UNTOLD ARSENAL

I got the idea for that headline from the one that says Arsenal could lose Theo for just £400,000.

That story is in the Mirror in its football news section.  Now the word “News” has within it the word “new” which means, well, sort of new - as in not old.

The actual story is that “FIFA rules mean that any buying club would just have to pay £80,000 training costs for every year that Walcott has been at Arsenal which would equate to just under £400,000 by the time his contract expires in the summer of 2010.”

Now that is not exactly new - the rules are there, have been for a while, and apply to everyone.  Theo’s contract runs out in 18 months, and the most likely time to discuss a new contract is when CEO Ivan Gazidis is in position, and has got to grips with the club’s situation, and the manager’s wishes.   So far Mr Gazidis has had, oh, well, let’s see, err, five days, of which one was a bank holiday.

In short the story is utterly misleading in every way.   From recent history I can imagine Tottenham Hotspur forgetting to negotiate a new contract for a player and finding he gets away, but not Arsenal.

So, what about my headline.  Well, technically yes journalists could be sued for libel.  If they wrote a story which suggested that a club did not want a player and so were trying to off-load him, and the player felt that this downgraded his reputation, and reduced the prospect of him getting a pay rise, he could try it.  It is a possible legal case, because he could argue he has suffered a real loss.

As to whether any player would ever do that… well, probably not - but that “probably not” is a lot higher certainty than Theo wandering off to Real Mad for£400,000.

It is on occasion forgotten that Henry didn’t do it all on his own.  Most of the time he had Robert Pires to help him.  It took over a year to get right, but when it did work it was stunningly simple.

Henry could always be relied upon to spend some of his game on the left wing, and when he did that he would invariably drag two defenders with him.   Pires would then toddle into the centre forward position ready for the pass that allowed him to score.

It worked so many times that it was always a wonder that other teams didn’t get it - but it is a measure of the quality of these two players that they got away with it for so long.

Repeating the trick is harder, although we’ve seen it start with Adebayor taking increasing numbers of excursions to the left wing.   Now we are starting to see why - Nasri is turning up in the middle more and more often.  We’ve even seen Bendtner going out left, so Nasri can work more and more down the middle.

OK, Nasri is not Pires - not yet.  But don’t forget that Nasri is younger than Pires was when he joined, and Pires had a very dull and ordinary first year with us (of course we now forget the cries that he should be dropped - what we now remember is Player of the Year and the rest of the team bowing down to him when he hobbled up to collect his championship medal).  On that basis Nasri is operating above schedule.

This could be the magic that Wenger has seen and is trying to develop.   Adebayor playing down the middle but confusingly ending up on the left wing, Van Persie playing behind the front player (and I have to say Van P is looking better and better to me.  I know the game was against an ordinary lower league team yesterday, but the last goal showed focus and concentration, and a lot of skill), with Nasri drifting into the middle.

Nasri spent a lot of the past year injured, and that is why he was available on a transfer.  People talked of the new Zidane, but that was more in hope than expectation.  But Wenger’s insights are generally more right than wrong.  It is not functioning anything like fully yet, but I think this is where it is going.

PS: Don’t forget Highbury High next week.   Including “It’s Football Jim, but Not As We Know It” - a stunning and remarkably amusing little number written by someone.

(c) Tony Attwood (come on guys stop nicking my text and sticking it up on other blogs - go and write your own) 2009.

The Lord Wenger has done an interview in which he says that he still has no doubt that over time he will be proven right with his strategy of bringing through younger players rather than doing what Manchester Bankrupt have just done - which is yet again to splash millions of pounds on transfers at the start of a new transfer window.

This is bad news for all the Arsenal supporters who are demanding success now, at any price.  But good news for those who value the notion of Arsenal continuing through the next decade as a strong and vibrant club.

Manchester B’s spending shows that beyond doubt the finances of the club are completely out of control.  Despite an assertion in the Guardian that the club is making a profit, the reality is that the situation in Manchester is so bad that the club has diversified its reporting into different subsections, so that the football can be seen to be making a profit, when in fact overall the club cannot actually pay the interest on its current loans.    Quite where the money is coming from to pay for the new Serbian players that have just come in is unclear.  It is possible that there is no source of funding.

This level of unreal financial reporting is apparent at Chelsea (KGB Fulham) too, where the papers happily report the club becoming financially self-sufficient, while omitting to say that this is only true as long as one ignores the debt and  the fact that for the moment it is interest free.  The terms of the loan are that it can be called in at any time with just 18 months notice.   That’s not long when you we £550 million and no bank will write you a cheque.

Liverpool’s disaster is much closer to hand, for they have to renegotiate their loans this month, and no bank is showing much interest in helping.  It is unlikely that they will go bust this month, because someone will step in at the last moment - but the terms the banks will extract from Liverpool will  be the harshest yet seen applied to an EPL club.   The most likely outcome is that from February, Liverpool will join Manchester in being unable to pay the interest on its debts.

99 years ago, Woolwich Arsenal went bust, and were taken over by Henry Norris and his friends.   The result was a disaster for Arsenal, and led to relegation for the only time in the club’s history, into division 2.   With the new owners not willing to bankroll the club, all the best players were sold, the crowds sank, and the club nearly sank with them.

The ultimate solution was the move to a much bigger ground - Highbury.   Since then the club has handled its money well, and it would be an absolute disaster if the club chose to go down the route of spending money it doesn’t have to buy some success this year, when in a few years time all our major competitors will be mere shells of what they are now, crippled by debt, and replicating Arsenal’s 1910 experience.

Meanwhile, on a different matter, next week there will be a new Highbury High published, with some more whizzo exciting and overwhelming articles by… well, me actually, including a piece on 10 Reasons to be Cheerful in 2009.  Do you hope you can spare a few coins to buy a copy.  Subscription details will appear here in the next couple of days.

Tony Attwood

One of the great things about supporting Arsenal under Wenger is that I haven’t got a clue what is going to happen.  Take Diaby - the notion that he could occasionally run into the top third of the pitch, behave like a proper forward, and score a goal or two, was about the last thing on my mind when he came back from injury.  Even when I saw the line-up in Turkey I thought he was just there to secure the midfield as the team tried  to get one goal in a breakaway.

I also never foresaw what would happen to Flamini in his last season with us.

Which often leaves me questioning what I am doing here, writing this stuff.  Especially at the moment, when the transfer window has turned upside and become, what?  A transfer skylight?  A transfer door?  A game show in which Bruce Forsyth ploddles around making that funny noise he does and pretending he is entertaining by saying “higher” and “lower” a lot?   (Probably the latter).

The point being that we have got used to transfer windows/doors/gameshows being times when the entire Arsenal first team, and most of the reserves, are going to be transferred to BarBarBarca-sheep, WC Milan, and Real Mad.

This month it seems not too many are on their way out - Gallas maybe but not too many others, while we are going to buy that guy from Everton, someone from Newcastle, a fellow from Zenit Leningrad that no one had heard of before last summer, and anyone else you can throw a stick at.

Years ago, in the early days of the Lord Wenger’s reign, when he was bringing in utterly unheard of people and playing them out of position (like that Henry chap) my mate and I used to have this running joke that Wenger’s next purchase was a goalkeeper from Peru who was going to play at the centre of midfield.

I mention this because I think I’m as likely to be correct with that purchase as I am by talking about any of the stories in the press or on the blogs.  If Wenger does buy the man from Leningrad then it will be just about the first time he has done a deal that has been heralded so far in advance.

But then he always does the unexpected, so maybe that is the next twist.  Certainly with no Theo, no Rosicky and no Cesc for most of the rest of the season, it is getting tough to see how we would cover if there are any more midfield injuries.

On the other hand, imagine next season, if those three are fit again, and we have bought in one or even two more midfielders, and we have most of the current bunch fit, and we have our two genius children - Ramsey and Wilshere - there are going to be players who get annoyed they are not getting games.  And one year on Fran Merida will be wanting a game or two, as will Bischoff - and the extraordinary Coquelin, if he carries on developing at this rate.

Then we are back to the old thing in which Cesc is off to Spain etc etc.

In short, there is never a balance.

Happy new year

 mentioned in a post a few days back that AISA have put out some interesting information of late.    The information below also comes from AISA and relates to ticket touting.

I have to admit I am utterly biased on this – I completely dislike touting, and would be much happier if there were none.  I appreciate I am in a position of privilege having purchased two silver memberships at the very start of the scheme (when it was the ticket registration scheme), so my partner and I can get to each game we want to.

But I’d like to think that I would have the same view even if I were not a member – tickets are expensive enough as it is, and the thought of genuine fan paying really high fees to buy a ticket from a tout is frustrating in the extreme.

So I read with interest that there have been 8 arrests for touting so far this season, and 7 bans from the area on match days have been handed out in court (of which some were hangovers from arrests last season).

According to AISA the police are now looking to seize the assets of touts, as well as getting banning orders.  This could mean in theory that the police could ask the court to seize the car or house of the tout, although this would only be in an extreme case. 

That number obviously is small, and clearly on the walk from Arsenal tube to the Ems there are still touts around.   But more to the point 400 memberships have been cancelled so far this season alone, after being linked to touted tickets; many more than in the past.

Now that is something else.  It means that the supply to the touts is drying up, and 400 more genuine supporters can get the right to tickets which were previously going on the black market.

According to AISA, “The new customer services and IT infrastructure is helping to create a “web” of intelligence on touts – linking memberships, addresses, credit cards and the like, and allowing more tickets to be stopped at the source.”

Long may it continue.

Jonanthan Brown wrote to me directly, rather than via the blog, on the issue of Denilson, and I would like to pass on his thoughts.

To declare my position: I think Denilson is a sensation, but that he suffers as Gilberto did in the fans’ eyes.  If you remember, Gilberto was often thought to be the weak link in the team - until he had a year out with the back injury.  When he came back the roar was huge - everyone suddenly realised what we had been missing.  The “invisible wall” really was fundamental to the way the team worked.

So it seems to me it is with Denilson.   But now it is not just my word for it.

Jonathan has searched the Actim Index stats page - the stats used by the Premiership to grade players. Under the midfielders tag we find Denilson lying in 6th place with 230 points, behind Lampard, Ashley Young, Gareth Barry, Stephen Ireland and Mike Arteta.

As Jonathan says, “By my reckoning this makes Denilson the second best defensive midfielder behind Gareth Barry.”

This is confirmed by the Guardians Fantasy Football stats that has Denilson as the best Defensive Midfielder with 277 points. Played 19 games with 3 goals, 5 assists, 71 interceptions, 11 clearances, 56 tackles won.

I am not suggesting anyone who is a convinced anti-Denilson person will be persuaded – but for anyone who has watched the game and thought, hang on, there is more to Denilson than meets the eye, you will find the stats are with you.

Which raises the question – given that the Lord Wenger has said he will buy someone to play in midfield, the issue is, what will the new midfield look like?   My suggestion is that Denilson will stay, and we will have someone in who can play alongside him, or replace Denilson in the event of an injury, thus giving us the midfield of Nasri, Newman, Denilson, Diaby or Eboue or Walcott or Rosicky.

At the time of the game I made some comments on the trouble at the Arsenal / Everton match - something I saw from the vantage of the upper tier a little way along from the place over the away fans - towards the half way line.

My thought at the time was that the biggest problem was the policing of the away fans - as the problems started it seemed that we were back to the old problem of police and stewards not being able to handle the matter because they were in the wrong place and had no way to get at the problem.

Immediately after a number of Everton fans wrote to the blog, daring me to print their comments and saying I wouldn’t; but of course I published them as I do 99.999% of comments sent in.  Their argument was that they were under attack from fans above - something that I couldn’t see - but I was also trying to watch the match.

Now the police report has been released via the Arsenal Independent Supporters Assn and it states that there were some instances of Arsenal fans spitting onto Everton fans, confirmed by Arsenal stewards in the away section. A programme and a burger also came down from upstairs onto the away fans - which of course could have been deliberate or simply someone mucking about and being silly – or a deliberate ploy (although it seems a bit of a waste of £6 to me).  Would you use a programme as a missile?

AISA says, “The vast majority of the objects that landed on Everton fans (as seen in the YouTube videos of the incident) were in fact thrown up by other Everton fans, trying to reach people in club level. Merseyside police confirmed that Everton fans have “previous” for doing this – trying to throw objects up, and ending up hitting their own fans.”

The police’s view of the incident was that it was “something and nothing”.  Some Everton fans rushed across the away section to get involved in an altercation across the barrier; a number of Everton fans were drunk and “lively” that day. 6 arrests made, all of whom are Everton fans and are going to court.

So there we are - a lot of pushing and shouting and the like and not nearly as much as it might have seen at first go.

I am most grateful to AISA for putting this report out - it helps clear up a situation on which we had some very contradictory comments.