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.
