UNTOLD ARSENAL » 2009 » January » 26

The time wasting at the end of the game at Cardiff, with the home side holding on for a draw, rather than going for a place in the next round, sums it all up really.   If Cardiff do get into the EPL they will fit there perfectly alongside clubs like Bolton, Blackburn, Fulham, WBA, and whoever else is there slogging it out at the bottom.  11 behind the ball, doing anything to survive.  All that matters is survival and the income.

At Arsenal, apart from those who remember the Woolwich days, there is no knowledge of what relegation means.   But for every other club, from the Tiny Totts to Manchester Bankrupt, relegation is a much more recent memory.

Ask anyone who has seen their club go down and they will tell you it is a terrible experience.  But the following season where they bounce back up, that is great – and makes up for all the pain.   Talk to a Leicester supporter and they will talk of the humiliation of being in the third division – and then the joy of being top  of the league.  That’s how it goes.

But that is not how it is for the chairman.  As the manager of Cardiff so clearly admitted, their own supporters were booing their players for wasting time in the 0-0 draw – but the chairman was really excited.  He wants 45% of the cash that will come from game at the Ems.

I hate to tell him this, but I am not at all sure the place will be full, and if Arsenal really want to fill the stadium, they could do worse than make the game League Cup status, and charge £10 and £20 for seats.   Not only would that encourage a lot of Red Members to turn up, but it would also send out a message to other clubs in the Cup: don’t expect a pay day if you go for a draw.

The fact that this is now a topic of debate shows how far the game has fallen.

The balance is coming back however – Mr Absent Abramovich has just sold a lot of his shares in a gold mining company at a fraction of the cost he bought them for, and Liverpool is so insolvent the new buyer is looking to pay £100m less than he offered for the club last year.  In fact he could cut his offer even more – because Liverpool will fold in July if there is no buyer.

So the financial changes are coming, although as usual UEFA is acting far too slowly.  But with the likely collapse of the price that can be got for TV rights (following this summer’s court case on the retailing of Sky cards), and the UEFA plan to limit expenditure on players to 50% of non-chairman-sponsored  income, investors (who seem a bit slow on the uptake in the world of football) will ultimately realise that once again the game is going to change.

Back to the replay and the question of crowds – the only game I’ve seen at the Ems in which a large part of the ground was empty was the Diddly cup game against the Tiny Totts that we drew 1-1 last year.   I think that was not a season ticket game, and maybe this one is (I’m a silver member so don’t keep track of such things), so maybe there will be a pay-out for Cardiff, but if so, that’s not really how we should be doing this.

(c) Tony Attwood 2009.