Monthly Archives: August 2011

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
August 31, 2011 posted by arseblog

Three in, more to come?

Right then, here we are. It’s TDD. Transfer Deadline Day. The sporting equivalent of Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. A load of shite made up by Hallmark simply to sell you tat you don’t need.

And you don’t need me to tell you that’s exactly what Sky Sports have done with football. As clubs feel the pressure to buy tat they don’t need (or tat they do!), their intrepid reporters like Johnny Sixphones and Jim ‘Redknapp Rimmer’ White, feed us non-stop information about who might on their way here, or who they understand is going there and for whom there’s talk of a medical somewhere else.

Most years Arsenal fans are on the periphery of TDD. We go into it with hope and not much expectation. Arsene has already said he’s done his business but, tantalisingly, says that if a bargain crops up then it’s not impossible. As the window draws to a close that flicker of optimism is snuffed out, other clubs go about the place like market traders, a-haggling here, a-bartering there, and we end up with nothing. But today should be different.

We know of three deals done or very close to being done, more on those soon, but Arsene still has a big chunk of change burning a hole in his Farrah slacks pockets and we still need a player or two. So it could be an interesting one. There’s hope, but there’s also expectation. Who might we be after? How much will we spend on them? Will we break our transfer record? Who might we sell? What does Sixphones have for lunch? All these questions and more will be answered before the day is out. In the meantime though, we’ve done some business although not all of it has been made official. Some thoughts on those.

Park Chu-Young:

South Korean captain, signed from Monaco, fee believed be less than £3m, which would make sense because he’s got to go back to South Korea in 2013 to do his national service. It seems extremely odd to me that we’d sign a player we are forced to lose in a couple of seasons time but clearly he’s a stop-gap signing, made when it became clear Joel Campbell wasn’t going to get a work permit.

That said, for a ‘stop-gap’ he seems to fit the bill. He’s experienced enough, at 26 years of age, will wear the number 9 shirt, and although the signing is odd in terms of the profile of the player and the fact his future is out of our hands, I’m interested to see what he can do.

On arrival he said:

I will do my best, I will never give up, I will show heart, I will give everything and I hope [the fans] will support me.

Can’t fault that and you can be sure of one thing – if he shows all those qualities on a consistent basis then he won’t be lacking in support. We’ve seen players come in to this club, give it socks for a few months, and then turn decide that’s enough effort. Hopefully that won’t be the case with him and he can make himself an important part of the squad.

Per Mertesacker

The gigantic German has been linked with us plenty of times before but his arrival now, for around £8m from Werder Bremen, signals a desire to finally do something about our porous central-defence.

There have been questions over his pace but, frankly, it seems like nitpicking to me. We’ve had plenty of fantastic defenders down the years who weren’t quick and if we’re worried about his ability to get back when teams exploit the space behind us, perhaps the answer is not to leave so much space behind us in the first place.

He adds height, experience (75 German caps), and at 26 is exactly the sort of age we’ve been looking for. I get that some people love to have a moan but you can’t cry out for this type of signing then complain when we make this type of signing. We’ll have to wait and see how he adapts to English football but on paper this signing ticks all the right boxes.

André (dos) Santos

Andy Two Saints (no relation to Johnny Sixphones) is a Brazilian international defender. We’ve just sold Armand Traore to QPR, Kieran Gibbs injury problems continue to plague his fledgling career, and going into the season without strengthening at left back would have been quite insane.

28 years old, 22 international caps, perhaps more of an attacking left back than a defensive one, but that in itself might not be a bad thing. Remember when our left hand side used to produce goals? In the Clichy era, and with all due respect to our departed friend, we lacked a little something. He’d intercept, bomb forward, then cross the ball perfectly for Arthur Smith sitting in Row Z. It’s safe to say this is an area we could improve.

Of course his first job will be to bed into what’s going to be a very new look back four but if he can offer us more going forward then that’s no bad thing either. And from the bits and pieces I’ve seen of him on YouTube he’s certainly capable of giving us something in the final third. And competition between him and Gibbs should be healthy for both players, especially if Gibbs can stay healthy in the first place.

—

So, those are the additions we know about but there’s likely to be more movement today. At this moment in time there are still question marks over certain players. Nicklas Bendtner could stay or go. The same with Marouane Chamakh who is being linked with a loan move to Spain. The uncertainty over Bendtner’s departure might well be tied to the future of the Moroccan who, frankly, looks anything but a Premier League player these days. If there’s a straight choice between the two then for me it’s the Dane.

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that both could go and another striker arrives but I’d be surprised. There’s also the suggestion that Henri Lansbury could follow Traore to QPR but Wolves and Norwich are interested in him too. Beyond that it’s hard to see anyone else leaving.

There is still a gap though and that’s in midfield. I hope that there’s something in the offing here because since Cesc’s departure we’ve needed a signing here more than anywhere else. It’ll be interesting to see what he does here. The links with Yann M’Vila suggest that he’d add strength to the defensive side of our midfield but it is unquestionably the creative side of it that needs to be improved. So does he go out and buy M’Vila and then when Wilshere is fit again move him forward into his more natural position? Or are we in the market for and out and out creative/attacking midfielder?

I would hope it’s the latter to be honest, and if we’re being greedy we could hope for both, but I think one signing in midfield would probably complete the business. Who it might be I haven’t the faintest idea. I assume the club have targets but even those who get whispers of things before they happen aren’t hearing any names. I hope it’s because details haven’t leaked yet and not because there’s nothing doing.

So, let’s see what happens. It promises to be a busy day, Arsenal have money, and while you might liken it to Christmas Eve spending, sometimes the last minute whirling around shops pays off handsomely. A bargain here, an inspired choice there, and an ‘Ah fuck it, I’ve got until the end of January to worry about my credit card bill’ to finish it off.

Fingers crossed Arsene and the rest make it just so, and that we don’t end up with a DVD box-set of the entire Adam Sandler collection.

You can follow me and Arseblog News on Twitter throughout the day and I recommend keeping an eye on Gunnerblog too. He knows things.

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

Arsenal react but do we have problems behind the scenes?

Arsenal have had all summer to buy players. Why they haven’t done so until now is very much an area of conjecture. Have we been unwilling to do so or simply unable to get our business done?

For all our frustrations, it’s hard to imagine that we’ve remained as static as we have through choice. If the manager and the club accept we need new players just 3 days before the window closes I think it would be reasonable to assume they were aware of this throughout the summer. The defeat to Manchester United so close to the deadline may have sparked a bit of urgency, but I very much doubt it was a case of ‘Oh, I thought our squad was better than that, better buy some players so!’

So what has been the problem? The money has been available since the get-go. Our transfer fund, pre-Nasri and Cesc, was around £35m which was to be boosted by sales of ‘fringe’ players. How many of these players have we actually sold? Vela, on loan. Denilson, on loan (despite the fact I’m pretty sure there were concrete bids from Spain). Almunia, gone nowhere. Clichy, we got some money for. What of Nicklas Bendtner, for example? Back in July Arsene confirmed he was being left out of things because he was in talks with other clubs, and the player’s father and agent confirmed there had been lots of bids.

So what’s holding things up? Are we to take it that not one of the clubs who have been given permission to talk to him have managed to find a financial package attractive enough for him to accept? He made it very clear he wanted to leave the club. He might well be on higher wages here than he’d get elsewhere but that doesn’t mean a new club has to give him exactly the same. You have to ask have Arsenal carried out their side of things properly? I can’t believe that there wasn’t one offer acceptable to Bendtner, especially given his desire to leave.

On Sunday, Amy Lawrence wrote in the Observer about summer and the business that’s been done/hasn’t been done. It’s worth another read in the light of Arsene’s comments after the United defeat. Speaking about transfers, he said:

I am not the only one to work on the case, we have 20 people who are working on that. If we do not do it, it is because we don’t find them.

Quite telling. I’ve struggled with Arsene’s inaction over the course of the summer. I’ve found it frustrating, maddening at times, but the idea that a manager as experienced as he is and as intelligent as he is has cast an eye over this squad and deemed it acceptable is difficult to make sense of. Yes, we know he likes young players, he enjoys giving them a chance, but in your heart of hearts do you really think he went to Old Trafford with that group of players thinking they were good enough?

Now, I’m not excusing Arsene by any means, and last night he got the full backing of the owner and the board who let it be known that:

The club is very much behind Arsène Wenger from Stan Kroenke to the board, downwards and sideways. There is absolutely no suggestion of any conversations about his future. We are right behind the manager who has led us to such great success for 15 years.

However, is something amiss with our scouting department? Arsene more or less said so above – if we’re not buying players it’s because we’re not finding them. And who is supposed to find them? The scouting department. Also, and more pertinently, are the people tasked with doing the deals when we have them on the table up to the job? From everything we’ve seen so far this summer it appears they’re not.

Ignoring the disasters that were Nasri and Fabregas, we have to question again why Dick Law spent so long in Costa Rica trying to sign a player who won’t play for us until next season. And remember, this deal was on, then very much off, before being on again. Joel Campbell, a 20 year old with absolutely no reputation or standing in the game, simply failed to turn up to a meeting with Law. Poor form from Campbell, no doubt about it, but what does that tell you about the man we have in charge of doing massively important deals and the regard that others hold him in? If a ‘nobody’ like Campbell acts like that …

Another example, last Monday, Dick Law traveled to Bolton to negotiate the purchase of Gary Cahill. Obviously there had been some contact between the clubs beforehand, they were open to selling the player, yet Law returned to London, tail between his legs, with no deal done. A few days later, Bolton, unwisely and rather unclassily, I’ll admit, went public with the details of our bid. Scoffing at our attempts to sign him, using Twitter to mock Arsenal Football Club.

It doesn’t reflect well on Bolton, by any means, but nor does it reflect well on us. The fee on offer was a guaranteed £6m which would rise to £10m based on appearances etc. Although the Nasri deal was a bit special you can see how Bolton might be aggrieved that a club, about to receive £25m for a player in the final year of his contract, would try and lowball another club for a player in the same position. Cahill was one of Bolton’s best players, no wonder they felt cheesed off.

However, you also have to wonder if there’s more to it than that. Clubs receive and reject bids for players all the time. Very rarely do they go public like Bolton did. Was it something about the way that Dick Law operated that annoyed them and caused them to lose their reason days later when, in reality, they really ought to have calmed down? Maybe the problems go beyond the overly-simplistic, but widespread, belief that Arsene simply doesn’t want to buy players.

I think it’s obvious that Arsene has the support of the board but it looks to me as if some of the people behind the scenes are have made this summer more difficult than it should have been. Maybe that’s an area the club need to look at once the dust settles.

All the same, it does look as if we’ve got our arses in gear a bit. We know the South Korean Park Chu-Young is a done deal, Arsene admitted as much after the United defeat, and last night reports emerged from Turkey that we’d had a £6.2m offer accepted for Fenerbache’s Brazilian international left back Andre Santos. I don’t know a great deal about him but I do know we need a left back, especially with Traore (thankfully) on his way to QPR, and at 28 he’s got plenty of experience.

I’m told that a centre-half deal is close to completion, and someone at Chelsea has been busy as we’ve been linked with Alex, Yossi Benayoun and Florent Malouda in the last 24 hours. How much truth there is in those stories I just don’t know, but with just today and tomorrow to get our business done, I suspect we’ll be hearing plenty more names before the transfer window closes.

It might well be late, but it definitely is better late than never. The next 24-48 hours are going to be fun.

Columnists
August 29, 2011 posted by Tim Stillman

Inviting Italians, Murderous Mancs

Tim Stillman Column

Greetings Arse-connoisseurs.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel like I spent yesterday gagged and bound in a cage of horny gorillas, with only my wits for company. For most of today I have been desperately trying to scrub the scent of sweet monkey love from my pores. Metaphorically speaking you understand. *Ahem*

It may not have escaped your notice that it’s Monday. The even more observant among you will have realised that that Stillman fella doesn’t usually pen his overly wordy insights on these pages until a Wednesday. Well, I was in Italy until Thursday evening last week. If you don’t like it, I’ll refund you for a future column …

Before reliving yesterday’s unmentionable humiliation, a few words on the trip to Udine, which was one of the best European journeys I think I’ve ever embarked on with the Arsenal. The affability of the Udinese fans made the trip most memorable indeed. Udine is not the most raucous of cities; indeed we had trouble finding anywhere that dispensed sweet, sweet booze when we arrived on Tuesday evening. However, having stumbled across the only open bar within walking distance, our first beer had barely touched our gullets when a group of Udinese fans came to our table with a bottle of red.

We proceeded to polish off a few bottles and communicate in broken English together until around 2am. We were treated to free food, good company and, most importantly, free drinks. That sense of hospitality pervaded the whole visit. Come Wednesday afternoon, when the 38 degree heat necessitated we cease our pottering for a bottle of prosecco (naturally), we were again indulged in conversation by the locals.

Even post match, with the result secure and Arsenal having knocked Udinese out of the tournament, their camaraderie didn’t desert them. A throng of home fans offered to call us a cab to help us get back to our hotel in lieu of a local bus service which had stopped for the night. I quite genuinely wish Udinese and all of their supporters luck for the Europa League and will root for them to be victorious.

The atmosphere inside the Stadio Fruili was rather strange. Arsenal only bought 400 supporters to fill 1,700 seats. I would estimate that around 75% of that contingent was derived from continental supporters’ clubs. It gives you a real appreciation of the fervour with which overseas Gooners support Arsenal. A reminder which is always well served on parochial London types like me. Nevertheless, a memorable trip with the desired result.

Of course, the avidity of the away support has moved into even sharper focus this afternoon. The club has announced that those of us that travelled to Old Trafford yesterday will be refunded the value of a future away game. This is a most appreciated gesture from the club. In a summer which has seen them take something of a kicking on the PR front, this sends out a positive signal. That said, I wouldn’t have badgered for a refund myself.

I was inside Old Trafford in 2002 when we sealed the Premiership title and I wouldn’t have taken kindly to a surcharge on that ticket price in retrospective view of events! I think when you pay for a football match, you only really part with your money with the guarantee that a match takes place. Everything else, you leave to chance. There again, the vocal support during the second half as United continued to pump round after round of ammunition into our soft, squidgy kneecaps was one of the more remarkable things I’ve experienced inside a football stadium. My lungs still ache. If the team were in dire straits, then we were the sultans of sing. But well played Arsenal. Now, a few more additions to the squad would be an even better signal to omit!

sad_arseneI won’t pore over the game in too much detail. Much for the same reason I won’t turn up at your front door unannounced and jam cocktail sticks in your eyes. Needless to say, the entire club has been in a right old funk for quite a while now. Absolutely everybody I travelled with predicted a resounding defeat – which is revealing in itself – but to ship 8 goals and lose by 6 was beyond the pale. I wouldn’t expect a League One side to get served up quite so emphatically at Old Trafford. Despite the pitiful state of our squad, the players on show yesterday are still better than that.

That’s not to say there was any lack of effort per se. Players such as Jenkinson and Coquelin were lambs led to a slaughter precipitated by a summer of neglect on the squad building front. But there just appears to be a morale issue there. Even by Arsenal’s capitulicious standards, the second half in particular was quite the prolapsed rectum of performances. The powers that be and the manager really have a job on their hands lifting the club. It’s not just the supporters that seem to be under duress, but there were senior players out there yesterday that looked like they were in need of a few bevies and a sing song to lift their spirits.

Check Rosicky’s reaction to the third goal here. Theoretically, Rosicky is one of the players benefiting from a summer of heedlessness, but even he looks weary and brow beaten. I won’t go into too much detail on the club’s transfer business this summer, because I will be writing a review column on that very subject here on Thursday. But the whole club at the moment just seems utterly demoralised. The manager has a gargantuan job turning that around, but one of the immediate actions he can take is to invest in some new blood and try to pick the atmosphere up again. It would be better late than never.

I’m just increasingly getting the sense that something’s not quite right behind the scenes. We can only but speculate, but one of the manager’s comments really jumped out at me in his post match autopsy. “If we find players who can strengthen our team then we will do it. But I am not the only one to work on the case; we have 20 people who are working on that.”

I’ve only read the comment in print, but the words look heavy on the page, as if they have been murmured out by a man trying to alleviate a burden he has been carrying alone. One thing is for sure, the next 48 hours are some of the most crucial of his reign. If there is a failure to rectify a catastrophe of a summer, then expect to see more young lads unfairly led out to slaughter this season.

To end on a slightly lighter note, a big congratulations to the Arsenal Ladies, whose continued excellence is not remarked upon nearly enough. They defeated Liverpool 3-1 yesterday to confirm the club as winners of the inaugural Women’s Super League. This is their 34th major trophy in 20 seasons. Quite remarkable.

As I mentioned, I shall be back on Thursday with a review of all of Arsenal’s summer dealings and the state of the squad for the season ahead. Let’s hope there’s a good few chapters to be told before I begin penning that. Chin up Gooners. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

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

Man Utd 8-2 Arsenal: Shambles

scoreboard

Video, interviews and highlights (if you can bear it)

They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Let’s hope they’re right about that. They have a tendency to say a lot of shit which doesn’t make a lot of sense, unfortunately.

I said yesterday I was fearful of facing United with the squad in the state it was in. I wasn’t expecting to win the game. I thought, with a huge performance, we might be capable of nicking a draw. But I never thought I’d see an Arsenal side managed by Arsene Wenger get pummeled like that. It was painful, embarrassing, humbling and, in a strange, perverse way in the cold light of day, it almost feels necessary.

After this there can be no doubt in anybody’s mind that our squad is in serious need of reinforcement. Not just the addition of one or two players, but we need wholesale changes from front to back and we need them before Wednesday. There are players who were out there yesterday who really shouldn’t have been. From the ones who just aren’t ready for this level of football yet and are being done a disservice by the manager, to the ones who have never been good enough but because of our inaction in the transfer window are all we’ve got, to the ones who should be good enough but have underperformed time and time again during their Arsenal career.

That was a motley bunch of players out there and while it would be easy to go town on some of them, what’s the point? They don’t get up the day of a match and pick themselves to play for Arsenal Football Club. Arsene Wenger picks them. If these were the only players available to him then that’s his fault. Since the end of last season this team has been crying out for the addition of quality and experience and Gervinho aside it has had none. In fact, it has lost more quality and experience than it has gained, and frankly that’s unforgivable.

I’m not inclined to go over the match in any great detail. Maybe if we’d scored the penalty things might have been different. Maybe if Arshavin had scored to make it 3-2 when clean through it might have different. Maybe if Arsene had left on Coquelin who was doing a decent enough job in midfield we might not have been as overrun as we were in the final half an hour. But we didn’t, and he didn’t, and the only thing we can look at is the scoreline.

Defensively our performance was abject. I felt for Carl Jenkinson, a young man being asked to make a huge step up with nobody to help him. Theo Walcott shouting at him just before their goal was hardly the kind of positive encouragement he needed and coming from Theo it must have been hard to take. Johan Djourou’s slow descent continues, alongside him Koscielny was ok but his refusal to put his head where it might get hurt for the opening goal was telling, while if you need any more evidence that we need a left back than the sight of the carefree, gum chewing, smiling-at-the-final-whistle Armand Traore in an Arsenal shirt there’s something wrong with you.

Yet as I said, it’s not their fault they’re out there. Sure, we had players missing yesterday through injury and suspension but all that did is highlight the shallowness of our squad. Arsene said after the game he couldn’t expect Gibbs to be out, Diaby to be out, Vermaelen to be out (amongst others). Really? Two of the most injury prone players at the club and a guy who spent 90% of last season injured and you can’t make contingency plans better than what we had yesterday?

The youth of our side is no excuse either. United’s average age was younger than ours yesterday. What they’ve got though is a decent mix of youth and experience and back-up players who can step up. Remember, there was no Ferdinand or Vidic yesterday. They had Johnny Evans and Phil Jones at centre-half with another centre-half at right back who, time and time again, found time and space down our left hand side.

Our squad was ruthlessly exposed yesterday. A couple of players aside that was a Carling Cup side out there for Arsenal. Fringe players forced into action because throughout this summer both the manager and the board have neglected their duties to the point where Arsenal Football Club found themselves on the wrong end of an 8-2 scoreline at Old Trafford. Remember when we used to go there, compete, battle, scrap and fight with players of similar quality to theirs? They were lambs to the slaughter yesterday. I’ve got sympathy for some of them and I hope the youngsters who tried hard but found it beyond them aren’t too damaged by it. Others, well, it’s hard to feel anything for them at all, as they clearly feel little for the shirt they are privileged to wear.

Ultimately though the buck stops with the manager and the board. The summer has been a huge disappointment and it’s impossible to look at it now and not think we haven’t mismanaged it completely. Deals that should have been done early dragged on and on, yet even with those situations hanging over us we were inactive. As I said yesterday, we all knew Cesc and Nasri were leaving. The sensible thing to do is line up replacements and get them in before, or just after, the sale of the players you know are on the way out.

Instead, we’ve let our captain and best player go and thus far replaced him with nobody. Such is the state of our midfield we’re having to throw in a young guy like Francis Coquelin for a debut at Old Trafford. We sold our flawed but highly experienced left back and failed to replace him. That we’re forced into playing a guy Wenger has wanted rid of for over a year and who he overlooked on Wednesday, preferring to play our first choice right back there, says it all. Reliance on Gibbs was always going to be a gamble. Three games into the season, that gamble has failed.

What must Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain have thought of his Arsenal debut yesterday? Wasn’t it asking far too much of this kid to have any influence at this stage? He comes on, we ship a further 5 goals. That’s going to do him the world of good, at 17 years of age, eh?

And the crux of it is this – even if Cesc and Samir Nasri had stayed at the club, Arsenal needed players to improve a squad that was close last season but ultimately found wanting. That they have left and we haven’t already spent the money their sales generated is just pitiful management. Everybody knew this squad needed to be strengthened, yet we seem to have been content to go through the summer, biding our time, playing games of brinkmanship with other clubs over their players, until we get within sight of the transfer window close when we can play our favourite game of ‘How cheap can we get a player?’

Even now, if we buy players before the deadline, doesn’t it feel like panic shopping rather than part of a well thought out plan to improve the squad this summer? We have three days left when we’ve had all summer. If Arsene had faith that his squad could step up and was strong enough, then he’s got it badly wrong. The evidence of that was the result yesterday. There was no gulf in age, only a gulf in quality and if he can’t see that then it’s bad news indeed. A shift in policy is needed and needed now.

Yet for all the criticism of Arsene, much of it warranted, what of our new owner, Mr Kroenke? Silent Stan, haha. Not. Silence is not good enough any more. Since he took over he looks less and less like the custodian Danny Fiszman hoped he’d be and more like an asset stripper. Arsenal is a club on the verge of making an £80m+ profit in a transfer window when the team needed investment. Where is the leadership? Where is the demand for the highest standards on the pitch? Why has a situation been allowed whereby we went to Old Trafford with the kind of squad we saw yesterday?

Since Kroenke took over he has presided over a footballing collapse and neither he, nor his management team, seem capable, or willing, of doing anything about it. Since the Carling Cup final Arsenal’s league form is: DDDWDDLWLLDDLL

By any standards, let alone the ones set by Arsene Wenger down the years at this football club, that’s atrocious. We hear from Ivan and Arsene that “we’re working very hard” on transfers. If that’s the case then you have to question the people doing that work. If this is the state we’re in after a summer of working very hard then we need some new people to do it, some better people. Or maybe we’re just not working that hard, who knows?

There’s a very real danger that this defeat could precipitate further problems but there’s also the possibility that it’s a wake up call. Overdue and all as it might be, it must tell those at the top, especially the ones who make the footballing decisions at Arsenal, that things need to change. And quickly.

The whole club needs a lift. The first job now is to do that by spending the money we have available to us. If it proves more difficult to sign players after taking an 8-2 pounding then that’s our own fault, it doesn’t make it impossible though. We must add quality throughout the squad. At least one centre-half, a left back is as essential, a couple of midfielders and even if the Korean guy from Monaco arrives we could do with another striker.

I’m not generally one for ‘marquee’ signings, the quality of a player is far more important than the name, but a big player with a big reputation would do far more than lift the spirits of the fans, it would lift the team. It would lift the players, signal some ambition, and improve our squad. That, above all else, is the most important thing right now. Arsene says he’s open to signing players as long as he can find ones better than the ones he has. On the evidence of yesterday that gives him plenty to choose from.

The clock is ticking. We can either go back into our shells, play the ‘we worked hard but couldn’t find super quality’ card, or take yesterday on the chin and come out fighting, using all the resources available to us to make us better. So, Arsene, Ivan, Slovenly Stan, what is to be? Do you continue to oversee the demise of this Arsenal team or do you do something about it? And you realise, of course, that question is rhetorical. Tick-tock, gentlemen. Tick-tock.

Finally for today, a word for the Arsenal fans who went to Old Trafford yesterday, sang their hearts out and showed the real spirit of this football club. You, at least, did us proud. Hats off.