Right then, here go back into the thick of it. We’ve got football tomorrow and this is good. A home game against Birmingham is a relatively nice way to get things going again after the Interlull and there’s some early team news.
Eduardo misses out on the chance for revenge against Birmingham as he remains out with his thigh injury. With arch-villain Martin Taylor injured anyway that will have to wait until we visit St Andrews in March. The goalkeeping situation is that Lukasz Fabianski is back yet Manuel Almunia remains 50-50 with his ‘chest infection’. You have to think the Pole will come back into the side ahead of Don Vito who has done well when called upon.
Gael Clichy is a doubt with an ankle knock picked up on international duty so a first Premier League start of the season could be on the cards for Kieran Gibbs while Abou Diaby has a bit of a knock but should be ok. Aside from that I don’t think we’ve got any other niggles but we’ll get a definitive answer on that when Arsene talks to the media at his pre-game press conference today.
As I said Birmingham is a good game to try and pick up where we left off before the break. We had, since the Man City defeat, won 6 games in a row scoring 18 and conceding only 4. With the game tomorrow and a trip to Holland midweek for a Champions League tie against AZ Alcazar it’s as good an opportunity as the fixture computer throws up to build momentum before we start getting back into the thick of things again. More on the Birmingham game tomorrow.
The other main news is that Stan Kroenke has upped his stake in the club to 28.9% after buying another clump of shares. I have no idea if he’s paid for these ones or written an IOU or what but what’s clear is that he’s edging ever closer to the 29.9% stake which would require him to make an offer for all the shares. And it does look as if this purchasing is being done with the full blessing of the board. Chairman Peter Hill-Wood said:
It does look like he is edging towards a takeover, which I would welcome. I have not asked him if that is what he plans to do, but I am very relaxed about it.
If it was to happen, I don’t think you can expect any big changes because he seems to like things very much the way they are.
It’s the first time we’ve heard from the board that they’d be willing to sell up to Kroenke and you have to think that his increased presence at the club, he attended the Wigan game last month for example, means that there’s a plan in place. He is board-friendly, he’s not buying up these shares for fun, and at some point I suppose he’s going to try and consolidate his holding.
Kroenke does have part-ownership of some sports ‘franchises’ in the US and I think, if the rest of the shares were held by the board he’d probably be quite happy to do the same with Arsenal. The elephant in the room, of course, is Alisher Usmanov and Red and White Holdings. We know there’s no love lost between the current board and Usmanov and I can’t see Kroenke and Usmanov working side by side in the years ahead so what happens will certainly be interesting.
And while I’ve always been of the opinion that I’d prefer if Arsenal’s ownership was more traditional, shall we say, I’d certainly feel more confident that the self-sustainable, well-run model currently employed by the club would be maintained under Kroenke rather than Usmanov. Let’s wait and see what happens.
Not much else going on. Cesc talks about winning the league and there’s some idle transfer speculation regarding Eboue and Atletico Madrid but with the transfer window not open until January I’m going to pass on that kind of stuff for the moment.
Right, competition winners. I’ve had a copy of the Official Illustrated History of Arsenal and two of Gunners Lists to give away with thanks to Octopus Books. I asked you how many times Arsenal had appeared in the FA Cup final and the answer is 17. Although I did allow 18 if you mentioned the replay against Sheffield Weds. It’s funny how many people answered the question ‘How many times have Arsenal won the FA Cup?’, weird.
Anyway, the RNG has done its thing and the winner of the Official History book is Jeff Ferman while Richard Savage and Brian Agnew get copies of Gunners Lists. Well done to you, I’ll be in touch to get details, and thanks to everyone else who entered. Better luck next time.
Now, Arsecast time. On this week’s “Oh shit there’s nothing to talk about” Arsecast I chat with Goodplaya about the return of the Premier League, Almunia’s ‘chest infection’ and more. Sylvester is in there and … erm … that’s about it. It’s a shorter Arsecast than usual but it’s (probably) better than no Arsecast at all. Probably.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (15mb MP3), you can download a zipped version here or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
And that’s that. Have a good day, more tomorrow.
