UNTOLD ARSENAL

The Chaos League is one of those little inventions from Untold Arsenal along with the Curse of Arsenal (see our stories on Birmingham City and WC Milan for details) which help pass the lonely hours when players forget who pays them and wander off to play games against other players doing the same thing.   And then get injured.

In the past the Chaos League has had various teams in it, but today there is only one club because they are so far ahead of everyone else that they are truly in a league of their own.

If you live on the planet Tiny Tott you may have missed the fact that Iceland’s economy has collapsed, West Ham’s owner, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, is Icelandic, he has just lost 250 million pounds (rather careless really), and our wonderful government is using the Terrorism Act to seize Icelandic assets in this country.

Of course the Icelandic government is not made up of terrorists, but using the Terrorism Act to do anything it wants (such as shoot Brazilians who are waiting for a tube train) is part of what has happened to our democracy, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Anyway, WHU put out a nice little statement saying that everything was fine and it had nothing to do with them even though their chairman and owner of 97% of the club was also the chairman of Landsbanki - the bank that has just collapsed in Iceland.and which is causing our government to use the Terrorism Act.

In other words the owner of WHU has just been called a terrorist by our prime minister, Gordon Brown, who is as I write freezing the assets of Icelandic companies in Britain under the said Act.   He then said, “We will take further action against Icelandic authorities wherever necessary to recover the money.”

West Ham who are known for sneaky deals (see their fight with Sheffield Utd and the 30 million or more they owe there) are now going to argue that their parent company is registered in the UK, but West Ham owe millions of pounds to a syndicate of five banks, some of which are believed to be Icelandic.

Mr Usmanov, the Russian billionaire who holds quite a lot of Arsenal shares but who seems to have stopped trying to buy the whole club has returned to his earlier lover of fencing.

He has announced that once again he will contest the election to be president of the International Fencing Federation. 

If he were to win he could then have a seat on the International Olympic Committee.

The current President is René Roch.  Mr Usmanov says he will get a lot of support from European, Central and South American fencing federations.  

If this is so it is likely that Mr Usmanov will either sell off his Arsenal holidays or leave them sitting there waiting for an upturn in share prices and then sell at a later date.  It seems that this storm has been weathered.