“The only people at Arsenal who overspend are the supporters”

A quote used very appropriately by Jamie Carragher on Monday Night Football, which describes accurately the ridiculous situation at Arsenal. The fans pay the most expensive ticket prices in the country, remain loyal and supportive to the club and turn out in vast numbers ever week home and away. Yet the club is spending no money on new players and is atrociously unprepared for the new season, and it has already cost us 3 points.

For the ticket prices supporters are paying, they should be seeing an ambitious team containing brilliant players and playing brilliant football. Yet with around £150m sitting in the bank, £70m or so of it available for transfer fees, the fans attended the shambolic opening day defeat to Aston Villa to see no new signings and a lacklustre display riddled with an embarrassing lack of tactics, ideas, organisation or preparation for the game. The club is sending the message at the moment that it doesn’t really care about on-pitch success, as long as their pockets are being lined with plenty of cash.

The supporters deserve better. The club need to either seriously and significantly reduce the ticket prices or buy some great players and conduct themselves with ambition as they keep saying they will. It’s ridiculous that Wenger won’t spend a penny over what he deems is the value of the player. But, as Gary Neville says, the game has changed and to get the best players and move forward, you have to swim with the sharks and overspend a bit at times. Especially at this time of the window as well when clubs are even more desperate to hold on to players due to a limited amount of time to find a replacement. Offering derisory fees for players with 2 weeks left of the transfer window isn’t what I call giving the fans value for money.

We need to overspend a bit sometimes in order to achieve in the current climate of football. We’d have had Higuain now if it wasn’t for Arsene Wenger’s ridiculous cheapness and reluctance to pay an extra few million pounds for the striker. We should have activated Fellaini’s release clause of £23m when we could. £23m isn’t much cost at all to buy us the player we’ve been screaming out for for years now, not in the current transfer market. If not him, we could have had Luiz Gustavo for £17m if we hadn’t dithered and had actually shown ambition by signing this much needed type of player.

We very much need a goalkeeper and Julio Cesar is available for around £2m and we haven’t got him. That’s surely a no brainer for that fee for such a quality, experienced goalkeeper. If not him, there’s Asmir Begovic at Stoke. Simon Mignolet went to Liverpool for £9m. There are so many obvious targets out there that would improve our side and help us progress and possibly win trophies. And after all, isn’t that what the club is supposed to at least seriously attempt to achieve primarily? There are so many players out there who would improve us and yet our manager has the audacity to say there are NO players out there who are good enough for Arsenal.  You can list the players that are and have been out there this summer off the top of your head now:

·         Fellaini

·         Gustavo

·         Rooney

·         Higuain

·         Mignolet

·         Begovic

·         Cesar

·         Ashley Williams

·         Soldado

·         Paulinho

·         Capoue

·         Willian

·         Sakho

·         Schurrle

·         Argubly Suarez

And this is coming from the man who panic bought the likes of Andre Santos and Park Chu Young, thinking they were appropriate signings for Arsenal two years ago. Surely he doesn’t really think there are no players out there good enough for Arsenal. How many of the above players would get into our side? A lot. If he does believe that, he’s quite simply not doing his job at all and is seriously inadequate for the occupation he’s getting paid £7 million a year for.

It’s ridiculous to see Arsenal being so unambitious and conducting themselves like this in the transfer market. The supporters deserve better. They overspend through loyalty to the club and it’s about time the club showed some ambition to succeed on the pitch, rather than just filling their pockets off it, by overspending themselves when they have to. We have £70m to significantly improve the squad and so far we’ve done nothing significant about it. It’s shambolic. Sometimes you have to overspend to succeed, Arsenal need to realize that.

A Shambolic Summer

Arsene Wenger has to take a large part of the blame for Arsenal's shambolic summer in the transfer market. Ivan Gazidis and the rest of the board have to take a huge share as well but I'm going to concentrate mainly on Wenger's contribution, otherwise I'll be here all day.

The man has had 3 months to find players and buy them. And to do this he has had around £80m to do so and a huge amount of wage money freed up. The club have had no excuse not to buy players. Wenger keeps coming out with comments like saying there are a shortage of quality players out there and saying they're looking but can't find anyone with the quality to play for Arsenal etc etc. It's complete rubbish, there are obviously quality players out there who have been available this summer. The fact that our rivals have gone out and bought a variety of them is evidence of that.

This week we lost out on Luiz Gustavo, a player who has just won the Champions League, Bundesliga and Confederations Cup with Bayern Munich and Brazil and is a strong, experienced, quality defensive midfielder who is energetic, battles well and breaks up play effectively. That's just the sort of player we've been crying out for years and we just let him go somewhere else when we could have had for a small fraction of our available money.

Then there was Marouane Fellaini, an equally brilliant and accessible option for Arsenal, he had a release clause of £23 million but did we snap him up? No, we dithered and cheap-skated out. Either that or we didn't even have the intelligence to recognize he was a player that would have been at least a good signing for us.

Gonzalo Higuain was available but Wenger and the club were so tight and unwilling to pay a penny over the asking price that we lost out on him. Luis Suarez and Wayne Rooney are want away players but we haven't really seriously gone for them. We've bid twice for Suarez but not bid enough and not gone back in for him for the last 3 weeks or so. Then there's the likes of Neymar and Falcao out there. I'm not saying they'd come to Arsenal necessarily but the point is there are "top top top quality players" out there.

There's Lars Bender, Bernard, Jovetic, Paulinho, Soldado, Schurrle, Capoue and Benteke. All players who would improve Arsenal so Wenger coming out and saying there are no players to buy is laughable. Especially for a manager renowned over the years for being able to find players from nowhere and turn them into stars, someone who has had a wide scouting network and he's telling us he can't find players and even saying other clubs are having the same problems. All of the clubs around us have found players to improve and we haven't. We're the only ones who haven't found the players. It's unacceptable.

It's the broken promises and the missed opportunity that gets me most. We have the chance to really kick on this summer, we've got this huge financial firepower and been told we're going to spend big and ambitiously this summer by Gazidis and then come the opening day the only player we've signed is a 20 year old French striker from Ligue 2 on a free. It's like we've been given a Porsche and are refusing to drive it, we're sticking with our cheap Mini Cooper.

Not only that but it's been an opportunity to capitalize on big managerial changes. Man Utd have lost Ferguson and Man City and Chelsea are adapting to change, and we haven't taken advantage. The board make these promises and then take a dump on us by breaking them. I'm starting to come along to the extremist thinking that the only reason they said all that stuff was to get fans to renew their ridiculously expensive season tickets and that the club is all about making money. They don't seem to care much what happens on the pitch as long as they're making a lot of money. As long as we're in the Champions League we've succeeded it seems is the attitude. There's not enough ambition to improve the team and achieve footballing honours and trophies.

It all seems to be about making the money, it's like a business and I feel so distanced from our club as a fan. I've never been so disillusioned with the club. The manager is coming out with more bizarre quotes by the week, he's rested one of our best players on the OPENING DAY of the season, not prepared tactically at all for Villa's obvious counter attack game and has us ridiculously unprepared for the start of the season for the 3rd season running. I just can't comprehend why we haven't got our business done before the season, or at least some of it, so that we are prepared and ready for the new season. We've already lost 3 points because of that lack of preparation. We go into the second weekend of the season with one available centre half and disillusion and frustration surrounding the club. £80m is burning a whole in the club's pocket and they aren't doing anything about it. It's just utterly crazy. Not signing any players is doing a lot more damage than signing a couple that Wenger thinks might be too expensive for their value.

It's maddening and the manager isn't even under pressure. Any logical club with sense would at least have their manager under pressure in this situation but not us. Our lack of ambition absolutely astounds me.



(Image source: Telegraph, Sunday 18th August, URL: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02646/Arsene_Wenger_2646660b.jpg Accessed 18/08/2013)

New Season!!!!!!!!!

Footy's back!

Yes, I know there was the half-seriously taken Confederations Cup and then the Football League season but now the bread and butter's back. I haven't been to a competitive football game since May 12th, 3 months and 4 days ago... not that I'm counting.

Arsenal are back, Everton are back and guess what... I'm going the game tomorrow! Norwich v Everton, I can't wait. A new ground, new place, opening day excitement, interestingly poised game, new signings, a new manager and a full day's outing before getting back in time for Match of the Day to watch and record the highlights of Arsenal's 7-0 opening day win against Aston Villa. Bitchin'.

It's been a while since I had that excited pre-game feel (probably April in fact) and it's good to be back. I'm looking forward to seeing how different Everton might be under Martinez- will the formation be different? Will the style be tweaked? Who'll be first choice up front? I'm also looking forward to seeing Ricky van Wolfswinkel, Gary Hooper, Leroy Fer and Nathan Redmond for Norwich. All very attacking, intriguing players and it should make for a very good game.

As for Arsenal, I really thought we'd be starting this season with genuine excitement and anticipation last May when it was announced we had £70m to spend and the likes of Higuain, Suarez, Fellaini and Rooney were being linked with moves to us. But sadly as usual we go into with trepidation and pessimism, only this season with a real sense of a missed opportunity. There's time to get players yet but so far, so poor.

Still though, I can't wait for the season to kick off. I can't wait to go to games, meet other fans, watch games on TV, be ecstatic at great wins (hopefully), enjoy the atmospheres, the away days and all the controversy and talking points that come with the season.

Bring it on!

The Emirates Stadium move and modern football- a distancing and snubbing of long-serving, loyal supporters

If you asked our older generation of fans about football you would find it un-recognisable and, in parts, comical with their tales of olden day heroes who all seemed to be called George, Arthur or Billy. Football has changed dramatically over the last fifty years. A lot more money has been pumped into the game and the gap between fans and their clubs has subsequently widened. In the George, Arthur, Billy days contracts were adhered to without get-out clauses; players didn’t angle for moves away for ridiculous wage increases and loyalty and commitment were still words in The Football Dictionary.

 

Of course football has improved in many aspects over that time. But the aim of this article is to widen your gaze to a big, unnecessary cost of that improvement. The dis-enfranchising of long-standing loyal fans.

The 1970’s saw the first 1 million pound transfer (Trevor Francis to Nottingham Forest) and since then we have witnessed an ever-growing increase in fees and wages which has escalated over time to the point where drastic and fast-moving increase in transfer fees and player valuations has seen Andy Carroll move clubs for £35 million. Admittedly that is an extreme example but overall players’ fees and wages have risen dramatically recently. Who’d have thought 30 years ago that one day you’d have players on £250k a week and transfer fees reaching into the £40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70 millions?

With the Premier League and Champions League came increased funding for success and league position, and the price for failure (such as relegation or missing out on promotion) became so astronomical. With the vast monetary gains to be made clubs suddenly became targets for mega-rich foreign owners who see football clubs as a business project rather than the community-bringing-together, soulful place it is. They fork out ridiculous transfer fees and wages are paid in order to achieve success, which subsequently escalates ticket prices (through clubs trying to make that money back).

Fans are dis-enfranchised, the ticket prices having being increasing over the last few years at the Emirates season by season only contributing to that. Hard-core, long-serving fans are brushed aside and treated like meaningless numbers. There isn’t enough thought going into the soul of a football club- the fans. Football has improved in certain ways- it being more popular, the TV coverage, the better players we see now, it’s a fascinating league. But there has to be some middle ground. This can’t all come at the expense of fans being priced out of going to games and supporting their beloved team. Teams in Germany have managed to avoid that. And not at the expense of lack of success- look at the recent achievements of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund.

Some clubs, like QPR, have had family sections where tickets are cheaper- that is a good way of partly resolving this issue. Let’s not make it so that hard-working Dads can’t afford to take their kids to football games. Having cheaper seats and sections of the ground designated for this sort of thing would help. Or even better, a reduction in ticket prices full stop.

Craig Love, co-writer of this article, has supported Arsenal since he was 4 years old, that’s 40 years in total and makes clear his sadness at what appears to be happening at his beloved club since Arsenal moved to the Emirates.

“I now look sadly on at fans sitting in the ground every home game as I and many other fans have been priced out of season tickets and new shirts every year, it is simply beyond my monetary budget and it has now become a birthday treat to watch the team I love ply their trade. Sky sports and internet streams ensure I watch most games but it is not the same. It was never this way at Highbury; all the board members were known and definitely closer to the fans. They seemed to understand and acknowledge our tradition and heritage more than the current board, and most importantly we were successful and had some world class players lining up for us. We moved, we were told ‘to compete better with the top clubs’. I did not realise they meant competing for higher share dividends for board members and not trophy success.”

Right this is. The stadium was supposed to put us on a more level playing field with the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, whereas it has actually just distanced us more from them. Yes it will benefit us in the future financially, but is it worth it? Is it worth leaving your spiritual home and soul to move to a bigger, more expensive stadium where ticket prices are higher and the club and the fans are more distant? What’s more, where a lot of fans who were able to afford to go and watch their team regularly at Highbury are now priced out of going to do the same at the Emirates Stadium, like Craig?

Fans are a secondary implement at all top clubs these days because owners install boards with a corporate based company ideology, and fans are just seen as a commodity and means of making more money. Boards seem more distanced from their fan base than ever before. Yes they still go through the motion of fans forums and focus groups, but do fans honestly feel they have a say in what goes on? Do fans honestly feel that they can persuade the club to lower ticket prices at all to allow the priced-out fans a way back into the ground? That would be a true test of the club’s priorities- a bit of extra money (to not spend on improving the team by the way) every week or treating the fans better and performing their moral duty to the long serving priced-out supporters who’ve supported the club through thick and thin and helped provide them with the income that has allowed them to progress and eventually move to a new stadium?

This triggers curiosity about which is the best kind of club to be supporting, is it the smaller family club whose fans feel part of and appreciated, or a bigger conglomerate that can isolate their fans but win trophies? I honestly believe Arsenal encompassed both of these things at Highbury and it worked fine. Which points to the stadium move being a negative thing once again.

Football has changed a lot for the good but I can’t help but feel it’s at the expense of a lot of fans and in particular, long-serving poorer class fans who are often the most loyal.

 

 

(Image soures: arsenal.com, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail)

Would the sale of Gareth Bale be a bad thing for Arsenal?

This evening Real Madrid have put in a record £85m bid for Gareth Bale. That fee is astronomical to say the least, especially for a player who has only looked top class for about 5 months. He bailed (no pun intended) Tottenham out a lot of times last season, basically winning games and points single-handedly for Spurs.

But is he really worth £85m? Of course not. He hasn't done nearly enough to merit that sort of fee. Tottenham would have to be mad not to accept it. I know it doesn't send the greatest of signals out to sell your best player but everyone has their price and think what Tottenham could do with that money.

They aren't in the Champions League so many would say they'd struggle to attract really good players, but I think that's a bit of a myth to be honest. Tottenham were in the Europa League last season and managed to get Verthongen and Dembele, this season they are in the same situation and have managed to attract a Brazil international team regular in Paulinho. They also seem to have caught the interest of high scoring Spanish striker Roberto Soldado. Liverpool have managed to attract Luis Suarez, Everton Kevin Mirallas and even Aston Villa with Christian Benteke.

We see every year new players plucked out of nowhere through good scouting systems- like Mirallas, Benteke, Michu and Koscielny. Tottenham could make those sort of buys and get in the likes of Roberto Soldado. They've still got the pull factors of being based in London, being in what is still largely renowned as the best league in the world and are at least in Europe and have got very tempting financial capabilities. So they still have the ability to attract very good players.

So I'd rather see Tottenham keep Bale and not have a huge war chest of dosh lying around to spend on improving the squad as a whole. Tottenham could easily get players in to replace the goals and chances Bale scored and created for them (he didn't get many assists last season- 4). And not only that, but have the license to go out and improve other areas of their team.

I'll be scared if Bale goes. Especially as we're just sitting on our huge war chest of money. So yes, Tottenham selling Bale would be a bad thing for Arsenal, provided Tottenham managed to get players of quality in after selling Bale.

My Graduation Ceremony

Yesterday I had my graduation ceremony. Call me weird but I wasn't really looking forward to it. Don't get me wrong, I was looking forward to collecting my certificate and making my family proud but it was the rest of it that was making me look forward to it being over.

The ceremony was at 5pm yet they wanted you to get there for 3.30pm, so there was a lot of hanging around and waiting. It was rather irritating until I arrived inside the hall for the ceremony. Virtually every other student was in their seat as I squeezed my way down the row to my assigned seat and in the corner of my eye as I sat down I saw a pretty blonde girl next to me look as if she was greeting me. I assumed my peripheral vision had deceived me but then she said "hiya". It turned out it was Vanessa, a girl who I'd liked but actually felt intimidated by a bit during the last year (only because she always seemed to be in one of those hot girl packs that they travel in). I was in a couple of classes with her but never really got the chance to talk to her but here she was chatting away to me likeshe knew me as her best mate.

It did make the ceremony a lot more pleasurable, she and I talked a lot and I felt totally comfortable. It was really nice. The ceremony speeches went on for what seemed like forever, very boring and irritating- as it always is to hear self-boasting. There's no way I'd do that, I'm way too good for it.

However soon it was time to queue up and collect our awards on stage. I stood there in my very awkwardly long and fiddly gown and hat (which kept sliding off). It was nice to be wearing the ceremonial robes but also quite annoying. The woman who'd put it on me hadn't done it completely right as my right shoulder strip kept falling away from where it should've been, and the hat was too small. I suppose I'm the common denominator but that sort of thing always seems to have happened to me- even when I went paintballing when I was about 12 when I got a shoddy combat attire.

But nevertheless I managed to fix it temporarily before I got to the stage (the gowning, not my paintballing gear). Slightly daunted, I walked on stage and shook the hand of one of the boring speakers and had my image on a big screen for the first time in my life while I was applauded by a crowd. It felt like I was being substituted on a football pitch.

Next up were photographs with the amazingly exact (or fussy) photographer who was very particular about things like finger positioning and hand placements. It was a nice evening with the exception of the unnecessary hanging around and the heat caused by wearing that frigging gown in that hot hall. My main disappointment was not getting to throw my hat up in the air... they didn't arrange that for some reason.

So, to quote the many clichés used at the ceremony... so begins the chapter of my life filled with fear of the unknown and, hopefully, opportunities of career advancement!

Why Williams would be a good signing- Experienced centre half can add to our British core

Arsenal have supposedly upped their interest in Ashley Williams (whatever that means). This excites me. It wouldn’t have done a year ago but over the last season we have seen some outstanding performances from Williams, notably against Man Utd and Chelsea.

He seems to be a big game player as he has shown over his two seasons in the Premier League with Swansea, as well as being an integral part of them knocking out Chelsea over two legs and Liverpool at Anfield on their way to winning the Capital One Cup. Moreover he is experienced; he’s 28 years old which is around the age of being at your peak as a centre half.

Additionally he knows the Premier League, which is crucial. He won’t take 6 months or a full season to adapt (like Koscielny and Mertesacker did), he’ll be able to slot right in and won’t struggle with the intensity or physicality of the English game.

My one worry with him is he does seem to drop the odd clanger, like a bizarrely timed back pass to the keeper. However he seems to have cleaned that up, I don’t remember him doing that for a while. I suppose as well his lack of experience in Europe isn’t a great factor considering our potential Champions League campaign.

Despite that I think overall he’d be a good signing for anything up to £10 million or so. Experienced, solid, stays injury-free and a big game player. He seems a very attractive option to me, the fact he won’t take a while to settle into the league being a big plus. It’d also be good to add more of that British grit and fight we’ve been developing over the last few years with Wilshere, Ramsey, Walcott, Jenkinson and The Ox. It’d be lovely to see us add to that determined British core.

 

 

(Image source: http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/003/108/284/hi-res-124641879_crop_650x440.jpg?1366117736)