Plenty to get through this morning so let’s get busy.
Football and players first and Kolo Toure has been explaining why he considered his Arsenal future this season. He said:
I have been here a long time, and when I saw some players leaving the Club last year that was difficult for me. Then when we didn’t start the season well I was scared.
Scared?! Kolo? Really? He goes on to say:
When you love somebody it’s important that they love you back.
Not if you’re a rich Arab prince and you bought your extremely hot wife from a modelling agency, then you don’t care if she loves you back because you own her. However, that example might be a bit extreme.
The fact is that Kolo’s form suffered and he was dropped from the team. I suspect he considered it a bit unfair because while the defence wasn’t playing well as a unit it was William Gallas who was guilty of all the individual errors that were costing us goals yet it was Kolo who was dropped.
The much talked about breakdown in the relationship between Kolo and Gallas was true and that was reason Kolo cited when he handed in a transfer request. The fact that Manchester City wanted to sign him and offer him monstrous wages was probably another factor but when push came to shove Kolo decided he didn’t want to be the concubine of an Arab prince and stayed at Arsenal (I’m told City were absolutely furious at his volte-face).
Personally I think Kolo has struggled for form because players go through dips in their career and, like Gallas, he has always played better with a big stopper beside him. We’ve spoken time and time again about how they were too similar to play together, it was something the manager even admitted this season. To be fair they did show signs of improvement after Gallas had the weight of the captaincy taken off him but you could ask a clone of Bobby Moore, Tony Adams and Franco Baresi to play well alongside Sylvester and he’d struggle.
Anyway, Kolo loves us, he’s always going to be an Arsenal man, he says, let’s just hope he can find his old self between now and the start of next season.
Cesc, meanwhile, has spoken about the club’s failure to win anything, saying:
We haven’t been in any Finals and perhaps that’s because of something. We’ve gone 21 games without losing in the league, so we know we are good, but when we’ve played in the Semi-Finals of the FA Cup and Champions League we haven’t been at the level everyone expected us to reach.
Maybe that means something, and sometimes you need to be honest with yourself – our opponents were stronger than us in both of those ties and you just have to go from there, try to see where you made mistakes and try to put them right.
It means you’re good, but not quite good enough. He goes on to thank the fans for their continued support throughout the disappointing times. Something Robin van Persie also touched on in an interview yesterday, although neither of them can have failed to notice the empty seats as many fans have voted with their feet in recent games.
Robin himself is looking for some continuity in the squad for next season, saying:
If we lose three or four every year it is hard to get the spirit in. Hopefully we can stay here and have a real go at it. If we can produce games like we did this year there is room for improvement – if you look at our midfield it is between 20 and 22.
He’s right, but you can lose three or four every year if those three or four are replaced properly and not simply by promoting fringe players to the first team. I watched his interview with Arsenal TV online yesterday and was struck by how downbeat he was. As I mentioned earlier he talked about feeling for the fans but there was a sense of frustration about him, as if he knew this team wasn’t quite there in terms of winning trophies.
There were quotes going around yesterday with Wenger saying he didn’t believe the squad needed a lot of investment. They came from L’Equipe apparently but I think these are the same quotes that came from his post-match press conference after the Chelsea game. Obviously in the wake of another trophyless season and two crushing defeats there’s been a lot of … erm … discussion, we might say.
There are those who think the manager has taken the club as far as he can, that a change is needed. I don’t go along with that but I strongly believe Arsene needs to look at the balance of his squad, as I’ve been saying for a couple of seasons now the balance is wrong. Too much youth, not enough experience.
What worries me slightly is the idea that he’s thinking ‘Ok, we learned harsh lessons last season when we should have won the league but fell apart. This season we learned lessons, responded well, got to two semi-finals, and next year these players are going to be more experienced. That will bridge the gap’. In a way I can understand it but not every player will improve, some have gone backwards this season, and choosing to rely on them next time around would be dangerous and foolhardy, in my opinion.
In the Guardian blogs Amy Lawrence writes:
So, after Arsenal were stripped of their dignity at home twice in a week at the hands of Manchester United and Chelsea, the hype-merchants propose that Wenger must go. There is no need to be quite so kneejerk. But Wenger must change.
And with that I cannot argue one jot.
Seen the new away kit? It’s a bit poxy, isn’t it? And by a bit it’s like a smallpox victim who has rubbed themselves off a chickenpox sufferer who has then smeared the oozing pus of a stenchpox casualty all over their sore encrusted body.
Now, from one horrible thing to another and Alisher Usmanov continues his ‘charm’ offensive by offering to pay off a chunk of the club’s debt to free up transfer funds for the manager. A spokesperson for Fat and Orange said:
The debt at the club appears to be an impediment to that and we are ready to help address that if the board asks. Raising ticket prices is not the answer.
It’s a fairly transparent attempt to curry favour with fans, sort of like the rise of extremist politicians in times of financial despair. Offer money, check. Make reference to ticket prices, check (ignoring the fact the club announced a freeze on ticket prices back in February). It’s funny how people are more inclined to ignore Usmanov’s background just because things aren’t going so well on the pitch.
I’m as desperate for a trophy as any Arsenal fan, I dearly want to see us win something, but the fact that Usmanov owns 25% of our club still does not sit right with me. I mean, look at him chatting away to his buddy here (birds of a feather) – and who amongst us hasn’t taken the higher ground when it comes to the way Chelsea have won things?
The desire to win silverware should not come at the expense of doing things the right way and anyone who has followed the Usmanov saga will know that this is a man of dubious character who I believe should be rejected by every right thinking Arsenal fan.
Let’s be clear, Usmanov will not be doing this out of ‘love’ for Arsenal – he’s a Man United fan after all – you don’t simply gift somebody tens of millions of pounds without wanting something in return. There is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it comes to oligarchs. But this is quite clever from Fat & Orange, they know the club will reject any such offer.
I’m no expert but I’m sure such a thing is a legal minefield anyway, and Arsenal will continue with its sensible, self-sustaining business model. It then means they can say ‘Oh, well we offered money, we’re the good guys’ if things don’t go well on the field. It’s troublemaking disguised as help, really.
What does seem obvious is that the chances of F&O and the current board working together in any kind of harmony are slim, and with the former having made some fresh share purchases yesterday the battle-lines are being drawn.
Right then, that’s pretty long so I’ll leave it there for today. More tomorrow.
