Archive for March 2012

A lesson lived is a lesson learned

March 29, 2012 Arsenal No comments

The saying a lesson lived is a lesson learned fundamentally means real life experiences and mistakes are what teach us best.

The one criticism I have of Arsene Wenger is that he has lived 30 years of managerial lessons yet his stubbornness refuses to allow him to learn or at the very least learn quickly.

There are lots of reports in the press that Arsenal are finally going to have the summer clear out that we desperately need to free up some wages for our existing stars. This is good and bad news.

It is excellent news that we are finally going to try to sell Bendtner, Denilson and Chamakh as well as releasing Squillaci and Almunia on free transfers. It is good news that we are going to offer new and improved deals to Van Persie, Song and Walcott and hopefully enough money to satisfy Robin’s financial requirements assuming we can convince him that we can satisfy his ambitions but I’ve already voiced my belief that he will stay.

It is not so good news that we are looking to sell on Arshavin. Don’t get me wrong, if we can get a decent sum for him then I won’t really miss him but I do feel that if we let him go we will be back in the situation of being a bit light on experience. Arshavin is a great player and maybe this loan will rejuvenate him and he’ll come back and be the player he was in his first 12 months. I’d prefer to keep him but will accept a reasonable fee for him.

It is also not so good news that Arsenal are looking at making the same mistakes as they have for many years with the report that we are going to double The Ox’s wages.

For far too long Arsenal and to a greater extent Arsene Wenger have offered big wages to young players or players with average talent. I’m not for one second saying that AOC is average, far from it and I’m not saying that he isn’t worth £50k a week or to put it into perspective just as much as we’ve been paying Denilson and Almunia. What I am saying is firstly Denilson and Almunia were never worth £50k a week and secondly but more importantly it is a big mistake to pay a player so young such great wages because what happens is that by the time he has 2-3 years of first team experience under his belt and is setting the EPL alight his agents will feel he is worth double again and he’ll only be 21-22, by the time he is 24 his agents and maybe by then he himself will feel he is worth another £50k a week. Then we are talking £150-200k a week. Arsenal won’t pay this or more importantly won’t be able to pay that for 10+ players which we will probably need to do. So what happens? We end up selling him when he has a year left on his contract to a Man City or the next club with a sugar daddy willing to offer him £250k a week. Read more

Smells Like Team Spirit

March 23, 2012 Arsenal No comments

Incoherent, apathetic, soft, quiet, hard, loud and finally revolution-inspiring – all words used to described the hit Nirvana track “Smells Like Teen Spirit” but also words I believe can describe Arsenal’s season and the team too.

We started the season, indeed the summer, incoherently. Nobody outside of London Colney could understand the noises that were coming out of the club or make sense of the few garbled phrases that they could understand. Much like Nirvana fans needed a release of the lyrics to comprehend the words Cobain was singing it took an exhilarating thumping of Tottenham for us all to make sense of what the club had been trying to do and finally get off Wenger’s back.

I truly believe that this season will be looked back upon as the catalyst for the revolution that re-instated Arsenal as not only title challengers but winners too.

I’ll make one quick statement about the past 7 years and leave it at that before I carry on with the rest of this article. It’s a cliché and a total cop-out and something some or many fans will completely disagree with but I honestly believe that the Emirates (or Ashburton Grove for the traditionalists out there) should be seen as our ‘trophy’ or our ‘success’ for the past 7 years. We have, probably the best stadium in the world. I don’t say that because I’m a Gooner, I say that because it is true. We have sacrificed silverware for the most magnificent arena but we have also competed in the biggest club competition on Earth for 15 straight years on a shoe-string and will probably make it 16 now we’ve shown those pretenders in N17 who the real Kings of North London are and that the only 12 points they’ll ever keep on us is the 12 between N5 and N17.

Moving on.

I said earlier this season that I honestly believed that this team would be a stronger team without Cesc and Nasri. Many of you laughed at me and quite a few of you stopped following my blog calling me an idiot. The reasons I felt the team would be stronger without Cesc is that he wasn’t mentally at Arsenal in his last two seasons and as a result didn’t dominate games the way he used to. Don’t get me wrong he was still by far our best player and losing him was a massive blow and given the choice I’d have preferred to keep him but his performances were below what I considered to be his average of the previous 4 years. Read more

Wage policy and the definitive transfer list

March 8, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football, Transfers No comments

It’s March, Arsenal are out of all competitions and fighting for a top 4 place which can only mean one thing…. it’s transfer rumour time.

Usually the rumours that start flying about in March/April are full of fan wish-lists and agents trying to build interest from the money men by using Arsenal’s “interest” as a selling point.

Florentino Pérez once famously said that Real Madrid’s recruitment policy was going to be “Find out who Arsenal and Arséne Wenger want to buy and pay more”.

I have previously blogged saying that we only need minor tweaks and will Podolski being all but confirmed by Arsenal it seems we finally mean business this summer.

Apart from buying new players I still think we need to have a massive clearout but such is the size of squad we can afford to lose 10-12 players and only buy 3/4. We don’t need to buy superstars in every position because we have such fantastic players coming through the ranks from the boys in the first team like Wilshere, AOC, Ramsey, Jenkinson, Gibbs, Szczesny and Coquelin to the guys on the periphery like Ryo, Afobe, Campbell, Eisfield, Ozyakup, Miquel, Henderson and maybe even Lansbury.

What Arsenal have now is a core group of players that are experienced and talented whereas before we’ve only really had the latter. Sagna, Vermaelen, Mertesacker (who I believe all Arsenal fans will come to appreciate over the next season for what he brings to the team), Arteta, Rosicky and RVP are all experienced and talented players who at some point or another over the past 3/4 seasons we haven’t had or haven’t had fit. We can now add Song and Koscielny to that list.

We are now starting to look like a team with enough experienced players to start sprinkling in some exciting youth for balance and flavour. A luxury we’d had forced on us over the past 6 years and you know what they say about too much of a good thing.

With all of that in mind I don’t think the squad needs too much adding to it. What we do need to do is get rid of the dross and bring in a few talents players to un-dilute our talent pool.

Podolski’s arrival has apparently brought about a change of direction in wage policy but I don’t think that is the case. Arsenal have always had the capacity to pay big wages, our wage budget definitely allows for this but Wenger’s stubbornness and refusal to pay players what they are actually worth has led to this myth that we cannot afford big wages. Read more

Why Captain Vantastic will stay….

March 8, 2012 Arsenal No comments

With the arrival of Podolski to Arsenal seemingly imminent there are as many touting him as a replacement for Robin Van Persie as there are those lauding him as the perfect partner for the hottest striker in the world.

I personally do not believe that PodGOALski, as I like to call him (and have tried in vain to get trending on Twitter), is coming to be a replacement for Van Persie. There are many reasons from Podolski’s point of view but the main one is that he wants to leave Cologne because of their perceived lack of ambition. Why would he then join a club that has struggled to challenge for trophies for 7 season, lost two of their most influential players of the season before and struggled to cope with that for the first 4 months only to have the pressure of being a replacement for the best striker in the world?

Lukas is coming to be Robin’s partner, or at least he thinks he is. He would have wanted some assurances from Arsenal about Robin and maybe, just maybe they know something we don’t or they have told Podolski that Robin wants big players to sign before he signs and that he is a big player and signing will convince Robin to stay.

I really hope that I am right about Robin staying because I spent most of last summer telling people that Cesc and Nasri weren’t going to leave and I honestly believed that. Cesc eventually left because his heart and mind were no longer with Arsenal and although Barca were his boyhood team I still felt let down by Cesc but most of all by the club.

Wenger knew that Cesc hadn’t been 100% ‘with’ Arsenal for at least two years and with him constantly being tapped up by the Barcelona playing staff in the media and probably directly he knew he was probably fighting a losing battle but he had one card to play that he just left in the deck. He could have made things very public and either got a decent price for Cesc or proven that Barca didn’t want him as much as they said they did.

Publicly Wenger could have stated that if Barca want Cesc then they need to pay £50m for him because he was and is a £50m player. He should have given them until July 31st to make an offer of £50m or that the door was closed until summer 2012. I personally think that Barca would have backed off and Cesc would have known that he wasn’t wanted at Barca as much as he thought he was and maybe would have started to think about Arsenal some more again. Remember, Cesc came to Arsenal because he didn’t think he could make it in the Barca team, so of course when they start to say “Actually, Cesc, now you can” he is going to yearn for it.

Nasri I honestly believed was going to stay with or without Cesc because I thought he would see a chance to become top dog. Bottom line is Nasri left because he was a greedy little wanker and Arsenal did well to get £25m. That’s a total of £71m from City in 4 years for our cast-offs. Thanks. Read more

Minor tweaks required

March 7, 2012 Arsenal, Transfers No comments

It seems that once again Wenger was right; this team is good.

Although Arsenal valiantly went out to AC Milan last night they have won four premier league games on the trot including that amazing 5-2 against Spurs where for 30 minutes it looked like we would play the opposition off the park and walk away with nothing to being played off the park at Liverpool and walking away with the 3 points.

I don’t really care much for those of the opinion that this team is weaker without Cesc and Nasri. I don’t think it is.

Cesc hadn’t really been Cesc for the last two years he was here and Nasri had 6 good months. Look at Cesc and Nasri now.

Cesc has made his mark on the Barca team but at what cost? He is obviously happy to be at his home-town club but I personally feel that he joined a Barca that, for want of a better phrase, are on the way down. They are still a fantastic team to watch but I feel that they aren’t going to be the team they were over the past few years. I’m sure I’ll get lots of abuse for saying it but 10 points behind Madrid from a team that is supposedly the best ever and only got “better” when Cesc joined suggests that they aren’t the best team ever any more.

Nasri has had a few half decent games for City but struggles to get in the first team. I personally don’t think he is a player that City really want more than a player they just really didn’t want anyone else to have. Chelsea played to those transfer tactics extremely well for 3-4 years and they won two league titles, the FA cup three times and got to the Champions League final with a bench of “you can’t have him Harry’s”. Nasri is now playing for City like he was for Arsenal for the first 3 years. Promising but not quite there. Read more

« Older Entries