers, since the Lord Wenger is happier bringing through young players whom he can mould.

Personally I don’t see too much to worry about at this stage. If we have a problem it is years and years away – unlike Manchester Bankrupt, Everton-Bolton, and Liverpool Insolvency who face an immediate crisis and could be either bust or completely destitute within 2 years. Certainly recent league games at the very old Trafford have only managed to sell out because they went on general sale and the club is being challenged in court over its pricing policies.

How to alienate your fan base

When football clubs are run by money grabbing Americans who are intent on filling the club with debt while having no sense of what a British football club means to its supporters then two things happen.

One is the club ultimately goes bust, but meanwhile while this is happening, it alienates everyone and the supporters start revolting.

Both Liverpool and Manchester U are now in this position

When the Glazier Family took over Manchester Bankrupt they were not bankrupt – exactly the opposite in fact. Now they can’t pay the interest on their debts and unless an Arab or Russian firm buys them out, they will go bust simply because in this day and age, banks don’t say, “oh sure fine, no problems, you carry on, pay us when you can”.

When the take over happened a group of fans formed FC United – and they are still there, rising up the leagues. I have the highest regard for them because they stuck by their beliefs and did something. I have the same feeling about AFC Wimbledon.

But what of those who stayed behind? They have now reported Manchester Bankrupts to the Office of Fair Trading have sent official papers to the OFT.

The complaint starts with the awful compulsory cup scheme, which forces season ticket holders to buy tickets for didlly widdly cup games. The scheme this year excludes Carling Cup games but includes everything else. The supporters also claim that price rises contravene promises made by the Americans when they bought the club.

The complaints are:

Season ticket terms and conditions are in breach of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999;

The automatic cup ticket scheme is in breach of The Competition Act 1998, Part II, Section 18(2);

Pricing policy is in breach of The Competition Act 1998, Part II, Section 18(2)(a).

Not to be outdone by this Liverpool Insolvency – a company in such a dire mess that it is looking that it might fall apart as early as next July, has now tried to register the liver bird as a trademark of the club.

The council has said no chance and lodged an appeal.

Of course trademarks and logos are important, and clubs and players do trademark what they can. Arsenal abandoned the old crest with the Latin motto because they could not protect it – which is why we got the new badge. But Liverpool has always gone further and has registered “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on its badge as its own, even though it was created by the fans.

The city council is taking legal advice over the trademark application and will lodge an objection. I am not an expert in this field – but from my perspective as one who tries to protect copyrights, trade marks and the like, I don’t think Liverpool Insolvency has a cat in hell’s chance. All they have done is alienated yet more fans.

Arsenal might have some problems on the field this season, but at least we are not trying to register Tower Bridge as a copyright (which would be the equivalent of Liverpool’s issue).

Theo should be ready for the next game

The problem is, that means the next game for England.

On a different matter, one of the interesting things about yesterday’s little piece about the Lord Wenger leaving the club was the way the commentaries on the piece could be analysed. Including not just the comments that went up on the site, but also those I received directly, it worked out at something like this…

50% thought it amusing or downright funny (one reader burst out laughing at one line – I am most grateful to you sir, you brightened my day considerably, and I must admit the “Eboue because he is Eboue” line made me smile too, and I wrote it)

20% thought I was criticising Wenger – and virtually every one of those swore like buggery at me – which is fair enough – everyone to his own opinion

10% thought the piece was stupid, pathetic, childish, and made me look stupid, which I guess is also fair enough since presumably I have every right under Magna Carta to make myself look like a prat if I want to

20% criticised others for not getting the joke in the first place – and I must say although I don’t criticise I couldn’t quite get myself around the idea that the piece could be read as an anti-Wenger piece.

What’s clear (as it has been clear I guess since the very first joke was cracked – which makes me think, what was the very first joke?) is that most things which some think are somewhat amusing, annoy others. I thought the “Wrong Door” on BBC3 earlier this year was the funniest thing since Monty Python, but most of my friends never got the joke at all. I don’t think Mitchell and Webb are funny, but they get awards and stuff. I find the Tiny Fantasists down the Lane endlessly amusing. So it goes.

One thing I would disagree on however is that I didn’t think the piece was sarcastic. More, post-modern ironic I think. Perhaps we should debate this at length.

Anyway, what I do find fascinating is that while anyone who has absolutely nothing better to do than to read my ramblings from time to time will undoubtedly know that this is a blog that is totally pro-Wenger, covers football finance and indulges in what I (but clearly not everyone) consider to be humour, some readers come here for the first time and clearly get the wrong end of the stick.

I’m not sure what to do about this – should I post a health warning on each note? Maybe something like…

“Some of the pieces on this blog are meant to be funny. Because I am not a very good writer, and because different people’s senses of humour differ (probably due to evolutionary effects dating back to the New Stone Age) you might not get the joke, but that is more likely to be my fault rather than yours, and I am happy to take the blame.”

That should do it.

If you have been, thanks for reading. If not, well, I can’t think what to say.

Tony

Wenger resigns

Following weeks of anguish and annoyance expressed by fans, the Lord Wenger has agreed to step aside as Arsenal’s manager.

Sir Peter Hill-Wood has announced that in a revolutionary move the manager will be replaced by a committee of fans who will decide who to play, who to buy, and who to sell, how much the beer costs, and the length of the white stripe down the sleeve.

“The idea has worked at Ebbsfleet in the Conference, so I don’t see why it can’t work here,” said the Chairman.

The first vote has already taken place, and it has been decided that all games will start ten minutes after they start, will stop five minutes before half time, will restart ten minutes after half time, and will finish ten minutes before the end.

“Half time is a problem because we have to get from the changing rooms to our seats, and there are 30,000 of us,” said one of the new Committee. “But we are energetic and forward looking, even though we don’t get to all the games.”

So far the committee, which is made up of fans who were very unhappy with Wenger in the summer, and whose slogan is “I told you so” have decided to…

Sell Adebayor for being disloyal in August

Sell Van Persie because he is too prone to injury

Sell Eduardo because there is little chance he will ever be any good again

Sell Almunia because he isn’t very good

Sell Gallas because he once played for Chelsea

Sell Eboue because he is Eboue

Sell Denilson because he isn’t Flamini

Sell Song because he isn’t Flamini

“This shows how radical and forward looking the whole club has become,” said Mr Hill-Wood. “We are moving forward with the times, and quite possibly, we should be able to move into a situation in which we can change managers every year, change the structure every year, change the approach every year, and apply for planning permission for a training ground every year – and in short be as truly successful as the Tiny Fantasists along the Seven Sisters Road. I look forward to this new era that the fans of the club have brought about themselves. “

Arsenal put 30,000 up for sale

In a radical move Arsenal FC has announced that it is to offer a number of its supporters for sale in the January transfer window.

“It is important to be able to rotate the fans as well as the team,” said the Head of Things, at the Emirates Stadium. “Some of these supporters have been with us for years, and it is time to move them on.”

“We are particularly looking to transfer those people who leave before the end of the match, although we are also looking to give assisted transfers to those who arrive late, or wander out before half time.

“We currently have 40,000 supporters who are season ticket holders, plus 47,500 supporters who have paid to be on the season ticket waiting list. At the moment about 500 people a year give up their season ticket, and this is clearly not enough.

“Our belief is that other clubs could benefit from taking these supporters. For example, the Tiny Fantasist team along the Seven Sisters Road has announced that it has a waiting list of 20,000 – but this number as we know is a fake, for it includes all their members who are automatically put on the waiting list. They could have some of ours.

The plan appears to be that moving the 30,000 on could kill several stones with one bird. Those getting the season tickets to replace the ones who leave early would be required to sign a pledge that they would not leave early. Those who are transfered to the Tiny Fantasists would be asked to sign a pledge to say they would leave early.

“The Fantasists under Harry Hotspur have done very well,” said the Head of Things at the stadium. “They are currently one from bottom in the EPL and stuff is looking good down the Lane. They have gained permission for their new training ground. So fans who leave 10 minutes before the end should feel at home.”

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Line pointed out that watching the Fantasists could lead to an Early Grave, and that as such might be illegal under the Assisted Transfer Scheme (Regulation) Act 1919.

Most of the people Untold Arsenal approached said that if they were forced to give up their season tickets they would sooner watch Leyton Orient. “I’d sooner watch Leyton Orient,” said one, who pushed past me in order to leave, ten minutes before the end of the game.

“I’d sooner see this game,” I replied, but by then he had moved on and disturbed the rest of the row, several of whom had been sleeping quite soundly and were annoyed to be woken before the match was over.

Anti-football develops another tactic

From the start of football there have been tough players – defenders for example who would say to a passing forward “go past me once more sunshine and I’ll break your jaw”. And he would and the ref would give a freekick. Maybe.

The first manager I ever heard talk openly about playing Anti-football as a complete tactic was Lawrie McMenemy who managed Southampton from 1973 to 1985. He was always on panels on TV giving his opinion, so he never got criticised – not even when he said, about one game against Arsenal in which his team was so dirty it even left the Liverpool focussed media of the day with their jaws dropping, “they’ve got more talented players than us, so we have to play dirty.”

So Anti-football was born. It is, in essence, the use of every tactic you can get away with to stop the other side playing football. There used to be time-wasting, kicking the ball out of the stand, all that sort of thing, but then rules were changed to stop it. And so clubs started to find ways around the problem – to break up the flow of more talented teams, while not getting penalised. Anti-football, the antithesis of Total Football.

In the 21st century Bolton and Blackburn took Anti-football forward by introducing rotational fouling, followed by rotational time wasting. The fouls and time wasting are there, but never by the same player, and so the number of cards is greatly reduced, but the opposition is broken and frustrated.

Aston Villa use one of the most sophisticated rotational fouling systems yet seen, and they have added another element to anti-football which I certainly haven’t seen before. When a Villa player goes down he holds his head, and the ref stops the game, in accordance with the rules. Then, having stopped the flow of the opposition, he gets up, either with nothing wrong, or (as we saw during yesterda’s game on one occasion which happened straight in front of me) to have treatment on an ankle.

Thus when the one really serious injury did occur – Sagna being totally crippled by a bad foul – play went on and Villa scored. If he’d held his head rather than waiving at the medical team, Villa would not have scored.

So the issue is, why can’t we beat the clubs that play Anti-Football? Part of the answer was given by Mr Wenger when he said, “If you want to be champions, first you want to be consistent. At the moment we are not.”

But there is more. In the great days of Henry we were able to overcome Anti-Football in all its guises because we had there players of such stunning ability that singlehandedly they could take on the Anti-Football game. At its simplest Henry would stroll out to the left and take two defenders with him. He could side-step all the lunges and kicks sent his way – often passing to Pires who through tactical know-how could get himself into the space left by the defenders who were Henry watching.

At this moment we don’t have the same supreme quality that can get the goal quickly at the start, and thus make Anti-football invalid.

But, there’s a bright side. Henry joined us in the summer of 1999, and that season we were 17 points behind the ultimate champions. The next season 2000/1 we were 10 points behind. In his third season we won the league.

My point being that some things take time. Of course it can be argued that either a) time is what we don’t have, or b) we’ve already had 3 years without a trophy.

But, contrary to that, what we have is a superb team that is inconsistent. If that team was made up of 28 year olds I would be worried, because at that age in football you can’t learn consistency. But at 21 and 22 you can – just as Henry learned his trade between August 1999 and August 2002 when he really started to fly. What we have also is an extraordinary team coming up behind.

Those supporters who left early and missed Theo’s one man tribute to those who stayed, perhaps do believe that success today is everything and success tomorrow is not worth waiting for. They perhaps won’t even be happy about the extraordinary talent at the club. They will maybe have seen Fabregas underperforming of late, and think, that’s the end.

But Cesc will get his ability back – after all it hasn’t gone totally, and a player will emerge who will singlehandledly be able to unlock Anti-football, and we will be back and running.

It didn’t happen yesterday, and that’s upsetting. The boos that rang around the ground was upsetting also. I can only hope that Theo really did carry the message back to the dressing room that some stayed, and some chanted “Arsenal” until he left the pitch.

Nasri to Barca, Cesc to Real M, Henry to Arsenal

If you have never read it, and you like a spot of laughter, it is always worth taking a peek at page 338 on BBC Teletext.

It is a summary, updated daily, of the madcap ramblings of a drunken bunch of nae’r do wells with nothing else to say (ie Fleet Street’s Finest). Each story lasts a few lines and they tell you absolutely that the Lord Wenger is plotting to buy some reserve geek you’ve never heard of from a second division club that probably doesn’t exist in a country somewhere east of Afghanistan.

To be fair none of them actually said any of the things in my headline – but they might have done, because just as I made that lot up, so do the papers.

My point is, apart from the jolly amusement that the BBC Gossip column gives each day (it was there, for example that I read last summer that we were selling Adebayor and buying Peter Crouch instead), it is a reminder that it is all going to happen again.

The journalists, having had a swift half of G&T are even now sharpening their noses to write up the wind up in the walk up to the start up of the transfer window being opened (if you get my drift).

And some people will get worried. “Why is it always our players that want to leave,” they will scream in anguish, forgetting that the same gibberish is being written about the players of every team. Chrissy Ronald Ronaldo wants £800 million a second to stay at Manchester Bankrupts otherwise he is off to Antarctica, Tevez wants to leave whoever he plays for, and it is the same old barmy army of Real Mad, BarBarBarcaSheep, WC Milan, Inter, and someone else I can’t be bothered to remember who are doing the buying.

So, let me strike a word in first.

It’s all a load of tripe. This is how it goes:

Agent says to player – “you are worth more than this” and makes a fuss.

Manager ignores it, but at proper time says yes or no and opens negotiations or not depending on what he thinks of the deal.

Meanwhile agent puts story to drunked up hacks saying “Peter Crouch to Arsenal” and the silly boys down the pub print it because they lost any sense of reality years ago.

Agent then says to his boy, “look sunshine everyone wants you…”

So it goes round and round. But in the end, the Lord Wenger usually gets who he wants, where he wants him and when. Not every time – Flamini was an exception, but mostly those who go, go with Wenger’s blessing – from Vieira on.

And for what it is worth, my guess is that Wenger didn’t mind Hleb going once he knew he had Nasri. And if that is the case, I am with him all the way.

Last little word before I make the long treck from the wild and windy Midlands to glorious sunny north London: goonernews has decided it doesn’t like us – or rather it did yesterday – so if you fancy reading about Arsenal’s Genetic Production Factory and other exciting stories, go back a page or two (or see the list top right, depending which sort of page you are looking at).

Right, time to start the old Austin 7.

How Arsenal are producing English superstars…

In deepest darkest Hertfordshire (Shenley to be exact) there is a biological laboratory. Surrounded by armed guards and men in track suits, it houses one of the most extraordinary genetic experiments ever seen on British soil.

For it is here, no less, that the Genetic Research Experimental Facility is based. Funded by Arsenal FC the Facility is the home to a series of experiments which have resulted in not just the production of young footballers, but the production of young English footballers who can actually play, err, football. Qute extraordinary.

“We start with a genetic soup,” explained Ivor Lottatalking-Todo as he showed me around the site. “The exact make up of the soup is variable, which is why the players that we produce here is so varied in both nationality and playing ability.

“One of the biggest problem we have had to deal with is the production of players who become classified as English. The essence of being English make up is so muddled, being a mixture of Danes, Saxon, Celts, Norwegians, French and even Belgians from earlier times, plus of course everyone else since the UK had its period of colonial expansion. So it is hard to get the mix quite right. One gene slips and you think you have an English kid and he turns out to be classified by FIFA as being from Chile or China or somewhere else. Take Ramsey – we thought we had an English boy, and it turns out to be Welsh. Beats me.

“Personally I don’t think this nationality thing matters at all – they are all people – but these fanatics at FIFA have all these odd rules about where your mother was born, and the fans of other clubs keep shouting “England England” so we have to abide by the rules.

“Our early experiments showed how wrong we were getting it. We had Francis Jeffers for example – a complete wash-out. We got the English bit sussed, but he had three left feet and a pair of ears that went in strange directions. Then we had that Pennant chap – somehow the mix went strange and it turned out he thought he was a racing driver.

“After that there was that strange Cole fellow. Started out ok, good footballer, quite English, but then his brain went awol leaving his head completely empty. Very odd. Just an experiment that went amiss, I’m afraid.

“But each failure has its value as we change the mix a little to compensate, and of course you can see the difference. As the production of the Fabregas line has shown, we now know how to make players – and the production of the Ramsey format means we can produce British players.

“And now you can imagine how excited we are about the Wilshere line. Of course there were production problems. We originally called him Wiltshire, after the county, just to emphasise his Englishness, but some of the genetic goo got spilled in the tub, and it ran over the name tag, so he came out as Wilshere instead – but who cares. He is English and can play football.”

And so it seems the production line is destined to continue. Now the genetic make-up is known, there seems to be no end in sight.

“We expect to be producing a dozen or more English superkids a year now,” said my guide. “One of the big benefits of working with English kids is that they are at such a premium that even if we get the football mix slightly muddled, as long as we produce someone who is designated “English” then we can sell him on. Again, look at Pennant. Or come to that Bentley. Crazy, insane I know, but if a boy is English someone somewhere will buy him, no matter how naff he is.”

Thus we have the future. Every month a new model player appears, all brilliant, many English. Not be eh?

Arsenal and that “Little squad” problem

Arsenal, we are repeatedly told has a little squad. That’s why they can’t win things. To win things you need a Big Squad. With a Big Squad you win things.

Its worth putting both ways round because it is said so often. You know the game – one journalist says it so another says it, and then another, and before you know it, it must be true.

But, well, maybe not.

Daniel Agger of Liverpool made the point that losing to the Tiny Fantasists (that is the team that reckons it has a season ticket waiting list of 20,000 and whose main achievement of the Levy Years is to get planning permission for a training ground), in the League Cup was not good because, “We have a big squad and the more games we can have the better it is for us. Not going any further than the fourth round this season is very annoying.”

Especially when you see the bunch of children that hammered you 6-3 at home a while back, sail through.

That is the problem with squads – you need to keep people happy. Or not as is the case with Pennant, at Liverpool. The Insolvents manager won’t play him – not in the league, not in the cup. Nowhere. He wants to sell him, but no one wants to pay much.

That’s part of the problem with being insolvent – you can’t buy until you sell, but all you have to sell is your players who are so fringe that they don’t even get a single game in the league cup.

Which brings me to my point. Arsenal keep players happy by having a tight first team squad in which everyone is going to get a game, with an extra group of young players who will be more than happy for a few games in the league cup.

Of course there is a risk that this way you run out of players for big matches. That’s true, but the Lord Wenger’s way around this is to find players who can play in two positions. Diaby with his midfield centre forward role is but the latest example. Kolo came as a full back, went to centre, and can move back. Gallas can deputize at left back if need be while Traore has fun and games on the south coast. Nasri can play across the midfield, Song can play centre half or midfield.

Some don’t like this – but… the alternative is to have a player of the highest quality who then gets very few games because he is a deputy to a top player. When his chance comes (eg in the league cup) he can’t do it, because he is rusty, and feels he is being made to step down.

When our kids get to the league cup it is the big moment for them – the great step up, so they give it everything, as we have seen. And, as we have also seen, in many cases they mature quickly for the first team. No one can deny that Ramsey can play in the first team already, just as Cesc could at that age. And if he then has to step back he is hardly going to feel it is not worth staying (unless he changes his name to Bentley)

The first team squad, slightly smaller than most, the vibrant reserve side that can play in the league cup, plus the ability to move players to other positions, is a superb system, and a great invention of Lord Wenger’s. There have been elements of it on show in other clubs, but not the whole pattern as we see here.

I know for sure that in 30 seconds time a journalist will say that Arsenal can’t win because they have a little squad – but then maybe I’ll drop him/her a note pointing at the grand squads of the Insolvents and CSKA both of whom lost in the cup, or Manchester Bankrupts who only just managed to scrape through.

How quickly these cynics deny what they said

Have you noticed the change in the way the wind blows?

And how everyone in the world of journalism is now denying they were puffing in the opposite direction?

Until a few weeks ago the Lord Wenger was the total enemy of English football, singlehandedly destroying our chances of playing in European matches and winning anything. If it hand’t been for Wenger England would have been world champions in 1970, 1974, 1978…

Well I exaggerate of course, but you know what I mean. The pathetic childish chants of “England England” heard at grounds where we play (usually when the opposition are 2-0 down). The charges of neo-racism – the sheer endless level of blame heaped on the man.

And then, suddenly, our children’s team beat Sheffield Untidy 6-0 and Wigan 3-0, in a team containing some England players, and the press is saying,

“I was never one of those who thought that Wenger was anti-English. He always used the best players avaialble, and if they were French rather than English so be it. You can hardly blame Wenger for a lack of quality in England.”

And on and on and on.

It really is rather sad the way the hacks change their views to meet the prevailing feeling. So no more, “Wenger sacked Bentley because he was English”, but rather “Wenger sold Bentley because he was not good enough at that point to be in the team, he had done poorly on loan at Norwich, and he was an absolute disruptive pain in the arse who said, ‘if you don’t play me I go’.”

So he went. And look where he ended up.

The kids team is great, and if you ever get a chance to watch the reserves (which is in effect our third team) you’ll see just how much depth there is. Take a look at the under 18s too.

There’s more where this lot came from.

Tony

Mimicking Arsenal doesn’t work

According to the Sun (that great vanguard of truth and taste) Ray Wilkins of CSKA said exciting things about Arsenal’s cup win against Wigan.

Things like “You enter a competition to win the competition. Why go into it if you’re not concerned whether you win it? Playing a young or weakened team undermines the value of the competition. And we have not and will not do that. We want to win it, big time.”

Which means he’s going to be a bit upset at losing to Burnley, who we also beat with a young side a year or two back in the FA Cup, I think.

On the other hand Chelsea won’t mind the fact that a coin was lobbed into the crowd by one of their players. In 2002 a Liverpool player called “Carragher” did the same sort of thing when the Insolvents were playing at Highbury. There was quite a demand that, since a fan who did this would be banned for life from the ground, so should the player.

But no, the “Carragher” was sent off, got a police warning, was fined £40k and told not to do it again.

Seems like it is all getting a bit softer these days – after all the EPL doesn’t fancy being sued by the might of Russia. No sending off, and no sign of a fine or anything else.

What we do see is that after 10 years of careful nurturing of talent, combined with world-wide scouting, Arsenal have produced a youth team that can defeat an EPL team, with Liverpool Insolvency and CSKA Fulham have used the time to buy anything that moves.

Their buy-buy-buy policy has resulted in a second team (not a youth team) that in each case doesn’t really look as if it wants to play much.

If ever there was a week that shows the worth of the approach of the Lord Wenger, it is this. I know we are behind in the league – obviously I look at the league table – but knowing what the youth team is up to gives me a really warm feeling.

Liverpool & Everton will be the first to crash financially.

On the day when everyone is raving (quite rightly) about our team of 3 year olds there’s nothing more to add on that front – save to reiterate that it was possible to get a ticket for £10. If we had been playing the Tiny Fantasists they would have demanded the standard A prices – just as they did last season.Which leads me to money.

We all know the economy has disintegrated, the banks are bust, and capitalism is on the brink. But the football clubs sail on into the sunset without any worries…

Except…

At a conference in Zurich, Keith Harris, the man who is trying to sell Everton and Newcastle, said he is most concerned about Liverpool. As I have mentioned before Liverpool have to find £350m to pay in January to Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia.

Both these banks are in dire trouble, and there is no sign that they want to agree to roll over the debt (something that Manchester Bankrupts are also dependent on, but from different banks).

The £350m owed by Liverpool Insolvency includes £185m borrowed by those lovable cartoon characters Tom Hicks and George Gillett, to buy the club, even though they promised the supporters of the Insolvents that they would not do this. And some of the Insolvents supporters believed them.

Ah. Bless.

Liverpool can extend the debt at higher rates of interest, for a further six months, and then, in July – just as the transfer window is bubbling into life, Liverpool Ins. must either refinance the loan or repay it.

Of course some idiot might come along and put money into the Insolvents, or that old “we can’t let a famous club die” stuff might kick in.

But what the banks know is that for everyone in Liverpool that they might alienate if they let the club sink, there are 100 people who would applaud them. After all why should companies that manage their affairs well be refused money while a club that manages its affairs so badly is given cash?

Meanwhile at Everton, Bill Kenwright, the chairman, has said that they must have new investors because they just can’t keep borrowing as they are now (and that’s before they even think about building a replacement for the current ground).
For someone to buy a club they look for an increase in the value of their investment of around 10% a year, without any extra investment. Everton can’t get anywhere near that. Which is why no one wants to buy.

Both Liverpool Ins and Everton suffer from being based in, well, errr, Liverpool. We all know it is not a very nice place to live, and in truth it is not a wealthy city. There are not the financial and business connections to run clubs in terms of massive purchases of players year after year after year, as they have done.

Of course clubs don’t have to go bust. What they have to do is have stadia that make a profit on every match, bring in their TV money, have a very positive image world-wide, and can afford seasons where things don’t go well.

Which brings me back to Arsenal. The performance by the Children’s Team this season is making news around the world – in the most positive way possible. Even the rampant nationalists who insist that we have english players in every side had to shut up. (Interesting that everyone forgets that 20 years ago Liverpool played a cup final without a single english player in the team).
For Arsenal it is exactly the positive publicity that brings in more and more supporters to the club.

And as Harris said at the Zurich conference “Arsenal’s £260m, borrowed at 5% interest to finance the building of the Emirates Stadium is the most competitive and conservative”.

For Arsenal, its not looking too bad at all.