Archive for Media Talk
The Curious Case Of Laurent Koscielny
Posted by: | CommentsMore often than not, the sleepless nights are about the heartbreak, the disappointment, the anguish and the despair. They’re about the anger and disgust for the punditocracy and the hacks who consider it open season on Arsenal.
You can almost taste the bile from the disdain and contempt in which Arsenal is held in the footballing media circles from Sly Sports to the BBC, from Talk Spite radio to the tabloids. There’s a macabre-esque enjoyment of Arsenal’s agony in every sense – and when we say it’s a conspiracy, we’re called paranoid.
Today though, there’s so much to say and write about such an amazing day for the spirit of Arsenal football club. For that however, I’d like to encourage you to visit ACLF where my friend Yogi has written a wonderful piece that captures the emotion and captures the moment. As George our resident pedant puts it, for all the days of anguish that Yogi has kept our sanity, it’s days like these that he deserves the stage to express the magic of the moment.
I have chosen today instead to focus on Arsenal’s most influential unsung hero, Mr Laurent Koscielny. There’s more than enough analysis all over the internet and the media of the now legendary shafting of the heathen horde at Stamford Bridge.
You see, the problem with the English football establishment is that there’s a collective determination to exercise cultural incompetence of breath-taking magnitude. Take the lack of understanding of the fundamentals of football business and finance. English football is the only place on this planet where people still think it’s OK to spend the GDP of most developing countries just to chase trophies.
It’s either a brazen and reckless disregard of the laws of economics as they pertain to football, or spectacular incompetence from a collective that has the IQ of a fence post. It’s the sort of culture that equates high spending to quality, notwithstanding the fact that the rationale for the market pricing is fundamentally flawed. How can it be justifiable for example for Andy Carroll to cost more in transfer fees than Thomas Vermaelen and David Silva combined.
So when the Arsenal scouting system pluck Laurent Koscielny from the wilderness of the French league, he is considered a pariah since he doesn’t conform to the text book definition of a Premiership defender. It’s almost like it’s a crime that they don’t know him so he can’t be that good. Koscielny’s not only fighting the PR battle against the football media and pundits, he’s had to contend with undeserved criticism from Anti-Arsenal Arsenal supporters.
Yet this brilliant young man has something that a lot of defenders don’t have. He is tenacious, dependable, perceptive and applies himself with finesse. He is a dogged defender with absolute class when it comes to the art of intercepting, one on one defending and recovery defending. He is exceptional in the air and excellent in working with the ball on the ground.
Koscielny is also silky in offence and has an uncanny ability to convert defence into attack with one touch football. A very confident player with the ball, he links up very well with the midfield and is perhaps one of the best ball playing defenders around.
The fact that people still talk about Arsenal needing quality defenders without paying Koscielny any respect for what he is currently doing is an insult of the highest order in my humble opinion. If Koscielny isn’t one of the best defenders in the league, I don’t know who is.
In yesterday’s post match punditry by Sly Sports, the punk Jamie Redknapp had the audacity to suggest that Laurent Koscielny had now arrived after that performance against Chelsea. As I was reminded, Jamie was probably the only person in the country who didn’t notice Lionel Messi in Koscielny’s pocket when Arsenal beat Barcelona with panache in perhaps the greatest match of football ever played in an Arsenal stadium.
From the first game that Koscielny played at Anfield, it was so obvious that the boy oozed class. And I gather it’s not just the class. I know a few female Gooners who are willing and ready to copulate with the guy and bear his children.
Granted, he has made some mistakes – but point out to me a defender in the league who walks on water. The media even hail Sideshow Bob at Chelsea as the second coming of defensive messiahs. That’s David Luiz in case you’re wondering who Sideshow Bob is.
If Luiz was that good – why the hell didn’t he play to stop the horror show at Stamford Bridge yesterday. Even after they wax lyrical and go sycophantic about Luiz because he cost £24m while Koscielny cost a few bob according to them, you can’t hide from the fact that Laurent Koscielny stands head and shoulders above the Brazilian defender. Everything they say about Luiz, you can say that about Koscielny with compound interest.
Let’s not forget, Fernando Torres might as well have been sitting on the bench yesterday, that’s how effective Koscielny was. He’s done it to Messi, he’s done it to Rooney and he’s done it to Drogba – and folks still think of this guy like a step child from the wrong side of the rail tracks.
And yet, Gooners around the world are debating who will lose their place in central defence to accommodate the equally magnificent Thomas Vermaelen.
I think people are missing the point. The question is not who will partner Thomas Vermaelen in central defence. The more substantive question is out of Vermaelen, Mertesacker and Djourou, who will be Laurent Koscielny’s preferred partner.
My sense is that Vermaelen and Koscielny will be Arsenal’s first choice central defensive pairing, but if you take it that there will be suspensions and injury as well as the need for tactical changes to counter different opposition – there’s enough games to go around for everyone.
The most exciting thing for me is that Koscielny, Vermaelen, Mertesacker and Djourou are either 25 or 26 years of age. The central defensive solutions at Arsenal for the next 8 to 10 years are on solid ground, notwithstanding the fact that young shining lights like Ignasi Miquel and Kyle Bartley are on hand to complement the squad depth.
Dont forget, if you haven’t yet, follow Stone Cold Arsenal on Twitter and join the growing community. We’re trying to find out where Bruce “We’ll beat the crap out of Arsenal” is hiding.
The Bastards Are After Arsenal, The Whole Phucking Lot Of Them
Posted by: | CommentsI got reminded this weekend why I started blogging in the first place. It really was either this or marriage counselling. The funny thing is that even my Chelsea supporting missus resorts to cursing like a drunk sailor when it comes to responding to the tripe and faecal matter served to us as opinion from the hacks and punditocracy.
“Have you read this shit yet”, my friend Jay screamed down the phone as he hyper ventilated in between spitting his spleen out. “These bastards are after Arsenal, the whole phuckign lot of them”.
“what the hell are you on about dude”, was my baffled response.
“The Daily Mail. They’re after Van Persie now”
Clearly, I wouldn’t have seen the faecal matter Jay was referring to as I wouldn’t read the Sports section of the Daily Heil if held at gun point. Not that the rest of the paper is a pantheon of journalistic integrity, the paper is symptomatic of a football media collective that is so far removed from anything with integrity.
This is the thing though – combine this lack of quality that redefines incompetence and you throw it into the mix of an agenda against Arsenal, the results are explosive.
Fuck everyone who suggests that there is no conspiracy. A conspiracy happens when more than one person plots to do something sinister. We don’t even have to look past the presenters at Talk Spite radio to satisfy this threshold. Throw in the print media, the punditocracy, Sly Sports and ESPN and the punks on BBC 5 live, the conspiracy makes Tony Soprano look like a pussycat.
Take the Robin Van Persie nonsense of a story. Someone at the Daily Heil decides that a new “Cesc must leave Arsenal story” needs to start sooner rather than later. He sits down in the pub across the road from Head Office, and after 4 pints and a dodgy meat pie, the light bulb moment hits. “I know, let’s do the Van Persie is unhappy shit storm”.
Next, Talk Spite radio picks it up as fact, followed by Sly Sports News who quote the Daily Heil as the source, before someone updates the Daily Heil article to quote Sly Sports as having broadcast the story.
Cue the internet circus who quote Sly Sports, Daily Heil and Talk Spite radio. The story then becomes a fait acommpli, with the hack who concocted the original story claiming he had the 4 pints and shared the meat pie with Darren Dein, Van Persie’s agent. Bedlam on the Arsenal faithful follows with Gazidis and Hill-Woods head being demanded alongside Wenger’s.
I’ve said it here loads of times, you don’t have to be paranoid for them to get at you. “Why do you think they’re after Arsenal” is the question I get asked all the time.
Simples. Arsenal represents a challenge to a Neolithic establishment that is in self-preservation mode. They feed off each other and they will attack anything that dares suggest an alternative to the status quo.
The fact that Arsenal hasn’t flown off the starting blocks this season is neither here nor there. It’s immaterial. The suggestion that 6 games into the season can tell you anything is as ludicrous as suggesting that if you sit at the front of a bus you’ll get to town before the guys sitting at the back of the bus.
This narrative of “Arsenal is in Crisis” didn’t start this season. It’s been in the making for a long time now and the end game is most definitely to hound Arséne Wenger out of English football and hopefully return Arsenal to mid-table mediocrity.
Never under-estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers. The bastards are determined and they don’t know when to stop.
“Arsenal in crisis” – my entire hairy ass.
A crisis is when you can’t feed your children because you have to live hand and mouth and can’t afford the next meal. A crisis is when the imminent default by the Greek government puts the Eurozone into free fall and risks the collapse of the Portuguese, Spanish and Italian economies – risking the very fabric of the European Union.
A crisis is when you wake up in a strange house after a one night stand, and your still drunk from the fumes of the previous night’s binging, you mistake a tube of Canesten for a non-branded toothpaste from Lidl or Aldi.
This narrative that ArsenalHasn’tWonATrophyIn7YearsAndAreInARelegationDogFight FC are in crisis needs to be filed right between shit and syphilis where it belongs.
Liverpool haven’t won shit in 6 years, let alone gone anywhere near the Premier League title. Why doesn’t anyone suggest they’re in crisis? What, because they spent over £100 million in transfers since Kenny Dalglish took over?
The only other two clubs that have won the Premier League since Arsenal have spent north of £1.7 billion to do It. Couple that with the over £1 billion investment in Man City by the Abu Dhabi Investment Corporation and we get told that it’s normal to spend the GDP of most developing countries to sustain a Premier league title.
The media shit storm about Arsenal is calculated, strategic and feeds off itself like an incestuous beast. And like lambs to a slaughter, people fall for it hook line and sinker.
Arsenal has work to do on the field to improve their form this season. There is no doubt about that. But to suggest meltdown or a crisis is just plain stupid. Of course the Van Persie contract stories help extend the narrative, but ask yourself this. Short of Van Persie’s agent sharing that dodgy meat pie with the hack who came up with this so called “exclusive” – are we suggesting that ArsenalHasn’tWonATrophyIn7Years FC actually briefed the press that Van Persie has refused to sign a contract even before contract talks start?
The worst thing about this is that lies and supposition is taken as fact even before the incestuous feedfest that engulfs the story while it goes viral. Editors aren’t bothered about checking facts or checking the quality and integrity of the articles their journalists write.
To be honest, you do wonder what it is most of them are paid for. It’s insulting to suggest that fans watching the game can’t form an opinion about what the game was like. Match reports are mind numbing at the least as hacks try to portray some sort of footballistic artistry when they write. Scraping the barrel is more like what they do.
Don’t even start me on the punditocracy, especially from former football players who couldn’t organize an empty drawer. Forget the tired ass clichés, most of these guys are actually incapable of any intellectual analysis. Suggesting they are illiterate would be kind.
I did actually question why I even bother to pay a licence fee to BBC after watching the Match of the Day re-run on Sunday morning. Hansen and Lowro’s punditry was as stale and uninspiring as watching Marcus Tandy in Eldorado.
But I agree with jay, they’re bastards, the whole lot of them.
The Arsenal Requiem, Armageddon in the Gooniverse
Posted by: | CommentsHere I was thinking it couldn’t get any worse, but believe it or not, the Philistines are in town. They say bedlam is taking over. They’re taking no prisoners as the battle to control the asylum thickens.
“Bring me the head of Arséne Wenger” is the deafening refrain that can be equally heard from the shadowy alleyways around the Holloway road and the ether that is the Arsenal blogosphere.
Sir Harry Pearce and his Spooks have gawked in amazement at the sheer noise and traffic that is overwhelming their listening stations only to find that bitching about Arsenal is spiking internet traffic like a nonsense. Off he sends Dimitri and Malcolm (no wait, Malcolm left the service, right?) – it’s minimum wage Tariq – Yeah, off he sends Tariq to redirect the Arsenal chatter on the web to the Samaritans website and TheSuicideBunker.com.
“If those Arsenal bastards want to commit suicide, then get them off my frigging grid before I blow a gasket”, Sir Harry demands. We’ve got the Russians to deal with.
Meanwhile, at the Islington Cathedral, the masses file into the church awaiting the arrival of the doomed casket carrying the remains of ArsenalHasNotWonATrophyFor7YearsAndHaveOnlyGot16PointsFromTheLast16Games FC. The casket slowly navigates the streets of Islington towards the cathedral in a cortege flanked on either side by twin cannons mounted on top of carriages drawn by the 4 horses of the apocalypse.
Sly Sports News lead the procession with Mr Transfer Deadline Day himself – Jim White marching as he blows the trumpet to the tune of “Judgment Day”, as Jeff Stelling, Paul Merson and Phil Thompson sing along with gusto that would put the town crier to shame.
The front pews of the cathedral are filled by a smug Red nosed Ferguson and his lackeys Alex McLeash, Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce and Phil Brown. Happy Harry sits in the row behind though he’s constantly occupied on his Blackberry trying to confirm whether his case file with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs was hidden in the imminently arriving ArsenalHasNotWonATrophyFor7YearsAndHaveOnlyGot16PointsFromTheLast16Games FC casket.
As the Right Reverend Alan Brazil of the Talk Spite parish rises to meet the casket, the multitude stand and join in a solemn chorus of “Kumbayah my Lord Kumbayah – Arsenal’s dying Lord Kumbayah”.
“But where’s Arséne?” a voice murmurs from the shadows of the media box at the balcony.
“You didn’t hear?”, John Cross responds. “They beheaded him like William Wallace, quartered him and had his head mounted on a stick outside the Waitrose on Holloway Road. Looks like he’s a bit short for this funeral”.
“What about the Arsenal fans? Don’t’ they attend their own funeral?”
“Well, I hear those whose bodies were recovered from the mass suicide on Saturday evening are still awaiting identification and can only be processed after that”.
As Reverend Brazil takes the pulpit, the congregation sits and awaits the final sermon as the Arsenal Armageddon is complete.
“Dear friends. We gather here today to witness the demise of an institution that dared challenge the establishment, an institution that despite our warnings and cautionary advice, thought that they could get away with doing things differently from anyone in the game”.
“Let this be a lesson to any other club that tries living within its means and refusing to sign the English backbone that we told them to sign. How dare they”
“We will hunt you down and kill you. At Old Trafford, At Ewood Park, even abroad at the Nou Camp. We will hunt you down and crush you with the wrath of a mighty iron fist that will ensure we make an example of you”.
“When we tell you to spend money, you must. When we tell you to buy Gary Cahill and Scott Parker, you must listen to us. When we tell you that Man City are taking over the world by spending the equivalent of the GDP of most developing countries around the world, then you must respect that. This is the way football will run, otherwise you will end up in this casket in front of me”.
As the camera pans around the enclosure usually reserved for family, the spokesman for the Arsenal Supporters Trust can be seen weeping silently next to an equally silent gentleman and former owner who watches sombrely. Happy Harry receives a text that his fixer at Southwark Crown Court was arrested by his namesake Sir Harry Pearce, defender of the realm. He too starts weeping but it’s not in solidarity with the Arsenal folks, its more to do with his case file still being active.
As the pallbearers led by Wright and Merson picked for selling their souls to the highest bidder are joined by Stelling and his crew to lead the procession out – the Camera spans to a quiet corner of the cathedral where Cesc sits with his minders Xavi Hernandes and Carles Puyol, who constantly whisper in Spanish “you could have been in that coffin my friend”.
The casket for ArsenalHasNotWonATrophyFor7YearsAndHaveOnlyGot16PointsFromTheLast16Games FC is led out to its final resting place at the Royal Arsenal Museum in Woolwich. The deafening silence for this final procession is only disturbed by the sound of Rednose Ferguson loudly masticating his chewing gum.
Damn wait! Was this a dream?
5 games in and judgement day has been written. If you didn’t know better, you’d think United has already won the title. What do we know anyway, Arsenal is in a relegation dog fight, we better start acclimatizing to football grounds we’ve never been used to – some of which hold 67 people with room for a few dogs.
Mind you, a game against Shrewsbury Town is just the game we need to get us used to playing in the lower leagues.
If you want to find out what happened in the rest of my dream, follow me on Twitter and I might just reveal all.
Why Bother With Arsenal, They’re Useless
Posted by: | CommentsImagine my shock last night (seriously, don’t laugh) on the way back home after watching the Champions League games with a few friends in town. “Be careful what you wish for” is the age old maxim that should have bitch slapped me in the face when I asked the taxi driver to put some football on the radio.
With the BBC’s exemplary equal opportunity employment policy that allows mentally retarded presenters like Robbie Savage to become an “expert”, it usually is a coin toss between 5 live or Talk Spite radio as to which is capable of coming up with the most faecal matter that can be legally allowed in one production.
Unfortunately for me, it was BBC’s Mark Pougatch who gave me the urge to ask for the sick bag, and it wasn’t because of the alcohol I had consumed while watching the Manchester teams’ adventures in Europe.
As conspiracy theories go, Pougatch was banging on about how cynical it is for United to have 6 home Premier league games immediately following Champions League ties, while Manchester City had 6 away games. Not that I wouldn’t put that past fixture mandarins with the propensity to kiss Alex Ferguson’s rectal anatomy, but it was Pougatch’s next remark that made me wonder why it is again that British people are held at gun point to pay licence fees for public service broadcasting.
This apparently reputable BBC presenter then went on to say that he did some research on Monday before the Champions League games and found out about the conspiracy in favour of United. He also did Chelsea who had 4 away games, but didn’t bother with Arsenal.
“Why bother, they’re useless anyway”.
This is the thing. If Arsenal were useless, I have no problem accepting such an observation. But Arsenal are not useless. Notwithstanding the fact that we had a positive result in a very difficult game at Dortmund, the expectation was that United and City were going to sail through their match day 1 fixtures like the other teams didn’t exist.
But no, they didn’t, and it was fairly obvious that City in particular have a fight to make it through to the next stage. Napoli away won’t be a walk in the park, and they can wishfully think about how to beat Bayern Munich.
The thing that stood out most with this “Arsenal are useless anyway comment” from Pougatch was not what he said, but how he said it. You could feel the absolute contempt and disdain in his voice, and I was half expecting him to spit in the microphone next to complete the triangle with some illustration of disgust for Arsenal.
The worst kind of venomous people are the ones who hide their spite under a cloak of niceties and professionalism. But it eventually comes out and last night left me seriously questioning why I even bother to pay a licence fee to contribute to the salary of presenters who have this sort of contempt for their listeners. It’s no point writing to the BBC to complain, they’ve already got a statement prepared about professionalism and reputation and that they will review – yada yada yada.
My friend Consols Bob still has the e-mail they sent him about his complaint on Robbie Savage – suggesting that they have rigorous recruitment policies designed to root out the assholes an Savage passed with flying colours.
Mr Mark Pougatch – if you’re going to pretend to be professional and thorough in your presentation, then please do your job and research all English teams with the same vigour and intensity. The fact that you can spout out such venomous nonsense about a team that you clearly hate while on a public service broadcast to millions of people who pay your salary is an indictment of your professionalism and character. You’re are disgrace to the profession of journalism, but then again, you really don’t have a high threshold to beat in this respect.
It reminded me of a story that Mark Saggers, a former BBC presenter who’s now at Talk Spite radio once confessed to on air about the treatment he received from a colleague at BBC they regularly presented with. My money is on Mark Pougatch being the colleague Saggers was referring to and the contempt, disdain and disgust I witnessed last night is indicative of what was being suggested about this “mysterious” colleague who forced another to change ranches.
But then again you ask, what’s different from what Pougatch is doing to what the punks at Sly Sports do or what the cretins at Talk Spite do.
Indeed, why bother with Arsenal – we’re useless after all.
I think the most amusing thing about all this is that even though we’re useless (has anyone noticed my cynicism yet?), Tottenham are still beneath us. ‘Tis true what they say – A cannon will always destroy a cockerel.
And by the way, if you haven’t yet, follow me on twitter. I’m now getting the hang of it. We might even get @markpougatch to defend his disappointing comments last night. Although he’s already told an Arsenal fan that the fan was being flippant about his comments.
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s going to be one of them days, probably even weeks or months. The Arsenal blogosphere and Twittersphere has literally gone off the grid with bedlam and hysteria. Colin Lewin must be one of the most worried men on the Arsenal payroll if you believe the misguided rationale out there that the Arsenal medical staff intentionally set out to injure their players.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That’s what conventional wisdom would dictate. Translated, it’s Latin for “After it, therefore because of it”. But is this always true? Does it follow that the Arsenal medical team are incompetent therefore Arsenal players are frequently injured.
Since the beginning of the season 24 days ago, you’ll find that out of the 8 defenders in Arsenal’s first team squad, only Carl Jenkinson and Ignasi Miquel haven’t been side-lined by injury, or in Sagna’s case, by a virus. The suggestion that Colin Lewin and his team are intentionally engineering all these injuries is as ludicrous as suggesting that Joey Barton and Robbie Savage aren’t platinum idiots.
We might as well check the betting patterns of the medical staff to see if any of them are visiting bookmakers more frequently than is healthy for a warm blooded individual.
I mean, they’re being accused of arranging for a Udinese player to kick the hell out of Vermaelen’s ankle and for setting up Jethro Gibbs to pull a hammy on us. They’re considered responsible for Andy Carroll shoving Koscielny into a back spasm when a probably feasible explanation is that Carroll was playing with a hangover.
Speaking of which, I’d like to know how they engineered Vermaelen’s thigh injury into an Achilles problem that needed an operation, but I digress.
The Arsenal medical team are not complicit in getting our players injured and I get bemused by the concert of Arsenal bloggers , hacks, plundits and fans screaming murder. And then you have the arm chair experts providing their considered opinions about how Arséne Wenger is mismanaging Arsenal and is subjecting Arsenal fans to a team of invalids.
The least these so called experts could do is apply to the folks at Highbury House for a job allowing them to you know – “impart their expertise”. Why talk to the Daily Heil or some other sleazy tabloid instead.
Injuries are a bastard, and there’s no way of getting round that. They’re also an occupational hazard in this game and something we have to live with. The notion being suggested that Wenger should stock pile players just in case does not make any sense at all. For one, there are squad limits, but more importantly, the squad is there for a reason, and it’s there not only to absorb injuries, but to absorb suspensions.
The more relevant question is whether the squad as a whole is strong enough, and not whether we get injuries that are part and parcel of the game. We might pray to whichever god we worship for the rub of the green, but injuries are a reality for a contact sport.
We might also hope that referees could actually do their jobs and stop the thugs masquerading on the pitch as “honest, hard tackling” players. I can’t tell you enough about my contempt for thuggery being used as an excuse for the inability to play football and for it to then be called grit and steel.
I even have to pay for the privilege of some twats on BBC to tell us that that sort of thuggery is what is needed in the game.
But then again, it doesn’t always follow that if we expect referees to do their job, then they’ll actually do their job. Not in this lifetime.
By the way, if you haven’t yet, follow me on Twitter to see how John Cross from the Daily Mirror is telling me how paranoid I am for suggesting he has a sinister agenda.
Arsenal’s Pursuit Of The Holy Grail
Posted by: | CommentsDivorce, marriage, bereavement, dodging bailiffs and supporting Arsenal’s pursuit of the holy grail.
If you believe Millicent from occupational therapy, then clearly supporting the Arsenal ranks way up there with the most common triggers of stress and anxiety. Not that she knows anything about football, but she’s read the papers and one thing is obvious – either Arsenal is full of shit, or there’s a coordinated onslaught on the fortunes of a club that is seemingly doing OK in this jungle that is football.
So of course she asked me “how is your club doing?”.
And for the record, Millie is a good friend and not someone I have been forced to “see” by my United supporting boss. I know that because I don’t have a United supporting boss – I’d rather resign than come to work every day knowing an arrogant punk is destined to make my life hell.
It’s been a while since I was up in here , but the hiatus was necessary as I tended to some commitments.
Last time I ventured into the world of football news, I got the impression that Arséne Wenger had been fired and Arsenal were going into administration following our relegation after only 2 games of the season. I suppose there’s a cynical upside to being featured in the news more than most, and that’s knowledge of the fact that Arsenal sells advertising.
That’s the only plausible reason for the sensationalist nonsense and faecal matter written about “ArsenalHaven’tWonATrophyIn6Years FC”. I mean, they might as well call us that.
Not that Liverpool have won anything in 6 years, or won the Premier league for that matter – 20 years and counting. Or that Chelsea, Man United and Man City have collectively spent north of £2.5 billion just to hog the trophies. And people want us to compete on a level playing field with clubs prepared to spend more than the GDP of over 40% of the world’s least developed countries.
Take Man City for example. This is a team financed by another country’s sovereign wealth fund. Think about it – this isn’t an egocentric billionaire who wants a train set of a football team to brag about. This is a club being financed by the oil and gas wealth of a Gulf state. How do you compete with a country.
If anything, football is fast losing its soul when the establishment actively promotes the obscene spending of money that it doesn’t generate. The hacks and plundits drool over the big money spending, oblivious to the economic environment around them.
You might be mistaken to think that these folks are deranged and have lost the plot, but to be honest, I feel sorry for the bastards. It’s clear that they haven’t got the ability to fathom the reality that football is dangerously living outside the laws of economics and when the bubble bursts, the thud as it hits the ground will be massive.
Arsenal on the other hand is treated like an unwanted step child – the club from the wrong side of the rail tracks. Considering that Wenger has literally been working in a strait jacket with limitations on what he can do with player investments, the man has worked a miracle to keep us competitive.
Of course there’s stuff that I would have wanted the guy to do differently; but point a man to me devoid of mistakes and I’ll tell you if that man is Jesus. Wenger certainly isn’t – but what he is cannot be doubted. He is one of the best managers in the world. A visionary with the balls and courage to do what his peers quietly admire but rarely admit publicly lest they’re lynched by the punks in the media.
Every day, I’m reminded why Arsenal is a magnificent club, and as they say “if they hate you that much, you must be doing something right”.
The end of last season left a bitter taste in the mouth, more so than the recent freak show at Old Trafford. I was asked by a friend whether we can ever recover from that mauling, and I suppose the narrative has been such that Arsenal is now seen as a basket case.
We’ve regrouped and brought in some shiny new recruits, a bit of experience and some solid team spirit and commitment. Dare I say some passengers have also been moved on – to Spain and up North to Manchester. I hear we’ve lost world class players we haven’t replaced. But then again, these world class players couldn’t carry us when the team needed it most. It’s not out of the realm of reality to take the view that maybe the world class player dependency was one of our weaknesses and we need to work more as a team with distributed responsibilities.
Supporting the Arsenal has never been for the faint of heart, and our season starts Saturday. If you believe some out there, our campaign this season has already been flushed down the toilet. I mean, we even have shorter odds of being relegated than them lot on the other side of Seven Sisters Road.
What to do except for us to fan up and enjoy the roller-coaster ride.
PS: Follow me on Twitter as I get into the mix of this micro blogging thing. My young niece tells me it’s the new frontier.
Stop The Bitching And Get Behind Almunia Already
Posted by: | CommentsI was quite bemused earlier on today when listening to my morning dose of sports news. To be honest, I don’t know what I expected considering that Arsenal was allegedly plunged into meltdown after the transfer deadline handed Almunia the Arsenal No.1 shirt by default.
“How stupid is Arséne Wenger? Can he not see that the fans want a decent keeper? Why does he not listen to the pundits?”, asked a comically exasperated Mr. Alan Brazil.
Even my cornflakes cringed on hearing Brazil demand that Wenger listen to the pundits.
You have to wonder though, whether the Samaritans were intentionally forwarding calls from so called Arsenal fans to Talk Shite radio. Someone has to have a word with the bosses at the Samaritans for gross dereliction of duty. These Arsenal fans are hurting and desperate – and they need proper counselling, they don’t need to be sent to a bunch of Anti-Arsenal retards who have perfected the art form of xenophobia.
For the record, my position is that the Arsenal coaching staff have the responsibility to ensure that we’re best equipped for the new campaign. Perhaps the mass hysteria misses the trick here in not identifying the issues that Arsenal has to address to defend better as a unit.
So far, I think they’ve done that job satisfactorily with the personnel changes made and the application of a more coherent defensive strategy. The misguided and and somewhat amplified perception that Almunia is the problem to Arsenal’s trophy drought is a red-herring of the highest order.
I’m amazed that the anti-Arsenal brigade and the punks in the media didn’t notice the 2 fingers Wenger stuck up right in their faces. Almunia was the match day captain every single time he was on the pitch, and deputized for Fabregas when the Spaniard had finished his shift at Ewood park. If there was ever an implicit vote of confidence, then what better way than doing something that obvious.
“But Wenger made a bid for Schwarzer. Doesn’t that show that he wanted to change things?”, I hear the heckling of the depressed and crazed fans with blood shot eyes holding the “Wenger Must Go!” placard on Holloway Road.
In between the chants of “Bring me the head of Arséne Wenger”, they summarily accuse the club of lacking ambition and failing to listen to pundits who clearly have the answer.
Yes, Wenger dipped his toe in the goal keeping transfer market, and many will accuse him of not trying hard enough.
What’s to say the Arsenal manager wasn’t lighting the mother of all bonfires under Manuel Almunia’s ass to make sure the Spaniard keeps on his toes? It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?
Wenger has an M.O that is impossible to ignore. He always signs essential players in the first week of July. These are the players who are identified as being critical to the season, changes that need to be made immediately. Koscielny, Nasri, Rosicky, Sagna, Chamakh et al, all came within a week of the transfer season opening.
If Wenger really wanted a new keeper, Arsenal would have got a new keeper. Schwarzer would have been nice to have around, but more importantly, Almunia was never on a transfer list. Fine, he might have left on his own volition, but Wenger never said he wants him out.
The best thing that has happened is that the transfer window has been nailed shut and boarded up. Enough of the Arsenal needs a new keeper madness.
It’s time to get behind Manuel Almunia and show him the love. There is no excuse in my view for not supporting him once he crosses that white line.
And by the way, I thought Almunia’s performance against Blackburn was stellar. If that had been Cech or Van Der Sar, everyone would be waxing lyrical about the performance and the reason why Chelsea and United are ‘Champions material’.
The rest of the team didn’t do badly for themselves either. So far, so good.
Tue 13th September 2011; 19:45, Dortmund