So Arsenal and Chelsea were both fined £100,000 for the Carling Cup ‘brawl’, which was little more than a bit of pushing and shoving at the end of the day. The FA said:
The Commission stated that it viewed the incident as serious, unacceptable and damaging to the image of the game. It found that Arsenal players had been marginally more involved in the Carling Cup Final incident, but that Chelsea FC had past proven cases in recent years regarding the general behaviour of their players where warnings had been issued.
Now, £100,000 is a lot of money, for Arsenal. For Chelsea it doesn’t matter a jot. It could be £1m and it wouldn’t matter but the point is that both clubs have, in light of other incidents, been very harshly treated. The example that people are holding up against is the brawl between Sp*rs and Boro which saw them fined £8,000 and £4,000 (both clubs had 50% of those fines suspended as well).
Let’s not forget Emmanuel Adebayor was fined £7,500 for his part in the Carling Cup goings on, more than the Sp*rs and Boro fines combined. Hardly fair, is it? Should Chelsea not also have been fined for their fans behaviour as they hurled potentially lethal sticks of celery onto the pitch?
You have to question the FA’s motives behind these fines. With a massive payout to Sven Goran Eriksson (which is being paid in installments) £200,000 comes in very handy indeed, doesn’t it? There’s really no point going over such old and well trodden ground though. I mean, we could ask why West Ham weren’t even investigated when some scumbag threw a coin which hit Robin van Persie but what’s the point? The FA are a shower of insufferable cunts who have always been a shower of insufferable cunts and always will be a shower of insufferable cunts. There’s not much more to it than that.
There was movement of Arsenal shares yesterday and strange movement it was too. Ken Friar transferred 152 shares to Peter Hill-Wood for £0.00p per share, which is a very competitive price, you have to say. That means the Chairman now has 500 shares which accounts for 0.80% of Arsenal’s shares. With the 1.1% sold by Danny Fiszman still causing ripples this will do nothing to dampen speculation but at the moment that’s all it is. We know something’s going on, but what? I do love a good mystery.
The French press yesterday linked us with Frank Ribery again, no surprise, as well as Florent Malouda and Eric Abidal (who are most unlikely targets). I’m not going to bother too much with transfer stuff when there’s still a fair chunk of the season to go but of the three the short ugly winger is the mostly likely to arrive in the summer.
Gilberto has been linked with a move to Juventus. There are quotes from him and quotes from agents and blah blah blah. More worrying are reports that he limped out of last night’s friendly against Ghana at half-time so we shall have to wait and see if he’s fit for Saturday.
Tomas Rosicky was fined for partying a bit to late with some of his Czech buddies after their 2-1 defeat to Germany at the weekend.
The final groups of games take place tonight so hopefully all our players will come back injury free. Light votive candles, sacrifice goats to whichever God you worship. It is your duty.
Until tomorrow.
