Arsenal News » 2009 » December » 11

So everyone is “carrying knocks” or is downright injured.

I have often wondered about “carrying a knock”.  I mean, carrying where?  In my pocket?  And what, after all, does a knock look like when it is carried?

Is it perhaps a bit like the dark matter that physicists keep talking about every time they try to suggest that the notion of gravity makes sense even when the galaxy shouldn’t be here at all because there’s not enough gravity to hold it together?

Perhaps the galaxy is held together because we are all carrying knocks?

Apparently, everyone in our team is either dead, injured or carrying knocks, so we will this weekend put out a team that is so young, most of them won’t actually be born until a couple of hours before kick off.

And because the players are as yet unborn we can’t actually name the team (as obviously the players don’t have names yet).

So let’s forget about playing Liverpool and focus on the rest of the world.

Reading a blog in which the blogger spends all his/her time saying “I told you so,” and “I was right” is a thoroughly unpleasant and tedious experience, so put on your gas mask and take three steps back, because the rest of this piece is based on the fact that I told you so – most particularly about Liverpool Insolvency, Notts County and Tottenham Hotspur with a touch of Portsmouth, Everton and others at the end.

Liverpool FC first. They is broke.  Bust.  Caput.  Done.  Gone.  Fizzled out.  In fact so far gone that even a brain the size of the Souness has grasped the fact and talked about it openly on live television.  (That is the TV was live – I don’t know about Souness.)

The fact is that the club owes the bank £350m, and the bank is demanding £65 million back a year.  Since the club is making a loss overall, because it keeps buying players, it doesn’t have any money to buy any more players.  And it is out of the Champs League, and so gets less money.

There is a real fear now that they won’t get into the top four this season, what with Manchester Arab, The Tiny Totts and Aston Hold Your Head, all champing at the bit.   If that happens the Insolvency will miss out on the Champs League next year as well.   More cash crisis, and no way of bringing in more money.

All the money they had to spend on the stadium has gone in the buy-out, so they are sunk.   Probably not to a Leeds level, but certainly to mid-table.

I won’t say I told you so, but I told you so.  Bugger it!  I didn’t mean to say that.

And Notts County. You’ll recall that the supporters trust gave (yes gave) all their shares to Munto Finance who are owned by… well, that’s a good question.  But apparently whoever they are they are fit and proper persons.  I know that because the FA said so.

Munto took the shares, and made lots of noises, and people went to North Korea too for reasons that have yet to become clear.   People were promised shares that didn’t emerge.   And there are all these pesky court cases over debts not paid, despite Munto being backed by some of the most powerful and wealthy men in Asia (who, as I said in an earlier article) claim never to have heard of the club.

Now Munto Finance has put the club up for sale.

Munto paid zero for the club, and is now putting it up for sale.   The supporters trust gave Munto the club because Munto said they would put the club in the Bent English Premier League.   But now Munto is selling what it got for free.

Was someone taken for a ride here?

And then the Tiny Totts.

That awfully nice Daniel Levy, has told Appy Arry (who remains out on police bail) he will have to sell players before adding to his squad.

Redknapp spent £45m 11 months ago – a mere snip for Arry who has previously left Southampton and Portsmouth on the edge of total ruin, but claimed it was not his fault.   Could Tottenham be out to stop him getting his hat-trick?

“We do not envisage being very active,” Levy said – and that was certainly how it looked to me when we played the Tinies in the League this season.

Levy also encouraged shareholders to write to Haringey council to increase the chances of gaining planning permission for a new stadium.

Tottenham seem to have had an unending source of money for players year on year and I have never been able to fathom quite how they make the profit they declare each year, unless they are doing what Manchester IOU do and have a dozen different companies, with one claiming a profit, and all the others sharing the loss between them.

It would be amusing if finally Arry is stopped from throwing money around by of all people, Tottenham.   My guess is that the moment the ground is built and/or Tottenham do by some miracle get into the top 4, the current owners will be selling the shares like a shot.

As I understand it the current top men like Mr Leavy have put money into the club to fund the application for planning permission.   In return they have got shares.  In which case, those shares will be worth a lot more when the planning permission is granted – and then they will sell.

I must stress I am not suggesting anything improper in this, nor that I have inside knowledge – this is just speculation on my part.

And now a look at one of Arry’s ex-teams: Portsmouth who have been sold to two different people neither of whom have any money and so the club can’t pay its transfer fees – including money owed to Arsenal.  They are on the very edge of the very edge.

Oh yes, and there is Everton who are sleepwalking towards the edge, and whose whole financial model resembles a zombie like progression towards oblivion, unless they can get a stadium for nothing, or produce a Rooney every three years.   They keep telling the elected local council that they are morons, and then asking them for planning permission.  An interesting tactic, but one that is I fear, ultimately doomed.

And let us not forget about Leeds and Birmingham with their mystery owners, still playing on despite not revealing who they are.  Maybe one day the FA will think, “oh, we have a rule on this sort of thing…” but no, that is probably too much to ask.

Back in Arsenal land my biggest concern is that with the Reserves playing instead of the first team in the Bent EPL, and the Youth Team playing in the Reserve League (in which the mighty Tottenham cannot even field a team – withdrawing from the league on the day it kicked off this season), who is going to play in the Youth Team?

Step up the Under 11s.

And please, if you know anyone that you want to buy a present for, who is interested in Arsenal, and would like to read a book utterly unlike any other book ever written on Arsenal, do consider MAKING THE ARSENAL.   If you don’t want to buy direct, you can buy from Amazon.co.uk

(c) Tony Attwood 2009.