Monthly Archives: May 2012

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
May 31, 2012 posted by Tim Stillman

Someone said something I disagreed with

Someone said something I disagreed with

We currently sit marooned in the post season pre European Championships no man’s land. It’s sometimes a bit crazying to watch my fellow inhabitants of this post apocalyptic wasteland roaming the thunder dome for scraps of tumbleweed with which to forge transfer speculation – desperately looking to fuse liquid gold from its drying spores. On a personal level, the whole transfer circus has moved me to a point where I can’t even be bothered to think about it.

That’s an odd feeling, because I know the business we do this summer is very important and I certainly hope the club don’t feel weary about it. But for me it’s reached a level of saturation now that my brain totally rejects the subject. It’s a bit like being forced to watch a continuous, 24 hour loop of hardcore pornography. At first it’s a pleasant enough distraction, but then it just becomes meaningless mounds of flesh lumped together. Then you reach this sort of post desensitisation state and you want to run home and sob like a little girl. Or so I’d imagine anyway. Ahem…..

Where was I? Oh yes. I think there are a certain amount of “live issues” with the squad that are equally worthy of attention. Robin van Persie’s contract is obviously the most pressing and has been subject to huge conjecture. My personal (uninformed) hunch is that he will stay but not necessarily sign a new deal. At a cost of around £6m in wages we’d keep one of the world’s best strikers for another of his peak years. If Podolski is to be his ultimate replacement, it’d give him a year to bed in.

It’s not ideal. But it would transfer the risk to Robin himself. He would need to produce another prolific, injury free season if he wanted the best deal in 2013. Especially when you consider that he’ll be close to 30 at the end of his contract and possibly past his peak. In any case, whatever the outcome there, removing the burden from him needs to be an incremental process. Off the back of a 48 game season, van Persie now goes into a summer of international action. He played every minute of every game after the January 9th cup tie against Leeds.

In September and October, van Persie started on the bench in games against Olympiacos and Stoke City, with the manager sighting the fact that he was in the famed “red zone” physically. I find it hard to believe he didn’t end the season with his deckchair and flip flops firmly entrenched in the red zone, but the lack of quality back up put paid to any prospect of rest. Walcott and Koscielny have also produced a comparable amount of minutes as they pack their bags for Polkraine. It’s naïve to think that they won’t come back at least feeling the nagging bite of fatigue next season.

Basically, this is a short hand way of saying that we won’t be able to go through another season relying on a core of 15-16 players. (There is also the spectre of another African Nations tournament next January too). Then of course there is the curiously quieter issue of Theo Walcott’s contract. Given his age and value we would not be in the same situation as we are with 29 year old van Persie. Remember, when one speaks of value in terms of contracts, it doesn’t just come down to ability.

Walcott is one of Arsenal’s most marketable faces. Think of every commercial activity of the last 5 years that has required a grinning player decked in red and white. Theo is usually front row centre for the lights, camera action. His agents and advisors will only be too well aware of this and it could make negotiations tricky, because his demands will likely be in advance of his actual ability on the pitch as a result. Speaking of Theo and his footballing ability, he had some criticism from sometime Arsenal TV pundit Stewart Robson this week. In turn, this seemed to spark something of a miniature outrage.

I didn’t 100% agree with Robson’s criticism myself (though I can see what he’s driving at). But I made the mistake online of trying to defend Robson’s right to pull no punches in his assessment. It’s fair to say this contention was widely contested! Within minutes of the quotes being printed, I saw online petitions for his removal and posters urging that the club sack him from his position on Arsenal TV. Employees of the club shouldn’t be so critical seemed to be the main jist of the counter argument and I have to say, that’s a philosophy I find troubling.

In my boredom, last summer I sifted through my mum’s attic for my old Arsenal programmes. I started to flick through publications from the 1992-93 season – my first as a season ticket holder. The club used to give up an entire page called ‘The Page That You Write’ in which supporters wrote in on subjects of their choice. Reading in the hindsight of the media coached, 21st Century propaganda paradise, I found it amazing that the club regularly printed missives aimed at the F.A., Sky television and the increasing commercialisation of the new Premier League alienating fans. It was amazing in that it was incredibly refreshing.

The knicker twisting at Robson’s lack of PR savvy reinforced how far we have fallen, not just as football fans, but as a society. We’ve become entrenched into this slave / master relationship with corporate blandness to the point that, not only do we accept it, but we find anything else genuinely unpalatable. Anything not couched in media friendly double speak is rejected vehemently. It’s contributed enormously to the pussification of our culture where sensibilities are offended so easily.

As I said, I didn’t entirely agree with Robson myself. But that’s OK. I think Theo is a very important player. That’s what makes him so frustrating at times. I don’t ever recall getting frustrated with McGoldrick or Hillier or even Chamakh. Poor players aren’t frustrating. But I find it genuinely troubling that a lot of people actively want happy clappy, diluted, disingenuous commentary. We’ve become cosseted to the point that somebody speaking their mind offends us so profoundly that we start up petitions, begging PR departments to rescue us with their veil of dilution.

“PR” is the absolute fucking devil’s spawn in this sort of scenario. It’s prevented us from behaving like adults and either exercising the right to disagree and argue the toss, or else to just ignore and disregard without the need to seek a gagging order. This is why we are served the sort of half baked, ill researched “punditry” from the likes of Shearer and Hansen, who just iron a shirt, sit on a sofa, recite cliché and trouser public cash for doing so. We’ve become so accustomed to it that any pundit that satisfies his job description by speaking his mind is regarded as a leper.

This isn’t necessarily to champion Robson’s opinions per se. But to see a criticism of one of our players (the substance of which I’ve seen from a thousand others) dressed up as some kind of conspiratorial agenda was a little dispiriting. If the guy thinks Walcott is “an athlete who puts football boots on” why shouldn’t he say it? He was asked his view of Walcott’s ability and did so. If you listen to him commentate on games that don’t involve Arsenal, you realise he’s curmudgeonly with a lot of players. Almost exactly a year ago, I was moved to write this piece, the last three paragraphs of which take up a similar theme.

I probably gave that an unequal amount of column inches and I realise that there’s an irony to getting angry about the oversensitivity of others. But it was cathartic to get it off my chest and it certainly sparked plenty of discussion when I broached the subject earlier in the week. Ultimately, as ever, you’re free to disagree or ignore. Of course you could petition for blogger to string me up by my bollocks. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
May 31, 2012 posted by arseblog

Loyalty schmoyalty

Loyalty schmoyalty

A day after two managers have left their clubs to go to bigger and supposedly better ones, can we really expect anyone in the game to show loyalty? Or what we’d define as loyalty?

Brendan Rodgers has had a great season at Swansea but when the plaintive Scouse cry was directed towards him, he was up and out the door. Paul Lambert had a similarly successful season with Norwich and now appears to be on his way to Aston Villa. To be fair, both Liverpool and Villa have more history, pedigree, resources and stature than the clubs they’re leaving, and jobs like that don’t come along all the time.

Yet it’s funny how players get lambasted for moving but managers seem to get a free pass, for the most part. I’m sure Norwich and Swansea fans will be grateful to the two men for the jobs they did, getting them to the Premier League and keeping them there, but will it colour their work when they start at their new clubs? Imagine they have a player who wants to move to a bigger club, with more resources, pedigree etc. How on earth can they do anything other than stand back and let them leave? They can’t demand loyalty, having paid lip service to the whole concept themselves. Do as I say, not as I do, and all that.

As fans we expect players to show the same loyalty to a club as we would if we were the player. Which is really the wrong way to go about it. As fond as any player is of Arsenal, or another club, there are a plethora of reasons they might choose to leave. Each one of them is entirely justifiable in their own minds.

It’s just a job. It’s just a job with a very short shelf life. Maximising your income for that short period is just common sense. Anybody would leave the job they’re in now if they were offered double or triple their salary elsewhere. My personal ambitions are not being fulfilled. My personal life is suffering, I need to change. I want to go home. I want to win things. The club would be quick to get rid of me if they thought I wasn’t up to it anymore. I need to stop swerving off roads. I’d just like a change of scenery. It’s my last chance for a big move abroad.

Which all make sense on a footballing level and even a personal level. Footballers have lives which are as affected by the day to day problems as ours (except financial ones – unless they’ve blown all their money in casinos in which case fuck them). They can just sit around in their solid gold houses and have these issues.

Once the talent is there, clubs will show tremendous loyalty to players. Arsene Wenger believes highly in the ability of Abou Diaby and took a risk that he could overcome his injury problems. That’s part of the risk of football. He’s got a contract, he’s entitled to his wages the same as anyone else. But at some point a decision will have to be made, we’re not a charity and he’s struggling.

In the same way that Robin van Persie struggled. Ok, not exactly the same way because Robin’s litany of injuries down the years were all different, Diaby’s stem from one terrible challenge and an ankle which has become more and more damaged as time goes by. All the same, when van Persie missed 6 months here, 5 months there, another 4 months over there etc, Arsenal paid his wages, extended his contract and so on.

Now, with 12 months left on his deal, after his first long spell of sustained fitness, the ‘loyalty’ shown to him doesn’t seem to be returned. And that’s fine. That’s entirely up to him. He’s nearly 29. He wants to win things. It’s just a job. His personal ambitions are not being fulfilled. And so on. And let’s not make this a thing, he might very well sign a new contract and stay with us even if I’m increasingly doubtful that will happen. I don’t want to turn this into any kind of anti-van Persie post, especially when there are others in this situation this summer. He’s a player I’ve loved from the day he signed almost, I always said I thought he had something a bit special about him, and over the last 18 months he’s proved that.

Maybe it’s our expectations that need to change. We see a player who we stood by through injury, the player says ‘That’s what any club would do. It’s their duty. They do it all the time for countless other players.’ As fans we expect loyalty in return for buying shirts with players’ names on them, singing songs about them, placing them on pedestals. Players lap up the adulation, play the football and if something better comes along they rarely think twice before making a decision. Thanks for the songs and the worship but it’s just a job. I need a change. Wouldn’t you leave your job if a rival firm offered you triple your wages?

Thomas Vermaelen says this morning:

I will stay at Arsenal forever. There will be no transfer for me. I love London. I’ve got a house there, I’m happy there and I don’t see any reason to ever leave the club.

Love it. It’s fantastic to hear because it’s how a fan thinks. But I’m under no illusions that if Vermaelen kicks on in his career and improves to the point where he’s interesting to the ‘big boys’ of Europe, or even those with the fullest pockets in the Premier League, he’d be taking advice from those around him about how his career is short, he has to do ‘right’ by his family, how it’s time he achieved things in his career.

And you can say what you want about how winning things keeps players at clubs. I’m sure it makes it more difficult to leave but in as much as players like Cesc and Liam Brady left Arsenal because they felt they had more chance of winning silverware abroad/at home, others like Vieira and Henry left having won plenty. Players come, players go, that’s the way it goes, that’s the way it will always go.

But maybe for other players there’s something more to a club than just a job. We seem to be a place where real connections are made. Our current captain knows the esteem in which he’s held and part of that is because we know he gets what Arsenal means to the fans. Henry, Brady, Vieira and others left but are still regarded as playing legends. Those that chose the money from the Premier League are not, regardless of what they did on the pitch or how good they were (or thought they were).

Loyalty is a two-way street, but many players have driven up cul-de-sacs of cuntery. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen this summer.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
May 30, 2012 posted by arseblog

Imagine

Imagine

I was in email conversation with a nice chap called Chris the other day, and he said something which got me thinking:

Lord only knows what people did in the pre-Internet days when Georgie Graham preferred to only spend money on Eddie McGoldrick and 14 centre-backs.

Although there were always rumours and chatter about certain players it was very much restricted in comparison to what we have today. These days, some idiot with nothing better to do, will set up a Twitter account pretending to be a journalist for The Times, link us to Fernando Llorente, and within hours muckracking hit-whores like the Daily Mail will confidently proclaim that we’re ‘set’ to make a move for the Spanish striker. We’re not. It’s bollocks.

And nothing illustrates the anatomy and ludicrousness of the transfer rumour better than this Tweet from @robkelly2 who shows how something is made up on one site, well known for simply making things up – that’s what they do, before appearing on the website of a national newspaper in the UK. Then it’s spread far and wide by folk who should know better and people then fixated on a deal which isn’t ever going to happen.

And while I know most people know that 99% of all transfer stories never come to fruition – even if some have a hint of truth here and there – it’s good to remind ourselves that this is a mini-industry built on lies, fiction and half-truths. The websites and papers get the hits, the agents use the papers and websites to build profile for their players (and perhaps even clubs too get involved to an extent), but all the same the best way of dealing with it all is to take a large step backwards and take everything else with an even larger pinch of salt.

However, the email got me thinking. Due to the explosion of fan opinion we have nowadays, be it on blogs, forums, Facebook or Twitter, you get instant, and very often ill-considered reactions to things. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if we’d had it back then when certain transfer deals were done. Imagine the outcry when we sold Anders Limpar and replaced him in the side with Eddie McGoldrick. I can remember seeing it on the back page of The Sun, Anders, lovely scampery little Anders, holding up an Everton shirt.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. And then I carried doing what I was doing in real life.

What would it have been like when Stefan Schwarz left after just one season? Would there have been accustations of lack of ambition, being unable to hold onto our best players? Would David Seaman have been the target of abuse and vilification following the Cup Winner’s Cup Final in 1995? ‘Past it’. ‘Flappy bastard!’ How would Arsene’s decision to sell Paul Merson have gone down? Losing an FA Cup final to 2nd division team would certainly have sparked plenty of ‘discussion’ and the 7 years without a trophy between that time and the League Cup final in 1987 would have been about as much fun as drinking a yard of whale piss flecked with manatee poo.

Green kits? George Wood? Chris Whyte playing up front? RAAAAARRRGGGHHHH. So while there’s a lot to be thankful for that we have this fantastic medium at our fingertips every day, and for some it’s the norm (like kids who will never know what it was like to be uncontactable or to play music via a large disc of black vinyl), it’s hard to not to be slightly wistful for the days when the first thing you knew about something happening is when it actually happened.

Yes, there was the odd saga. I mentioned Charlie Nicholas yesterday and that seemed to play out for a little while if I remember correctly, and I recall the stories in the papers about Liam Brady wanting to leave, but for the most part we didn’t get into the nuts and bolts of things the way we do today. Of course that’s because of the way technology has changed the world.

There used to be a time when if somebody asked a question in the pub you either knew the answer or you didn’t. Now a question can be asked and the answer is in our pockets. A quick Google and Bob is your very uncle. Maybe it makes us more informed, more educated, but maybe it also makes us think less. ‘What was the name of that bloke in that film?’, and you had to think. Some time later it might crawl out from the recesses of your brain and you’d blurt out the answer. Now IMDB does that thinking for us.

And perhaps that too is reflected in the way transfer rumours are spread. People take information at face value, never thinking to question it. One Tweet is a beacon of truth regardless of the source and regardless of the fact that reading a few more Tweets by that person will show you they’re probably talking a load of old rot. That it appears in the paper adds credence to a story, even if it’s just been made up the day before by a website which makes things up. Simply add one helping of people who can’t get enough information about their club – and this is not just related to Arsenal – and it’s a heady, potent mix.

There is no IMDB of transfers, no Google to give you the right answer because most of the time there isn’t one. And just be thankful of the fact that you can, if you really want to, filter most of that rubbish out of your ‘digital space’, if you’ll excuse the obnoxiously wanky phrase I’ve just used. Don’t torture yourself with trolls and people whose sole reason for being online is to tell lies to others. And when something happens, enjoy it, or not, but react to it then.

Que sera, sera.

—

Finally for today, if you want some summer reading it’s kind of last orders for the book for a while. I’m off on holidays on Friday and the shop will be closed for the duration, so if you fancy a copy, order today from here. More info on the book (including digital editions) here.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
May 29, 2012 posted by arseblog

If only Richard Marx could have warned us somehow

If only Richard Marx could have warned us somehow

As you will know, this is a blog about Arsenal. Hence the name.

Obviously I have a keen interest in all things Arsenal. I want the the club to do well, to win things, to compete and to sign good players. When we sign those players, I will welcome them (unless they’re one of these signings in which case I’ll hedge my bets and make a ‘this tastes yukky’ face whilst suggesting we should wait and see how they do), and players we don’t sign don’t interest me in the slightest.

Such is the way of the summer that there are ‘must sign’ players that people get fixated on then get utterly depressed/outraged/psychotic when we don’t. Recent examples might include a gigantic ex-Blackburn centre-half who is so perfectly what we need and such a good player that he’s now in the Russian Premier League, alongside such greats as Aidan McGeady. You couldn’t open a newspaper without somebody saying Chris Samba is exactly what Arsenal needed when in fact Chris Samba was just a very, very tall man who had some reasonable games for a team which flirted with relegation every season.

Perhaps what we exactly needed was Laurent Koscielny but then that’s not something people write about too much, only the perfect players that we let slip by. Like Scott Dann. Or Joe Cole. Or the countless others to whom maximum qualities and skills are applied as long as there’s some vague rumour linking them with us. Not going for these players shows lack of ambition. Or, to put it another way, it shows common sense because the people that bemoan our lack of ambition also want us to sign Blackburn players. That confuses me, you know.

That’s not to say we can’t show a bit more in the transfer market, and I think most people would like to see that this summer. Lukas Podolski is a good start but it’s still not even the end of May and the knicker wetting has started over the fact that Eden Hazard is joining Chelsea. Here’s the way I look at this:

1 – Hazard is a good player all right and would improve us

However:

2 – He’s about to join Chelsea, therefore he’s a dick and I don’t care about him

3 – You can’t accuse Arsenal of a lack of ambition or a lack of stature because we didn’t sign him because you’d have to apply the exact same criticism to Man City and Man Utd who were both after him. And remember, this is a player who said he’d join Sp*rs – so clearly the stature of the club he’d join isn’t a big deal to him.

4 – You can accuse Arsenal of a lack of resources, which is spot on. We can’t afford to pay a £32m transfer fee, we can’t afford to pay wages of £200,000 a week (let’s say) for 4 years, nor can we afford to pay his agent a reputed £6m fee, bringing the total outlay over the course of his contract to £80m. And that’s making the assumption that he’ll hang around for that long because anyone who didn’t get a whiff of the Na$ri, the footballing ultra-tart, from the way he’s behaved since this move was announced is deluding themselves.

So to conclude:

5  – He’s about to join Chelsea, therefore he’s a dick and I don’t care about him

Now, as a small boy who prayed for us to sign Charlie Nicholas from Celtic, with Liverpool, Man United and others sniffing around him, I understand the transfer saga and what it means when there’s a player you really want. But just because we can’t afford to buy Eden Hazard doesn’t mean we can’t sign good players this summer and doesn’t mean we can’t improve our squad.

We have to be smarter and more efficient and show that there is another way of building a winning team without just throwing around as much money as it takes because money is no object to you. And if you don’t look at this particular transfer circus – and it has been a circus – and find the whole thing slightly distasteful then I don’t know what it would take.

For me it’s not a reason for us to follow that path, or to be reliant on the generosity/hubris of one man (or even two men) to make our football team competitive. It’s a challenge for us to work better as a club, from top to bottom, and to realise that although the playing field is becoming increasingly less level (can you imagine a world a few years ago when Man Utd were in danger of being left behind financially?) we can definitely improve what we do.

Even the staunchest critic would surely accept that adding two or three good quality players to this squad would make us better. Increase our defensive efficiency, cut out some of the mistakes, be a more cohesive unit – which is something the good quality players would help us do – and we’d be better team. And the one thing I keep coming back to is using all of our resources to their maximum so we can compete.

That means having a squad of players who can all contribute something. Perhaps all is a pipe dream, but more. Maybe that’s what we need to focus on. Last season there were seven, eight, nine players who contributed nothing much to what we were trying to do. With 25 man squad rules in place that’s far too much. There’ll always be ‘deadwood’ (the latest buzzword) at any club, it’s not just an Arsenal malaise. It’s the nature of the game. But there’s no doubt we can do better.

When deals like Hazard to Chelsea go through I understand why people are frustrated. Some of it is hype, of course, and I don’t believe there are as many Ligue 1 fans out there who watch him week in, week out as there appear to be. But Hazard is not an Arsenal player and therefore is now completely uninteresting to me until such time as we play against him.

His transfer, this £80m deal, does interest me because of what it means for Arsenal. As FFP approaches I wonder how this will impact on Chelsea (Swiss Ramble’s February assesssment of their finances suggested they were on the right track but this kind of outlay must surely have make a dent in that), but most of all I wonder how we’re going to react.

This is a summer in which we’ve got to prove – for more reasons that just the future of our captain – that we’re serious about building a team to compete for the league title and the Champions League. Those trophies have to be our aim and signings like the one above increase the pressure on the owner, the manager and the board to produce that kind of a team. And maybe that’s not a bad thing in itself.

I don’t need to see us spend £32m on a single player – anyone hoping we do will be waiting a long time – but I want to see us do the right kind of business and to make Arsenal a better team. Which is something we can do with what we have available to us.

Till tomorrow.