The ink was barely dry on their one record breaking contract to snag Kaka when Real Madrid turned around and destroyed their own previous transfer record and purchased Christiano Ronaldo from Man U for £80m. No need to link to a specific article, it’s all over the news, hell, it made NPR this morning.

And of course it made NPR, it’s f*cking insane.

That said, the deal raises more questions than it answers…

What will Man U do with the money? If they spend it, it inflates the market, if they don’t spend some they’d be fools. How does this all play out? Will they go for Ribery? Cause a 4 way fight for him, between Chelsea, Real, and the other Manchester?

How does Kaka feel? Like second runner up in the Miss Football pageant I imagine.

How long before Ribery joins them and for how much?

Where does Real Madrid get the money for this and will Sepp Bleater and Michelle Platini decry them for their financial doping?

What will Man U supporters do with their CR7 shirts? I recommend a bonfire.

There is one thing I know will happen: the English can go back to hating Christiano Ronaldo. There were at least 5 or 6 guys out there who were conflicted about Cron, just a few men who had yet to completely genuflect at the altar of the steppy-overy cheating diver. They were genuinely conflicted. Here was a guy who had raped their beloved England team, a man who disgraced English football pretty much every time he set foot on the pitch, but a man who scored goals and won medals for Man U. WHAT TO DO???

Well, most of them would privitely confide their dislike of the player or say things like “yeah I wish he wouldn’t do that.” But when he was up on the dias, cheekily biting the gold medal, all oiled and muscles rippling, they were there clapping along with all the other mindless Man U supporters.

And now that he’s gone, I am fully prepared for the deluge of Man U supporters who “never really liked him” drowning out the 5 or 6 genuine football fans who knew something was wrong all along. They will be there, at your local boozer, filling your ear with nonsense about how much they hated his cheating. Or how this is good riddance, because he was a cancer on the team. Or how he’s just a mercenary. Or my favorite, “he was overrated.”

No, asshole, that’s what WE say. YOU say “thank you Christiano Ronaldo, please may I have another?” Because we’ve been saying he was a mercenary, tart, diving, cheating, steppy-overy, take 20 free kicks to score one goal, overrated, chump, asshole, cunt, for 8 years and your sudden conversion stinks like rejection. Like a teenager rebuffed. It’s unrequited love.

Now, go crawl up inside your CR7 jersey, spread out all your signed pictures  of him on the bed and wallow in it. Have a good cry, because tomorrow you get to pretend to be a real football fan again, until the next steppy-overy, overrated, diving, cheating, seal dribbler comes along.

Poop Scoop

Ok, so we basically got nothing. There’s a report that Arsenal are after 16 year old Luc Castaignos, with his agent publicly saying that he only has eyes for Arsenal, but only if he stays at Feyenoord for another year. Yeah, Ok, another kid! At first I thought “isn’t 16 a little old?” and then I saw the picture in this link and I’m starting to think there might be something to this story.

I have some sad news to report, it’s looking like The Hoff is ending his long and glorious Arsenal career. A testimonial is the least we could do for him.

UEFA to FIFA, STFU

Ha! Tired old xenophobe and known Arsenal hater, Sepp Blatter has been told to shut the f*ck up by tired old xenophobe and known Arsenal hater Michelle Platini. See, as it turns out their collective idea to trot out some tired old xenophobic nationalism under the guise of a “6+5 rule” which would give England a world cup,  is a violation of European law.

Which I have said all along.

So, we can put this one to bed.

EPL chief Scudamore has been a busy little boy this week, rattling sabers, and proposing all sorts of wondrous rule changes. Changes that he thinks will save English football for Englishmen, stamp out debt, prevent another Leeds United style collapse, prevent unseemly characters from taking over clubs, and even had time to hail the Respect Campaign as an overwhelming success (link works best in Internet Explorer, ugh).

And people say that Arsene Wenger lives in a world of his own.

Let’s start first with the Scudamore/Platini/Blatter idea that the only thing that will save English National football is a return to the failed quota system of the 1980’s. A time when quotas still didn’t help England qualify for the World Cup (‘74 and ‘78). The problem with this story is that I have written extensively about it and really don’t feel like rehashing those thousands of words. Besides, I just re-read my best post on this topic and, frankly, I have nothing more to add and couldn’t say it better if I tried. Check the link above if you want to see why I think this is a racist, nationalist idea that will not help the English national team, will further overvalue English players, will not level the playing field between smaller clubs and the top four, and will be overturned as soon as one foreigner feels discriminated against.

The second story, then, is debt and Richard Scudamore is having none of it! Not coincidentally, this Premier League anti-debt campaign is breaking into the media at the same time as Alisher Usmanov is offering the club a hot cash injection. This debt issue is yet another story that I have written extensively about and don’t feel like re-hashing at this point. Suffice it to say, the proposal as I read it would have no effect on Arsenal, as we already fit the rules which are essentially an adaptation of UEFA’s rules for qualifying for Europe. No, this rule will only hurt smaller clubs, or clubs that are in real trouble like West Ham; and may even force those clubs to sell off their players.

The story that I’m interested in is the jaw-dropping claim that the Respect Campaign has been a success. In what world? Again, this is a topic that I have written extensively about and there’s no need to re-hash a lot of what I’ve said in the past. But I think that in light of recent events such as with Chelsea’s inability to control their players after and during matches, and the club’s steadfast refusal to even take internal action against their players this latest quote from Scudamore is about as jaw dropping as it gets.

I mean, Chelsea supporters have threatened Tom Ovrebo’s life… and this is the second time, this season, that Chelsea supporters have threatened the life of an official. Is that “respect?”

Or how about the dossier on Drogba, Terry, Bosingwa, and Ballack linked above? The footage is clear, Chelsea acted in a manner that was disgraceful on the Premier League, their club, and themselves by attacking the referee at the end of the game.

The most worrying part, though, is that the Chelsea stewards could not, or perhaps would not, control the situation after the match. Those stewards are there to protect the referee in case that exact thing happens. In case the players attack a referee, which is what the Chelsea players did, make no mistake about it, the stewards are there to protect the ref. To see them feebly try to move a clearly out of control Drogba and then let him come back in and get in the face of the ref was disgraceful and deserves at least as many column inches and at least as much investigation as Phil Brown’s imaginary story that had Cesc Fabregas watering the pitch with saliva as he karate kicked the opposing coaches in his designer thug hoody.

UEFA banning Chelsea from the Champions League for a season would be a light punishment for that display. Anything less is truly a disrespect to the referees and would make enforcing something like their plan to allow referees to stop matches due to racism impossible.  How can a UEFA official feel like a home team’s stewards will protect him from players and the crowd in Spain when the home team stewards at one of the crown jewels of world football (a country which supposedly prides itself on ‘law and order’) allowed a clearly out of control Chelsea team to threaten the ref?

But, ultimately, this is a chronic problem with this team in particular. Chelsea are the embodiment of disrespect in world football. From the disgraceful scrum they started in the 2007 Carling Cup final against Arsenal, to the Ashley Cole incident which started the “respect” campaign, to this latest in a long line of outrageous behavior, and if you throw in the distorting effect of their “magic money,” Chelsea are truly all that is wrong with modern football.

Look for Richard Scudamore to address this problem… never.

Bit of a different format today, owing to the deluge of news that always happens on a Friday so let’s get stuck in, shall we?

Injury Update

Eduardo and Silvestre are both out for Saturday. Dudu is being rumored to be out for the rest of the season with his  groin strain while Silvestre will be a late test for Tuesday. I had wondered why Eduardo was such a late sub on Wednesday and I think now it’s clear: he’s never really been fully fit since ‘recovering’ from Martin Taylor’s horrific tackle. And that makes sense. He needs time to get the tendons and muscles back into shape. More rehab, more light practice, rest, recovery, etc. I don’t know a single Gunner who isn’t proud of the courage that Dudu has shown this year and would gladly wait to see him fully fit at the start of next year. Get better Eduardo, we’ll wait.

Robin van Persie is another who’s going to have a late fitness test to see if he can play on Tuesday.  Either way, I doubt he’ll start and instead will need to reprise the super-sub role he played against Cardiff. I know, Man U are not Cardiff, but I mean get a goal, like he did against Cardiff.

Gallas and Rosicky remain out for the season, and the boss is now saying Clichy will be out for three weeks as well. That basically means that Arsenal are without Eduardo, Clichy, Gallas, and Rosicky for the rest of the season.

Fabregate

Cesc has spoken out about the FA charges against him saying that if he should be suspended then 8 others who came on the pitch should be similarly suspended. The FA responded by basically saying, it’s not that you came on the pitch it’s how you acted.

With that said, I am now confident that Fabregas will get a 3 match ban here, the same amount that Martin Taylor got for intentionally breaking Eduardo’s leg.

Because those two things are equivalent.

Maybe next time he should come out and break a player’s leg. At least then he’d deserve the ban.

Transfer News? In April?

The papers are all reporting that Wenger will sell Adebayor and buy Roque Santa Cruz.  The selling point in this story?

Wenger has been an admirer of the 27-year-old for some time. He had Santa Cruz scouted and is particularly impressed by the player’s work-rate after studying his ProZone statistics.

Well, Wenger is a lover of hard work, how do you think Bendtner keeps getting a shot?

Speak of the Devil

Bendtner is featured in this week’s free video on the dot com. A word of warning: clicking that link caused my browser (Firefox) to crash. Actually, that’s about what I’d expect, even Bendtner’s videos suck.

Almunia for England

And finally, the big story of the day is that Fabio Capello would not rule out Almunia should he get an English passport when he becomes eligible in July.  Legally and morally, I don’t see how he could exclude him.

First off, my name is Tim. I’m an American, and I’m a Gooner. I’ve been a Gooner now for 10 years. I’ve seen matches at Highbury and the Emirates and I fly every year to see my beloved Arsenal. I also support France in world competitions, rather than the U.S. team, because, well, because I want to. And so I think I have a bit of a unique perspective on this Almunia situation.

Whether Almunia wants to become an English citizen or not is about choices and not about birthplace. That’s just the way the world is today. The old days of nationalism are dying slowly and people now have more freedom than ever before to choose the country they want to naturalize in. Personally, I’d like to see it be even more open. I have never understood why capital could move freely from one country to another but people were restrained by quaint old notions of borders. So, if Almunia wants to become an English citizen and renounce his eligibility to play for Spain, knowing the stick he’s going to get from xenophobes and nationalists, then I say more power to him.

Moreover, the old notions of “identity” that surrounded certain things, like being a Gooner meant that you were probably from North London, have changed radically as well. Now, you have millions of Americans, Indians, Chinese, Africans, and Spanish devoted to following English teams and thus the identity of English clubs are no longer associated with place. When you have millions of Africans wearing Liverpool shirts and identifying with Steven Gerrard it both takes a bit away from that old identity as “scouser” and adds something new to their identity. Again, you can wring your hands about this, you can jump on the Platini xenophobe bandwagon, and you can scream about how your identity is being taken over by Yanks and the Africans. But unless you are willing to stop broadcasting English games around the globe and shrink the English game back into something provincial and small (something that will never win a world championship) then you’re going to have to deal with the fact that football is a global sport with a global following. And that means that clubs now have global identities. And more radically, that national teams now have global identities.

Other countries have already accepted this change and I have no doubt that Croatian fans love their Brazilian born striker.  It’s time for England to let go of the old, small way of looking at football and join the modern world. And time for fans to embrace their future England Number 1; Manuel Almunia.

Tomorrow’s Match

Right, so that’s it for today. Tomorrow’s match kicks off at 7am (PST) is being broadcast on FSC. I’ll try to do a quick update before kickoff and then do a liveblog of the match. If you’re into that sort of thing, join us here at about 6:30.

See you then!

Once again, three out of the four English club teams have progressed to the semi-finals of the Champions League. Manchester United became the first English team to win at Porto, after a Cristiano Ronaldo wonder strike from 40 yards sealed a 1-0 victory and an aggregate score of 3-2. They have set up a date with Arsenal, who breezed past Villareal 3-1 at the Emirates to win their tie 4-2, with goals from Theo Walcott, Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin Van Persie. Despite a rousing performance from Liverpool, who had to claw back a 3-1 home defeat to Chelsea, the Reds couldn’t hold onto their early lead and the game finished 4-4. Stand-in manager Guus Hiddink’s side will face Barcelona, who held Bayern Munich to a 1-1 draw but demolished the German outfit 4-0 in the first leg.

This brings me onto my main point of discussion. Yesterday’s main headline on my favourite football website Soccernet read, “Scudamore defends Prem’s UCL dominance”. Once again, raving lunatic Sepp Blatter has attacked the Barclays Premier League. Over the years his grasp of the English language has improved, but his grasp of reality and understanding of the English football is worse than ever. How a man from Switzerland, with no ties to football, be that as an ex-player, an ex-manager or an ex-CEO, without any known passion for the game, complete with the irrelevant experience of working for a tourism board in his early career, can become the most powerful and influential person in the world of football remains a mystery to me. It is almost laughable. That would be like a bus driver determining the flight trajectory of a spacecraft on a mission of extreme scientific importance from Earth to Mars. And I mean no disrespect at all towards bus drivers. The man used to be president of an organisation whose main objective was to stop women replacing suspender belts with pantyhose, for god’s sake! I’m not even joking – according to a number of reliable sources, one of which can be found here, good old Sepp was a key figure in the ‘World Society of Friends of Suspenders’ – an accolade that anyone would be proud of.

Sepp Blatter: the bane of human existence. Photograph: Lefty Shivambu/Getty Images, taken from guardian.co.uk

Blatter in action. Photograph taken from olymwandishi.files.wordpress.com

He would also like to enforce a 6+5 rule, which would mean English clubs must have six homegrown players in their starting line-ups for matches. It is true that there is an influx of foreign players in the EPL, with less than 35% of players in the league originating from the UK. Clubs look abroad for young talent and integrate them into youth teams, and the top clubs have purchased international superstars. The rule would mean more emphasis being put into developing young British players, while perhaps in the long-term improving the national team. Of course, Blatter and his minion Platini point to the fact that England failed to qualify for Euro 2008 as proof that the rule is needed, but let us not forget Steve McClaren is a wally with a brolly, and that the national team are currently performing well under Fabio Capello with almost the same group of players. Once again, I believe Blatter’s intentions are not what they seem. Admittedly, I think club teams must focus more on homegrown talent, but I think the 6+5 rule is a little extreme. Does Blatter think he can enforce a rule on the EPL but exclude the other European leagues? Perhaps he has failed to acknowledge that by introducing the rule, every league would be forced to comply, and by doing so all of the European leagues would be weakened, otherwise European teams would be given an unfair advantage. It has come to my attention that Jose Mourinho fielded only one Italian player for Inter Milan in their Champions League clash with Manchester United, but that didn’t get frowned upon.

Perhaps that is all part of his evil scheme. Unbeknownst to Platini, who only wants to hinder the EPL, perhaps Blatter would like to water down leagues all over the world so that international football is recognised as the best competition. At the moment, many people would agree that club football is more enjoyable as a spectacle, and the Champions League in particular is currently the most exciting football competition in the world. Blatter could be resorting to dirty tactics which may benefit the interests of FIFA and his bank account balance. However, with a breach of EU law due to the discrimination at work and a restriction on the free movement of workers, the implementation of the 6+5 rule will not come to fruition, or at least not for some time.

Michel Platini: Blatter's French henchman. Photograph: Getty Images, taken from telegraph.co.uk

We can assume Michel Platini’s grudge against English football began after the disaster at Heysel Stadium in 1985, when he witnessed first-hand as a player the death of 39 Juventus fans before his side’s European Cup final match against Liverpool, after which EPL teams were banned from Europe for five years. What happened was a horrifying and upsetting ordeal, but this shouldn’t get in the way of his decisions at UEFA. Especially since, without excusing the disgusting actions of a minority of Liverpool fans, the disaster could have been avoided, but that is another story. The reasons behind Sepp Blatter’s hatred of English football remain unclear. However, it strikes me as strange that two men with such a blatant dislike towards English football, or any football association for that matter, can find themselves in such positions of power. Surely these positions require someone with an open mind, or at least someone who portrays an open mind.

Sepp Blatter is allegedly corrupt, after he apparently used FIFA funds as bribe money to ensure his re-election, and I certainly wouldn’t put anything past him. Investigative journalist Andrew Jennings spent four years undercover and has exposed the dirty deals and more in his book, Foul! In fact, the whole world was witness to a glimpse of Blatter’s lack of integrity when he stated that if the FA didn’t dismiss plans for a 39th EPL game it would hurt England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup. “When it comes to a decision of the executive committee concerning this matter of the 39th round, and I am sure they will be against it, then it will not have a positive impact on the bid from England for the World Cup in 2018.” Don’t get me wrong, I am totally against the 39th EPL game, but isn’t that blackmail? Unfortunately it seems the FA will be forced to make unwanted changes if they wish to host the prestigious tournament. I acknowledge there are problems in the world of football, with its share of greedy individuals, but that is no reason to surrender to the demands of a greedy, deranged individual at FIFA.

For those of you who follow my Google Reader shares (link there on the left to my page and an RSS Feed on the right of the blog) you’ll already know that we’ve got a lot of stupidity to get through today. But before we get to the stupidity, I just want to say that if you want to follow my shares on Google Reader you can either subscribe to the RSS feed or if you’re already a Google Reader and want to be friends (so we can comment together) you’ll need to send me an email (bostelle | gmail) and then we’ll need to chat. Stupid I know, but once we’re sharing together it’s actually a lot of fun and for my money more relevant than getting “I’M POOOPIN” updates off twitter.

Ok, where did I put the stupidity???

Oh yeah here it is: one of the main things I despise about the international break(s) is the sheer number of times Arsenal players are shipped off to play against some micro-country and come back in pieces. These weeks ahead hold great promise for us to suffer horrible, season ending injuries to players who are currently being held together with duct tape. No player exemplifies this worry more than Emmanuel Adebayor.

Today, the Togo manager is promising to use Ade, despite the fact that he hasn’t played since he suffered a hammy tear in February. Now, I know a lot of you will straight dismiss this story because you feel like “we don’t need Ade” but you’d be 100% wrong. We need every player on this Arsenal team in order to win a trophy and we especially need Adebayor in the Champions League where his size and speed pose problems for European squads and he always seems to step up his game (3 goals and 2 assists in just 3 CL appearances this season). Like it or not, we need Adebayor 100% healthy and not pulling a hammy for Togo.

Similarly, Eduardo’s Croatian manager is saying the Dudu is “perfect” and “showing no sign of injury” which indicates to me that he’s going to play the living crap out of him over this next week and a half.

Yeah, he’s perfectly healthy if you don’t count the fact that he’s been in and out of the Arsenal lineup with niggling little injuries picked up every time he plays because he was sidelined for a year. While I share his enthusiasm for having Dudu back, I’d rather see Eduardo used sparingly over this international break so that he could be available to win something for the club which pays his salary.

And then, of course, there’s Andrei Arshavin. Who’s agent described him as “60% fit” which I would also describe him as.. erm… fit as. Given that level of fitness, every Arsenal supporter is holding their breath hoping that Chelsea/Russia coach Guus Hiddink uses Arshavin in a responsible manner and that he is returned to us safe and healthy for the run in.

Of course, not everyone is off on international doodie and that makes them very sad. Sad enough to contemplate getting a passport for a country they weren’t born in and praying for a call up. You know, I think Alumina should get the English passport. Not so that he can get an England call up (which he might, given that he’s probably the best “English” keeper in the world right now) but so that he could count in Arsenal’s 6+5 scheme. Just in case that xenophobic, protectionist, and racist idea is passed. Think about it, we’d get to say “Hey now, Arsenal have TWO English players in their first team, the same number as Uber English Liverpool.” That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

But the big story, the one we’ve all been waiting for, is “what insane ideas will come out of UEFA/FIFA during the international break?” And, of course, they don’t let us down do they?

This month we have “Let’s do an American style salary cap based on, of all things, BASEBALL, despite the fact that it would be impossible to manage and ignoring the fact that baseball’s salary cap is the laughing stock of world sport.” Luxury tax… yeah, that hasn’t stopped New York and Boston from having payrolls that are the shame of the world.

But let’s think about this for a second. Either a club would have to adhere to the salary cap (LOL) OR a club’s supporters would be attending games at great personal expense and at least a portion of that expense would be going to some club like, say, Blackburn.

This idea is so mind-numbingly stupid and untenable that the only conceivable reason why they would announce it is because they need to make it look like they are doing something. So, they travel to America, talk to a few people, pick a plan that could never possibly work, come back, and wait until international week to announce that they are looking into implementing it.

Frankly, this plan has as much chance of happening as the 6+5 rule, or me giving a shiat if Amaury Bischoff leaves for one of the, literally, hundreds of clubs who want to buy him. Which is to say, 0%.

Hey, at least with this proclamation out of the way we can officially say that the International Break has well and truly started. Because it’s not an international break without a retarded idea coming out of FIFA/UEFA.

Ugh… remember that lady behind me on the flight back from London? The one who was coughing her lungs up mere inches away from my face? Well, I think I got her cold. I feel miserable today, worse than yesterday by far and yet I absolutely must go in to work today. It’s not fair to my coworkers to come in while so obviously sick but I have a Calc test today and I can’t miss that so I might as well bring my diseased ass in to work. The worst part is that this cold comes from overseas so they won’t have any immunities to it. I’m calling it the London Flu and me bringing it to work makes me “London Flu Timmy.”

Speaking of sickness, the press are making a big hoo-doo of some report that was released today claiming that FIFA’s 6+5 rule would not be illegal. It’s even prompting some reporters to make outrageous claims like

With the proposed 6+5 Fifa rule being ruled legal by the EU courts, we might have to see a return to more homegrown talent being fielded.

Let me make this absolutely clear: this is a report compiled by a FIFA hand-picked organization (INEA) which basically skimmed through the law looking for arguments that FIFA might make to the EU Court and found that while the rule is very clearly discrimination, it’s only “indirect discrimination.”

The EU ministers and the EU courts are firmly against this rule, and given that FIFA’s hand-picked report proves that this would be a form of discrimination I can’t see how they will get any ruling past the courts. No, the Bosman ruling still stands and will continue to stand. Which I think is good for football.

The INEA also repeats FIFA’s preposterous claim that having foreign players in the EPL stunts the growth of the Full English players. This argument is so prima facie ridiculous that I hardly feel the need to attack it, but let’s take a look at how it goes. Basically, they argue that foreign players “take the place of” local players in academies and thus there are supremely talented Englishmen out there who just never got a chance.

Bullshit.

Look at the youth academies of Arsenal and Man U. Both clubs have reached the finals of the Carling Cup with basically their academy sides. And though Arsenal get all the press for their academy I think this Man U class is actually better than the Arsenal class. But the important thing to look at is the fact that both of those teams have tons of English players on them.

Thus, this is far from the case that English talent isn’t being nurtured, rather that English talent is being fostered in a competitive atmosphere with the world’s most deserving players. These clubs are making English players better.

Make no mistake, the 6+5 plan will never be implemented and if it is, the Arsenal’s and Man U’s will still have the best academies, they will still produce the best talent, and the big clubs will continue to dominate the markets for these players. What would happen is that the overall level of play would be reduced significantly. All you have to do is look at Liverpool and ask yourself who should start at right wing: Pennant or Kuyt?

The second big story that fell out like the lung of a disease ridden airline passenger is that Arsenal released their mid-season financials. This year’s numbers look incredibly good: profits up £4.5m over last year, match day turnover up, television profits up, and even some profit made off the Highbury square development. The total before tax profit reported is £24.5m. That is truly an incredible number for a half season.

But there are some worrying signs; the £133m that “The Group” owe the banks for the Highbury Square development looks as if it’s come due as “The Group” are busily trying to re-finance that loan.

Moreover, whereas last year Peter Hill-Wood categorically assured supporters that the Highbury development was accounted for apart from the operations of Arsenal FC, this year he is equivocating, saying:

The financial arrangements for the group’s property activities are separate and largely operate independently from the financing of the football business.

The truth of the matter seems obscured, but I suspect that one reason Arsenal have maintained such large cash reserves (£90m before this half-season’s £24.5m profit report) is that they need the money to flood into the Highbury development should the loan come due and banks are unwilling to refinance this apparent lode stone on the club’s profits.

The other worrying aspect of the profit report is just how important being a top club is for our financial health. Television revenue, match day revenue, Champions League revenue, all are dependent upon the club competing at the top, top level.

Arsenal are certainly making money right now, but losing 4th place combined with the financial downturn and the collapse of the high end housing market could prove devastating to this club and has me a bit worried about the future for the first time as an Arsenal supporter.

We have to trust that the board will get this all ironed out. After all, they’ve not let us down so far.

All right, got to get into work and get some things started before my exam today so that’s your lot for the day.

See you tomorrow.

Of all the problems plaguing modern football the biggest, and the first that I would change, is international football. No more World Cup, no more Euro Cup, no more Under 19, Under 16, Under 3, nationalistic pointlessness, I’d get rid of it all. It just seems like a holdover from when Europeans used to kill each other over a line in the forest somewhere. For example, there’s an Andorran national team. A country the size of the city I live in, with half the population is fielding a national team in all of these competitions. And what are they playing for? Andorran pride? What’s that some kind of veiled racism or pathetic nationalism?

More than any spectacular football, the international breaks signal a chance for horrible people like Michel Platini to bleat on about quotas, for fans to display their racism, for football associations to propose preposterous rules changes, for players to give interviews, to watch some really crappy football, and for the specter of injuries to raise it’s ugly head.

Yes, the internationals, what a great idea. Let’s whip people into a nationalistic fervor over a pointless game so that players and associations like UEFA can have a platform to change the game I love while extracting the very last Euro out of the average fan’s wallet.

As the links above show, this break is no different than any other. We start off with the FA’s announcement that they are looking into a “homegrown” quota system. Basically, it takes Platini’s horribly racist idea of forcing clubs to check passports before they field a team and waters it down by allowing  teams to simply follow the current quota rules for Champions League qualification. Which is to say that no matter where you were born as long as you were educated at the club, you count as “homegrown.” Actually, I’m fine with this, mostly because I think it will shut Platini and the English nationalists up about Arsenal’s academy.

These homegrown plans always make me wonder why UEFA and FIFA and the FA refuse to deal with problems like Spanish racism before they start worrying about the passports of players on a club like Arsenal? I’ll tell you why! Because the line between the nationalism they are peddling in the guise of “International Football” and outright racism is more permeable than the Maginot line. You need look no further than the fact that a club like Zenit can openly discriminate against blacks and still be allowed to play in UEFA tournaments or a national team like Spain has so many openly racist supporters that the English team needs 500 cops to protect them from the Spanish supporters to see that there’s a serious problem brewing here. How can those organizations let those teams play unless the reality is that they need those racist fans? Surely not every Spanish fan is racist but a large enough number are that these organizations have to play this balancing act between nationalism and racism.

From “homegrown” quotas we move on to the Irish FA recommending a “sin-bin” for yellow carded players. I understand where this comes from because in a sense it is unfair that a player who gets a fifth yellow is suspended for the next game but there’s just two minor drawbacks to the sin bin idea; the referees seem to have a problem getting calls right, and the referees seem to have a problem getting the calls right. Now I know that technically those two are the same thing, but they seem important enough to mention twice.

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea, like if there was a sin bin maybe Bolton wouldn’t be as quick to tackle. But the problem is that you only need to look at the last game against Bolton to see what would happen: Arsenal got as many yellows as Bolton did! The sin bin idea isn’t going to stop a team like Bolton from kicking Arsenal off the pitch because the refs let teams like Bolton get away with more before they get a yellow.  No, it won’t make the game better, it would just give as all another reason to bitch about the refs.

Not to be outdone by the executives in charge of the game, players too use the international break as a soapbox on which they can give their opinion — and for us Arsenal fans that usually means some disgruntled (former) employee. This time it was the exception that proves the rule and Gilberto gave a very respectful, thoughtful, and even-handed interview about Arsenal’s struggles since he left. Just one quote from the interview should remind us all what we loved about Gio: he was a selfless, hard working, respectful player who did everything asked of him out of love for the club.

It’s a big period for Arsenal. Since I was there they haven’t experienced a situation like this. Now they are out of the Champions League places which is very uncomfortable but I’m sure they will pick up points and get back and qualify for the Champions League like we expect. They’ve got quality and a good manager, Arsène Wenger, will do a good job with them.

♬ Mister, we could use a man like Gilberto Silva again… ♬

And if you’re able to stomach all of that and sit down to actually watch a match, well then you’re likely to be treated to a display of football futility like the goal by Bischoff linked above. I’ll concede that you might catch a beautiful goal or two, I guess Robinho had one yesterday against Italy, and you might even get a good match every once in a while, but the vast majority of these matches are just dross. No one, not players, managers, fans, no one on earth wants to see the Malta first team play; much less their U21 (yes, they have a U21).

Given all that, I say down with the internationals! Instead, let’s give hard working footballers a week off and let them travel to Malta to enjoy the sandy beaches without the added pressure of giving an interview, or having the ignominy of being booted out of some pointless tournament at the hands of the mighty Maltese FA.

What am I saying? They’ll never give up on these tournaments. There’s too much money to be made off the suckers who watch them.

In what will almost certainly be either quickly retracted or apologized for, some Russian Racist Rag got former Tottenham mega-super-star Sergei Rebrov to give Spuds new Russian signing Pavlyuchenko some choice words of advice:

I wouldn’t go for a walk on my own around White Hart Lane. A lot of dark skinned people live there. So naturally the crime rate is higher than anywhere else. It’s not nice to be a robbery victim. So I suggest that Roman doesn’t walk but drives around that area.

After some contemplation, I’ve decided that there is another way to look at this: Rebrov’s comments have been taken by some as racist, but as someone who has a “Liberal Studies” degree I can assure you that he was simply musing on the effects that societal racism has on class and therefore crime. Additionally, his statement could be seen as someone who genuinely cares for his fellow man: “it’s not nice to be a robbery victim” shows that he cares, about all robbery victims, not just the white, rich, Russian ones. I beleieve that if we really delve deep into Rebrov’s caring and kind words we’ll see a man who is pained by the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth around White Hart Lane. So pained that he could barely live with himself as he drove his expensive vehicle into his exclusive player only parking lot on game day, all the while shielding his eyes from the poverty and “darkness” around him. It was this “darkness” which put out the light inside Rebrov and explains why he, while one of Tottenham’s most successful players ever, was only ever available for a few games a year. Rebrov’s not a racist, he’s the boddhisatva of caring for the poor and “dark skinned.” He really just wants equality and safety in Britain for all people! The next stop on his “tour of compassion” is, no doubt, going to be Liverpool, where it’s also not nice to be a robbery victim.

But seriously, what the hell is going on over there? First there’s the Zenit St. Petersburg debacle where coach Dick Advocaat made it clear that he’s not allowed to hire any blacks because the fans are so insanely racist and now there’s an article in “Sovetski Sport” which is both a racist diatribe and a full assault on Arsenal. How is it that UEFA and FIFA are refusing to deal with this entrenched racism? This is a problem that’s at least as important as whether or not people have the correct passport when they play in Champions League matches, isn’t it?

Speaking of which, CaribKid (regular commenter) wondered in yesterday’s comments about UEFA’s ‘homegrown’ rule, so I did a little digging and this is what I found out. Introduced 2 years ago, the rule reached its full maturity this year and requires that a team have 8 ‘homegrown’ players in their Champions League squad. You don’t have to have them on the pitch, just in the CL squad. Originally, they wanted to do something like the 6+5 rule that Sepp Blatter keeps proposing but UEFA knew that wouldn’t fly due to the EU work rules that require something called “fairness,” which is unfair. So, UEFA worked with the EU and came up with a plan that basically states that you have to take kids (15-21 year olds, from anywhere in the world) and train them in your academy for three years, and then 8 of those kids must be named to your CL squad.

They wanted to prevent teams like Chelsea and Liverpool and Man U from simply hoarding fully developed players from around the world, which means that it has failed miserably. Only Arsenal, with their fully developed academy, produce the quality and quantity sufficient to challenge in the Champions League utilizing their former academy players like Cesc, Walcott, and Clichy. Two years in to the program and Liverpool have to drop key players like Hyypia off their starting XI because they cannot seem to develop anyone, or maybe Rafa Benitez just doesn’t understand the rule?

It was a really difficult decision, but we had to do it. With the rule saying that you need more or less eight British – or local – players in the squads, we needed to decide which three centre backs to have for the Champions League

Nope. He’s straight up wrong. You need 8 players from the academy and their passports don’t matter. Maybe, he could, you know, set up an academy, bring in some kids, train them up?

Christmas Eduardo

Dudu is “recovering faster than expected” and should be ready for first team action in December. Yay! I know I speak for all Arsenal fans when I say that we wish him a 100% recovery.

Appiah Watch ‘08

Every club in Christendom, and even some in Italy (ha ha! I’m the boddhisatva of hating Italians!), is admitting that they are trying to sign Stephen Appiah. Arsene should sign the guy, because even if he spends the whole season on the bench injured signing Appiah will shut the whiners up for at least a brief period. Plus, if he doesn’t sit in the injury room all season and plays at a fraction of the level that everyone thinks he can, he will be a great addition to the squad. Sign sign sign sign!

Blah blah blah Internationals

If you have Setanta, you can watch England lose to Croatia today. If not, you cannot even see the “highlights” — like when half-arsed midfield elf, Luca Modric scores a triple hat trick on them.  This has English fans in an uproar, because it’s their birthright to watch horrible football on the tee vee or some such.

Also, there’s a story that Adebayor refused to fly with the Togo team because he heard that someone was going to shoot the team out of the sky. Uhhh… hm… well… I don’t know what to think, except that death would be a difficult injury to recover from.

Whelp, that’s it for today, I have a work retreat today, which is to say that I’m wasting taxpayers dollars for 8 hours today doing team-building exercises, so I can’t go down to the bar and watch England lose on live tee vee, which I think should be my birthright, as a Wallonian.

“Quelle surprise” was probably the most used phrase in the Arsenal camp when yet more journalistic fear mongering was published regarding FIFA’s highly sceptical “6+5” quota plan for foreign players. For those of you that don’t know, the plan involves teams having to field 6 English (or “home grown”) players or more, with the rest of the team allowed to be made up of players from foreign nations.

Recently the buzz has been about Andy Burnham, the secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, backing FIFA’s controversial plans, even going as far as saying would campaign against the EU for it. But this ignorance is to be expected from a West Ham supporter.

The “quelle surprise” moment comes when every major newspaper references to Arsenal in relation to these plans. It’s the constant barrage of “Arsenal aren’t an English club,” “Bunch of foreigners”, “Not a single English lad,” that annoys me, especially when it’s driven by complete and utter ignorance. Just by watching some of Arsenal’s pre-season friendlies it becomes clear to the naysayers that Arsenals have the cream of the crop when it comes to young English talent. In both the matches against Barnett and Szombathelyi Haladás, Arsenal’s line-ups have featured the potential stars of England’s national team. The first is the highly lauded Jack Wilshere, who looks like the player to shut up all this talk about how Arsenal should do more to help the plight of the English player and the national team.

At just 16, Wilshere possesses unbelievable talent and has already drawn praise from all angles, including Arsene Wenger looking to score “I told you so” points in years to come, by comparing him to Cesc Fabregas, if just a little prematurely. 19 year old striker Jay Simpson’s hard work is starting to bear fruit with an impressive equaliser at Barnett, and let’s not forget how very English he is. I could go on about the likes of Mark Randall, Henri Lansbury, Gavin Hoyte and Paul Rodgers, all English and all under-20, but let’s save that for another time.

The fact is that this relentless vilification of the Arsenal first team is completely unfounded when you look at the potential stars of English football, just bubbling under the surface. In comparison to the other Big Four clubs, Arsenal’s young English talent is much more abundant. Because of the massive publicity that the first team naturally receives in comparison to the reserves, it is unsurprising that Arsenal’s crop of English talent is ignored. If this criticism of Arsenal’s un-English first team continues, some wise figures need to point the critics in the direction of the likes of Wilshire and co. After all, remember where David Bentley came from? And just think, he was one of the ones we let go.

In addition to the tongue lashings that Arsenal get in the media when talk of the “6+5” rule comes round again, the club is getting a lot of negative press for not a lot of reasons. The so-called “exodus” of players from the club has done nothing to settle the nerves of fans and all the papers seem to be trying their best to unsettle the club. No, I’m not suggesting that Big Phil has handed the papers a cheque to deliberately do it, it is just that every day without fail there is a story about the difficultly the club is having in hanging onto the players. Of course, there are those stories which have substance to them (Hleb leaving) and then there are those which seem to have completely come out of the blue à la William Gallas moving to Barcelona from the Daily Telegraph. It’s almost as if there is a media grudge against Arsenal for systematically blowing all their Premier League 07/08 predications of Arsenal coming in 5th behind Tottenham out of the water.

The most irksome of these newspaper reports are the ones based on the financial situation that the club is in. The Daily Mail would have you believe that because Arsenal may or may not be willing to sell Senderos for less than £6m to Newcastle, it means that the club is strapped for cash, not that Senderos is a sub-Big Four club defender.

The fact remains that Arsenal are the most financially stable of the Big Four clubs, despite fending off the advances of a certain Russian oligarch. But ok, the papers want to talk about financial situations, so we’ll talk about financial situations. In the 06/07 season, Arsenal’s revenue was £165.2m compared to Manchester United’s revenue of £197.8m, Liverpool’s revenue of £135.1m and Chelsea’s revenue of £191.8.

The tell-tale signs come when Manchester United’s debts are revealed as being around £764m, Chelsea’s debts being £736m and Liverpool’s coming in at around £300m. Arsenal’s debt, which recently rose considerably due to the construction of the Emirates, stands at around £260m, considerably less than any of the other Big Four clubs. Wenger isn’t lying when he says “we have always managed at this club to balance the budget. We should not be criticised for that and should be respected, instead.” Furthermore, the Arsenal chairman has time and time again insisted that Arsene Wenger has the money to make big signings if the need be.

The problem here is that the press seems to constantly forget that Wenger does not tend to bring in expensive players, instead seeking out the hidden gems of football and moulding them into world class players. It is too often forgotten that Wenger bought both Van Persie and Adebayor for around £3m and snapped up Fabregas for next to nothing. This is all put in perspective when you look to Anfield and see Robbie Keane holding up his Liverpool shirt with a £19m price tag around his neck. The media speculation about Arsenal has got to such a ridiculous level that you can’t help but feel a tinge of embarrassment for the journalists themselves, hopefully now, after Fabregas came out and exposed Marca’s pseudo-quotes, this perplexingly negative media circus will close down.

Meanwhile is Barcelona, the Catalan giants have just realised they got a two-for-one deal when purchasing Alexander Hleb a.k.a. Dribbly McNoScore (as one Arsenal blogger lovingly nick-named him). Not only is Hleb the versatile midfielder (and goal scoring machine) but he also appears to plying his trade in the Football Agents field, or so it would seem. Although this is from the conspiracy theorist inside of me, it seems that Hleb has been allowed to have a suspicious number of press conferences where he unleashed his agent-esque comments of “He loves this club. Now he’s at Arsenal, but who knows if in the future he’ll come back to Barca?” when speaking of Fabregas.

It would appear that Barcelona officials looking to snatch away Adebayor whispered into Hleb’s ear to praise the centre forward, leading to Hleb’s statement of “Without doubt he is one of the five best strikers in the world.” The blood boils when looking at the Belarusian’s cheeky grin as he spouts all this. Hleb’s pure audacity in making these comments is the most infuriating aspect of the whole switch. After months and months of is-he-isn’t-he speculation, Hleb finally left, leaving it at a simple transfer would have been fine for everyone, especially the fans.

It appears that from the safety of Spain, Hleb thinks he can get away with anything; all the more bewildering is that these comments about Fabregas and Adebayor follow his declaration of love for Arsene Wenger. “Arsene is like a father to me and the coach that gave me the opportunity to play for Arsenal and then to sign for Barcelona, I owe him everything.” I’ve just highlighted the last sentence because I feel it brings up a vital point. If you owed everything to a football manager, would you repay him by publicly declaring your new club’s desire to sign his best players, I don’t think so.

Recent events with Hleb can only leave me questioning his moral fibre and his puerile behaviour serves as a kick in the teeth for the players, Wenger and most importantly, the fans.

Article By – Andrew McPhail for Gooner Talk

Typically I only do the one blog a day but I just wanted to follow up on the folly that is the Sepp Blatter and Christiano Ronaldo Slavery Sideshow and I didn’t want to sour the post about Nasri signing for Arsenal. Since there are some new developments, you get a second blog.

Anyway, yesterday Ronaldo did an interview with Portuguese television channel ITV in which he outright fully agreed with Sepp Blatter’s assessment that earning £120,000 a week and being asked to play football professionally is tantamount to slavery.

I would, at this point, normally go off on a tirade but there’s no need when pretty much every thinking person in the free world sees this for what it is: a crock of shit.  And while the free world is reeling from the idea that the head of FIFA and one of the world’s richest sports stars have the temerity to call honoring a contract “slavery” good ole ‘arry Redknapp was busy putting things into perspective, as usual.

It’s rubbish, isn’t it? You can sign somebody at a football club who turns out to be a disaster. He might not be playing, might be no good, but you have to pay him for four years. So when somebody does fantastically, you’re supposed to just let them go? It doesn’t work like that. You sign a contract and it has to be mutual agreement, if the club receives a good offer, that’s how it works. It’s not slavery, is it? That’s absolute nonsense.

No Harry, contract labor is not slavery, you are correct as usual.

Another bizarre development that’s hitting all the  blogs was briefly mentioned in the same article that I got the picture above from; Sepp Blatter is an honorary member of Real Madrid.  I did a little digging and sure enough, there’s a press release on the FIFA.com website that confirms his status.  I too am looking for a reason why Blatter made his unusual statement but really his honorary membership isn’t it.  The “Gold and Diamond Insignia” is just something that Real Madrid give away to any and all politicians that will accept it and I think Blatter took it more for the photo op than anything else.  It’s not like Blatter is secretly a member of the board or anything, he just got an honorary membership.  It probably entitles him to 10% off at Denny’s or something.

No, I think this is just more of the same stuff; Sepp Blatter has a stick up his ass about the Premiership and is using any opportunity at all to stick the knife in and turn the blade.  Who better to knife than the club that is one of the most emblematic of the “problem” of foreign transfers and all the other myriad issues that Blatter has on his agenda.

Don’t be surprised when he calls the Arsenal/Adebayor transfer saga something asinine (sharecropping?) in the next few days.  Arsenal have to be next up on his hit list.

Sepp Blatter in his slave garb

I thought it would take a whole week for Sepp Blatter to stick his foot in his mouth, how could I know that 24 hours after the defeat of his insane 6+5 plan he would swallow the whole leg? I was scanning the news feeds last night when I came across an article that had this quote

There’s too much modern slavery, in transferring players or buying players. We are trying now to intervene in such cases. The reaction to the Bosman law is to make long-lasting contracts to keep the players, and then if he wants to leave there is only one solution, he has to pay his contract.

Jesus Christ, Sepp. There are real slaves in this world, people who do not have the freedom to sign a multi-million dollar contract and then bitch and moan to get out of it when someone comes along with an even larger multi-million dollar contract. You can’t seriously be comparing multi-millionaires to people who are forced into sexual servitude, can you? You dolt.

This is just another example of how Sepp Blatter is dramatically disconnected from the real world. Maybe it was just a flip remark, maybe it was just an off-the-cuff comment, or maybe he was deliberately misquoted by the press. But if he really did say something that ignorant he has no business being the manager of a 7-11 much less one of the largest sporting organizations in the world.

I wonder what’s prompting this “slavery” remark, honestly. He’s an educated man, he’s aware of the difference between contractual employment and slavery. He’s never shown a lick of care for players before, so it’s not about the players. And it’s not like players need more power: contracts ARE the player’s power. Sepp knows all that, so something else is going on here and frankly it stinks of him playing favorites with Real Madrid.

UEFA, to their credit, reacted quickly to Sepp’s comments and reminded him of the differences between slavery and football

It would be useful to remind people (and Sepp Blatter – ed.) that slaves in all of the slavery systems never earned a wage. It seems that both clubs and players are trying to negotiate an exit before the player is free [at the end of his contract]. It is obvious that today players have a lot more power than they did 20 years ago, undoubtedly, and agents have a lot more power than they did 20 years ago.

Is Sepp Blatter really that thick that he needs UEFA to explain slavery to him? Jesus Christ, Sepp.

UPDATE:

Paul Doyle at the Guardian published a brilliant and insightful article about Sepp’s comments after I got to work this morning and I would feel remiss if I didn’t suggest you read it.  In the column, Paul tries to shed some light on the reality of football penury, what it means for Blatter to make such comments, and a wonder (as we all do) why Sepp made them.

Transfer news

All the papers are reporting that Arsenal and Barcelona have agreed to a fee for Left Wing Slave Alex Hleb. Arsenal are reportedly raking in a fee of somewhere between £12-18m while Alex Hleb is expected to receive an extra bowl of rice a day, but only if he doubles his garment output.

I do love some of the quotes attributed to Hleb from yesterday; he wants to leave the noisy, busy city of London, for the bucolic quietude of Barcelona. These quotes look awfully familiar, almost as if The Mail took the quotes he gave at the beginning of the summer, whited out “Milan,” and replaced it with Barcelona. Those sneaky reporters!

With their new found cash, Arsenal are reportedly linked to Russian slaves Arshavin and Zhirkov. I’m pretty certain that neither of these people will be forced to play for Arsenal next season; Arshavin because Zenit is demanding more than £19m and he’s demanding a hundrededy billion pounds a year in salary and Zhirkov because, well, because he’s shite and the only link to any club is a statement from his agent.

No real signings on the horizon, though Arsenal seem to be linked to every striker in the world in order “to replace Adebayor.”

In Conclusion

The annual “Arsenal in serious trouble this summer” stories have started to make print and this year the story is “Wenger desperate to hold team together!!!” On its surface this seems to be a fair criticism: Flamini, Hleb, Adebayor, and now Gilberto are all leaving, have left, or have made strong indications that they want to leave. Coming in to the team so far are Carlos Vela, Aaron Ramsey and Samir Nasri: all young, all unproven — to us.

As Sagna (and everyone with a brain) pointed out, losing Flamini and Ade are doubtless big losses. Losing Gilberto would make Arsenal one of the youngest teams in the EPL and sap away more of our experience in midfield. As much as I loved all of those players last year none is irreplaceable. The only player on this Arsenal team that is irreplaceable is Cesc Fabregas and the fans all know that. As for the experience argument, there isn’t a team in the world that has more experienced 21 year olds than Arsenal.

So then, the only argument seems to be whether Arsenal need to spend big to replace Flamini, Hleb, Adebayor, and now Gilberto or whether they, as I have said time and again, can recruit from within. The fans are deeply divided here but there’s no need to be. Because Arsene Wenger knows what he’s doing. He knows his team, his knows his players, he knows where the team’s weaknesses were last year, and where he can draft in from the reserves to strengthen the team.

Of course, Wenger’s not always perfect: Aliadiere was given about 4 years too many. I understand what he’s doing with Eboue up front but it does seem like another Aliadiere situation. And the Reyes/Baptista experiment was a disaster. But his record with converting players is damn good. For each Reyes, there’s a Fabregas. For every Aliadiere, there’s an Henry. For every Eboue, there’s a… I was going to say Overmars but didn’t want to stain Marc with Eboue so I’ll just say “Wenger’s not perfect.” The point is, given the choice between our (the fans, pundits and writers) opinion and Wenger’s opinion I’m going to trust Arsene Wenger — he’s just proven to be better at this than all of us.

So, you’re going to keep seeing these stories about Arsenal in trouble but there’s nothing to worry about; Wenger no doubt has a plan. Honestly, I’m excited for the next season. I can’t wait to see Diaby in the midfield role he was brought here to play. I can’t wait to see what Wenger turns Alex Song into. And I can’t wait to see the triumphant return of Eduardo. But more on all that at the big kickoff party on August 1st when I do the season preview.

Now… what nuttiness will happen tomorrow?

Arsenal announced today that they have locked Alex Song into a long term contract. He’s just 20 years old and in his three years with the club he’s yet to really win over the skeptics, but he rates very, very highly with Arsene Wenger who last said of him “I could show you all the (news) papers who slagged him off, but I’ve always liked him, he will be an Arsenal great” or something like that. I’m convinced Song will start for Arsenal next year at either holding midfielder or (more likely) as partner to William Gallas in central defense. Now, we know that Wenger is bull headed about decisions that he makes so you lot that love to hate Song ought to just go ahead and get yourself used to the idea that he’s going to feature for Arsenal. Let it sink in… own the anger… there, isn’t that better?

We’ll see where the boss puts Song during the pre-season tournaments, which are set to kick off with the traditional friendly against Barnet on the 19th of July. Also set to feature there is Mexico starlet Carlos Vela, who scored a goal in Mexico’s 4-0 thrashing of Peru. I know nothing about Vela, except that he’s 19, he’s got a very slight build, he’s “highly rated,” and he’s competing for a spot in one of the most congested positions at the club; striker. Good luck little buddy!

Adding to that congestion up front, Eduardo is rumored to be ready to play in July. On the one hand I would be shocked, people just shouldn’t be able to recover that quickly from having both tibia and fibula broken. But on the other hand, this is how far medical science has come for the people who are fortunate enough to afford it. Let’s hope the Boss proceeds with great caution, the last thing we need is another van Persie type situation.

In a totally unrelated article, Gilberto has publicly asked the kids to stay together and achieve something great. I don’t know where this agitation is coming from but someone in the squad is clearly agitating the others. Maybe it was the departure of Flamini and the imminent departure of Hleb that’s causing this uproar? I don’t know, but good for Gio to stand up for the squad and warn the kids that the grass is never greener. One guy who learned that lesson the hard way was Patrick Vieira and now the rumor mill has Pompey looking to re-form Arsenal 2000 by signing him for £4m. You know, I jokingly have referred to Portsmouth as Arsenal South and as the Island of Misfit Former Arsenal Players, but this latest rumor is just bizarre. What the hell is going on at Portsmouth? I fully expect to see a “Pompey in for Henry” article at any moment now. PICK ANOTHER TEAM TO SIGN FORMER PLAYERS FROM, HARRY.

And finally, it’s ladies week over at Arsenal.com and I think that means drinks are half off and there will be hundreds of skeezy single men hanging around asking “do you come here often?”

Ok… one more thing… I thought it was funny to see an article that reprises England’s international glory days. You know, like 1988, when there were quotas and top flight football had tons of Englishmen to choose from — England must have done well that year right? Because we all know that the only thing that will “fix” football is affirmative action quotas for Englishmen!

I am dead tired of hearing from Blatter and Platini about how much they hate the EPL.  Unfortunately, the Euro 2008 tournament has afforded both of them ample opportunity to spout off.  Blatter started the whole thing off on Thursday by taunting England for not qualifying for Euro 2008.  He is absolutely, 100%, determined to push through his 6+5 rule: he doesn’t care how much it will hurt struggling football associations in Africa, Asia, or the USA.   He is only interested in tearing down what the English Premier League has built; a successful, multinational, diverse football league with a world-wide following that generates billions of dollars and which produces the finest football and footballers the world over.  He wants to stop the EPL because prior to their rise, the only decent football anyone outside of England, Italy, France, and Spain could watch was the World Cup.

The cat is out of the bag, though. Fans are not going to be satisfied with just the World Cup or Euro Cup every two years.  Players are not going to put up with this form of nationalistic discrimination. And owners are going to spend a lot of money to fight this.  So, even if he does get the exception he’s looking for I suspect that the rule will quickly be challenged and overturned in the courts.

And what happens if it holds up in court?  Well, there will only be two choices; the world’s top clubs follow the rule or they break away and form their own association.  If they follow the rule, then we the fans will lose out and I suspect that some other league will rise to prominence, threaten FIFA, and they’ll have to come up with some other law to put them down.  If the clubs form their own “super league…”  uh… well, I haven’t given that much thought but it seems awfully drastic and potentially permanently damaging.

Platini, not really caring too much about FIFA’s problems, seems to have given an interview while wasted.   I swear he had to have been drunk to say that he likes divers.  He actually admits that he was a cheater and thinks that cheating should be rewarded, saying “When I was a player I simulated to help my team win.”  But it was his stance against the retroactive bans of two French players who clearly cheated that really gets me.  This is the head of the organization that banned Dida for two matches because of insane dive and stretchering off against Celtic.

That was clear simulation, Dida was absolutely unsporting (actually disgraceful) to collapse like that.  Dida’s dive was a humiliating episode for everyone involved and only served to reiterate the constant criticisms that Football is nothing more than a bunch of “grass divers” as they say here in the USA.

For me, though, I see absolutely no difference between Dida’s dive and a player like Ronaldo who gleefully will say “I feel contact, I go down.”  Both are an attempt by the player to gain an advantage via the referee by cheating.   CHEATING.  In fact, I have said here before that I think the Ronaldo type dives are more problematic than the Dida type dives because they are harder to ferret out, more difficult for a referee to call properly, and they can (and are) done much more ubiquitously.  I think the Ronaldo type simulation has actually done as much, if not more, damage to Football’s reputation than the Dida dives.

And here, the head of UEFA, the governing body of European football, is saying that not only is he a cheat but that cheating is OK?  How drunk was he?  And then, of course, in the same breath as he embraces the diving cheaters, he decries Man U and Chelsea as cheaters because they have so much debt.  You almost have to laugh, right?

But like I said, I’m getting tired of talking about these two clowns.  I really wish they would just go away.

Adebayor watch

The boss said that Adebayor is not for sale and neither is Cesc Fabregas.  Still, Arsene, if AC Milan offer £32m for Ade, I say you take it.  I love the guy and all but come on!

Also, please note that Wenger is not saying that Hleb is not for sale.  Which must mean that he’s going to Barcelona!

And finally…

Wenger loves Spurs new signing Luca Modric but not nearly as much as he loves Cesc Fabregas’ intelligence.  It almost seems like a backhanded compliment, but the boss said that despite Cesc’s slight frame he’s got the best football brain in the world.  Or something.

That’s it for today.  I’m tired after my first week back at work, so I’m going to take a nap today!  See you tomorrow.

According to the Mail, Arsenal are going after Torres. Their headline screams “Torres flattered by Chelsea and Arsenal interest but his heart is with Liverpool.” HAHAHAHA That deal will never happen. Not in a million years. Not under Wenger where he can buy 3 Torres’ for the price that Liverpool would want. Regardless, if you read the article he just throws Arsenal in in an offhand way. So there really isn’t a story here except as yet another example of the way the press is searching for any and every story possible to connect with Arsenal.

Who could blame them? They have to get tired of running the same “Nasri deal not done” story over and over. I know I am.

Return of the Dein

Why anyone would ask David Dein anything about football matters I haven’t a clue, but they did. Or he held a press conference and inexplicably people showed up, I’m not sure. Either way, it’s being reported that the disgraced former Arsenal vice chair had something to say about the 6+5 rule: he’s against it. I’m surprised he didn’t find a way to say “Arsenal need funds from outside to compete in the new 6+5 world.” There’s nothing new here, except that somehow Dein got an interview.

6+5 = a six pack of drunks

Harry Redknapp is sick of English players. After four of his young English players (who didn’t even play) got soused on the bus ride home from the FA Cup win over Cardiff, Harry had a go at all English youth:

It’s a culture thing, you get these 16- year-olds who think they have cracked it and aren’t prepared to work and improve and put the hours in. You don’t get that with the foreign lads. I have gone up to youngsters in the morning after a big European match and asked a kid if he had watched it. Nine times out of 10 he will say ‘No’. I’ll ask him why? I’ll say to him: ‘You should have been watching Ronaldo or some other of the great players’. He won’t have an answer. They want the money, they want the fame and I suppose they think it is simply going to happen for them. But it won’t. What chance has a kid who is as disinterested as that got? None.

So, according to Harry Redknapp English youth are lazy, drunken, and unnecessarily arrogant. I wonder why there aren’t more English players in the Premier League? It couldn’t have anything to do with this “culture thing” could it? Naw, clearly just a rules change is in order. The EPL needs to go back to 1994 when only one team got into the Champions League final, the players were all drunks, the best players were left off the pitch because there was a quota, and the English team lost.  That’s what’s really important.

Oh yeah, and England didn’t qualify for the World Cup.

QUOTAS WORK!

Of late, the English Premier League has been facing a lot of criticism from the likes of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, with accusations ranging from poaching players, too many foreign nationals, too much money which attracts all the big players in the world, hampering the development of youth players etc etc. (Arsenal has the least number of English players in the first team amongst the big 4 clubs) Sepp Blatter has announced a 6+5 formula and the FIFA has approved it as well. What remains to be seen is how the European Union responds to this. Although as a gooner I must say that I hate the sight of that bald b*stard, but Blatter is not way off the mark when he talks about the amount of money being pumped into the premier league.

Wages break 1 billion mark
The combined wage bills of the premier league crossed the £1.5 billion mark in 2006/07 season.  With the new TV rights and takeover of clubs by billionaires, the clubs in the league are getting more funds to spend on players. There are reports in the media that Chels*a, who have already signed Bosingwa for £16.2 million, are planning to spend big this time as well. ManU are also supposedly looking to splash £50 million this summer.  But not everything is as rosy as it seems to be. Only 8 teams reported an operating profit, as the collective wages to turnover ratio reached 63% in 2006/07 season as compared to 62% in 2005/06.  Also, an amazing £492 million was spent on transfers by the clubs in 2006/07 season.

Our Revenues
Our revenues have seen a tremendous increase after we moved to the new stadium. We reported an increase of 37% and our revenue touched £177.6 million. However, it doesn’t include the revenue from property development, which was £23.8 million. The total match-day revenue was £90.6 million (£3.1 million per match-day approx), which is a growth of 111% and was 51% of the total revenues. We also received £42.7 million from the shirt sponsorship deal and the stadium naming rights. Broadcasting got us £44.3 millions. With the increase in revenues, our wage bill has increased too. We paid £89.7millions in wages in 2006/07, which puts us in the third spot after Chels*a (£132.8m) and ManU (£92.3m). What the figures tell us is that the decision to move to the Grove has paid off immediately. The very first season in the new stadium has given us a growth of more than 100% in match day revenues as we had the most utilised stadium of all clubs in the league. We stand third in terms of wages paid and second in terms of revenue generated. However, we have a debt of £268m, which puts us at third after Chels*a and ManU at £620m and £605m respectively. But the difference between us and them is that we have our real estate projects at Highbury Square and Queensland Road which will be paying off the debt very easily. We have 25 years to pay off the debt at a fixed interest rate, irrespective of what the financial market goes through. Whereas, ManU have Glazer’s debt passed onto them, and they have to pay off interests to the tune of £50 million per year. Which means they have to consistently perform at home and in Europe so that they get the revenue to pay off the debts. Chels*a on the other hand have interest free loan from Abramovich. Although it is interest free, they’ll be in deep trouble once the Russian decides he has had enough and decided to buy another toy for himself.

How is the future going to be

How the future of the club is going to be will depend largely on the steps the board decides to take. According to Deloitte, the top clubs in the top financial ranking had a couple of similarities. First, all the clubs have a bigger stadium, which results in higher gate receipts. All the clubs consistently play in the Champions League. And, all the club are successful in their domestic leagues. We have just moved to our new stadium and have seen what a major difference it has made to our coffers. We have been playing in the champions league for a long time now. We have been fairly successful in the league as well. However, what we have been lacking is consistency. From 96/97 to 06/07, we have won 3 titles and 4 cups, but we have reached the quarter-finals of champions league only twice and reached one final. Compare that to ManU, they reached the quarter-finals four times, semifinals 3 times and won the UCL once. That is exactly what we are lacking. We must challenge for the titles regularly. That will not only see us get more revenue, but also will give us the satisfaction knowing that one season without any trophy will put huge pressure on ManU.

Resist Take Over Bids
We must also make sure that we resist any sort of take over bid. Our business model has shown that a take over is not necessary to be a financially successful club. We are not known to be big spenders, yet we are one of the best paymasters in the league. And that too without hurting the wage to turnover percentage. The surplus is duly invested in improving the training facilities or paying off the debt. We have worked out an almost perfect balance of wage structure and transfer budget and any ‘benefactor’ will just screw things up. The lock-down agreement between the board members will keep the b*stards out for sometime, though what will happen after the agreement is over, remains to be seen.

Image Courtesy Billcara.com

What do you think our present situation is like? What do you think our future will be like? What do you think the club should do to compete with the so called ‘big clubs’? Leave a comment and let your views be known.