In March 2010 I decided to create this blog because I couldn't stand the hyberbole, metaphor and sport psychology coming out of Arsenal Football Club. This inexhaustible witches' cauldron of protective and forward-thinking statements served no other purpose than to protect a rotting bowl of fruit from more flies. (We can all use metaphor here).
So I named the blog, Spirit, Commitment, Bullshit and started to moan. I didn't moan all of the time as some of it required introspection, reflection and even the occasional gloat. But in the main, I needed to suck eggs in a way that relaxed the mental angst, by unpicking the tension caused by the squishy, thick melee that was the dark, crusty, yet still bleeding obvious, and formulating it into sentences that could make sense and highlight the situation at AFC.
I realise that a fine line is required to navigate the sense that continual practice of a skill is a critical part of the 'exercise' at hand. That is, staying focused, aware and able to elicit an explanation for the ills at AFC, but on the other hand, staying too focused, thinking too much, not being remotely close to the inner circle and inner workings of the thing that one gives too much of their life over to, well that just fucks you up.
They say that men think about sex approximately every seven seconds. I suggest that this 'discovery' must have been concluded by interviewing men on a Saturday who were not at the football, pub watching the football, or at home swearing freely at the computer and internet whilst trying to find a decent stream to watch the football on. Either way, it is lunacy to declare such a wild proclamation when the remaining men not on the above list would most likely be sex maniacs, academics or even worse, rugby fans. Not exactly a fair and reflective cross-section of society.
The point is, football tends to be all-encompassing - from a position of acceptance or denial in terms of devotion and support. It is a better and worse psychological and emotional exercise than sex. One can play and watch the best and worst of football and vicariously take away from the game the most amazing and energizing, or dirty and disgusted feelings. There is nothing in solo sex, duo sex, team sex, gang bangs, that can remotely come close to the aligning of planets and meaning attributed to Mickey Thomas' goal against Liverpool, or Wayne Rooney's overhead kick against Manchester City. Or even the highs and lows of Michael Owen's goal against Argentina and the ensuing result.
Football requires so much more than a condom, bed, camera, mirror, courgette, partner etc. It requires competition, fair play, skills, mistakes, passion, anger and humour. It is an obsession and in many ways, just as easy to unpick as sex, and just as complicated to rationalize. But it is supposedly just a game. Just sport. Stop being so silly and read a book. And so on.
So let's get serious. The useful thing about blogging is that one can take time organising one's waffle to get to the point. Now that I have established how much football can be wired into the mainframe of many men and women, it is worth exploring how my affiliation and devotion to Arsenal Football Club is souring to the point of bitter disgust.
Firstly, I blame Arsene Wenger for so much but I will deal with him in a bit. I am going to address the situation based on how every other 'decent' football club is structured. So let me begin with the Board of Directors (BoD). The shocking and negligent, greedy and workshy BoD.
First, the majority shareholder Stan Kronke - owner of almost 70% of the shares. This man has no passion for the game, he has many 'franchises' in American sports and rarely, or never, been a winning owner. Nor does he have any particular urge to be. He is a businessman and a very good one too. He has seen something that most other prospective 'owners' have not been able to see. A club with value that will go up, yet with very little needed in the way of overheads and profit. To treat it as a business, as he does, he looks at the macro value of the Premier League and realises that an organisation with little in the way of long term debt, a state of the art new stadium, based in the most expensive city in Europe, in the most popular league for viewing reasons, and a team who play some of the most alluring matches, as the opposition gain so much from beating Arsenal, yet if Arsenal play well it is usually a decent spectacle, all of this (except the last point) make it a good medium to long term business venture.
He is not in it for the immediate profit, he is in it for the value. Stake £500 million and take £800 million out after 5-7 years is an amazing increase in value to potentially profit on in business terms. He doesn't have to attend games, he is not interested in attending games. He has no idea why he has to attend the AGM and doesn't find the sport in the least bit interesting. Except for the continued speculative value in random things like the ongoing change in TV rights, worldwide viewing patterns and audience share. The commodification of Arsenal Football Club's television personality across many different media platforms, (TV, Web, Sports Club, Pub, etc), is not something we take much notice of inside the UK. But the American, Asian and African markets cannot get enough of the 'package'. This is no different to many of the top UK clubs, but since he only owns AFC in the UK, this is a great asset and reason to 'own'. As well as this, he is able to oversee a 'franchising' style 'Arsenalisation' of the club which attempts to consolidate the collective victories and successes of years gone by, as a marketable force to overshadow the turgid present. All this coupled with a desire to instil a present material 'urge' for those who attend the matches.
The long term fan, the season ticket holder, these are no use to the club as there are 30,000 or so season ticket holders, but there are several million 'tourists', who come to the game and sit in the various levels of the club. They may spend anything between £50-100 on a ticket, (season tickets cost £1000), and another £20 on food and drink, and £80-150 in the club shop. Five of those 'tourists' every game far outweighs the income made from a seasoned fan who worries about where the funds for a season ticket will come from. There may be as many as 5000 to 10,000 tourists who attend each game, and the true value of that can be properly counted at the end of the season. But while the board can sell the club to these people, the tourists will continue to spend and be the priority for the BoD.
The tourists bring a high pitched, but low volume atmosphere to the club. The are dressed brightly and have cameras. They smile throughout the game and are overwhelmed by the sense of occasion. They bring little to the club except cash, but that is what the BoD wants, and only what they want.
Then you have those silent partners on the BoD. They do next to nothing except try to profit from, and sustain Arsenal's market value. Their input is questionable as they have become more peripheral as the American's strength grows. The rich Russian who owns 30% is rightly or wrongly not allowed to contribute and not invited to sit on the board. The friction grows as the direction of the club becomes questioned more every day.
Then you have the CEO. A man who unbelievably answers to the manager. Ivan Gazidis is a South African born, Oxford educated, USA employed sports lawyer, who cut his teeth creating and marketing the MLS in the USA which David Beckham has done so much to increase the value of. He was a perfect right hand man for Kronke. The only problem is Wenger hates him and he answers to Wenger. There is no other management structure or business on Earth who's manager has more power than the CEO. Apparently, I have been told that Wenger didn't take his calls over the summer when Gazidis was fumbling his way around transfer negotiations. This fractious relationship is a disaster for the club as 'Wenger the despot' tries to micro-manage the ever-growing elusive quest for the nebulous perception of 'success'. A micro-manager who needs the relative circumstances of all clubs and personnel outside of the club, to present his 'true' value to those inside and who follow the club. A mad professor who cannot accept his own failings because he has shown signs of brilliance in his early years at the club. Many think he over achieved in the years 1998-2004 and the real evidence of what he can produce is right here, right now. Others think he is a master of many elements of football who has been caught up by wiser, younger managers who have learned only to manage a team and not a club. Wenger was compact disc in a rapidly moving age of digital sound and cloud storage. I think he is a deluded clown who can still occasionally make people laugh in the circus. But a clown who has lost his lions, tigers and elephants and replaced them with squirrels and badgers and tried to market the cuteness of his act. The big animals went to better circuses or died.
Next we have the unfathomably unhealthy relationship between Wenger and the ex-CEO David Dein. They are best friends. Dein is now an enemy of the board as he has questioned the direction of the club, ever since he tried to firstly bring Kronke on board, and secondly sold his shares to the Russian, Usmanov and making himself a very rich man indeed. He is unwelcome at the club, yet still attends the game and owns a box. His son Darren, is a football agent who moved in to represent and agitate for the transfers of Theirry Henry, Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy, Samir Nasri, Robin van Persie away from Arsenal Football Club.
Does Wenger really not know what is going on with his best friend's son? Does Wenger not say to his best friend, "your son is ripping our team apart"? Does Wenger continue to maintain his friendship with Dein because he doesn't care? Is this why he doesn't speak to or recognise Gazidis as a CEO because in Wenger's eyes Dein is the original CEO and Wenger is acting up in his absence? Is there any logic to this continued 'friendship' when his son is the devil?
It is a rotten relationship and before a ball is kicked, the dysfunctional and split agendas all serve no purpose than to negligently and mistakenly, (because I don't believe they purposefully intend to), smash the club to bits from the top down.
Aside from all of that, the money men and women at the club have decided to latch on to UEFA and Platini's Financial Fair Play concept like some holy grail. But much like our chancellor George Osborne's declaration today that Britain's deficit will not be reduced by 2015, (yet will not change his fiscal direction), the club employs much the same delusional qualities. Both Osborne and Arsenal PLC are hubristic imbeciles of the highest order and deserve to fall on their diamond-encrusted gold swords when the time is right.
However, in terms of the real day to day running of the club, the small profit and turnover of Arsenal FC can only genuinely be facilitated by player sales. There is little success and reward for footballing accomplishment nowadays, which means that player sales, much like selling tickets to the tourists, to the other successful clubs competing in Europe, is the only way to pass breaking even. Therefore, the Arsenal way in terms of football education, is the equivalent to studying at Harvard, Oxbridge or MIT and is seen as a true asset in the marketing of player value to opposition/the competition/small clubs looking to make a big purchase in their fans' eyes. All of this is further complicated by the outrageous and incomprehensible salaries awarded to injury-prone, ability-prone and personality-prone 'performers' but not competitors.
The (best) Arsenal player is seen as a thing of taste. A rock of experience and skill. There are few, or even none left. Robin Van Persie showed how he could lift the club out of mediocrity last season. He was remarkable. Wenger went to replace him with some brawn and silky skill, but his failing as a tactician make the old and new players look systematically and individually weak. The formation Wenger's team employs, with the onus being on the effectiveness of offensive-style players, makes the team's ability to stifle, defend and at the death, repel the ball from our net, a complete and uproarious laughing stock. Arsenal have no mettle, no nous, no common goal in reality, no physical evidence or outcome for the sporting psychobabble they are trained to spout and employ as mantras. They are emasculated.
The players Arsenal have trained and bought, the experiment of youth to fund the new stadium, the patience demanded from the fans as the impending FFP rules set in, the lack of foresight as all other clubs jostle for a position of strength, the adopting of modern and expansive, exploratory and expensive approaches in the game that can all pay off in other areas, all of these hugely important factors have become distorted priorities or totally ignored in the most muddled and sickening metaphoric knot, in our speaker, TV, Sky, scart and DVD/HDMI/Home Entertainment cables.
Metaphorically speaking, (and mantra purging), Wenger and the club need a good sit down and to allocate a period of time to untie the knots, working together and virtually ignore the fact that all the other sensible clubs have moved over to wireless sound and connectivity. They need to recognise and assure/rationalise with the fans that it would not be prudent to just throw the whole multimedia home-entertainment set-up out of the window and buy in the wireless. Instead they have to unpick it, test it for functionality, market the hell out of it on eBay and Gumtree and then when they have the reddies in their back pocket, work out how, on what, and who is best to spend the funds.
If the answer is not Wenger, which is most probably the case, then we need to bring someone else in who is enthusiastic about digital and wireless media, and doesn't hark back to the days of vinyl and CD as if the past is where we should all be aiming to emulate. Many folks out there have suggested to be careful what you wish for. Many have said that an Arsenal-style Arab Spring can result in mutiny, evil factions, unnecessary death (not really), and more. Is present-day Iraq the model that Arsenal fans and Arsenal PLC need to be looking at? Does the historic destructive tyrant need overthrowing, only to reveal a culture of mayhem constantly marketed to the rest of the world as a burgeoning future centre of financial and material gain? The only people who really tend to believe this in reality and metaphor come from the upper echelons of British Society and the expansive Capitalist loonies of the USA. Which after marveling at the irony, brings me back to the Arsenal Board of Directors... Your next move?
Some very selective and (solely chosen for my argument) quotes about change:
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only
those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can
hope to escape.
Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can
be wrought by crisis -- once that crisis can be recognized and
understood.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most responsive to change.
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Remember that the six most expensive words in business are: ‘We’ve always done it that way.’
If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.
All real change requires risk.
I fear that the rot will be allowed to become much worse. That a fire sale is brewing. That the manager will leave with the remaining assets and hide in a bunker waiting for the cavalry. That the BoD will profit from the sale of the club, based on the real estate and international commercial value. That the fans will watch the mediocrity become lesser than average, all in an arena of bitter and festering silence.
It is not just coincidental irony that the most significant and most obvious, human and pictorial evidence of success, legend and achievement is all outside the recently renewed Emirates Stadium. No Arab Spring here thank you very much.
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Friday, 6 July 2012
“Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”
Occam’s Razor.
And so we have the Arsenal Uncivil War. The Arsenal way is no more.
Whatever the reasoning for two expected bombs landing in two sites occupied by the public, the inner workings or malfunctions of our football club have conspired to make summer yet again, the most foul of seasons for its fans.
I am all-too-often a person who likes to complicate and pick apart notions and ideas for that which looks worth explaining. But in this instance, the simplest approach seems the most appropriate.
Let’s break this down:
• The best players want to leave year on year.
• The manager confides in no one and practises the art of damage limitation to no great success (unless we include his marriage).
• The board want to make money – huge money, out of the club by completing a 5 year plan and selling at around a 75% profit per share. Debt free, Arsenal is an amazing proposition to a billionaire looking for a Man City toy in a prime area of London. (Inevitable if the current financial base incurs a further economic demise – relative to our competition)
• The fans pay the most in the world for their tickets.
• If it is to be believed, the fanfare surrounding the appointment of our CEO and our Commercial Director culminates in a cold-call exploring sponsorship links with a company owned by our 2nd biggest investor.
The club is a mess. The Arsenal way is an organised, yet minimalist mess. Wenger’s overgrown teenage affection for all things Japanese – (eg no obvious acts of rebellion, no aggression to one another, take your shoes off before trying to burgle my house and so on), is the only thing that disguises the torrents and rumblings that continue to affect our planning and consistency.
Now it is not all doom and gloom. But right now the 8-2 defeat feels far more resonant in my mind, then any decent result as I remember how the disaffected Wenger and his shell-shocked troops were dismantled and imploded last September.
What appears to be the case is that it is not all the managers’ fault. He has made the club in his image and the board have allowed this to happen. Wenger is a better PR, commercial director, product in himself, manager, CEO and economist than most people working in football. All this for £6 million a year is a bargain. But only if you work on the board of Arsenal FC.
So what of the rumours of Wenger’s and Gazides’ relationship? What has the Chairman done in his Prince Phillip role? What do the chairmen of clubs like Tottenham, Dortmund and Porto do that is so relatively successful, yet continually have to contend with the higher achieving clubs around them, (or conditions such as Spurs minimal pay scale)????
These questions cannot be answered by us and need more than speculation by ourselves. However, as I started this with Occam’s Razor, I might as well continue it. The simplest way is to conclude that many errors have been made in many areas. Some are directly attributed to judgement and capability issues from employees at the club. Others are down to the irregular and unpredictable nature of cash and cache. We don’t know when a player is going to ask for more, or claim to want success – but we sure as hell know it will happen. What prompts them to do it is usually a mixture of agents, media, personal glory and stagnation.
Theo for example is another player in a similar situation as Robin. However he won’t be offered what R$VP wants because his demands don’t mirror his erratic cache. But in terms of what the club stand to lose, it will be viewed and take a similar effect (though in differing amounts/impact) to the R$VP case. This will contribute to the detriment of the club (and have a variable impact on the performance on the team), it will have a similar effect on the issues that affect the management of the club and team. This might sound like waffle but it is critical as it suggests the need of a rather large change to the contracts of our players.
Parity in pay can only be merited once players have proved themselves. Parity that Wenger espouses is contradicted by the policy to sell tickets at different values depending on the opposition. These are largely part of the same value system and therefore need to be further addressed.
EG: R$VP is paid £100k per week. Theo £60k. Denilson £60k and so on. Now is Theo a top tier player? Is Denilson a middle tier? We know Wenger pays (and it is Wenger, not the club) players based on the idea that they will come good and wish to remain loyal. Nope. He knows but is he willing to accept this? Arteta took a pay cut to come to Arsenal and is now the fans’ favourite to be made captain. A captain that will not leave next year. Sounds like a pay-plan to me.
If dead wood gets shipped out and frees up a load of money, that shift can change the current pay policy without costing the club more. Then again, we can also purchase and pay more without costing the club too much more. We need to make the decision based on the supposed pledge that 75% of all revenues must be spent on player acquisition and/or retention. Is it? Is it really? Have we spend all that we amassed with Adebayor, Toure, Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy and so on? Or do those sums offset the heavy price we pay for Diaby, Denilson, Chamakh, Bendtner, Almunia (RIP), Squilacci, etc? In which case, we need to take a hit and start again with a new pay structure. Future players need it, we as fans need it. We are like Status Quo complaining when Radio 1 decided not to play them again. Who cares? We were once important and within our own fan base we are important but the difference is that Arsenal FC doesn’t have to age, even if the Arsenal way seems a bit old and stuffy.
Now the claims and counter claims, rumours and so on will try to kill our summer. They will try to destroy all that the club foolishly prides itself on by sending out a PR message dressed like Miss Jean Brodie in a Playboy beauty pageant. Does it even matter how good-looking she is, if the myth and allure are killed by the ‘surface’ presentation? Or what if Brad Pitt enters a body building competition? Is Arsenal the embodiment of Feminism or metro-sexuality in a world of hardcore banking porn?
It says so much about how football is viewed by the players, agents and fans alike that an attractive and decent club with an amazing infrastructure, can be mocked and pilloried because they decided to adhere to an ever-growing, utilitarian view of football. Ticket = pleasure.
Do me a favour!
Usmanov has taken a chance to destabilise, as has R$VP. Wenger has hidden behind the board and CEO for the first time in a while. The financial damage to the brand increases every hour that nothing is said or done. But this cannot be properly felt in the ‘bubble’ that has been created for the players and the management. Occasionally, the businessmen of the board have to step out of the bubble and take a look around, because in the original Adam Smith ethos of economics, the ‘market’ exists for the people. But the ‘football people’ don’t seem to see this and choose not to cater for it at Arsenal. Not beyond doorsteps of stale bread with morsels of fois gras. Meanwhile, the rest of the league are bankrupting themselves to gorge themselves to a slow, medium or rapid death.
So my patience is a thin as Usmanov is fat. My reticence is fragile and my faith in those who control and steer this ship is more Costa Concordia than Victoria Concordia Crescit.
We can come out fighting. We can do damage limitation PR. We are not the royal family. Nor are we cream and will not ‘float’ to the fecking top. Our class may be as permanent as the damage done by our own staff, the media and the economies of scale. If we think big and pay little, we will end up hosting concerts and X Factor auditions to more people than football matches.
We do not need sea change, we need some change. We do not need billions, but we need hundreds of millions. We do not need more fans, we need loyal and appeased fans. We do not need to be in the know, but we need to know some truths. We put our faith and hope in the most ungodlike of people.
Our football will not be saved by two signings and a couple of loan deals. Nor will a farcical cancelled trip to Nigeria, which no doubt will still result in the website showing photos of ‘our’ Frank Stubbs posing next to an urban open gasoline pipe, a couple of Muslim-targeted churches and him hitching his way round the country blindfolded and gagged.
This is the time for political and financial change. But not revolution. Make the moves Arsenal but stop being so bloody British about it.
And so we have the Arsenal Uncivil War. The Arsenal way is no more.
Whatever the reasoning for two expected bombs landing in two sites occupied by the public, the inner workings or malfunctions of our football club have conspired to make summer yet again, the most foul of seasons for its fans.
I am all-too-often a person who likes to complicate and pick apart notions and ideas for that which looks worth explaining. But in this instance, the simplest approach seems the most appropriate.
Let’s break this down:
• The best players want to leave year on year.
• The manager confides in no one and practises the art of damage limitation to no great success (unless we include his marriage).
• The board want to make money – huge money, out of the club by completing a 5 year plan and selling at around a 75% profit per share. Debt free, Arsenal is an amazing proposition to a billionaire looking for a Man City toy in a prime area of London. (Inevitable if the current financial base incurs a further economic demise – relative to our competition)
• The fans pay the most in the world for their tickets.
• If it is to be believed, the fanfare surrounding the appointment of our CEO and our Commercial Director culminates in a cold-call exploring sponsorship links with a company owned by our 2nd biggest investor.
The club is a mess. The Arsenal way is an organised, yet minimalist mess. Wenger’s overgrown teenage affection for all things Japanese – (eg no obvious acts of rebellion, no aggression to one another, take your shoes off before trying to burgle my house and so on), is the only thing that disguises the torrents and rumblings that continue to affect our planning and consistency.
Now it is not all doom and gloom. But right now the 8-2 defeat feels far more resonant in my mind, then any decent result as I remember how the disaffected Wenger and his shell-shocked troops were dismantled and imploded last September.
What appears to be the case is that it is not all the managers’ fault. He has made the club in his image and the board have allowed this to happen. Wenger is a better PR, commercial director, product in himself, manager, CEO and economist than most people working in football. All this for £6 million a year is a bargain. But only if you work on the board of Arsenal FC.
So what of the rumours of Wenger’s and Gazides’ relationship? What has the Chairman done in his Prince Phillip role? What do the chairmen of clubs like Tottenham, Dortmund and Porto do that is so relatively successful, yet continually have to contend with the higher achieving clubs around them, (or conditions such as Spurs minimal pay scale)????
These questions cannot be answered by us and need more than speculation by ourselves. However, as I started this with Occam’s Razor, I might as well continue it. The simplest way is to conclude that many errors have been made in many areas. Some are directly attributed to judgement and capability issues from employees at the club. Others are down to the irregular and unpredictable nature of cash and cache. We don’t know when a player is going to ask for more, or claim to want success – but we sure as hell know it will happen. What prompts them to do it is usually a mixture of agents, media, personal glory and stagnation.
Theo for example is another player in a similar situation as Robin. However he won’t be offered what R$VP wants because his demands don’t mirror his erratic cache. But in terms of what the club stand to lose, it will be viewed and take a similar effect (though in differing amounts/impact) to the R$VP case. This will contribute to the detriment of the club (and have a variable impact on the performance on the team), it will have a similar effect on the issues that affect the management of the club and team. This might sound like waffle but it is critical as it suggests the need of a rather large change to the contracts of our players.
Parity in pay can only be merited once players have proved themselves. Parity that Wenger espouses is contradicted by the policy to sell tickets at different values depending on the opposition. These are largely part of the same value system and therefore need to be further addressed.
EG: R$VP is paid £100k per week. Theo £60k. Denilson £60k and so on. Now is Theo a top tier player? Is Denilson a middle tier? We know Wenger pays (and it is Wenger, not the club) players based on the idea that they will come good and wish to remain loyal. Nope. He knows but is he willing to accept this? Arteta took a pay cut to come to Arsenal and is now the fans’ favourite to be made captain. A captain that will not leave next year. Sounds like a pay-plan to me.
If dead wood gets shipped out and frees up a load of money, that shift can change the current pay policy without costing the club more. Then again, we can also purchase and pay more without costing the club too much more. We need to make the decision based on the supposed pledge that 75% of all revenues must be spent on player acquisition and/or retention. Is it? Is it really? Have we spend all that we amassed with Adebayor, Toure, Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy and so on? Or do those sums offset the heavy price we pay for Diaby, Denilson, Chamakh, Bendtner, Almunia (RIP), Squilacci, etc? In which case, we need to take a hit and start again with a new pay structure. Future players need it, we as fans need it. We are like Status Quo complaining when Radio 1 decided not to play them again. Who cares? We were once important and within our own fan base we are important but the difference is that Arsenal FC doesn’t have to age, even if the Arsenal way seems a bit old and stuffy.
Now the claims and counter claims, rumours and so on will try to kill our summer. They will try to destroy all that the club foolishly prides itself on by sending out a PR message dressed like Miss Jean Brodie in a Playboy beauty pageant. Does it even matter how good-looking she is, if the myth and allure are killed by the ‘surface’ presentation? Or what if Brad Pitt enters a body building competition? Is Arsenal the embodiment of Feminism or metro-sexuality in a world of hardcore banking porn?
It says so much about how football is viewed by the players, agents and fans alike that an attractive and decent club with an amazing infrastructure, can be mocked and pilloried because they decided to adhere to an ever-growing, utilitarian view of football. Ticket = pleasure.
Do me a favour!
Usmanov has taken a chance to destabilise, as has R$VP. Wenger has hidden behind the board and CEO for the first time in a while. The financial damage to the brand increases every hour that nothing is said or done. But this cannot be properly felt in the ‘bubble’ that has been created for the players and the management. Occasionally, the businessmen of the board have to step out of the bubble and take a look around, because in the original Adam Smith ethos of economics, the ‘market’ exists for the people. But the ‘football people’ don’t seem to see this and choose not to cater for it at Arsenal. Not beyond doorsteps of stale bread with morsels of fois gras. Meanwhile, the rest of the league are bankrupting themselves to gorge themselves to a slow, medium or rapid death.
So my patience is a thin as Usmanov is fat. My reticence is fragile and my faith in those who control and steer this ship is more Costa Concordia than Victoria Concordia Crescit.
We can come out fighting. We can do damage limitation PR. We are not the royal family. Nor are we cream and will not ‘float’ to the fecking top. Our class may be as permanent as the damage done by our own staff, the media and the economies of scale. If we think big and pay little, we will end up hosting concerts and X Factor auditions to more people than football matches.
We do not need sea change, we need some change. We do not need billions, but we need hundreds of millions. We do not need more fans, we need loyal and appeased fans. We do not need to be in the know, but we need to know some truths. We put our faith and hope in the most ungodlike of people.
Our football will not be saved by two signings and a couple of loan deals. Nor will a farcical cancelled trip to Nigeria, which no doubt will still result in the website showing photos of ‘our’ Frank Stubbs posing next to an urban open gasoline pipe, a couple of Muslim-targeted churches and him hitching his way round the country blindfolded and gagged.
This is the time for political and financial change. But not revolution. Make the moves Arsenal but stop being so bloody British about it.
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
What is Arsenal?
What is Arsenal?
I spent too long yesterday explaining how little as fans we really know our team. Instead I tried to emphasize the anomaly that the club is, in a league of slightly predictable anomalies.
We know what Man United is. We know that when we look at the parts of the machine, there are few players in that team we would like over ours. We could say the same about Chelsea and City, Spurs and Newcastle and so on. Actually, I bet out of all of the above teams, the most players we would want from any one team would probably be Newcastle – which is strange no?
We know how City, United, Chelsea and ourselves will get on. We know how Stoke, Everton, Liverpool and Villa will do. We know because like Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” Or, “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.” Or even, “being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience”
If you haven’t read it, it is worth a go as it makes sense a lot of the time. As does his book Outliers and The Tipping Point. All lend themselves brilliantly to analyzing, or at least appearing to analyze sport. In Outliers, Gladwell’s premise is that to be extremely good at anything, to be regarded as a genius in your field, you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing that activity as some kind of apprenticeship. The funny thing is, if we start supporting from an age of 8 or so, and we think about football on and off for 4 hours a day, we will have completed our 10,000 hours by the age of 15! And what the hell do we know at 15? Certainly what do we know about football? Have you ever heard teenagers argue about football? It is like listening to chimpanzees fighting. So therein lies the rub. We have hundreds of thousands of over-qualified experts, unheard in the melee of genius-turd, spouted off like some Sony Bravia advert in which we are both the paint and the sprinting clown. Football is the boring block of flats.
You see the thing is, we have no idea what we are talking about. None. Even football managers and players talk a bad game. They might tell a good story, or be able to explain some interesting insight into why circumstances transpired in a favourable or unfavourable manner based on a decision they made or didn’t make. But the one thing they don’t get any better than us, is the meaning and qualification of what it is to be a football fan. So they need to do their job without acknowledging us or they end up sinking to our level. We all have strange and lucid gut feelings based on the hours accumulating meaningless and trival facts and bias that bring no reward to our lives. Most people do things/work on areas of themselves to make them seem more attractive. The generating of football knowledge is not one of them.
We give ourselves over to something weaker and more secretive than religion. There is a flexible and odd moral code that can bridge the disgusting (I’m thinking of the songs about Adebayor and Hitler being a Gooner because he killed Jews), to the amazing (Muamba, the pre-match laying of flowers by the Arsenal players at Anfield ’89).
The amount of time we spend trying to think things through is directly at odds with our real feelings. Feelings about a Wenger who mirrors the worst in all of us. His inability to budge from his self-belief/opinion, his myopia to suit his needs, his devotion to that which he truly cares about (parity within pay and stability/family life within the group). All of these things are things we see or believe we see in ourselves. Much of that which we love or hate is mirrored in our own beliefs and failings. Why should football be any different?
Anyway, I digress. What I am trying to explain, is that the game itself and the ritual around it are two very different things. One is steeped in tribalism, camaraderie and emotional abandonment. The other is the achieving of immediate objectives based on the qualities of one team to try to beat or hold another team. I am going out on a limb and assuming few teams go out to lose (in any sport).
So then we have the challenge of what makes a fan, set against what makes a professional footballer. From here on in, the links and comparisons could decend into the hilarious. I apologise if I let go of the reigns. If I do, this will be both in surrealism as well as experimental sentence structure.
An English fan is an amalgam of branded clothes and sportswear, beer, regular (if unreliable) sources of opinion and conjecture, spurious recollections of the past and projections for the future. A studied and dissonant rabble of solipsists resembling the French Foreign Legion and in the main, suffering some type of physical and psychological atrophy. (Woooah horsey!)
The fan reacts on the hoof and thinks in detail at a later stage. The fan loses all sense of discipline because the abandonment is the drug that invigorates a meaningless and often one-way faith. The real fan doesn’t care about their self-image, because they have long-since recognized that they come a very distant second to the physical demands in the overwhelming emotion that is blind faith.
The quality player is (mainly) fit, disciplined, single-minded, aware of their duty and the impact it has on a team, a good decision maker and able to do so in an instant under stress/pressure.
Why have I spent so long trying to establish this? Because Arsenal is a crazy anomaly that occasionally tries to play like the crappiest fans (8-2 :( ), but let themselves down by reluctantly and more frequently resorting to skill (5-2 :) ).
So much as I would like to talk about the merits of Arteta, Wilshire’s absence, defensive indiscipline, us being a selling club and so on, I find myself having to justify why I want to talk about it in the first place. For all the tactical inefficiencies and genius displayed by the various factions of the team, I find myself worryingly overcome by my own fits of rage at the inane, docile, simian and discombobulated expressions too often worn in recent times by the likes of Eboue, Vela, Almunia (who always looked like a homeless person caught defecating in a backstreet), Djourou, Song, Arsharvin, Clichy, Chamakh and so on and bloody so forth.
With that in mind, caring about whether van Persie stays, or if Podolski will be a hit almost seems meaningless. The amount of time we have invested in our madness has already elapsed and taken its true form. The delusion that success on the field, will bring the fan some kind of moment of clarity is as nonsensical as manufacturing and using a home-made catheter when your junk and bladder are in perfect working order.
Man United fans are miserable. Man City fans have been and are already miserable. All fans are bloody miserable because it is that state of being which we enjoy. We just tend to confuse it with thinking. The temporary elation in success brings us worryingly close to a realization that the meaning of football is to chew us up and spit us out. Results and achievements are ephemeral and the solipsism of the fan is what it is really all about. Wenger and his strange habits show he is human and suffering his own madness. Good. Serves him right.
I spent too long yesterday explaining how little as fans we really know our team. Instead I tried to emphasize the anomaly that the club is, in a league of slightly predictable anomalies.
We know what Man United is. We know that when we look at the parts of the machine, there are few players in that team we would like over ours. We could say the same about Chelsea and City, Spurs and Newcastle and so on. Actually, I bet out of all of the above teams, the most players we would want from any one team would probably be Newcastle – which is strange no?
We know how City, United, Chelsea and ourselves will get on. We know how Stoke, Everton, Liverpool and Villa will do. We know because like Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” Or, “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.” Or even, “being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience”
If you haven’t read it, it is worth a go as it makes sense a lot of the time. As does his book Outliers and The Tipping Point. All lend themselves brilliantly to analyzing, or at least appearing to analyze sport. In Outliers, Gladwell’s premise is that to be extremely good at anything, to be regarded as a genius in your field, you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing that activity as some kind of apprenticeship. The funny thing is, if we start supporting from an age of 8 or so, and we think about football on and off for 4 hours a day, we will have completed our 10,000 hours by the age of 15! And what the hell do we know at 15? Certainly what do we know about football? Have you ever heard teenagers argue about football? It is like listening to chimpanzees fighting. So therein lies the rub. We have hundreds of thousands of over-qualified experts, unheard in the melee of genius-turd, spouted off like some Sony Bravia advert in which we are both the paint and the sprinting clown. Football is the boring block of flats.
You see the thing is, we have no idea what we are talking about. None. Even football managers and players talk a bad game. They might tell a good story, or be able to explain some interesting insight into why circumstances transpired in a favourable or unfavourable manner based on a decision they made or didn’t make. But the one thing they don’t get any better than us, is the meaning and qualification of what it is to be a football fan. So they need to do their job without acknowledging us or they end up sinking to our level. We all have strange and lucid gut feelings based on the hours accumulating meaningless and trival facts and bias that bring no reward to our lives. Most people do things/work on areas of themselves to make them seem more attractive. The generating of football knowledge is not one of them.
We give ourselves over to something weaker and more secretive than religion. There is a flexible and odd moral code that can bridge the disgusting (I’m thinking of the songs about Adebayor and Hitler being a Gooner because he killed Jews), to the amazing (Muamba, the pre-match laying of flowers by the Arsenal players at Anfield ’89).
The amount of time we spend trying to think things through is directly at odds with our real feelings. Feelings about a Wenger who mirrors the worst in all of us. His inability to budge from his self-belief/opinion, his myopia to suit his needs, his devotion to that which he truly cares about (parity within pay and stability/family life within the group). All of these things are things we see or believe we see in ourselves. Much of that which we love or hate is mirrored in our own beliefs and failings. Why should football be any different?
Anyway, I digress. What I am trying to explain, is that the game itself and the ritual around it are two very different things. One is steeped in tribalism, camaraderie and emotional abandonment. The other is the achieving of immediate objectives based on the qualities of one team to try to beat or hold another team. I am going out on a limb and assuming few teams go out to lose (in any sport).
So then we have the challenge of what makes a fan, set against what makes a professional footballer. From here on in, the links and comparisons could decend into the hilarious. I apologise if I let go of the reigns. If I do, this will be both in surrealism as well as experimental sentence structure.
An English fan is an amalgam of branded clothes and sportswear, beer, regular (if unreliable) sources of opinion and conjecture, spurious recollections of the past and projections for the future. A studied and dissonant rabble of solipsists resembling the French Foreign Legion and in the main, suffering some type of physical and psychological atrophy. (Woooah horsey!)
The fan reacts on the hoof and thinks in detail at a later stage. The fan loses all sense of discipline because the abandonment is the drug that invigorates a meaningless and often one-way faith. The real fan doesn’t care about their self-image, because they have long-since recognized that they come a very distant second to the physical demands in the overwhelming emotion that is blind faith.
The quality player is (mainly) fit, disciplined, single-minded, aware of their duty and the impact it has on a team, a good decision maker and able to do so in an instant under stress/pressure.
Why have I spent so long trying to establish this? Because Arsenal is a crazy anomaly that occasionally tries to play like the crappiest fans (8-2 :( ), but let themselves down by reluctantly and more frequently resorting to skill (5-2 :) ).
So much as I would like to talk about the merits of Arteta, Wilshire’s absence, defensive indiscipline, us being a selling club and so on, I find myself having to justify why I want to talk about it in the first place. For all the tactical inefficiencies and genius displayed by the various factions of the team, I find myself worryingly overcome by my own fits of rage at the inane, docile, simian and discombobulated expressions too often worn in recent times by the likes of Eboue, Vela, Almunia (who always looked like a homeless person caught defecating in a backstreet), Djourou, Song, Arsharvin, Clichy, Chamakh and so on and bloody so forth.
With that in mind, caring about whether van Persie stays, or if Podolski will be a hit almost seems meaningless. The amount of time we have invested in our madness has already elapsed and taken its true form. The delusion that success on the field, will bring the fan some kind of moment of clarity is as nonsensical as manufacturing and using a home-made catheter when your junk and bladder are in perfect working order.
Man United fans are miserable. Man City fans have been and are already miserable. All fans are bloody miserable because it is that state of being which we enjoy. We just tend to confuse it with thinking. The temporary elation in success brings us worryingly close to a realization that the meaning of football is to chew us up and spit us out. Results and achievements are ephemeral and the solipsism of the fan is what it is really all about. Wenger and his strange habits show he is human and suffering his own madness. Good. Serves him right.
What is Arsenal?
What is Arsenal?
I spent too long yesterday explaining how little as fans we really know our team. Instead I tried to emphasize the anomaly that the club is, in a league of slightly predictable anomalies.
We know what Man United is. We know that when we look at the parts of the machine, there are few players in that team we would like over ours. We could say the same about Chelsea and City, Spurs and Newcastle and so on. Actually, I bet out of all of the above teams, the most players we would want from any one team would probably be Newcastle – which is strange no?
We know how City, United, Chelsea and ourselves will get on. We know how Stoke, Everton, Liverpool and Villa will do. We know because like Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” Or, “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.” Or even, “being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience”
If you haven’t read it, it is worth a go as it makes sense a lot of the time. As does his book Outliers and The Tipping Point. All lend themselves brilliantly to analyzing, or at least appearing to analyze sport. In Outliers, Gladwell’s premise is that to be extremely good at anything, to be regarded as a genius in your field, you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing that activity as some kind of apprenticeship. The funny thing is, if we start supporting from an age of 8 or so, and we think about football on and off for 4 hours a day, we will have completed our 10,000 hours by the age of 15! And what the hell do we know at 15? Certainly what do we know about football? Have you ever heard teenagers argue about football? It is like listening to chimpanzees fighting. So therein lies the rub. We have hundreds of thousands of over-qualified experts, unheard in the melee of genius-turd, spouted off like some Sony Bravia advert in which we are both the paint and the sprinting clown. Football is the boring block of flats.
You see the thing is, we have no idea what we are talking about. None. Even football managers and players talk a bad game. They might tell a good story, or be able to explain some interesting insight into why circumstances transpired in a favourable or unfavourable manner based on a decision they made or didn’t make. But the one thing they don’t get any better than us, is the meaning and qualification of what it is to be a football fan. So they need to do their job without acknowledging us or they end up sinking to our level. We all have strange and lucid gut feelings based on the hours accumulating meaningless and trival facts and bias that bring no reward to our lives. Most people do things/work on areas of themselves to make them seem more attractive. The generating of football knowledge is not one of them.
We give ourselves over to something weaker and more secretive than religion. There is a flexible and odd moral code that can bridge the disgusting (I’m thinking of the songs about Adebayor and Hitler being a Gooner because he killed Jews), to the amazing (Muamba, the pre-match laying of flowers by the Arsenal players at Anfield ’89).
The amount of time we spend trying to think things through is directly at odds with our real feelings. Feelings about a Wenger who mirrors the worst in all of us. His inability to budge from his self-belief/opinion, his myopia to suit his needs, his devotion to that which he truly cares about (parity within pay and stability/family life within the group). All of these things are things we see or believe we see in ourselves. Much of that which we love or hate is mirrored in our own beliefs and failings. Why should football be any different?
Anyway, I digress. What I am trying to explain, is that the game itself and the ritual around it are two very different things. One is steeped in tribalism, camaraderie and emotional abandonment. The other is the achieving of immediate objectives based on the qualities of one team to try to beat or hold another team. I am going out on a limb and assuming few teams go out to lose (in any sport).
So then we have the challenge of what makes a fan, set against what makes a professional footballer. From here on in, the links and comparisons could decend into the hilarious. I apologise if I let go of the reigns. If I do, this will be both in surrealism as well as experimental sentence structure.
An English fan is an amalgam of branded clothes and sportswear, beer, regular (if unreliable) sources of opinion and conjecture, spurious recollections of the past and projections for the future. A studied and dissonant rabble of solipsists resembling the French Foreign Legion and in the main, suffering some type of physical and psychological atrophy. (Woooah horsey!)
The fan reacts on the hoof and thinks in detail at a later stage. The fan loses all sense of discipline because the abandonment is the drug that invigorates a meaningless and often one-way faith. The real fan doesn’t care about their self-image, because they have long-since recognized that they come a very distant second to the physical demands in the overwhelming emotion that is blind faith.
The quality player is (mainly) fit, disciplined, single-minded, aware of their duty and the impact it has on a team, a good decision maker and able to do so in an instant under stress/pressure.
Why have I spent so long trying to establish this? Because Arsenal is a crazy anomaly that occasionally tries to play like the crappiest fans (8-2 L), but let themselves down by reluctantly and more frequently resorting to skill (5-2 J).
So much as I would like to talk about the merits of Arteta, Wilshire’s absence, defensive indiscipline, us being a selling club and so on, I find myself having to justify why I want to talk about it in the first place. For all the tactical inefficiencies and genius displayed by the various factions of the team, I find myself worryingly overcome by my own fits of rage at the inane, docile, simian and discombobulated expressions too often worn in recent times by the likes of Eboue, Vela, Almunia (who always looked like a homeless person caught defecating in a backstreet), Djourou, Song, Arsharvin, Clichy, Chamakh and so on and bloody so forth.
With that in mind, caring about whether van Persie stays, or if Podolski will be a hit almost seems meaningless. The amount of time we have invested in our madness has already elapsed and taken its true form. The delusion that success on the field, will bring the fan some kind of moment of clarity is as nonsensical as manufacturing and using a home-made catheter when your junk and bladder are in perfect working order.
Man United fans are miserable. Man City fans have been and are already miserable. All fans are bloody miserable because it is that state of being which we enjoy. We just tend to confuse it with thinking. The temporary elation in success brings us worryingly close to a realization that the meaning of football is to chew us up and spit us out. Results and achievements are ephemeral and the solipsism of the fan is what it is really all about. Wenger and his strange habits show he is human and suffering his own madness. Good. Serves him right.
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Another defeat with strange positives
The positives won't last long though. Another cog in the flimsy machine that is our defence is now likely to be a long term absentee. Sagna didn't have a great game but will be missed for a while.
Instead, I look at several passages of play and feel with better players, a more commanding centre forward and brainer team mates, we might finish in the top 6. I am so fed up with Arsenal's restricted capacity to break the mould that they have created for themselves. It is a Corinthian rule that sets an example to other teams about how to run a club. Except no one gives a shit. It makes no difference to any other team and I am sure that they question the relevance of Arsenal Football Club. I mean, what is it we as a club need?
Is there a plan because there doesn't feel like one? It is not to wait for Wilshire, Diaby and now Sagna to regain some fitness. It is not to just wait for Van Persie to stop scoring or get injured. These are a given and there is still no plan b.
If there is anything to really take away from a defeat to Spurs, it is that it wasn't anywhere near as convincing as people were predicting before the game. It felt at times that Arsenal could put Spurs under a full court press, but then the absent minded Walcott and Ramsey kept making the wrong choices. Ramsey scored and I am grateful but he was rubbish today.
Anyway, I fear for the future until Wenger makes a root and branch change to the mentality of football. We need to create more chances and retain the ball under pressure. How will this happen?
It won't this season. Not often enough.
It is sad.
Instead, I look at several passages of play and feel with better players, a more commanding centre forward and brainer team mates, we might finish in the top 6. I am so fed up with Arsenal's restricted capacity to break the mould that they have created for themselves. It is a Corinthian rule that sets an example to other teams about how to run a club. Except no one gives a shit. It makes no difference to any other team and I am sure that they question the relevance of Arsenal Football Club. I mean, what is it we as a club need?
Is there a plan because there doesn't feel like one? It is not to wait for Wilshire, Diaby and now Sagna to regain some fitness. It is not to just wait for Van Persie to stop scoring or get injured. These are a given and there is still no plan b.
If there is anything to really take away from a defeat to Spurs, it is that it wasn't anywhere near as convincing as people were predicting before the game. It felt at times that Arsenal could put Spurs under a full court press, but then the absent minded Walcott and Ramsey kept making the wrong choices. Ramsey scored and I am grateful but he was rubbish today.
Anyway, I fear for the future until Wenger makes a root and branch change to the mentality of football. We need to create more chances and retain the ball under pressure. How will this happen?
It won't this season. Not often enough.
It is sad.
Monday, 29 August 2011
Manchester United 8 Arsenal 2
I have tried not to write. I have.
I tried to collect my thoughts, get over the sick feeling, take the bump in the road and my little bag of vomit from the journey so far, and instead just keep looking ahead to the imagined destination. But then, so far down the line that I have often forgotten that this is meant to be about growth and experience - and one is meant to savour all the components within and around it. I realise that I have never more than fleetingly questioned the competency of the driver.
I want to get off. I want to travel by another method or wait for another vehicle. I can still take in the landscape, just at a different speed. You can all join me. No doubt this driver will still be paid. He will do just fine and can go where he wants with the length of the journey he has taken us all on. But we should not feel sorry for him. He has made up his own route and gone off-road before it was de rigueur. But he refused to countenance the new roads and vehicles coming past and tempting those on board with a faster and more luxurious mode of travel.
Now I am not stupid. I know I am not on my way to paradise. I have paid over the odds for an up market package holiday. Actually scratch that, I am stupid.
Let's talk Arsenal.
On Sky yesterday, they barely spoke about Manchester United as some fairly inept thinkers tried to dissect the remainder of the roadkill that lay before them. It was like watching critics and analysts of the recent riots come up with horrendous and wild theories of the causes. It was not needed. You can see what happened in the game and anyone with a bit of viewing (yes viewing), or spectator experience could tell what was happening.
Arsenal were decimated. They were not tired. They were tactically untrained. The players might as well have been playing table tennis outdoors during a hurricane.
I shall not dwell on the inept performances. Those players are not to blame as they were following instructions by a mad Colonel whose own family long since turned on him. The remaining faithful tried to pass and move. They tried.
Instead, we can look at everything around the players on the pitch. The away fans were staggering, but they were singing for their club, their history (of which Wenger is a massive part), of their heroes. They were singing for the badge and the shirt, not the men and not the manager. They sung to show we are still here, independent of this mess. We are Arsenal. We buy it, we verbalise and contextualise it, we take our disappointments and in the height of summer, like Groundhog Day, revert to excitement and optimism that this coming season could be our year. Except not this year and not this time.
We had the broken sleep of all broken sleep summers. We have lost Henry, Vieira, Overmars, Anelka, Hleb, Flamini and more. We know the insomnia of being a feeder club to bigger ones. This year was no different except that the inner workings of Arsenal Football Club had not been looked after. It was like having a major heart condition, and on the operating table the 'top, top' surgeon (on a whim), decided to do a penis extension and shape the patient's eyebrows.
So Liverpool, Man Utd, Newcastle, Udinese have all proven something to us. With a season that is 5 games old, and began with 2 injuries (Diaby and Wilshere), our squad has injured and indisciplined itself to its bare bones in 1/8 of a season.
Therefore it is down to the manager and the board. We must look at them. The investment made in the Arsenal 'experience' has been second to none. The money spent on Club level and Arsenalization has created a slick, Upper Class lounge feel to a holiday riddled with the runs. We cannot rid ourselves of the dead wood any more than we can the manager. Both are paid too much and have contributed little in the recent past.
We have players on our books who could not get in yesterday's side. Professional ones who commanded several column inches of turgid media lies. Yet they could not play owing to being THAT bad.
So what can the club do? They have no balls, no strength, no heart, no proactivity, no risk. They entrust they running of the empire to a man who deserves help, yet rejects it.
I have called for Wenger's head because it cannot get any worse. Us fans would like to win the league but we can't. We would like to win anything but it is unlikely. But we sure as hell don't want to lose by 8. That is a given. A fucking axiom that the most indignant and impetuous and malicious scumbag would have to work very hard to break.
Who cares who would come next? We are a wealthy and elite club. We will employ someone with skills. Virtually all coaches in the world have tactics except ours. Our pitches will remain excellent. Diets and player fitness won't worsen. The marketing of the club (disgusting), will never cease. What will really go wrong here? Transition, Tony Adams once said, is an excuse. Only if you are a massive club like Man Utd or Barcelona.
What will happen is that Wenger will buy two players. No stars and workhorses who believe in his methods. No big name players will now come because Arsenal are crumbling and everyone knows Wenger has a short time left. We will show 33% fighting spirit and demonstrate in a few games that, in the words of Wesley Snipes, "the sun shines on even a dog's ass some days".
But next year, there will be no new contract. And the management of the management will prove that like our manager, with no plan B, we can sink lower and lower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next manager, (and he has been waiting so patiently for his chance). With no further ado, I give you Pat Rice.
I tried to collect my thoughts, get over the sick feeling, take the bump in the road and my little bag of vomit from the journey so far, and instead just keep looking ahead to the imagined destination. But then, so far down the line that I have often forgotten that this is meant to be about growth and experience - and one is meant to savour all the components within and around it. I realise that I have never more than fleetingly questioned the competency of the driver.
I want to get off. I want to travel by another method or wait for another vehicle. I can still take in the landscape, just at a different speed. You can all join me. No doubt this driver will still be paid. He will do just fine and can go where he wants with the length of the journey he has taken us all on. But we should not feel sorry for him. He has made up his own route and gone off-road before it was de rigueur. But he refused to countenance the new roads and vehicles coming past and tempting those on board with a faster and more luxurious mode of travel.
Now I am not stupid. I know I am not on my way to paradise. I have paid over the odds for an up market package holiday. Actually scratch that, I am stupid.
Let's talk Arsenal.
On Sky yesterday, they barely spoke about Manchester United as some fairly inept thinkers tried to dissect the remainder of the roadkill that lay before them. It was like watching critics and analysts of the recent riots come up with horrendous and wild theories of the causes. It was not needed. You can see what happened in the game and anyone with a bit of viewing (yes viewing), or spectator experience could tell what was happening.
Arsenal were decimated. They were not tired. They were tactically untrained. The players might as well have been playing table tennis outdoors during a hurricane.
I shall not dwell on the inept performances. Those players are not to blame as they were following instructions by a mad Colonel whose own family long since turned on him. The remaining faithful tried to pass and move. They tried.
Instead, we can look at everything around the players on the pitch. The away fans were staggering, but they were singing for their club, their history (of which Wenger is a massive part), of their heroes. They were singing for the badge and the shirt, not the men and not the manager. They sung to show we are still here, independent of this mess. We are Arsenal. We buy it, we verbalise and contextualise it, we take our disappointments and in the height of summer, like Groundhog Day, revert to excitement and optimism that this coming season could be our year. Except not this year and not this time.
We had the broken sleep of all broken sleep summers. We have lost Henry, Vieira, Overmars, Anelka, Hleb, Flamini and more. We know the insomnia of being a feeder club to bigger ones. This year was no different except that the inner workings of Arsenal Football Club had not been looked after. It was like having a major heart condition, and on the operating table the 'top, top' surgeon (on a whim), decided to do a penis extension and shape the patient's eyebrows.
So Liverpool, Man Utd, Newcastle, Udinese have all proven something to us. With a season that is 5 games old, and began with 2 injuries (Diaby and Wilshere), our squad has injured and indisciplined itself to its bare bones in 1/8 of a season.
Therefore it is down to the manager and the board. We must look at them. The investment made in the Arsenal 'experience' has been second to none. The money spent on Club level and Arsenalization has created a slick, Upper Class lounge feel to a holiday riddled with the runs. We cannot rid ourselves of the dead wood any more than we can the manager. Both are paid too much and have contributed little in the recent past.
We have players on our books who could not get in yesterday's side. Professional ones who commanded several column inches of turgid media lies. Yet they could not play owing to being THAT bad.
So what can the club do? They have no balls, no strength, no heart, no proactivity, no risk. They entrust they running of the empire to a man who deserves help, yet rejects it.
I have called for Wenger's head because it cannot get any worse. Us fans would like to win the league but we can't. We would like to win anything but it is unlikely. But we sure as hell don't want to lose by 8. That is a given. A fucking axiom that the most indignant and impetuous and malicious scumbag would have to work very hard to break.
Who cares who would come next? We are a wealthy and elite club. We will employ someone with skills. Virtually all coaches in the world have tactics except ours. Our pitches will remain excellent. Diets and player fitness won't worsen. The marketing of the club (disgusting), will never cease. What will really go wrong here? Transition, Tony Adams once said, is an excuse. Only if you are a massive club like Man Utd or Barcelona.
What will happen is that Wenger will buy two players. No stars and workhorses who believe in his methods. No big name players will now come because Arsenal are crumbling and everyone knows Wenger has a short time left. We will show 33% fighting spirit and demonstrate in a few games that, in the words of Wesley Snipes, "the sun shines on even a dog's ass some days".
But next year, there will be no new contract. And the management of the management will prove that like our manager, with no plan B, we can sink lower and lower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next manager, (and he has been waiting so patiently for his chance). With no further ado, I give you Pat Rice.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Thoughts on Barcelona, Media and so on
Somewhere in between euphoria that transcends all sense of logic and outcome, and a cynicism which suggests that actually Barcelona won the game in the long run, comes truth.
Arsenal were very good, Barca too and better in most areas of the pitch. But Barcelona could not take all of their chances. Their disallowed goal is part of the game as all England and Arsenal fans know well.
It is somewhat confusing that the soothsayers and doomsdayers and whoever else are trying to create a context for the result that underpins a false intellect and a logic fitting for the individual that wants to be understood. By this I mean that the media people and bloggers who attempt to contextualise a game of football, with a great sense of meaning and understanding, do so with the primary objective being that their perspective is the right one and possibly only one. Why bother?
So having scoured the media today for the reaction, it is unsurprising to see that Barcelona were better, squandered chances, complacent and (in some parts of the Spanish Press), a spent force. Nice try with a spent force. That is extreme in the extreme.
Then all the conclusions drawn from the Arsenal victory attempt to undermine the validity of the football match. Even Fabregas alludes to half time in the tie, but the three weeks of oranges that we get to eat between now and the second half suggest that some serious evaluation and consideration will be given to the successes and failures of both sides. Normal fare for a half time chat, but in taking stock, new things happen. This is the point of my writing.
Barcelona play sublime football in terms of their drills. But the drills demand colossal focus and it was quite easy to see that they can switch off because of the demanding nature of this. The drills are based on systems that they deploy to dictate, with or without the ball, the available space to use for themselves or the opposition. So what we see from them is a change in formation from 4-4-2, to 4-5-1, to 4-3-3, to even 5-4-1 depending on where the ball is, who has possession, if it is a dead ball – e.g systems for corners, free kicks, goal kicks, and so on. All the time however, there are 2-3 players who are also required to surround and harangue the player/s in possession and not only try to create a turnover, but also position themselves on the eventuality of that happening or not – in an immensely short timeframe.
And yet we beat them. So what did they do wrong and we do right?
Well they were not clinical, they say Messi should have scored 2 but the pressure told. But RVP also should have scored 2 more in the first half and both were nailed on chances that he would have normally taken. We could say the occasion got to both of them for different reasons.
Next, it would be important to highlight that they found it easy to slice our defence up. But firstly, look at who is playing for them and then consider that it is more amazing that they didn’t do a better job. Is that because they are bad or that we stood up to the task, as much as we could? Equally, we showed their weakened defence what they can expect in the second half. Without Puyol, they lost their thunder, without Pique they lose their finesse. These things will worry them as much as we can be worried in the Nou Camp.
Lastly, everyone will expect them to beat us. I expect them to beat us. But I can see Arsenal winning too. The reason for this is the system and players that Arsene has educated ‘live’ for this situation. They have learned everything for this particular test and with a strong first team available, have options and a Plan B. This is something that has always been levelled against us, yet the stronger our bench gets, the more varied our systems can become. This is not without fault and games like West Brom and Spurs show a real downside. However, like Man U, we are conditioned to come good at this time of the season and our second half stats are much better than our first – both in terms of season and individual matches.
I don’t think I need to single out players. The passes for our second goal demonstrated that the lack of fear and the freedom of expression are not always naïve. It was a coming of age, but this doesn’t mean that we will not experience problems and slumps within ‘adulthood’.
So really who cares if Barcelona were better? It doesn’t even matter and the score is almost irrelevant as it is so finely balanced. But that is the point that people don’t seem to recognise. Villa, Alves, Maxwell and Abidal cost more than our whole team. This Barcelona side many believe are the best in the history of the sport. And we went toe to toe with them. We beat them, and we are not afraid to do it again. We can beat their opposition too and we can give them and their rivals a run for their money. We are not the best in the world, and probably not the best in our league, but we showed maturity, stomach, consistency and guile on top of our usual passing game.
And that my friends, is good fecking news (provided it continues) ;)
Bring on Brum, Brauglana, Big Balls. Bring it.
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