Pest Control – Barçelona « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month

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By Carb O’Hydrate, our Irish correspondent

There are two types of football clubs.  Type A clubs buy in players whom the manager and his team think will turn out to be brilliant players for the club.  Type B clubs buy players to show they are a big club who will not be pushed around.

Type B clubs are run by pests who feel that their club’s own fans are so stupid that they won’t realise they are being duped.  They get a name player from somewhere like Arsenal, play him a bit, waste a load of money, and before the fans complain that they have just come second in a two team league, go off and do it again.

So inept are these people that they allow their young players to drift off to amateur clubs, where they can be picked off by clubs like Arsenal, while they are busy having their vice presidents check that no one is doing any photocopying in colour.

I actually first heard the Type B philosophy expressed within Arsenal in the days when the view really was that to keep the fans happy Arsenal had to make a big name signing every two years.   That was it – not a signing because it was a real bargain deal, but because the player was known.

It kept Arsenal’s name to the fore, and made everyone continue to believe in the big club philosophy.

Fortunately those days are way behind us.  Mr Wenger is firmly of the Type A approach – and with a twist.  The twist is that when he sells on he makes the buying club pay too much, and get far less than they imagined.   As such we have the Pest Club, doing the buying, but being stamped on, as all pests should be.

Barca are of course the prime example of the Pest Club flitting around like pesky flies picking up the likes of Henry and paying him nearly half a million pounds a game, picking up Hleb and not playing him at all, and on and on and on.

Anyway, it seems the vice-pestident, Josep Maria Pest-Bartomeu, has buzzed in to London to tie up midfielder Alex Song.  Pests do that – the tie up bit.  £15m is said to be ready to change hands.  Arsenal are rumoured to be asking to see the colour of the club’s money before they let Alex go.

What Alex doesn’t know perhaps is that Real Madrid were a long way ahead of Barça in the two horse league, and so far all the Pests have done this summer is bought a full back from Valencia.

Poor Alex.  But then, that’s what you get from cavorting with Pests.

Fortunately they won’t be around much longer because their debt is big and the banks are revolting, as is the local government for the region.

A year ago the Vice Pest of Finance, Javier Faus, said,  “We followed an austere line, we’re committed to growth and we’ve reduced the debt, but we’re still in a delicate situation. The debt is still too high for us to be able to dictate our future. We can’t afford to owe so much money to the bank, and we need to generate more income.”

Now this is where it gets fun.  Barca are now boasting a 40 million euro record profit last year – largely achieved because they didn’t win the league and so had no league winning bonuses to hand out!  But the debt is still 350 million euros.

Meanwhile  Spain has cut spending and raised taxes.  The regional governments like Catalonia accounted for two-thirds of Spain’s deficit slippage last year, as Spain missed its target of keeping the deficit to 6% and so it is they that have to cut.

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But Catalonia and Andalucia have refused to play, meaning that those running the Euro show see Spain as a pest; ineffective and liable to default.  Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro said, “We are talking about the application of European standards.”

The Catalan regional government has  said it is on the brink of financial collapse as it could not afford to make payments for  July to non-profit hospitals, old age homes and other social services agencies.  It is trying to use a new central government fund worth up to €18bn.  The central government set a debt limit for Catalonia for 2012 of an insane 22.81% of output and of 23.6% in 2013.

Now here’s the twist.  Spain’s central government want the European Central Bank to buy Spanish debt.  The Bank will do this if it sees Spanish banks reigning in their own wild lending to businesses with little chance of paying the money back.

And that lending includes lending to pests… like football clubs.  Pest Control indeed.

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