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

Suddenly no one is complaining

Because, after all the rubbish and nonsense about Arsenal being bust, having to sell even poor old Senderos to balance the books, the Board selling despite Wenger saying no, everyone leaving… and on and on and on and on and on and

suddenly its all great.   We have Jack Wilshere.  We have so many strikers we don’t know what to do with them all.  Vela turns out to be as amazing as we all thought.   Van Persie didn’t get injured in the Euros, the guy from Cardiff looks nifty, and we still haven’t really seen much from those other kids we all tipped…

And what of Wenger?

He says, “I don’t need any more strikers,” which is bleeding obvious to anyone who doesn’t work for the Daily Mail or News of the Dickheads.

He says, “There is only one 16 year old that I have taken on our tour, and that tells you everything.”

Yes – it tells us that we have got a second Cesc Fabrigas genius who can play at 16, and score at 16 and by the time he is 18 will be worth £20 million.

I personally, speaking for me, myself, just me you understand, no one else, couldn’t give a bugger about the opinions of everyone who says Wenger has lost it, we are bust, it is all falling apart.

I think we are going to win the EPL with this team.

Who should be 4th & how funny is Bentley

I’m mentioning Bentley again because Goonernews didn’t run my wonderful and exciting piece on his transfer and just how much money exactly Arsenal are making out of him drifting along to Tottenham High Street. Go back to the last article if you missed it and want to see some earth shatteringly funny stuff. Well, maybe not, but its quite good. Ish.

Anyhow, the EPL has operated for several years as a three club estate – the three teams that win the EPL and are regularly up at the top – Arsenal, Manchester Bankrupt and CSKA Fulham.

The question is, who should be the 4th team – a team that never wins the EPL but who clambers into Europe and hangs around with the big boys?

Liverpool Weetabix (so called because their owners base their working practices on those of Weetabix whom they also own) do it regularly, but I thought, I’m getting a bit fed up with them hanging on like this. Maybe its time for someone else to have a go in fourth space.

There’s the Tiny Totts that Bentley is going to, but I don’t think we want them at the top table as they’d only make it messy, with all that slobbering.

But it might be nice to keep it in London – Fulham would be ok, I think, if Mr Al Fayed could stop attacking the Duke of Ed for a while and focus on the main issue.

Although they are from tup norf I quite like Manchester City because their supporters by and large seem reasonable sorts of people with a deep sense of humour, and they hate their bankrupt neighbours.

While I don’t want the mob that are two stops from Barking to get anything, I must admit that their foray into the Little Euro Game when they played a team from Sicily and wore WHU v the Mafia t-shirts, and then were surprised that they got beaten up, was something to behold, so on that basis, I quite like WHU in Europe.

Kevin at Newcastle would of course just love it, but the problem there is that they’d all take it seriously and think they got there on merit or something, rather than because the Curse of Arsenal did a reverse swing and gave them the place in order to have a laugh.

And that just about leaves Wigan. I think I’ll go for them to become the fourth club in the EPL. Mostly harmless, never any problem getting an away ticket, interesting pies and the focus of a book by George Orwell (which says something). They sort of remind me of Woolwich Arsenal somehow.

Tiny Totts ready to give Arsenal £5 million bonus money

As we all know, The Great Lord Wenger did not want silly-billy Bentley to leave Highbury and trot his stuff around the rest of the EPL. (Actually although we know it no football journalist knows this, or if he or she does know it, he or she keeps very quiet about it.)

But the Bentley knew better and so in order to get “first team football” as he so lovingly called it, in January 2006 he went to that Mecca of football… Blackburn Rovers.

Last year he signed a deal extending his contract until the Second Coming, but now, just one year on he wants to go elsewhere in order to “play at a higher level” so he is going to Tottenham. (Look if you are not going to stop sniggering at the back I am not going to write any more of this).

Now we need a bit of background fact and figure here. The Bentley character was signed for a grand total of £2.5 million. Quite a lot really for a guy who had only played a couple of games. Anyway, they do things different up north.

Now Mr Wenger and his mates know a thing or three about idiot football teams, and so they said “if you Mr Blackburn sell the Bentley at a profit we’ll take 45% thank you very much indeed.”

So Tottenham (a “football club” thought to inhabit the other end of the long and winding road that used to house the honorable Wood Green Town until they went bust) have no money and no sense, but they are good at borrowing the former if not the latter, and so they have agreed to pay Blackburn £12million for Bentley, as a starter.

That’s right. As a starter. It goes up to £16 million with add-ons depending on his “success”. (Success at Tottenham is of course relative. They still dance in the streets each night after having their first ever victory over Arsenal in 200 years last season.)

So that’s round about £5 million now with getting on for another £2 million to come if the guy learns to tie his own boot laces.

You have to hand it to this Tottenham club. They know how to spread the money around.

Cesc to write column for Daily Mail

In an amazing about turn Cesc Fabregas has agreed to write a regular column for the Daily Mail.  In it he will reflect upon life as a professional footballer.  It is thought he will discuss his longing to return to Spain, and the way in which professional players talk to each other and encourage each other to go to different countries, particularly Andorra.

For his opening piece Cesc will congratulate the Mail on the breadth and depth of its football coverage.  I caught up with him at the Angel tube station and he told me he had always been a Daily Mail reader since the age of six months.

“I’ve been a great believer in fanatical right wing politics and invented transfer news all my life,” he said, “and so it is natural that I should join the writing team at the Mail.   Their aim of destabilising the club I adore by making up inane transfer rumours and childish drivel about the way Arsenal have no money is something to be admired.

“I particularly like the way they cover the Kenyon story today in which the Chelsea man says that it is up to lower clubs to sort their financial houses out, conveniently forgetting that they played a part in the notorious £1.5 billion debt final which brought the whole of European football into disrepute.”

The column will be translated into Finnish and negotiations are afoot for several other languages to be covered.

If this makes no sense at all to you, take a look at the previous story – sorry that one wasn’t listed in GoonerNews.  Not my fault.  Honest. 

So is there an anti-Arsenal conspiracy?

Events in human history can  be described in three ways.

1,  As a series of cock-ups.  We go out to fight the Germans in world war I, put a total cretin in charge and manage to slaughter half of our young men with a campaign that should never have happened in a war that could have been avoided.  We win because the other side are bigger idiots than the Brits.

2, As a series of conspiracies.  MI5 shot Kennedy because they were worried he was getting a bit liberal, and that might encourage the Labour Party to go further to the left, with American support, and thus win a big victory…   You know a conspiracy when you hear about it because conspiracies are everywhere – but that of itself doesn’t mean they are not true.

3, As an inevitable progression towards a pre-ordained outcome.  Curiously both Marxism and Christianity are at one on this although the outcomes (workers paradise or the second  coming of Christ) are somewhat different.

I have always believed in the cock-up theory of history – in that even if there are conspiracies they always implode – simply because society is so complex that no one can ever really cover every eventuality.

But even a hard-bitten ol’ timer like me is starting to wonder.  The level of destabilising material on Arsenal in the papers at the moment is beyond anything I have seen before – having been following the Arsenal since 1958.

I thought I had seen it all, but then suddenly we are back to Cesc is leaving stuff, and the odd attempt to reactivate the Adebayor stories.  Kolo’s ailment was so bad he’d be out for months, and we had no one to replace him, and Eduardo has had a setback, and Arsenal are so broke that board has over-ruled Wenger and sold Senderos while Mr W is out of the country…

But if there is an anti-Arsenal conspiracy then the question is why?

Either to knock the club about financially so someone can buy some shares, or to knock the club about in terms of morale so that the players feel they are unlikely to win, or the manager feels he is wrong and must rush out to buy someone quick.  Peter Crouch anyone?

Working backwards, I just cannot believe that Wenger is influenced by any of this.  In fact I don’t think he reads the papers or watches TV, apart from actual football matches.   How can he – he has 50 scouts dotted around the world and they are sending in reports which he has to evaluate; that must take up all his time.

But what is clear is that a huge number of fans are influenced by such talk, and that a lot of people really do believe this year, as they did last year, that Arsenal are going to crash because Wenger won’t buy big.  You just have to read some of the news groups to see this – and indeed I’ve now retreated to the RedAction group as it is one of the few that seems to have a bunch of people on board who are never swayed from their devotion by nonsense.

But as for the financial suggestion – yes, I can go with this.  That is not to say it seems likely but it does seem a way of doing business.  You want to buy shares so you call up your mate in the press and run a story by him that says Arsenal are in real trouble financially and have to sell someone.   That undermines everyone and a few more shares change hands.

So, the conspiracy might well exist, and it exists because people who want shares are trying to force the price down.  As a side effect this also causes a lot of supporters to turn against Wenger – but that is just a side effect.

Somehow we have to fight back – just as the Curse of Arsenal fights back against such people as Birmingham City FC and M Flamini.  But how.

Telling the truth is never an easy way to overcome someone who is tipping out a load of old cobblers, so maybe we have to make up positive stories about Arsenal that are just as wild as the Mail and News of the World’s negative stories.

No one will believe them, but still, it could be fun.   Thus I offer, ladies and gentlemen The  Arsenal Conspiracy – reversing the rubbish in the Mail.

Incidentally if you do like conspiracies you might enjoy www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk   It tells the story of Arsenal 1910 to 1931.  It has only just started and it is all a bit slow at the moment I know, but still, there is one hell of a conspiracy that happens in 1913 when Arsenal move to Highbury – and an even bigger one in 1919 when they get promotion.

Thanks for all the emails.  The idea of this blog is that it expresses ideas that are not elsewhere – and results in the odd smile too.   Good to know that for some people it really works.  (Incidentally if you have a nice conspiracy idea I’d like to hear it – it doesn’t have to be a reply to an article – you can write a whole piece and send it to tony@hamilton-house.com if you like.)

Ain’t it just bloody typical?

I write what I think is rather a cool and interesting analysis of why there are these negative stories around about Arsenal, linking the whole thing to a subterranean movement with a fair degree of skulduggery not to mention drunkenness and lo and behold, the moment it is up on GoonerNews, our server decides to take a nap.

My apologies.  I have just delivered a coup de gras (lawnmower) to the sensitive regions of the company that hosts our servers, and we are back up on line.

Sorry about that.

The original story should be below, or if not toddle along to www.blog.emiratesstadium.info and you will see a list of past postings on the right.

Do you like being treated like an idiot?

Every day the newspapers of England (and for all I know, the rest of the world too) create stories.   Like…

• Peter Crouch will join Arsenal  (I always quote that one because it is so funny)
• Cesc is about to leave – ok maybe not today, but next year certainly.
• Hleb calls Cesc selfish
• Toure will be out for 3 months and Arsenal will fall apart
• Arsenal in major cash crisis and must sell now to pay off debts despite the fact that the certified accounts say exactly the opposite
• Arsenal have to sell two big players a year just to balance the books.

So my question today is why do we still read this gibberish?   Or perhaps I should rephrase this and say, why do I still read this?

Quite honestly I have no idea – I suppose it is because every now and then something is true.   Like

• We are going to sign Nasri – yes we did
• Hleb is going – yes he went
• Gilberto is going – yes he did, and I just wish I could have shaken him by the hand and told him how much I had appreciated everything from him, from his playing ability to his style as a gentleman.
• Ramsey is coming – yes he did

But really, is it worth all the rubbish for a few confirmations?  To answer that I would have to bring in my psychotherapist and she charges me such a fortune per hour I can’t afford it on such a trivial question.

And yet I raise it because underneath all this idiocy that I and (I suspect) most people can see is tripe, there are some true supporters who start believing it.

As a result they now believe that it is not the likes of me who needs medical attention, but Wenger himself – that he has had a mid-life crisis, that he is too stubborn to admit he is wrong, that he clearly can’t see where the problems are in the side, and that he really needs to be moved on before the club sink into mid-table obscurity.

Now I know that all people have their sell-by date, and that there is nothing sadder than seeing great men of the past still trying to do it when their time has long since gone (Brian Clough comes to mind).   But does Wenger really fit this image?

IF a couple of those dreadful draws after the Birmingham City attack on Eduardo had turned into victories, our confidence would have been higher and we could have been there.  And then Wenger would have been a god.  Again.

Of course it is up to each supporter to have a point of view, and mine, very clearly is that he can and will deliver us another championship.

Meanwhile I think the press will get worse.  Until last weekend I generally thought that drunken reporters sitting in public houses in Wapping sat together and said, “got an Arsenal story?” and someone said, “Crouch to Arsenal” and so they all wrote it down.   Now I start to worry for the first time ever that maybe there is something more sinister going on.

Not in relation to the pieces of tittle tattle about who’s being signed or not, but about the finances.

After all if you wanted to undermine a big company, the first thing you would probably do is start circulating rumours about its financial stability and the sanity of its top man.
Now who would want to do that?  Who would benefit from players being nervous about signing for Wenger?  Who would benefit from shareholders thinking, actually I think I will sell out now?

The answer to the former is: other big clubs across Europe.

The answer to the latter is: someone who wanted to buy lots of shares.

Of course I have no evidence and I make no accusation.  This is speculation done while I should be writing some more of my next book.   But still, it’s a thought, and I think maybe its worth a little more contemplation than the tittle-tattle in the tabloids this morning.

A special thanks for kind words expressed

When I started this blog and opened it up to comments I thought that the best thing to do would be not to reply to comments – unless someone was expressly asking for extra information.

My thinking was that otherwise I’d end up justifying myself over and over again – and the reason I didn’t want to do that was that if I was so inept as a writer that I couldn’t actually  make my point clearly in the blog, then that was me 0-1 down, as it were.

I’ve kept to that, but of late I’ve had some really kind comments from readers – some claiming to be regular readers (I never imagined that would happen and I find that hard to believe).  I’ve had some nasty ones too, of course – including the ones calling me a racist because I don’t like internationals – but that goes with the territory.

So, can I say how very much I have appreciated getting notes, either personally or to the site.  It does encourage me to keep going.

Meanwhile – there is always a meanwhile – there is a second site on the go.  It is UTTERLY different but you might like it.

It is a gradual write up of the diary of a journalist who covered Woolwich Arsenal and its transformation into The Arsenal – in essence it is the tale of the 21 years from bankruptcy and disaster to becoming the most famous club in the world.

The story, told in the journalist’s own words, is appearing on www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk  

All the best (on what is a very wet Sunday afternoon in Northamptonshire)

Tony Attwood

Mail on Sunday reveals Arsenal fraud shock

There is a story in the Mail on Sunday 27 July which says that Senderos is wanted by Newcastle United, and that they have bid £4 million.

More, it says that Mr Wenger doesn’t want to sell him, but that the Board are interested in letting him go, especially if they can edge this up to £6 million.

This desire by the Board to sell a player over Wenger’s head shows, according to the Mail on Sunday, that Arsenal are in financial difficulties.

Now this would be most interesting because the last financial report from Arsenal Holdings plc shows that Arsenal are actually highly solvent and making a profit.   The debt is secured by the ground, and the mortgage payments are fixed and well within their grasp.

Further, a series of statements from Board members clearly state that Mr Wenger can buy anyone he wants to, that the Board does not interfere with his transactions, and that there is as much money available as he wants in terms of the context of footballing purchases.

What this means is that if the Mail on Sunday story is true, Arsenal Holdings plc and the members of the Board have either been lying to or have been hiding pertinent facts to the shareholders.   This is a criminal offence, because false information of this type affects share prices, and generally involves insider trading.

So there we have it.  Either the Mail on Sunday is right, and the Board is committing one of the biggest fraud operations ever seen in a contemporary plc, or…

Well the other possibility is that the Mail on Sunday made it all up.

Which one?

Has Wenger lost the plot, or is it just some fans?

Let’s try the arguments and see where they go.

Against Wenger:

We ain’t won nothing since the FA Cup.

Quite true, although since then we’ve got to our first ever Euro Final, built a completely new team and were looking for a while last year like we could win it.  Only a bad run of injuries totally screwed us, and we did after all only finish 4 points behind the leaders.

Against Wenger

Arsenal has become a selling club.

We’ve got rid of Hleb, Gilberto, Flamini and ?Ade.   We’ve brought in Nasri.   But this analysis totally misses the point – the side that Wenger mostly built last year has settled in and people like Clichy, Fabregas, Sagna etc are all that much further on.   True we don’t know how Vela, Diaby, Eduardo, van Persie, Theo, Bendtner and others will perform this year but on the basis of Wenger’s past performances some of them will come through as stunning stars.  Wenger is buying one more player – and who knows who that is going to be.

Against Wenger

You don’t win nothing with kids.

Just because some Liverpool pundit once said this, doesn’t make it true.  No one believed you could have an unbeaten season, so why not a winning club made up of incredibly fast younger players?

Against Wenger

He needs to buy more.

The point is that each year one or two players come through unexpectedly – Flamini was the obvious example last year.  We don’t know who it will be –  but it would be a unique year if we didn’t have one unexpected success in the year – and normally we get two.

So what is there against Wenger?   That he failed to win the league with a young side last year against a bankrupt team from Manchester who just spend anything necessary to keep going.   That he failed to win against Chelsea that have more money than anyone.

Well yes that is true – but the fact is that despite their spending powers Arsenal came very close – so close in fact that it could well be reversed next season just on luck alone, and we win a few games we drew and so walk off with the title.

Personally I have already seen several amazing sights in the two games this season – Wilshere, Coquelin, Barazite and Ramsey all look good – and we’re only two games in.

Obviously only the end of the season will tell, but I can’t see why these people are getting so fed up.  Must be a tough life they are living.

Wenger plays a master stroke

Manchester Bankrupt go to South Africa. Now they are looking at India to spread their evil message. Where the Bankrupts go, so go CSKA. Spread the word, sell the t-shirt, get an audience.

The whole approach was probably started by Real Mad, at least that’s the first big attempt to grab an audience by artificial means – Real Mad making a big play in the north African territories.

So as the big boys (sometimes followed by little Liverpool Weetabix) trot the globe Arsenal go to… Barnet and a second division team in Hungary. Why?

First big reason is because Wenger says so, and that says something remarkable. We all think that Sir Alex F-word is top dog, but only up to a point. He has to do the world tour, no matter how much it exhausts his troops because of the desperate need for money (not least to pay the Moscow bus company – see earlier report).

Second reason, Arsenal need to bring the kids through. That Jack Cornwall (Wiltshire? Somerset, something like that) isn’t going to get 75% of a game if we go and play the top team in China or somewhere – they will demand to see the big names and big players. And what about Francis Coquelin. Aged 17 from SASP Stade Lavallois Mayeene MFC of whom you have never heard (and nor had I) he looked amazingly sharp in the game this week. How would he fit in and get experience if we were playing for money?

Third, the strategy of money grabbing in foreign parts is not a guaranteed success. Shirt sales in many third world countries (not to mention Italy) is a counterfeit business, and TV sales are often related to the whole league not an individual club. Worse there is no guarantee that the whole thing will bloom. Football in China looked set for the big time, but then it collapsed among allegations of match fixing, and interest is not shooing up to the skies as was predicted.

So doing it the Arsenal way is not quite as goofy as it seems. The players are better prepared for the season, the youngsters like Coquelin come out of nowhere and show us just how good they are, and the strategy might not be all it is cracked up to be.

Plus there’s the politics. Who can forget the pictures of Rooney in Saudi Arabia waving a big sword, blissfully unaware that this is the country where they cut your hands off for adultery.

As ever, Wenger is playing a master stroke. Long may it continue.

Absolutely nothing about Arsenal is true (including this headline)

So, what we know is that Kolo has got the plague – (big full page spread in The Standard yesterday saying that this was going to be an utter disaster and instantly means that Arsenal will be relegated to the Conference by Christmas).

But he hasn’t, he’s got little plague, probably because he was taking his anti-malaria pills like a good boy.

Eduardo has had a set back and won’t play until 2034, except actually he’s due back at the time of the Ashburton Grove Cup and will then be checked over, and could be playing in a few weeks after that.

Then there’s the fact that Arsenal’s new amazing incredibly player is actually a county in southern England – thanks to Young Guns for pointing that out.   I’m actually honoured to find that they read anything we write here, because the Young Guns site is bloody brilliant, and tells us everything we need to know about Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and of course Wiltshire (except it isn’t its, oh, Wulshore, or Wellsly (no that was the Duke of Wellington).

And the Guardian is reporting that Big Names from Birmingham City FC are going to be questioned yet again by the men in blue about mucking about with money (although no charges have been put and no one is saying that they done nuffink wrong ok gov?)   If you are an avid reader of Untold Arsenal you will know we have a special interest in Birmingham City FC since the attack on Eduardo – although mostly because of the way the club did things after the attack – claiming that it was all perfectly ok for their man to be playing again after 3 matches out – the same that Hleb got for a little smack around the face.

So we supported putting the Curse of Arsenal on Birmingham since when they have been relegated, had police raids that removed paperwork, arrested senior people, questioned them again, and then had one top man arrested after a complaint by a young lady from Essex.   Funny the effect we have on people.

And its Wilshere.  (I knew that really).

Honest.

Oh and go and buy the latest Highbury High – its got an amazingly good article called Being Arsene Wenger.   My God that guy can write.

Wilshire again???

Every summer I anticipate that one of our “signings” will in fact be a youngster who has come through from the age of 2 months and suddenly is ready.   Not necessarily ready for the first team, but certainly ready for the Doddly Woddly Cup matches that the Tiny Totts hold so dear.

Maybe it is Jack Wilshire.   He’s not only gone on the tour bus, but he’s actually played.  He’s not only playing he’s looking rather clever.

To have found a player who at sixteen can do another Fabregas and move up at so young an age would be remarkable – especially given that he was actually signed aged nine.

Certainly it was better watching Jack rather than watching Hoyte and Hoyte, which seemed a very strange affair.   I remember seeing Hoyte the Younger in a reserve game a  couple of seasons back, and thinking then, “blimey this Wenger bloke can see stuff I can’t”.   Trouble is I still can’t – but as always I am of course wrong.

What would life be otherwise?  Just an endless stream of I told you so’s about Wilshire.

Overall though, it is looking much better for Bendtner and Walcott, who, with the stupid mucking about by Adebayor, could be getting a lot of games.

Who is Jack Wilshire?

There is a film doing the rounds of Jack Wilshere scoring a goal from just a few yards in front of the halfway line.  The ball travels off target, and stays off target, and then at the last second bends inwards, hits the inside of the post and goes in.

You can think maybe of Liam Brady – that more or less does it.  Bergkamp scored goals like that – but he size and shape of Wilshire – and of course his position in midfield is more Brady.

There’s another bit of that film too.  A shot of Wenger in the dugout smiling and smiling and trying so hard to stop himself smiling.

Wilshire has been at Arsenal for seven years  – he’s now 16 and last season broke into the reserves.   He likes to play in the middle – but the fact that he played for the reserves on the left is neither here nor there.

As everyone who has watched him knows, this guy is stunning.  Quite, utterly, amazing.

But whether he can break through into the first team…  I wonder.  I suspect he needs a season being in the reserves, just to get the experience of that – although an appearance in the Diddly Widdly Cup might be on the cards.

And thanks for all the suggestions about Milan.  I did like WC Milan, so maybe that’s what I’ll go with for now.  Much appreciated.

But then it just gets messier for Ade

There is a story doing the rounds that the whole world of football transfers is going to unlock, and vast amounts of money is going to change hands any second now.

The big event that will start all this happening is the transfer from AC Milan of Kaka to CSKA Fulham or somewhere else for 83 billion trillion zillion mega dollars.

So Milan get their dosh, and start spending it despite saying they did not want to buy anyone else, and all that money floods round and round in circles and on its way, while disappearing up a backwater, Adebayor gets bought by BarbarBarcaSheep or Milan.

(Incidentally what is a silly name for Milan?   I mean we have Manchester Bankrupt, Liverpool Weetabix (because the owners base their business methods on Weetabix who they also own), CSKA Fulham (obvious) the Tiny Totts (ditto), not to mention Real Mad (accurate).  But Milan?  All ideas welcome).

Anyway, back to the plot.  That’s how it all happens.

Except Milan have just said that they won’t sell Kakakaka because, well, they just won’t and nobody can make them, so there.

Of course only a blind man reading the Daily Star while eating a gerbil would believe them, but stranger things have happened in football.

(No they haven’t – Ed)

Wenger raises an interesting point

… which is that he hasn’t actually discussed any of the Adebayor summer issue with Adebayor.

At lot has been made this summer of the fact that “Sir” Alex F-word would not return from his summer holiday to have a natter with Ronaldodo but little comment on the fact that Wenger likewise let the player and his pimp (agent) stew for a while.

That has had a double interesting effect.  First, it has let the story run and run – which might or might not be a good thing.  But second it has given Milan time to run its “Ade or no one” story, and then sign a Brazil player and say “we don’t want anyone else”.

This “don’t even talk to the player” approach might well be something of a masterstroke – since it leaves the player and pimp out in the cold – if there are no negotiations going on between the pimp and Arsenal then there is nothing that can be agreed, unless the player comes out and  asks for a transfer – which he has not done.

It all makes for an interesting next few days.

Meanwhile, for those of us who managed to see the Barnet game, there was the chance to marvel over the incredible Jack Wilshire.  I suppose he is too young to get much going this season, but oh what an amazing talent.

In defence of Adebayor

I’m not bursting with desire to defend Ade, but I do think that some of the stuff being posted about him at the moment is a bit over the top.   Here’s a little bit of the other side of the coin.

To start,  90% of what passes for the transfer market is now pure manipulation by clubs.  Clubs like Barca, Milan, Manchester Bankrupts, Liverpool, Real Mad go to great effort to put out stories that have no purpose other than to either

a) cover the tracks of a transfer they want to put through, but don’t yet want made public

b) mess up the market for their rivals

If you want an example of both a) and b) happening at once, take a look at Milan’s activities this summer.

Simultaneously we have the agents.   They have a vested interest in a player moving from one club to another because

a) they get a percentage of the transfer fee

b) if the wages go up they get a higher income as they take a percentage of the wages.

Indeed, if we really want analogies, instead of calling players “slaves” we ought to start calling agents “pimps” because the similarities are very real indeed.

Now when you put the clubs with their manipulation, and the agents (pimps) with their endless desire for money, together, you get endless stories and rumours.

That wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have the press running the stories.  In the UK we have papers fighting with each other over headlines, which (as we have seen this summer) reach the point of insanity with the News of the World’s pieces.  (Arsenal to buy Crouch – ha ha very droll).  In Spain there are papers associated with individual teams – so the paper puts out the gossip as news, and neatly by-passes the tapping up rules.

That’s the triumvirate of evil –  the agents, the newspapers and the clubs.

My point is that it is easy to describe the transfer market situation in full without any reference at all to the players.  They are in fact the playthings of the triumvirate.

Now that is not to say that I am going over to the crazy world of Fifa and calling players “slaves” – clearly that is bizarre for people who earn 50 times my salary.  But I do think there is a point to be made that the whole unsavoury business of the triumvirate operates without any involvement of the players.

Milan wants to muddy the waters over their transfer of a player from Barca – keeping it all quiet until it happens.  They also want to make life difficult for Arsenal who had the nerve to beat them on their own ground.  So they run the Adebayor story.

Ade’s agent wants more money as all pimps do, so he edges the story along, and gets his client to say all sorts of rubbish on TV.

The wretched press run around with saliva dripping from their jaws, printing every word without checking a single statement.

Of course we could say that Ade could stand up for himself and say, “no chance, I’m staying.”  But I’ve no idea how bright he is, how much pressure he’s under, or even how much in touch he is with the present day reality.  Maybe he doesn’t read the papers or watch TV.

But let’s move on.  What if the whole messy process leads nowhere?

• Milan and Barca don’t care – they’ve done their deal.
• The agent doesn’t care – no one is going to boo him – most people don’t know who he is.   Ade is tied to Arsenal by a contract, so if no one wants to buy Ade, he stays at Arsenal and gets his salary.
• The papers don’t care – they have sold last week’s rags, and are onto new rubbish today.

Thus I suspect much of this mess was not of Ade’s making.  Yes he could have behaved like Cesc and said, “I stay,” but that’s about the start and stop of it.  If he is under his agent’s thumb then that’s why he reads the autocue and says what he is told to say.

Still, if no one puts in a single proper bid for him, he’s going to feel a bit of a prat.

It’s good to laugh at those less fortunate than ourselves

Now I want you to sit down and relax.  Take some deep breaths.  If you don’t I can’t possibly be responsible for the result.

This is a quotation from that awfully nice Mr Ramos of the Tiny Totts reported in the Guardian.

“Tottenham have a clear philosophy and have had for years.  We are on the stock exchange and have to balance the books. The idea is to buy young players with potential and talent.”

Now I want you to put that in perspective.   When Levy “captures” (as the Guardian so amusingly put it) David Bentley for about £15m (yes this is not a wind up, £15 million) Levy will have spent over £100m in the last three transfer windows.

True, he sold Carrick to Manchester Bankrupt for £17 million, but even so.

A year ago you will remember how we laughed until we cried when Levy spent £34.5m on Darren Bent (£16.5m) and three others now forgotten.   Ramos then turned up and promptly spent £22.5m on defenders so that the Tiny Totts could finish in the bottom half of the table – which they duly did.

So far this transfer muck-around they have spent £30m, including £16.6m on Modric and another cartload full on Giovani dos Santos.  Both of these players could end up costing them more and more because of the agreements with the selling clubs.   If they play, Tottingham pay.

So while Arsenal keep getting millions as the players they have previously sold are sold on  for a profit (one thinks of Mr Bentley, whose transfer to the Totts will bring further income to Arsenal through the Blackburn agreement) Tottenham spend it.

When you look at the make-believe world at the end of White Hart Lane (that’s the opposite end from where Wood Green Town used to play) you realise that Arsenal are actually having a very smooth ride in the transfer market.   Largely because when we talk about bringing in youngsters with potential we sign Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott.   And Nic Bendtner.  And Gael Clichy.   And Kolo Toure.    And Carlos Vela.

And half a dozen others who will play tomorrow.

Barca’s next step concerning Adebayor

We know that Milan have finished mucking about.  All that stuff about “the only person we want to sign is Adebayor” followed by “we don’t want to sign anyone else” shows that it was all a hoax to help edge along their discussions with Barca, keep the fans happy and disrupt their rivals.

So that leaves just Barca in the playground for what the president of FIFA would call the purchase of the “slaves”.

The question is, were Barca also playing a game with Ade in order to get their squad sorted out – putting out feelers for a player they never wanted in order to sign the ones they did want behind the smoke screen.  Or did they actually want to sign him?

So far, by my counting, Barca have signed five players this summer.  In addition they have been linked with Robinho, Arshavin and Adebayor.

It is hard to imagine them taking on more than one of those, which suggests they have highlighted all three in order

a) to keep the majority of members of the club who voted against the president happy

b) to disrupt the work of other clubs (which of course Milan and Barca have done wonderfully well in terms of Arsenal)

c) to ensure that they can negotiate the price down.

This last is a major point – they will say to a club whose player has now said he fancies leaving, “we’re not buying him at THAT price” – which effectively means the club are left with a player who has effectively alienated himself from the fans (as Ade has at Arsenal).

So the price comes down.  Then Barca say to the next club – well, look, the price for Robinho, (or Ade or Arshavin) has come right down, so what are you going to do?

This is the modern “slave” market.  It is by and large not the buying and selling club that create the market, it is the other clubs who are trying to do different deals (or in the case of Milan and Barca who are trying to disrupt the rest) that create the market.

The fact is both Milan and Barca have fallen so far in playing standards (Milan are not even in the Euro Cup this season) that they clearly feel they have to undermine the opposition to stand a chance of doing anything.   Milan of course have the extra problem of the third round of corruption enquiries that are just about getting underway. (See our earlier posts on this).

Why Milan hoax has been ignored by warped press

The Milan Hoax – in which they openly stated that Ade was the only player they wanted, then claimed they had a letter from Arsenal virtually begging them to make an offer – before finally saying “we’ve got a guy from Brazil we don’t need anyone else” – is ignored in the press today.

These newspapers ran all the other parts of the story – and in doing so have made life difficult for everyone involved.

But why stop now – why not reveal exactly what Milan were up to: the fact that they never wanted to sign Ade in the first place and were just interested in making life difficult for Arsenal, and putting up a smoke screen around their deal with BarBarBarcaSheep.

There are two reasons.

The first is that as we might expect Ade’s agent did not send out a press release on this one – and up to this point the press have just been running his press releases as if they were news.  No press release no news.  Simple.

The second is that the press are not interested in the current situation in Italy in which a third scandal in the space of 3 years is about to break (helping Argentinians get false passports so they can play in Italy.)

Quite why they are not interested is a mystery, but it fits in with the UK’s inward looking vision.  The original match fixing scandal which saw Patrick Vieira have his two championship medals withdrawn after it was found that Juve had been fixing matches for years, gained little coverage until the findings by the court – and then only for a day or so.

The situation in Italy is even more out of control than here.  There are more match fixing hearings going on at the moment, plus the new Argentine issue, and no one knows which clubs are clean and which are involved in the fix.  Certainly any club could go down a league or two at any time.

While the bubble in the EPL that is going to burst is the financial bubble, that will take down Liverpool, Manchester Bankrupt and the Tiny Totts, in Italy it is match fixing, and the next time round it could be huge.

All of which leaves Ade in no-man’s-land, which is just about where he belongs at this moment.

Milan admit: Chasing Ade was just a hoax

Reuters have reported formally what insiders have been saying for weeks – Milan’s fun and games with Adebayor were just that: fun and games.

The statement that said, “It’s Adebayor or no one for us,” the really dumb story about Arsenal having said that they are still interested in selling and will drop the price…  It was, as I think virtually everyone knew – a pack of lies set out to cover up the desire to get some Brazilian guy.

Quite where that leaves Ade now is unclear.  There is still Barca who are richer after the deal, and it is quite possible that part of the Milan strategy over their new signing involved easing the passage of Ade to Barbarbarcasheep.

What is clear is that this is the way clubs in Europe now operate – no game is too dirty, no trick too nasty.   Simple players are led along by rich clubs and rich agents, not realising the way they are falling into a trap.

One can  only hope that next time around Arsenal supporters realise from the very start that this is how these clubs behave.

25% of the way through: what have we learned about Arsenal?

We are 25% of the way through the transfer window, and we have learned things…

1.  Agents run the game, with the willing support of their Slaves (as we must call them) and a few clubs that have their own agenda (such as BarBarBlackcelona)

2.  Arsenal are the only team in the top 4 of last year’s EPL that have money – all the rest are living on borrowed time (see the story recently published here on Manchester B not being able to pay for the busses they hired in Moscow.

3.  Newspapers make up transfer stories because they have no idea what’s going on.  Of course it is possible that Wenger is about to change his habit of a lifetime and sign someone we know all about, but I doubt it.  OK if you knew who Eduardo was, who Vieira was, who Reme Garde was, when he signed them, fine.  But I didn’t – and nor did most, and that is Wenger’s style.  He brings through players you never thought of.

4.  The Curse of Arsenal is really doing it for Birmingham City (see other recent stories on this site).

5.  Some fans are getting very depressed and they reckon that we are going to have four injured forwards and bugger all anywhere else.  That was exactly how they felt last year, when they bought into the story that Arsenal would finish mid-table.

6.  Carlos Vela is an amazing player.  Just look at the stats about him on Young Guns.  Incredible.    (Incidentally Young Guns is a very good site indeed).

7.  Players are still being picked for the Olympics, so someone might still go there and get done over.

8.  There is no point 8.

9.  If Wenger lets Ade go to Milan or Barca then he will do so because he knows something we don’t know.  Such as Ade has a dodgy knee, and there is an incredible player somewhere (or maybe its Vela) ready to take his place.

10.  When pushed Untold Arsenal can write 3 articles a day, but that doesn’t mean Goonernews will list them all.

What will Arsenal do with all the money?

Hleb to Barca for £15 million. That’s a £5 million pound profit.

Adebayor to Milan for £25 million. That’s a £21 million pound profit.

You have to wonder, what is Arsenal going to do with the profit? We’ve already given detailed analysis of the finances of the club to show that the turnover at the Ems has doubled that at Highbury, and that doubling more than pays for the mortgage – with quite a bit to spare. In fact, as was pointed out, the money taken from the club level and the boxes pays for Ems mortgage.

So we have spare dosh there. And another load of spare fivers from all these sales. What are we going to do with it all?

Curse of Arsenal strikes yet again

If you have ever thought the talk of the Curse of Arsenal was just so much blog based gibberish, then it is time to think again. It should also be a warning to anyone at Arsenal who is looking to leave.

The Curse, as you will know if you have been paying attention, was placed on one player and one club this year – Flamini and Birmingham City. I’ve reported before how since then Birmingham has been raided by the police who removed documents, David Sullivan and Karren Brady were arrested in April, a co-owner has been arrested after a complaint by a woman in Essex, and the club has been relegated when (at the time of the Eduardo attack, which started this) that seemed very unlikely.

No charges have been made as a result of the arrests and raid, and there is no suggestion anyone is guilty – but that is not how the Curse works. It undermines and annoys, causing frustration among those who are under it.

Now we find that City of London police are going to interview David Gold, the Birmingham City chairman, and Julia Shelton, the Championship club’s secretary later this week. We must be clear that these two are being questioned as witnesses and not suspects – and it is all to do with allegations of false accounting and conspiracy to defraud – as was the case with earlier events (except the woman in Essex of course). There is no suggestion that Gold or Shelton has acted improperly.

Sullivan is clearly feeling the effect of the Curse, and said to the Guardian, “It’s the most horrible experience I have ever had.” Eduardo probably said the same after the horrendous tackle on him that caused the Curse of Arsenal to focus on Birmingham City FC. A spokesperson for the Curse of Arsenal said, “we don’t make threats. We just advise players, clubs, agents and newspapers not to play silly games with Arsenal FC.”

Must we make Kieran Gibbs suffer like this?

Kieran Gibbs suffered the ignominy of having to play with a bunch of players of clearly lower levels of ability as England under 18s were slaughtered by the Czech Republic, who managed to stroll to a 2-0 victory despite have only 9 men for the last 10 minutes.

Gibbs must have wondered what was going on as England played to a level far below the standard he normally sees in the Arsenal Reserves.

Surely there must come a time when the clubs have the ability to protect their players from low-level nonsense like this, which can only harm their development – or worse lead to injury.