Monthly Archives: June 2011

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
June 30, 2011 posted by arseblog

Give me back that old familiar feeling

Good morning. I hope this finds you hearty and well and enjoying the delights that only a summer can bring. Rumour, innuendo, frustration, constant refreshing of websites, trawling the NewsNow feed, and now, for the first time, Twitter has become a ‘tool’, and I use that word quite deliberately, for the mischievous to play with the delicate minds of football fan.

In the past it used to be a case that if a player was linked with a club some scamp would go to Wikipedia, edit the profile and change the ‘current club’ to the one he was linked with. This would spark a raft of reaction.

“OMG, Wikipedia says Winston Terrorgooch is already an Arsenal player!!!”

Of course Winston was no such thing. And people came to realise that because any old cunt could come along and edit Wikipedia pages it was as truthful as a politician caught with an orange in his mouth, a dozen young boys in his bed and a whip in his hand who said he was simply trying to get his ‘Helping the community’ boy scout badge.

Twitter has become the very same. It has, unwittingly, provided a platform for hundreds, if not thousands, of fans of each club who are insiders, in the know, impeccable sources, who then belch their knowledge into the public domain. And in these desperate times, when football fans are like starving people hanging out the back of an aid-agency’s plane, any little bit of informational sustenance is seized upon. Grab first, RT, then look at what it might be.

Last night there was a story on Twitter, entirely made-up, about how Samir Nasri had signed for United for £23m, after a medical a week ago, and that because Arsene Wenger had been overruled by the Arsenal board he was considering resigning. I mean, if you stop and think about that for a second it’s just stupid. Players generally have a medical just prior to signing, not that long beforehand, and the Arsenal board overruling Arsene Wenger? Yeah, you might as well have said the Arsenal board had a meeting during which they consumed more opium than a gigantic Sherlock Holmes before cannibalising Ken Friar in a poppy frenzy.

Yet this story was RTd and RTd and RTd and people were saying “OMG” and “Is this true?!” and “I can’t believe Arsenal would do this” without stopping to think for just one second. Fair play to whoever started it, it was a perfect example of how misinformation can be spread at the drop of a hat. It took advantage of fear, rumour, uncertainty and this desire to have the most up to date information possible at all times, regardless of its veracity.

I can understand it because as we wait for the club to do some business this summer – remembering that pre-season starts next week and the only signing thus far is Leeroy Jenkins – we’re wrapped up in two tedious, long-running sagas involving two of our best players. The Cesc situation and that of Samir Nasri. There were some comments last night from Cesc which I read in Spanish and then promptly forgot. I missed a trick with the Arseblog Store, I should have created a range of teacups for people to have storms in. And Nasri, much as I find it unseemly and annoying, is just playing the game.

The game that footballers all down the years have played. Check out this quote from the summer of 2001:

I had a meeting with Arsene Wenger and the club’s vice-chairman David Dein two days before I went on holiday to America. I told them I was not going to renew my contract for a third time, that I wanted to leave and that is was nothing to do with money because that was not an issue to me.

This is not about Arsenal, but about my personal ambitions as a player. I feel, and people should respect this. I expect Arsenal to stand by a verbal agreement they have with me and I expect this to be sorted out before I return from my holiday.

That was Patrick Vieira, if you hadn’t already guessed. This was when his agent, with the player’s full knowledge, tried to engineer a move to Manchester United. Imagine if Twitter had been around then. It would have been much easier for people to call him a ‘traitorous cunt’, at the very least. The first line of that article, by the way? ‘PATRICK Vieira intends to go on strike unless Arsenal agree to sell him’. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Forward we go to January 2002 and a story in the Sunday Mirror:

PATRICK VIEIRA will activate a gentlemen’s agreement with Arsenal this summer to complete a pounds 40million transfer to Real Madrid. Vieira, who has been at the centre of growing speculation about a move to the continent, is understood to have agreed last summer to remain at Arsenal for one more season following a row over his future

Agreement to stay for just one more summer after his future was in doubt previously? Where have I heard that before? And on it went. Almost every summer from 2001 onwards there were stories and rumours and whispers about Vieira’s future until the emergence of a young Catalan boy made Arsenal decide the time was right to cash in. The story goes that when David Dein told Vieira at the training ground that we’d agreed to sell him to Juventus, Patrick was in tears. Yet that’s football, it’s a business, the clubs will hold onto players as long as they feel they have value and once that starts to dwindle off they go.

In the summer of 2001, after Vieira had publicly questioned the ambition of the club (at that point Arsenal had gone three seasons without the title, and lost the FA Cup final to the Mugsmashers), he stayed and Robert Pires said:

It was vital Patrick stayed because, by keeping one of the main leaders of the team, Arsenal are demonstrating they want to progress. That was an important message to make. If you let a player of Patrick’s stature leave, your whole credibility is shot to pieces. That’s why keeping him here was so important. For me and the others, it shows Arsenal are serious about wanting to be one of the best clubs in the world.

Wouldn’t it be easy now to replace ‘Patrick’ with ‘Cesc’? Doesn’t the same sentiment Bobby is expressing apply to Arsenal today and, after six seasons without a trophy, isn’t it more crucial than ever that they club do as much as they possibly can to show they’re serious about wanting to be one of the best clubs in the world?

Does selling your captain and essentially buckling to a relentless campaign from Barcelona do that? Does accepting a bid of £35-£40m (if we do) really demonstrate anything other than the fact Arsenal are a selling club, a stepping stone to truly big clubs? Why would that be an acceptable amount for a player of Cesc’s calibre? How can selling our best player, and one of the best players in the world, be anything other than a step backwards?

Forget the people who say we need a clean slate and that selling him would be good for all concerned. It’s nonsense. It would be bad for Arsenal, on the pitch and off it. The reality of having one of the best players in the world is that the other big clubs around Europe will want him. We’ve had it with Vieira, with Henry, even with Bergkamp who was strongly linked with Barcelona in the summer of 99 or 2000, if I remember correctly. What would it have said about us back then if we’d sold Dennis?

Cesc has a contract till 2015. Either Barcelona come back with an offer than we simply cannot refuse (we all know every player has his price) and we reinvest that money in an established, world class talent, or we tell them to fuck off, draw a line under this, and get the fuck on with our work this summer. The other side of this, of course, is investing properly in the squad. I fully understand people who are frustrated that we haven’t brought in any new players yet. If we’re serious about improving we need to a) keep our best players (tough and all as it might be) and b) bring in players who will improve the team.

I’m still patient, I know transfer business is complicated and time consuming, but the reality is that pre-season training begins early next week. We don’t have to have things done by then but it’s a marker at which we ought to consider where we are, what we’ve done, and what we still need to do. And at this moment in time there’s a lot still to do.

So it’s over to you, Arsenal. Do we want to progress or do we want to shoot our credibility to pieces? I have no doubt some impeccable source on Twitter already knows the answer.

Till tomorrow.

Columnists
June 29, 2011 posted by Tim Stillman

Footballism and unvarying dancing

Tim Stillman column - Arseblog

A slumbering summer appears to be slowly stirring from its sleep; stretching, yawning and having a good old scratch of its knackers before assessing the carnage ahead. Though there have been no confirmed incomings or “don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way outgoings”, the cogs appear to be creaking into action. The transfer window opens officially on the continent on Friday, whilst Arsenal’s first team are back in pre season training on 6th July. I’m of the impression that by the time I come to pen this column again next Wednesday; there will be more than mere speculation to write about.

Perhaps inevitably, it is the transfer saga of Cesc Fabregas and Barcelona that has set tongues a flutter. Only this time, it’s not been the loose larynxes in Barcelona that have set the Catalonian amongst the pigeons, so to speak. We now know that Barca have made a rather derisory offer of £27m to the club for Cesc. An offer that has rightly been refused and, one would hope, that the fax containing the offer has been put to good use in the water closet at Casa Gazidis.

However, whereas last year’s initial Barca bid was met with spiky defiance in the shape of a statement that rather said, “Fuck you very much and have a nice day”, this year there appears to be a more conciliatory tone from the club. If last year’s rejection was administered with a sledgehammer, this year’s seems to have been delivered with an olive branch. It’s no accident that a senior Arsenal official told the BBC quite candidly that if an acceptable bid came in, “I expect we’ll have to sell.”

Arsenal have rather thrown a curve ball into this jester’s court that suggests they’re willing to do business. Of course, this could all be a deceptive ploy. I wrote in this column last week that I felt Barcelona were laying the groundwork for a future bid; gently letting Cesc know that they are on the radar; whispering honeyed words to Fabregas but failing to follow up with the proposal until they really needed to. Maybe this is a ballsy counter strategy from Arsenal. Perhaps they are asking Barca to put up because they know they won’t, which would force them to then shut up. If Barcelona blink, everybody will know they are bluffing.

I’d like to think that that was the angle; but I just don’t think it is. I must say the club’s stance has come as a surprise to me. Cesc’s contract is still reasonably strong. We know he’s a good professional and it’s unlikely he will cause us any trouble. My personal preference would be to hold onto him for one more year until an axis of Wilshere and Ramsey are ready to take the reins. But sometimes we have to accept that managers see things that we as fans don’t. It wouldn’t surprise me if the manager and the captain had a gentlemen’s agreement last summer that, in the event of another unsuccessful season, the club wouldn’t impede a move.

Maybe, to coin a popular Wengerism, the reasons are more footballistic than that. I’ve written many times before about my frustration that the team seem overly contented to stand by and let Cesc shoulder the burden for the whole team. Even in games at home to Huddersfield and Leeds, the players appeared to be looking sheepishly towards the bench, just waiting for Cesc to come on and cut their meat and veg for them. It’s possible that the manager believes we have come to the sort of checkpoint we arrived at with Henry, whereby the captain has unintentionally become a shadow that the team needs to step out of.

Ready or not?

Ramsey, Wilshere and Song is a midfield trio that could feasibly play together for ten years or more. There were green shoots of a positive symbiosis in the home victory over United. The shift in emphasis being that Wilshere and Ramsey swapped the more attacking role, whilst Song stayed deep. Whilst I’m enthusiastic about that prospect, I think it would be a big ask for those three young men to carry a season that could potentially rise to around 60 games. Who knows, it could just be that the manager wants to stop delaying the inevitable and wants to remove an insuperable barrier to building his team with a long view.

Our reported transfer targets seem to suggest there will be a change in emphasis. With Alvarez, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gervinho all in the crosshairs, the manager has invited anxiety for some by targeting tricky wingers when our defence is the most oft maligned aspect of the team. I’m not so sure myself, even if Fabregas and Nasri stay, we desperately need reinforcement in the creative side of our game. Tactical inflexibility came to blight the second half of our campaign. A little more variety in our attacking approach would be welcome- if anything so we don’t have to, oooh, just plucking an example out of the air, put our 6 foot 3 striker out on the wing just for the sake of shoehorning him into the same stuttering system.

At the very least, a little depth in our wide options gives us a better Plan B. It’s been widely suggested that the team should revert to 4-4-2; and whilst I don’t think that should necessarily be our system for every game in our campaign, it looks like we’re targeting players that can help us move to that more fluidly in game if necessary. A lack of pace and urgency has sometimes been present in our game. Walcott starts ahead of Arshavin nowadays not because he is a superior player- he isn’t. But because the qualities he has give us a better balance and variety in our offensive threat. Whilst reading Gingers for Limpar’s quite excellent season review I came to pondering the question as to whether Arsenal were actually that exciting to watch last season.

Now, I suspect supporters have been rather spoiled by the style of our play. We do clearly play an attractive brand of football. But a marriage of anxiety over lack of success and over exposure to it makes us immune to its charms sometimes. However, I am of the opinion our passing became laboured and one paced in 2011. Prodding the ball across the centre circle at 0.003mph in front of a ten man defence isn’t spectacularly effective. Possibly the nadir of the last campaign was listening to Stoke’s odious oafs grunting “Boring! Boring!” as we passed aimlessly and finding little ground for objection. Great sides are able to slow the pace of the game down with their passing and, once they sense an opening, they act with devastating speed.

It’s what Barcelona do so well. I recall Jimmy Hill talking about the Dutch side of the 70s and he said that the pace at which they conducted a game put one in mind of a dance step. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Too often Arsenal have just been slow. If the introduction of more “urgent”, explosive players can remedy that, all the better.

Moving on, it was interesting to see some of Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith’s more forthright comments regarding Arsenal’s ownership situation on Twitter this week. She was rather candid that Dein and his fallout with Fiszman had become a destructive influence in the boardroom. The comment that appears to have attracted the most discussion was that the current board had nothing left to give the club and should go. Not quite sure that’s as outrageous as people think.

Edelman and Dein have already gone, Fiszman sadly departed and the other members of “the old guard” are past retirement age by now. The new broom sweeping through the Marble Halls isn’t as much of a coup as people think. The old guard saw us through an incredibly difficult transitional period in moving us to a new stadium and bore the financial restrictions that came with that. Now the belts aren’t quite as tight, they can consider their job well done and are now looking towards pensioning themselves off. I just hope history properly places their contribution.

That about wraps it up from me this week. Until next I speak to you next, Up the Arse. LD.

Follow me on twitter @LittleDutchVA

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
June 29, 2011 posted by arseblog

Barcelona’s improved offer still nowhere near enough

Last night I dreamt I was drinking all night in a strange old hotel. Pints of Armagnac and other things and when the alarm went off this morning I braced myself for inevitable and no doubt painful *boilk*.

Which never came! That’s awesome. It’s like when you wake up and go ‘Oh, it’s Thursday’ and then you realise it’s actually Saturday. Of course, when you’re already dressed and out the door for school, as happened to me one day, it takes a little bit of the goodness out of it but still. It’s better than when you think ‘Hurrah, it’s Friday!’, only to discover it’s Wednesday, which is the more usual situation. So that’s a decent start to the day.

Unlike the back of The Mirror which suggests we could lose both Cesc and Samir Nasri this week. They say that Barcelona have returned with an improved bid of £34m. El Mundo says that Barcelona’s bid is €35m + “variables”. Sport say Cesc is house hunting in Barcelona. I say, fuck £34m and fuck their €35m + variables.

The Catalan press say that Barcelona consider this a perfectly acceptable price to pay for a player when there’s no auction, i.e. there are no other clubs after him. As has been pointed out before, and has been again by Arse2Mouse, that didn’t stop Real Madrid paying £80m for Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s the precedent here, not what Barcelona consider acceptable.

I do feel for Ivan Gazidis a bit, it’s certainly more difficult in this situation when there’s only one club bidding and the player would only go to that one club, but the fact remains that Barcelona are woefully under-valuing Cesc Fabregas. They insist in today’s reports that they will never go past the €40m bid they made last year, Sandro Rosell simply won’t allow it. In which case I would hope that leaves them disappointed.

As I’ve said, I understand this is a new regime at Barcelona, one which is determined to try and put the club back on a more even footing financially, eschewing the madness of the Laporta years, but that still doesn’t alter the fact that if they want one of the best players in the world then they have to pay an appopriate price. Offering us £1m less than Liverpool paid for Andy Carroll does not come close, I’m afraid.

For me the bottom line is that £34m is not enough and Arsenal should not only reject that out of hand, they ought to send them an official rejection on headed paper saying just:

£34m? heh

They’ll understand, I’m sure, because it’s not as if they haven’t paid big, big money for players before. They know what it takes to buy a world class player who still has four years left on his contract. And that’s the Ace that Arsenal are holding. Aside from everything else we have a player under contract who we have no pressing financial need to sell. And there’s no good footballing reason to do it either.

In the ‘will he, won’t he?’ madness, and the plethora of ill-informed opinion pieces on how Arsenal should sweep the decks and start afresh, the point that you can’t simply sell a player like Cesc and go out a buy a new one is almost completely missed. He is absolutely crucial to the team, and the way we play, and at the moment we don’t have anyone in the squad who can take his place. It’s also hard to think of a realistic target to replace him, even if we did have the full fee to reinvest.

As for Nasri the talk of a £20m from Manchester United continues. I think this story began life in Sunday’s News of the World and it doesn’t seem to be going away. I’m still a bit dubious about it, to be honest. I’m suspicious that it’s a ploy to get Arsenal to up their offer to the player, threatening us with the possible departure to a bitter rival, but I have to say if United did come in with a £20m bid I’d be very, very tempted to take it.

For a player with 12 months left on his contract it’s a big offer and would still represent a £6.5m profit on what we paid Marseille for him three summers ago. And if Nasri wants to go there, then fine, that tells you as much as you need to know about him. He’ll become a vague pantomime villain, never important enough for us to be the real deal, and we’ll move on and bring someone else in to take his place.

As I said though, I’m not sure it’s realistic. Would Arsene’s pride allow him to sell a player to United, especially after he so categorically said he wouldn’t last month? It’s one thing selling an Adebayor to Man City, or Thierry Henry to a club abroad, but to sell Nasri to United would be too much, I think. Perhaps his pride would be put to one side if the offer were large enough but the whole thing smells fishy to me. And by fishy I mean agenty. And by agenty I mean as foul and fetid as the decomposing, maggot ridden anus of a 12 foot long cockroach which has been pissed on by a badger in renal failure.

What’s clear is that the deadline the club imposed on the Nasri situation is looming on the horizon. July 1st was the date set for a decision, one way or the other, and unless Nasri agrees to a new deal the club will actively try and move him on. Whether they have any success in that remains to be seen. And I’m biting my tongue a little bit over Nasri’s carry on this summer.

What’s interesting is that a key figure in the Cesc to Barcelona deal has also been co-opted by ‘team Nasri’ to ‘help’ with his contract negotiation. That key figure knows well that the idea of Arsenal losing both Cesc and Nasri in the one summer is going to be a hugely difficult one to sell, so, if Cesc to Barcelona is likely, then Arsenal will be forced to give Nasri more money.

It wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising if that person was feeding information to the press about United’s interest in Nasri. It’s not a case of the journalists making things up, they’re simply using the info that they’re being given. And you can make of that, and those tactics, what you will.

July 1st has become almost mythical as people are expecting an avalanche of business to be done that very day. The significance of it is that the transfer windows around Europe officially open, and with many clubs financial years beginning on that date, it means they are more open to doing business so fees etc are part of the new financial year. So while July 1st won’t necessarily see announcement after announcement, I expect things to get significantly busier from then on.

Finally for today, The Sun says Arsene is set to replace ‘misfit’ Manuel Almunia with Inter’s Emiliano Viviano. Check out the picture. They could be twins! Same long mournful face, same dead, slightly heroin addicted, eyes, don’t do it Arsene. Have you never learned to judge people by their appearance?! It’s how they look, not who they are inside or what they do, that counts.

And that’s that for this morning. I’m off to enjoy a wonderfully hangover free breakfast. Laters.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
June 28, 2011 posted by arseblog

Ball in Barcelona’s court – CUoCo (again)

Well there was much drama yesterday when the BBC ran an article telling us what we already knew.

They quoted a ‘senior Arsenal source’ talking about the future of Cesc Fabregas. He confirmed an official bid from Barcelona:

“The offer was made formally in writing to our chief executive (Ivan Gazidis), and we said no straight away.”

Then was asked if they were expecting another bid:

“Possibly. If it’s enough I expect we’ll have to sell.”

None of this is a surprise or new information, in any way, apart from the formality of Barcelona’s bid. It was thought they’d made a verbal offer which we had turned down. Either way, it was refused.

Now, as you would expect, the Catalan press have gone to town on this. Sport says ‘Signing imminent: Cesc will sign this week’, and on the cover they’ve photoshopped him into a picture of Barcelona’s ghastly new shirt with the Times New Roman Foundation logo. El Mundo is a little more reserved but insists that Cesc will not return to London for pre-season training.

Yet nothing has changed. Arsenal’s position is exactly as it was at the beginning of the summer. Meet the valuation we have of the player and we’re open to doing a deal. Fail to meet that valuation and there’s no point even talking about it. I suspect that the BBC journalist was deliberately fed the information by Arsenal to bring things to a head somewhat.

The ball is now very firmly back in their court. Arsenal have publicly stated that if Barcelona bid ‘enough’ then they’ll ‘have to sell’. It’s now up to Barcelona to come back with a bid that is enough. And the big question is are they willing to do that? Are they willing to spend the majority of their transfer kitty on a player they obviously want but, as long as Xavi is still ticking, don’t necessarily need just yet?

If they want him they’ll pay what Arsenal want. Cesc has a contract until 2015 and while the stance this summer is somewhat different from that of the last, it doesn’t mean that Arsenal will do a deal just for the sake of doing the deal. And I sincerely hope that whatever we do will be 100% in the best interests of the club. I do like the way we seem to be quite ‘human’ in how we deal with our players, those that are struggling or in need of a change of scenery get what they need/want.

Sometimes it’s nice, as per Eduardo last summer. Sometimes it’s not so pleasant, like Adebayor or Hleb (or before that Overmars and Petit, for example), but again those things all come down to us getting the right deal for the club. There’s simply no room for sentiment when negotiating a price for one of the best midfielders in the world, for the captain of our club and our most important and influential player.

What Cesc wants, Cesc wants, but that doesn’t mean we should sacrifice anything to ensure he gets it. At the end of the day he’s an Arsenal player, under contract, extremely well rewarded and that’s that. Unlike Nasri, for example, he hasn’t publicly agitated, has always said he’s happy at Arsenal and it’s up to the clubs. So if there’s no deal this summer then he’ll remain an Arsenal player and will do his best, the same way he has in the 300+ games he’s played for his since his debut as a 16 year old. I don’t buy the story that he’d go ‘on strike’, and not return for training, for one second.

That he comes from Barcelona and is a fan of the club has no bearing on things either. Nor does the fact Barcelona might feel aggrieved at the way he joined Arsenal. That was eight years ago, they need to get over that already. This is football, this is business, and ultimately money talks. If they spend enough, they’ll probably get what they want. If not, it will be something for Cesc to ponder, to question why if they push the boat out financially for other players they’re not willing to do it for him.

It seems Arsenal want some kind of conclusion to this whole situation though. Publicly putting it up to Barcelona like that means a resolution sooner rather than later. It’s a brave strategy really. Ivan Gazidis has to negotiate with Barcelona knowing that they’re the only possible buyer and in a summer when disenchantment is high to have the potential sale of the captain to deal with on top of everything else is quite something.

We’ll just have to wait and see how he does, the consequences/fall-out from any sale can be put on hold until it happens (or doesn’t), but it’s now down to officials and money men do their thing. While Barcelona might be easily the strongest on the pitch you wonder if off it we might just have the strongest team.

In other news, the agent and father of Juan Mata denied any knowledge of an Arsenal bid for his son yesterday, but said he’d be open to an offer from an us if it arrived:

I know Arsenal is a big club, a very important club in England, always in the Champions League, but it’s up to any club to pay the required amount to Valencia.

According to the Spanish press Valencia are saying he’s not for sale and they wouldn’t comment yesterday on possible contact from Arsenal. The Sun says we’ll have to pay £23m for him.

Then again, The Sun also run a story about Arsene Wenger opening his heart with a letter to a fan. Which is rather amusing because the letter is made up almost entirely of selected quotes from Arsene’s press conferences. Opening his heart indeed.

The Express says we’ve opened talks with Bolton over the signing of Gary Cahill. There’s the suggestion that we might offer them players as part of any deal. And there are certainly a number to pick from, you just wonder which of the ones we have available might want to go there.

In The Mirror a link to Bayer Leverkeusen’s Chilean midfielder Arturo Vidal. I’ve said it before but the name Arturo just reminds me of the character from the book ‘Geek Love’ who has flippers for hands and feet. Now that would make football more interesting next season.

And finally, Arsenal have launched next season’s away kit. It’s a cross between Wycombe Wanderers and jockeys silks. Can’t say I’m a fan.

Right, busy day ahead. Till tomorrow.