This is the moment that Arsenal should spend a little cash. £150m should do it. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Over 750,000 visits in the last month
By Walter Broeckx
“Spend some f$cking money.” I think we all have heard it before, seen it before, seen it written before. But is it really that simple?
We all know (and if you don’t know this by now I welcome you, visitor from Mars) that Arsenal only will spend what they have earned themselves. For me, personally, this is a breath of fresh air in a mad football world.
And yes, the football world has gone mad. In Dutch they use the expression the world has gone for soap (as usual it gets lost in translation but I will keep it in because the football world sure could use some cleaning up.) (That made more sense).
[And anyway, on what other Arsenal blog do you get solid football debate combined with literal translations of Dutch and Flemish idioms? This is exactly what I had in mind when I called the site “Untold”! Well, actually it wasn’t, but you know… Tony]
[Sorry Tony seems a bit excitable today having watched Arshavin play for Russia last night. He’s been taken for a lie down now. Duty Officer, Untold Management Committee]
[Sorry about the interruptions. I’m on the job now. Back to the article by Walter. Senior Vet, Untold Writers Supervisory Body]
But with the sugar daddy clubs winning the EPL and the CL for some time this is the only way to go. And so we can see with the regularity of the time table of the Eurostar from Brussels to London we get people over here who shout this magical sentence that will resolve all problems and will guarantee us all the titles in the world: spend the f*cking money.
Now if, for the sake of it, we would imagine that Kroenke as the major shareholder would get out of bed this morning, take a look around at his house, feels bored and suddenly gets this idea: yeah, why shouldn’t I spend some of the cash I have spare? – then what? He comes to London with his cheque book and tells Wenger: “Okay I have got £1billion (as that is what it apparently takes to win something like the PL and the CL these days) you just spend it all before August 1.”
And suppose Wenger does what Kroenke orders him. And he goes and buys all the mercenaries you can find in the football world. I think Tevez would fit in to that nicely. Who knows even Nasri might come back. Christiano Ronaldo forgets that he just said he wants to stay at Real for ever (it was just for fun and he actually intended to say: stay for never, and anyway the bank has just gone bust so he might not get paid, just like those guys at Barca don’t get paid when they run out of cash). We get all the Goetzes of the world. We buy Terry and Lampard as they know something about earning lots of money and winning things. We buy Suarez to complete the diving section of the squad.
Now some might say: “we don’t want Arsenal to spend that much.” But that is the point. If you spend less you don’t have any guarantee at all to win something. If you are not willing to join the mega bucks spenders like Chelsea and Manchester City then it all could be for nothing. If we spent £150m it could be that we end up in 8th place. Like Liverpool did. Or in 6th place like Chelsea did this season. But thanks to the spending of some £1billion over the last seasons the old guard finally got their CL. Just. On penalties.
But “us ambitious” Arsenal fans want to win it all! Not just one trophy. No, no, no. We want to win it all. So we will have to spend even more than £1billion because for City it only was just enough to win the PL…on goal difference. They went out the CL in the group stages and then lost in the Europa league. So they didn’t buy enough to win it all.
So after reading this we should realize that we should send Kroenke back to his home and get another cheque book out. We should go even one step further. And who knows with the Spanish economy and their banks on the verge of distinction even Messi might consider coming to London. How much would it take to get Messi? £500m? If I remember right there was an outrageous buy out clause in his contract of around £750m a few years ago. I could be wrong with some £100m more or less I admit.
But that should be enough to win it all I think. If we would get them all, then we should be able to win the PL, the CL, the FA cup and the Carling cup that has got another name from now on but I will not write it down because I’m not sure of the spelling and it could end up horribly wrong and getting untold a bad parental rating.
Again you might say: we don’t want Arsenal to spend that much. But again you have to make a choice somewhere. Go to the bank and put all the eggs in one basket or do like we are doing. Because spending a little bit more than we do now will guarantee us nothing.
[Can you actually put eggs in a bank? Tony]
[Help, Tony’s got out again, can you get the vet back? – Chief Orderly]
Another point is: who are we to say to Kroenke or Usmanov that they should spend their money? Would you accept a total stranger coming over to you and telling you: you should spend your f*cking money. I’m not telling Tony how to spend his money. And I wouldn’t accept Tony to tell me how to spend my money. If he would ask me advice I could say what I think but who am I to say: you must spend it like that. It is his money and he should do as he feels is best. Not me, not you, not anyone else. And it doesn’t matter if people like Kroenke have lots of money or not. We have no right to tell them how to spend it.
Some people are screaming to take the money from Usmanov after he offered to spend £100M a few seasons ago. Now that showed ambition. So some people get fixated with Usmanov and want him to be the chairman of Arsenal. But as I just illustrated spending £150M is hardly enough these days to win the Carling cup these days. So unless Usmanov comes up with £1billion his offer is worth nothing. We could as well just continue the way we do it now.
A thing we also have to keep in mind is that Usmanov does seems to have a strange way of thinking. To the outside world he talks about giving £100M to Arsenal to spend on new players. But on the other hand he is the only shareholder that has gone public on the fact that Arsenal don’t pay dividends to their shareholders. And he wanted to change that. But paying dividends is taking money out of the club and put in the shareholders pockets. And isn’t that something that the Usmanov supporters claim the current board are doing? The current board doesn’t fill their pockets and it would be an easy thing to do for them because they can decide on this in a split second. But the current board which doesn’t include Usmanov wants the money to stay in the club.
And my final remark on Usmanov is that at the moment when he said that if he would become the boss at Arsenal he would give £100M to Wenger and tell him to spend it (or something in that style), it was very unclear how the situation would develop. Kroenke and Usmanov were both buying the loose shares but the old board members had agreed not to sell to anyone until the dust of building the Emirates had settled down.
So in a way it could be seen as a way of getting board members on his side and get them selling their shares to him. It could have been a political move. Who knows if he would keep his word. After all Gillett and Hicks promised they would not use the Leveraged Buyout technique to purchase Liverpool, but would invest their own money to start work on the new stadium within one month of their purchase. Of course I don’t suggest anything untoward of Mr Usmanov, but the fact is that with a billionaire you simply don’t know which way he will jump and for how long.
Billionaires can act like politicians who stumble over each other to promise heaven on earth. And every time lots of people believe them. And fall for it. And vote for the person who promises most. And then after the election when the biggest liar won the election we find that we have been cheated. A bit of keeping up appearances but not what they promised before the election.
So who of those Usmanov supporters can guarantee me that Usmanov will spend the f*cking money? Who can guarantee that Usmanov will spend that promised £100M FROM HIS OWN MONEY? And that keeping in mind that in this moment of time spending £150M is just enough to win the Carling cup on penalties against a first division team.
Which of the Usmanov supporters can tell me how Usmanov wanting to take money out of the club rhymes with his promise to spend £100M?
[Hello – I am Tony’s banker, and would like to point out that he does not have enough money to make it worth telling him what to do with it].
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