France 2 Spain 1. Last night. Final of the UEFA Under 19 Championship.
In the team were two Arsenal players – Coquelin and Sunu. Both played brilliantly, both were significant part of France’s victory, and both were part of the magnificent double winning team of Arsenal, that won the Youth Cup and Youth League.
They were in fact the only French players in the all-conquering Arsenal team of the season before last, and France has embraced them totally.
The rest of the Arsenal team are English, and we are slowly seeing them edge their way into the Arsenal under 21 squad, used to supplement our first team squad of 20 or so.
So with this massive array of talent available we might turn to the England under 19 team in the same competition. And how many Arsenal players were in the England team that got knocked out by Spain? One, Tom Cruise. That’s all.
Worse, when England got knocked out by Spain our great and glorious coach-leader Fabio Cappuccino couldn’t even be arsed to turn up to watch. He was in fact in Spain playing golf doing what the Telegraph called “the football equivalent of an expenses-fiddling MP, his every moment on the fairway monetised against his enormous salary.”
Quite clearly England don’t get what Arsenal are up to – the incredible production line of talent being knocked out year after year. Wenger gets it, because he built the youth sides that have won three trophies in two years and became the first ever team to hold onto the youth league trophy. And he identified that he was weak in two positions – one in defence one in attack. So he went out and got the two best players in Europe at that age level.
And he was right.
But why does England turn its back on one of the greatest collection of youth talent the country has ever seen?
The answer is complicated and it has to do with the fact that the idea that “you won’t win anything with kids” which the Hansen idiot said five years ago, is deeply ingrained in English football. Arsenal started to work on this project seven years ago, when it signed a bunch of 9 and 11 year olds to create what later became the youth cup winning side.
But in working in this planned and methodical way, they are considered out of step. It is a story that is grabbed upon by the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal blogs who run the endless “the youth project has not worked” story – forgetting that only now can we see the results of seven years of playing the Arsenal way. Only now do we see JET, Wilshere and the rest.
So to the English mind, the under 19s championship (the final of which was incidentally utterly glorious and enjoyable from start to finish) is irrelevant, and players who are groomed for this continental style are irrelevant too, because they are getting all the passing technique and having the bulldog spirit knocked out of them.
To appreciate this you have to have watched how England played in this competition and then how France and Spain played – especially in the final last night.
And then take a look at Gilles Sunu goal, and reflect he is an Arsenal player and that he is playing at under 19 level.
And then take a look at the list of stories on the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal sites appearing on Goonernews.com and you’ll see virtually nothing about our two players playing in front of a full stadium winning a trophy that the rest of Europe knows is of great significance, and which is a sure sign of strength in the years to come.
And consider where Cappuccino was.
And know that England has utterly lost it, but fortunately Arsenal has got it.
Today is my last complete day in Cataluña. And I must say that I feel rather glad about it. I will be returning to a colder place, with less sunshine but with a media and press that is a bit more factual than the rubbish I had to see in the last week.
Today the headlines were about Cesc having a face to face with Wenger. Yesterday they told it was on Thursday, today they tell it is today and tomorrow …well they will invent something new I think.
One toilet paper, I can’t remember it’s name anymore, even had a nice flight plan on the front page indicating that Cesc was flying to London, in a very straight line and then had another line from London to Barcelona. I don’t have to draw that out to understand the picture I think. Cesc going to London to tell Wenger to let him go and then fly to Barcelona. Followed by a few pages full of all the claims Barceloanus has made during the summer on this subject.
And also a small article about Cesc being in the picture of the advertising of the new home shirt. They couldn’t understand this as Cesc was leaving, why would Arsenal put him in the advertising boards? Er, maybe because Cesc isn’t leaving my dear dumb Spanish newspaper making friends? If you are Spanish and feel offended by this I want to make my apologies as I don’t want to insult the Spanish people but yes I do want to insult the brainless chickens that make something they call sporting newspapers.
The other newspapers are following the same path and the same headlines al be it in other words. I could have missed it but not one of the sporting lying papers did raise the question: “Well we all want Cesc to come to Barcelona, but can they pay for him?” No the debt from Barceloanus is not important for them. A bit like the lonely battle Tony has been doing about the financial problems in the EPL and the official press never took notice until the bomb exploded right under their nose. So maybe there are a few people in Barcelona that understand that Barceloanus can hardly make an offer as they have almost no money left but it sure looks like they are not as easy to find as a needle in a haystack. In Catalan : una agulla en un paller.
Leaving a place where you have spend a (little) bit of your time is always a time to take a look over the shoulder. And I must say that back at home I didn’t realize what it really was in Spain to have to cope with the sporting press they have. I feel sorry for the people who have to face a press like that day in and day out. I think it is reasonable to imagine that after a while you live in another universe and you believe it all.
But when you imagine that it are those same papers who are running their stories like they do now and did last week, who not so long ago were proclaiming as a fact that: Cesc would sign for Barceloanus before the week was over (somewhere in May), Cesc would sign for Barceloanus before the start of the world cup (begin June), and the list continues. I wonder how on earth can any Spanish or Catalan citizen of this warm and sunny country believe one word these pathetic liars are selling them on paper? But it seems that they are buying the stories and maybe they don’t believe them all but they sure hope they become truth.
So this will be my last report as a special correspondent for the Untold Arsenal from Cataluña. I loved the weather, I loved the sun (the thing that is standing in the sky during the day, not the paper), I loved the people who are mostly very friendly even for persons who are wearing Arsenal caps, but the one thing I will love to not set my eyes on for the first period is the sporting tabloids that are printed in this country. They have the same class as Barceloanus FC this summer: none.
As I leave this place to go home, the Arsenal will kick off at the same moment against AC Milan. So I will not be able to see the game live and this is really a sad thing as I was looking forward to this game a lot. But that’s life.
Give my fellow gooners from the Benelux, who are coming to the game tomorrow a nice and warm welcome, and support our Gunners from the first moment and let us show them that even without our two best players, Cesc and RVP, we are the best team the world has ever seen.
See you in a few days, ens veiem en uns dies. This is the same but in Catalan so that Cesc can feel a bit at home in the Emirates, if his DNA is bothering him.
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The entire publishing team within the empire of Micrododo Publishing Ziggurat of Rutland who publish Untold would like to thank our special correspondent for his valiant efforts during the past week the face of overwhelming and insane provocation from the local media. We are all deeply grateful.
Cesc Fábregas has decided to stay at Arsenal. What’s more he has given his exact reasons.
“My main reason for staying is that I like to be paid,” he said. “I am not mercenary, but if I sign a contract that says I will be paid each month, I like to be paid each month. As we know, Barcelona players were not paid at the end of June, and that is a major concern, not just for me, but for everyone at the club.
“Secondly, I like to work in a stable atmosphere, and certainly that is not the case in Barcelona. Everyone now knows that the club is broke, and is liable to slip into administration shortly. This is not the way to prepare to play football. It is bad enough that Spain’s economy is ten time worse than Britain’s, but Barcelona’s finances are a million times worse than Arsenal. Only a madman would transfer from Arsenal to Barcelona. Or at least a madman or someone who doesn’t mind if he is paid or not.
“A significant problem here is that the club have repeatedly said that they have €50m (£42m) available to spend on buying me from Arsenal – but we have all been asking, if they have this money, why didn’t they use it to pay the players? In fact when we have asked that question the answer came back – we did use it, but we needed another €150m on top of that.”
“And overall I think it is the absolute lying that turns players like me off Barcelona. They had an article on their web site the other day saying, ‘The club has approximately €50m net to spend on new players each season. In the case of this season buying David Villa [€40m] combined with the sales of Yaya Touré and Dmytro Chygrynskiy balance themselves out. This means the club still has €50m to spend.”
“But when they said that, the fact the club had just made a huge loss was hidden, and they were also telling us they had made a profit. How can you have all this money to spend if the club makes a loss year after year?
“It looks as if we will be selling Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Rafael Márquez, and that raises the question – do I want to be working in a selling club? The answer is no. If I stay at Arsenal, I know they will value my contribution. If I go to Barcelona, who knows where they will quickly sell me on to, the moment they need some cash? I don’t want to play for Athletico Madrid.
“I think the whole club changed when Professor José María Gay, at the University of Barcelona made his statement and showed just how the wages at the club had got out of control. What is important is that he made his comments long before it was revealed that Barcelona could not pay its players’ wages, and even then he said there were hints there could be a risk of default during the current close season.
“The club scoffed, said it wasn’t true, and threatened to sue. Then the next thing we find is that the club is in such a mess no one is being paid. Do I want to go and work in that sort of shambles? No!
“That was when I made my mind up, but when the story broke that instead of making a huge profit as the club had said, they had in fact lost €77m last year, and were losing far more this year, I thought, ‘I can’t believe a word they say. They say, ‘come here and you’ll play every week, and we’ll pay you all this money,’ but how can I believe any of it? Everything Barca says is a lie.
“I also had a chat with Thierry Henry and Alex Hleb and they both warned me not to come here. Alex had a terrible time – he hardly got a game, and now has had to go back to his previous club on a fraction of his Arsenal salary. Thierry told me to have a look both at Alex and Mat Flamini. Flamini had one great year at Arsenal, went away, and now is reduced to playing a few minutes at the end of games as a substitute. I don’t want that.
“Barca have a habit of doing this sort of thing. You know Dmytro Chygrynskiy? He came in from Shakhtar Donetsk and then within a year they have to sell him back at half price because they are in such a mess and they dress that up as part of normal trading. It is total panic.
“The problem, as I understand it, is there is no further source of money. That’s why the banks won’t lend anything. We can’t get more people in, we can’t get more for the TV rights, we can’t do any more marketing. The club has nowhere to go but down.
“Barca made an offer for me, and my grandfather asked me to look at it, so I did. But these people are liars and cheats, and the club is on the edge of bankruptcy. Why would any footballer ever want to go there?”
We are most grateful to Mr Fábregas for taking time to put the record straight.
Clarification: Untold always feels that articles should be written in a style and with a level of accuracy that is used by others when handling a specific topic. In this case our research is at exactly the same level as that of virtually every newspaper and blog covering this topic.
We’ve debated this issue over and over again – how big is the waiting list at Arsenal for season ticket in the main part of the ground (by which I mean upper and lower tiers, not Club Level and Diamond Geezer Level).
The Anti-Arsenal Arsenal (AAA) web sites have suggested since the start of last season that the waiting list has gone, with some 80% of regular supporters giving up their season tickets. Indeed last December I was confidently told that it was possible to call up Arsenal and buy a season ticket straight off.
In trying to unravel this I believe we have established quite clearly (although not directly relevantly to Arsenal) that there are season tickets available all over Very Old Trafford (100 years old this year) – and they have indeed suffered a total collapse in the number of applications over the past four years.
They too had a long waiting list for tickets only four years ago, so the questions, could it happen at Arsenal and indeed, has it happened at Arsenal, are highly relevant.
The comments from the AAA are all based on here-say. One AAA site has said that several people have offered the site season tickets to pass on. Another has reported a single person saying he has moved right up the list from number 45,000 to being offered a ticket in one season.
But neither site offers any evidence. One person says he went from 45,000 to an offer, two or three people offer up their tickets for re-sale through a web site, one guy tells me that he knows for sure that tickets are available. What we needed was hard evidence.
Indeed it is not just that these cases are all just the say-so of one person in each case. They are all a bit odd. None of the people I know, and none of the people who sit around me, are leaving their seats. And as for offering your ticket to a web site, the terms and conditions of a season ticket make it quite clear that you must not pass the ticket on to another. And why would you? If you don’t want the ticket you don’t renew. And if you believe there is no waiting list, as the AAA sites believe, then there’s no problem. Give up your season ticket along with all the other anti-Wengerians, wait for a year or two, and then have your choice or a seat when a new manager is in place.
So what is the evidence from Arsenal?
It appears that there is not one waiting list for seasons, but several. Which one you are on depends on how many tickets you want. You can apply for one, two together or three together. The number you apply for determines which list you go on.
The most common application is for two together, simply because most of us tend to be fairly sociable people and we like to go with a friend. The pressure on the two together has risen also because of the increase in the tendency for men and women to make going to the football part of their social lives. Twenty years ago this was much less common.
Thus when I got to the top of the list and the letter arrived with the news, it was all recorded and understood that I wanted two tickets next to each other, one for me one for the good lady. I had been on the two-together list all the time.
Because of the need to find two together, where Arsenal do have two season tickets together they hardly ever let them go as singles, because once those seats have been sold as singles they will never come back to the club as a pair.
When it comes to the allocation of new seats each summer the club runs the separate lists (the list for singles, the list for pairs etc) separately, and these lists are numbered separately. I don’t have the details but if you imagine it working like this…
Number 10,000 to 15,000 are all singles
Number 15,001 to 20,000 are doubles
Number 20,001 to 25,000 are singles
and so on. Because of this it is quite possible to be on the waiting list for a single at number 22,000 and then suddenly find yourself at 12,000. It doesn’t mean you have moved up 10,000 places – it just means you have moved across one of the other lists.
The number is put together like this to avoid too much public discussion about the system. If I had been on the D for Doubles list I might be miffed by the smallness of my move each season. Being on a general list the way in which I moved along the list was encouraging.
Very roughly speaking (and I really don’t have access to the exact numbering) I think that if you send in two applications together you go into the Double Waiting List at around number 40,000, and with a single, you go onto the Single Waiting list at around 60,000.
There’s another issue – the lists don’t move at the same speed. I think there are more double seats than any other type of seats, and I believe that double people are more likely to drop out. Not only is this because there are more of them, it is also because they go as a couple, and if one person in the couple sadly passes on, gets made redundant, or moves, they both stop going. Not in every case of course, but where going to the game is part of a social family activity it is quite likely. So more doubles give up their seats each year, which means that doubles move down their waiting list faster than singles.
Putting all this together, and looking at the evidence sent in my readers the last time we discussed this, it would seem that we have probably around 45,000 people on the waiting list – people who did not get offered a ticket this year.
Now here’s another fact. If you get to the end of the waiting list and you don’t take up your ticket for any reason, you lose your place and drop off the list. So if you are on the list for a single ticket and suddenly you find your number goes down by 10,000, it might be that 2,000 have left their seats this year. But the club has to go through 5,000 names to get 2,000 people who are still willing to sign up. The others might have died, moved, lost their jobs, or been AAA supporters all the time and so never seriously wanted a season ticket under the present regime. What’s more you might have jumped 5,000 on the list because you moved across a set of numbers allocated to doubles.
In fact, I don’t think it is 10,000 coming off the list a year. My estimate (and I don’t try to suggest this is anything more than an estimate) is that it is more like 5,000 seats a year becoming available – with the majority being available as doubles.
So my estimate after all that is 5,000 new season tickets a year, 60,000 or so on the waiting list, but only around 65% of those offered a ticket take it up, meaning the average wait is around 8 years. You might appear to be moving faster up the list, and because after 8 years some people decide they don’t want their ticket, but part of the reason for the jumps is because of the segmentation of the list.
This is all unofficial information – but hopefully it is slightly more accurate than the notes that say “3 season ticket holders have illegally offered me season tickets to sell on, and since I have no regard for Arsenal’s rules, I’m doing it for them.”
Well another few hot days in Cataluña over here but that is not what you want to here, if you want to hear it.
But I have been doing the round of the sporting things they call sports news papers over here. Mind you I don’t buy them. No I just read them in the shop but I will not allow myself to even give those companies any eurocent (penny in your case) of my hard earned money. Money they can use to carry on in the way they are doing.
So I do buy myself a Belgian newspaper to keep the shop keeper happy. But no way I would spend money on As, Marca or any other Mundo Deportivo or what ever they are called.
In the Belgian newspaper there was an interesting article about Vertonghen who was saying that he hopes to join Vermaelen at Arsenal. But he thinks it could happen next summer as Ajax is not really are interested in letting him go. He would love to come to Arsenal and said that with the departure of Vermaelen he lost a very good friend at Ajax and a reunion at Arsenal would be great. Arsenal is following him but you know by now that Arsenal doesn’t buy you after one game.
But back to Cesc land and the stories they fill their pages with and make their headlines.
The newspapers have come out over here with the story that Arsenal and Barcelona have a secret agreement. Oh yes, they know it. The first thing that enters my mind is: how on earth can a newspaper know anything about a “SECRET” agreement? If they all seem to know it, you cannot talk about a secret agreement.
But the agreement should be that Arsenal sell Cesc to Barceloanus. Wow, I’m baffled and speechless. I couldn’t have made that up. Selling Cesc to Barceloanus in a secret deal. Lucky that the newspapers in Spain have pulled of the masks and now the agreement is no longer a secret.
Cesc will be flying to London on Thursday and then it all will be done. That is off course if Arsène Wenger is not being himself and being stubborn. Because Arsenal is stubborn according to the Spanish press in their attempt to hold on to Cesc. So lucky the doomers and gloomers have told us that Wenger is stubborn so we can feel relaxed now and be sure that Cesc will stay.
For today they ran out of stories it seems. So then they came up with the news that Cesc would get the number 4 in Barceloanus. The same number as his big example Guardiola had in the past. And the same number he has at Arsenal. I don’t know what they want to say by this bit it filled up a whole page with 2 pictures, one with Cesc and one with Guardiola both in the number 4 shirt. So I think this is all what it is in fact.
Oh yes and the fact that Barceloanus made a loss of some 77 million in the last season is maybe more important for us but in the Spanish newspapers it is just a very small headline or even page 2 or 3 news. But in some papers they talk about some total debt of 442 million euros. So how on earth are they going to find the 40 million for Cesc they are talking about which will be offered to Arsenal? Well I think that will be for next year’s debt figures. But it is amazing how low profile this news is being kept in the newspapers. It is mentioned but in very small print compared to the Cesc headlines anyway.
Well that’s about it for the moment and now I’m going to try to get some sun and try not to do an imitation of a boiled lobster. And be sure I will follow the papers over here and inform you if I get the time and a computer.
Arsène Wenger is opening up a little in his interviews, and giving us a little more insight into how matters are going to pan out in the opening match of the season.
One big hint comes in a statement directly from him that he will buy one or two centre halves – and it seems one of them is probably Werder Bremen’s Per Mertesacker.
He’s also been dropping hints about the line up for the game against Liverpool Reds (as the owners lovingly called them on buying the club)
Cesc Fábregas and Robin Van Persie start training on 5 August, he has confirmed, and that might be too late to play in the game against the Insolvency (as they sometimes get called here), but it is a great exaggeration to take this to mean “Cesc Fábregas and Robin van Persie likely to miss opener at Liverpool” as one newspaper headline screams this morning.
What the manager actually said was, “They might be short for the first game but I don’t know. That will depend on the fitness work that they have done during the holiday.”
There’s also a lovely quote from Wenger on the subject of a Spanish team hovering on the edge of administration (see recent articles). About their frantic antics this summer, which can now be seen as nothing other than an attempt (a successful attempt until recently) to hide the club’s financial disasters from the press, Mr Wenger said, “It is only noise. In our job, we have to deal with what we can master. What we cannot influence is not to worry about. We have learned about that and I believe that in a big club you have to live with those kind of noises without being disturbed.”
I think that statement should be on banner headlines. “It’s only noise”.
As to the squad as a whole, over the last few weeks I have tried to draw together who we have in place and looked at as a whole it looks rather impressive to me. Here’s the summary of the three articles recently published.
Forwards: Arshavin, van Persie*, Bendtner*, Chamakh, Walcott, Vela. (Six)
The kiddies: Murphy, Sunu, Watt, and throw in Wellington Silva in January. (+ Four)
* = may not be available for the first game. To summarise the injuries
Denilson has not played so far, and probably won’t in the Ems Cup but will play in the final warm up in Poland.
Diaby – same as Denilson
Bendtner - it is clear now that he played for Denmark in S Africa with his injury and made it worse. Another player being mucked about by international rubbish. No knowing how long he will be out.
Ramsey – the effects of Shawcross are still there and he will not be seen until the late autumn.
Rosicky - no real injury, just a niggle.
So can we do an early prediction of the team for Liverpool Insolvency away? We could try…
Goalkeeper?
Sagna, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Clichy
Song
Diaby/Denilson, Nasri
Arshavin, Chamakh, Walcott/Vela
OK, no exciting changes there, except without Cesc, Nasri can play centre, and he has been on fire feeding in behind the front man. In effect this formation gives us Walcott or Vela dropping back a little and allowing Nasri to move forward. This looks a rather good line up to me.
As for the keeper, I have no more idea than anyone else whether it will be Almunia, one of the others or a new guy.
And that is not to suggest that I think this is the team for the season – far from it. Against Blackpool the following week I would hope to see Wilshire and Emmanuel Thomas get a part of the action.
Just as a final point, here, once again, is the “25″ – the players over 21 on qualification day who have to be registered with the EPL as our players. As you will see, we now have six places available and only one of them would need to be “home grown”. So we could buy five new players none of whom is “home grown” and still be fine. (Incidentally we have debated the “25″ rule til we are blue in our collective faces. Before shouting at me and telling me I have got the rule wrong, do have a look at the in depth analysis we’ve been doing on this through the summer – details in the links below. There’s a million different versions of what the rule means, but I think we have got this right based on the official statement from the EPL).
Yesterday Untold Arsenal published the second in the series of Barca’s finances revealing how the club has lied over supposed profits, and how the prediction made previously that they were actually on the edge financially was completely true.
Having seen the story develop I wanted to know what happened in the build up to this fiasco. I figured what with them needing to borrow around £125m to pay wages despite being able to buy Villa and bid for Fabregas it’d be worth shedding some extra light on their finances.
So in this article I’m going to look at the 08-09 accounts as they are fully audited and I have data from the same year for other English sides for comparison, too.
Thankfully, Barcelona put an English translation of the accounts up, but the quality of it is poor. From a quick read through I’ve found spelling mistakes and sentences that halfway through revert back to Spanish! Not the most heinous of crimes, but does it really give an impression of professionalism and thoroughness off? Not at all. For a club that boasts that it reaches out to the world, using a proofreader on its official accounts wouldn’t seem too much to ask.
According to their accounts, their turnover for 08-09 stood at £286m, lower than I would’ve expected but still higher than Arsenal’s £225m. I’m converting figures to pounds so that you can compare easily to what I’ve written on the various other clubs previously, though exchange rates changes will have an effect on the figures.
Their wage bill stands at £168m, or £8m more than Chelsea (the highest in the Premier League). That puts wages as a percentage of turnover at 58.7%, not an unreasonable level though much higher than the top clubs in the Premier League bar Chelsea (46.2% for Arsenal, 44.2% for United and 53.5% for Spurs). As we saw in yesterday’s article it is now 64% and rising.
That in itself is not a disaster, in terms of current finance, but it raises a huge problem. Once a club gets up to that level it is very hard to come down again, without falling down the league table. At the moment quality players on the move expect Barca to pay big. If they don’t they go elsewhere, which forces Barca to pay more. The spiral can rarely be broken.
Bear in mind that this is all while Barcelona and Real Madrid have the vast majority of La Liga’s TV revenues (£112m from TV for Barcelona, compared to £73m for Arsenal). The EPLs television deal is worth substantially more than La Liga’s but the top Spanish club’s get the lion’s share of their league deal, so their top clubs get more than our top clubs courtesy of individual sale of the rights.
If they were ever to shift to collective bargaining and share the money out in a similar fashion to the EPL, my rough estimation is that they’d be looking at TV revenues falling by at least half. With the finances and competitive balance in La Liga in a dire state, a shift to collective bargaining is inevitable in my opinion.
One thing that is generally impossible to get from a football club’s accounts is details of their actual transfer spending. Even in the new Financial Fair Play criteria (article on that on its way), the only way transfers are taken into account is via amortisation. We can however get a number for transfer spending by taking a look at the cash flow statement (literally, the record of money coming in and out) and there they give us a very useful number. I hadn’t noticed it until it got pointed out to me by Andersred (a virulent anti-Glazer Man U site which is well worth reading by anyone who is able to have a civilised conversation with a supporter of a rival team).
It is basically the total amortisation charge to be paid for players bought in that window, which is of course the total transfer fee paid for players in that window, and thus very useful. According to this figure, Barcelona spent over £61m during the 08-09 financial year while Hleb alone cost them £13.5m in case you were wondering.
For a club who play up the fact they have Unicef on the front of their shirt, they seem to do more than well enough out of having the Nike logo on their jersey, earning them a minimum of EUR30m (£25m). Doing the maths, they made £36.7m from taking part in competitions and tours, while membership money chipped in a further £15m, season-ticket holders £27.5m. Commercial revenues of £93.4m dwarf Arsenal’s of £48m, and even the marketing machine of Manchester United doesn’t come close at £70m.
Amortisation (transfer fee paid for a player divided by the length of the players contract) is bundled with depreciation though the latter figures isn’t a substantial figure, so the figure of £52.5m is sky-high (over twice that of Arsenal, nearly half again that of United and a shade below that of Chelsea).
Not bad considering the 08-09 operating profit was only £18.6million, and such high transfer spending is the reason they’ve got a lower pre-tax profit £7.3m. Finance charges of £12.5m will also have played their part (a bit lower than Arsenal’s £16m but then we have a vastly larger debt because of the stadium development).
On the topic of debt, be wary of any figures quoted in the sports media, as most of the journalists don’t have much of a clue about finance, or life in general for that matter. They tend to pick the biggest, headline grabbing figure which includes all sorts such as outstanding fees to be paid for players as a result of long-term payment agreements. Clearly, we can’t compare such a figure to the circa £200m that is Arsenal’s debt, as the latter figure doesn’t include what Arsenal owe to other sides, so it’s an unfair comparison.
On the topic of these liabilities, they owe £18m, during 10-11, as well as £15m in 11-12 to other football clubs. This is actually fairly low, which points to many of their recent transfers being done on a cash up-front basis. Given Inter’s spending the summer that they sold Ibrahimovic, it wouldn’t be unrealistic that they demanded the majority of the money up-front, while they apparently paid for Villa in a lump payment due to Valencia’s financial problems.
They’ve also got a EUR29m loan listed on the accounts to be paid back to La Caixa on the 18th Feb 2010 (which was probably the tipping point of the current round of disasters, and the not paying of players in June this year) of which EUR15m has already been paid back apparently. Part of the reason for this loan was to cover the deficit of non-payment of the TV money by Audiovisual Sport, who apparently have been told to pay up by the courts, so that should in theory pay off the debt.
This loan does make one thing very clear: Barcelona are dependent on TV revenue. As soon as the TV money didn’t come through, they had to rush to the bank, hardly the most sustainable and resilient of business models. After such an event, if I were running them I’d be looking to cut my costs or keep more cash in the bank to somewhat mitigate any future issues with the TV companies, but can you really see Barcelona applying some restraint to wages?
I also stumbled across something they called a “syndicated finance contract” which is basically a line of credit that totalled EUR150 in two phases. Phase one consisted of EUR92.5m, all of which was used and then paid back in 2008. Phase two “consists of a line of deposits to warrant guarantees of maximum EUR113.9m”. Most interestingly, the club have failed to stay within financial parameters set out in the contract which should serve as a warning shot to lenders. However and most confusing of all, apparently there are no consequences as a result of them not meeting the parameters. That’s Spanish banks for you. I didn’t dig too deeply into this syndicated finance contract as I don’t feel qualified to do so adequately, but this is effectively Barcelona supplementing their transfer spending with credit, hardly a sustainable business plan and one that will hopefully come back to haunt them if Spanish banks start to get cold feet.
The section in which they spoke of the risks facing their business also made for some interesting reading. My personal favourite has to be “the Club, for purposes of ensuring liquidity [literally, having sufficient cash in hand] and enabling it to meet all the payment obligations arising from its business activities has the cash and cash equivalents disclosed in its balance sheet…” Well, they clearly didn’t have enough to cover the current summer’s wages given the £125m bank loan they needed, did they!
What is most confusing is how they managed to put sufficient cash aside for wages in the summer of 2009, with all the bonus payments of that highly successful season, and yet in the slightly less successful 2010, they didn’t have enough money. My educated guess is that the money that was paid to Valencia for Villa was originally put aside to cover summer wages, though it was a lot less than the £115m that they eventually borrowed, and surely Barcelona wouldn’t be that negligent?
The fact however that their future liabilities to other football clubs (literally, what they owe on transfer spending still) is relatively low despite their high transfer spending suggests to me that they’ve been paying for a recent purchases up-front. If they did so, it would back up my theory about why they didn’t have money budgeted for wages.
They probably have been paying up-front or nearly up-front for players in order to persuade clubs in financial trouble to let a player go. When Chelsea got the Abramovich money they did exactly the same, which is why clubs flocked to their door to flog off the goods. It was only a little later that these same clubs realised how much damage they were doing to themselves by letting such top players go in this way, and it may be that in Spain the same is happening.
Either way, it is shockingly bad planning, especially when they apparently take steps to avoid any such cash flow issues.
You might remember how Barcelona have boasted about making money, having no problem with cash, and winning things at the same time, and all that sort of stuff.
Why can’t we be like that, cry the anti-Arsenal Arsenal. Well here’s why.
I had the temerity to put up an article “Barca on the edge” in which I argued that this was far from being the case.
In my piece I quoted work prepared by Professor José María Gay, the head of the University of Barcelona’s economics and business unit who investigated Barce’s 2009-10 balance sheet. Wage costs (he said) have risen 55% from their 2008 level to €262m (£220m). But (and this is the big point) the club’s stated revenues have risen 33% over the same period, meaning wages now account for almost 64% of income. Not terrible, but not good.
The key point however is that the club’s short-term debt of €392m (£329m) far exceeds their working capital of €110m (£92m) and “even hints there could be a risk of default during the current close season.”
Now there was the usual annoyance at this prognostication, for we are talking about God’s team here. God’s team does not go bust – just like Liverpool and Man U don’t go bust. God’s team never gets itself into a position in which it can’t pay its players.
Anyway all these figures looked very odd given that the noise coming out of everywhere else in Barcelona, with everyone saying that they were making bumper profits (as they should what with having won everything) and that everything was hunky dory.
And besides Barca is owned by the fans, so everything must be good. The fan ownership model is exactly what the government wants for this country. Put the fans in charge, they know what to do.
Well…
Now it seems that fans can screw up too. Those profits didn’t exist, and the figures presented were fake (or unaudited, as those who created them would undoubtedly say).
The audited figures show that Barcelona lost more than €77m (£64m) last season as opposed to the £9m profit reported by former president Joan Laporta.
The new audit shows that Barcelona had an income of €408.9m for the 2009-10 season, but costs amounting to €477.9m, and although I am no accountant I reckon that is not good. Further spending of around €8m means the overall loss is €77.1m.
“The figures presented by the former board don’t reflect the real image. They have cheated,” the new man at the helm said. “There is a structural problem. The sporting excellence in the last few years has not been reflected in economic excellence. The new board’s goal is to bring economic excellence alongside sporting excellence.”
Or, we could say, “We have done a Ridsdale.”
That may seem shocking - to compare the destroyer of Leeds United and Cardiff City with the progress of God’s Barça, buyers of Henry and Hleb and wannabe owners of Cesc. But in fact Barcelona have taken the Ridsdale model (in which one borrows money against the future success of the club and uses it to buy the players who will bring that success) and instead of seeing it as the most chronically stupid thing in the universe, they have dressed it up as the way to make football perfect.
And when it all goes horribly wrong, they start having a fire sale of players.
So awful is the situation that Barça recently took out a loan of €155m after falling behind with the payment of player wages at the end of June. The central defender Dmytro Chygrynskiy was also rapidly flogged on to Shakhtar Donetsk to raise much-needed funds for the club.
But before the problems emerged Barcelona had already signed David Villa for €40m and have ponced around claiming that they are willing to spend as even more to buy out Cesc Fábregas’ five year contract with Arsenal. But the fact remains that they made one derisory offer and then have done nothing. They know that they can’t afford him.
Although the refusal of Arsenal to deal has meant that Cesc stays with us, it also sadly means that Arsenal have stopped Barca falling into even deeper debt.
Of course none of this has emerged over night – just like Liverpool’s debt and Man U’s debt didn’t just suddenly happen. But is has been hidden by the fact that journalists have generally been unwilling to admit what is staring them in the face. That huge teams like Barca, Man U and Liverpool are utterly bust – and yet are carrying on with their old methods of buying players, because like a junkie, they have no idea how to stop.
For the English clubs it is the buy out that caused all the damage. For Barca it is the dependence on TV money and the recklessness of the owners – the fans. When the TV cash dries up, all hell breaks loose.
Of course the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal sites ignore all this stuff, and go on demanding that Wenger should go out and buy and buy and buy, and get Arsenal into exactly the mess that Barca are now in.
But what we are doing is exactly the right thing – keeping the money stable while clubs around us fall apart, or get trapped by new regulations.
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Coming next - how Barca let it all happen: a review of their accounts leading up to the fiasco.
This is overseas week on Untold Arsenal. Walter Broeckx is in Spain covering “Cesc Week” and here is Billy’s piece on tonight’s game in Austria.
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Unfortunately transmission lines across the ocean are not what they might be and Walter’s article wasn’t listed yesterday on Goonernews, so if you rely on that august publication, you will have missed it. It is here and it contains a lot of stuff about the letter “n”.
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Meanwhile: Vampires and the disappearing lake.
By Billy the Dog McGraw
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The long awaited game againstSportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 from Neusiedl am See, in Austria (western Europe), is in serious doubt.
Although all the 2,500 tickets for the fabuloso Sportzentrum Neusiedl were sold out weeks ago, the local lake has been rising and falling with no apparent connection with the weather situation and the authorities are concerned, shocked, amazed, amused and annoyed.
The lake bed has totally dried up at least 100 times since its formation and indeed wasn’t there at all in 1866, when current Sportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 manager and local duck farmer Gottlieb Wenzel, took over the club. I was pleased to interview him yesterday afternoon and can report that he had a penetrating sort of laugh rather like a train going into a tunnel.
The last (brief and partial) vanishing of the lake (and the football ground) took place during the summer of 1949 when the northern part of the lake bed (approximately the size of Tottenham) dried up, causing a diversion of traffic from the North Circular Road, across western Europe and into Neusiedl itself. The event is celebrated with a stamp.
Now there is a warning that the change is happening again, and it is anticipated that by kick off time Sportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 could be under water or half way up a mountain. Only time will tell!
Part of the problem is the Hanság swamp on which Sportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 exists, and which is known to be the home to at least six different varieties of vampire, several of whom have played for Sportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 in recent years, two of whom are still on the books of Manchester City. Man City’s chairman, Sheikh Yermoney, refused to apologise for his venture into Austria. “It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them,” he said.
Much of the lake is surrounded by volcanic dust which serve as a habitat for young creatures who believe that they will one day will play for Blackburn. (There is also a growing number of local missionaries working in the area, telling these sad young men that they deserve more from life, and seeking to sign them up with Hardcastle Wanderers in the Beezer Homes League Division Four South (west).
But the evil trade continues and the players are harvested in winter as soon as the ice is solid enough for the northern England scout ships). Indeed it is said that in February the blood flows freely around Little Lever, Great Lever and Bradley Ford.
However there have been many tales of the vampiric natives attacking the craft – something that is to be applauded by all supporters of true football on the Isle of Wight who are even as we speak (metaphorically) are attempting to persuade the FA to move Wembley to a spot off the Hampshire coast.
During the summer months, there are occasional fires, as captured English football club agents are easily flammable and the dancing continues long into the night. Much of the area has now been turned over to a golf course, but there have been complaints that players are missing short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
Several plans for the removal of the vampires, butterflies and other intrusive species have been discussed by the Austrian FA but they have come to nothing.
In 1971 plans for a bridge across the Austrian part of the lake were thwarted by supporters of Sunderland who have also started recruiting players among the alien life forms in the area. Traces of human settlement around the far end of White Hart Lane in north London have been shown to be directly related to lake creatures from the neolithic period, when both Sportclub Neusiedl am See 1919 and Tottenham were in the second division of the Visigoth Empire League – a sad moment in Austrian history, and one that the locals do not like to be reminded of.
The club itself had its best period in the 1990s under the management of Theodoric the Great, who also became king of the Ostrogoths in the afternoon when the players were not training. His motto, “Flowers are happy things,” is printed on the wall of the north end of the stadium.
Thus Lake Neusiedl suffers from an impossible array of problems: predatory football scouts from the north of England, changing sea levels and vampires. There is also some commercial fishing. But the locals are plucky fellows, and we must not forget the annual freestyle mass crossing of the football ground during the summer when it is underwater. Everybody who can swim and is more than 160 cm in height can participate in this event, which dates back to 1204 – that is just before lunch.
Arsenal’s team for today’s match:
Almunia the Brave
Sagna the gold, Nordveit the Norse, Koscielny the unsayable, Clichy the fast
Frimpong the unknown,
Lansbury the misspelled Henri, Emmanuel Thomas the Tree
Arshavin the tax, Chamakh the new, Vela the Smiley.
After the match there will be a collection for the water buffalo.
Just what do the footballing public in southern Europe think about the issue of Cesc, his contract, and the fact that Barca are nowhere near as financially sound as the world makes out.
We sent out intrepid report Walter Broeckx to Spain, to keep us up to date on how football appears in such foreign lands.
Here’s his report, just in.
Hi Tony,
If you see some strange things in ñy mail just notice I am typing on another keyboard and with all kind of funny things like “ñ” on it in places where I normally have other letters. Hope you can understand.
I managed to get hold of a computer as my son has launched the new Arsenal Benelux website and I had to take a look. The new site looks great but just couldn’t resist to send you a ñail.
Just to inform you a bit about the crazy world I have found myself in. For in Spain this is “Cesc is coming home” this week. ñ!
I am getting out a bit, although unfortunately on the first day I fell asleep in the sun and I look as red as the new home shirt is. But when I do go out I see the tabloids and every one of them has the same headline. In fact you cannot miss it: they are are all talking about Cesc. There’s a bit about Contador the bloke that won the Tour de France, but for most of the newspaper it is Cesc, Cesc and yes Cesc. ñ ñ ñ ñ!!!
If those journalists are paid by the number of times they mention him they are all multi-millionaires.
Yesterday the headline was : The five year contract for Cesc is ready. He will get 7 million euros a year. In fact all that is missing is his signature. And oh yes just the fact that it all depends on the goodwill of some club in North London who already have a 5 year contract with Cesc but who really should understand that if “we” want Cesc to come back home, he should be released by Arsenal. Oh and the moment Arsenal agree with selling Cesc, it will only take Cesc a fez minutes to sign on the dotted line. Because legally and morally he is ours.
¿Offering a 5 year deal to a player who is still under a 5 year deal with another club, isn’t this tapping up¿¿¿¿¿¿ But then again we should keep in mind that this is a tabloid offering Cesc a contract. ¿ñ¿?¿ñ!
Oh and today headline is talking about Barceloanus people flying to London to talk with Arsenal today (yes today, not yesterday ¿ñ¿?¿ñ! to finalize the transfer this week. Now this is something new. This is the sañe thing I heard just last week. So I think we can conclude that this is just another reprinting of the same story each week at the start of the week! ¿ñ¿?¿ñ!
Now I must admit that I don’t speak fluent Spànish or Catalunian but I can read a bit and I can understand it a bit. My wife who knows a bit of the Spanish language confirmed what I just summarized as being in the headline and articles.
¿ñ¿?¿ñ!
Out on the streets, I am wearing an Arsenal cap to prevent ñy brains getting boiled, and in the shop people are urging me to let Cesc come home¿ñ¿?¿ñ! As I am well educated I don’t show them any fingers in certain positions but I tell them to leave our player alone as he has just signed a contract which holds him at Arsenal for another 5 years and that they are behaving in a disgraceful way and are an embarrassment to their club and country and to the letters ñ à and the upside down question mark ¿
And as their English is mostly as bad as my Spanish I leave them with something to think about¿
Well this is it for the moment but I will try to keep an eye on the Spanish crazypapers, (you cannot call them ‘news’papers) and let you know. Now I am staying out of the sun for a few hours on the hottest time of the day I can have a look on the internet and read ñy mails a bit¿
Sorry for the typing errors but I also haven’t got my reading glasses on so it all is getting a bit dark before my eyes for the moñent.
Greetings from your Gooner in Catalunya, in plain English also known as [word edited out in the interests of decency and good taste¿]
The edition of this article published at around 8.30am BST on 26 July missed out Sagna, not because I don’t know he is there, but rather because my computer decided to take on a life of his own. His details were added at around 1pm BST. Apologies for the first mistake – I had to leave for work and just didn’t have time to sort the page out.
This article carries on from the pieces already published on the front line and the midfield for Arsenal next season – keeping the same format as before.
Sagna
Last Season: 39 starts, 5 as sub, 0 goals
Injury potential: Had a bit of a spell out last season but nothing too awful. 125 games in three years says he’s not one to get too many problems..
Brilliance potential: Has been a regular from the start.
Breakthrough potential: Nowhere to breakthrough to – we would expect him to be first choice.
Personality: Never seems to react too much, a solid defender – exactly what we want.
Crowd potential: Few rave over him, but he is just there, consistent, doing it.
International Disruption Potential: Banned by France for having been in South Africa. What dopes they are – but to our benefit if he doesn’t play.
Vermaelen
Last Season: 45 starts, 0 as sub, 8 goals
Injury potential: Nothing too serious – missed a couple of games at the end of the season, that’s about it.
Brilliance potential: Hit the ground running – first match a 6-1 thrashing of Everton away. If that season was not brilliant I have no idea what is. He’s only 25.
Breakthrough potential: He’s there – no one will replace him when he is fit.
Personality: Cool, calm – he came over as a really nice guy in the interview Walter did with him on Untold.
Crowd potential: Loved by all.
International Disruption Potential: Will play in all the Belgian games but they don’t qualify for major tournaments normally.
Gibbs
Last Season: 7 starts, 0 as sub, 0 goals
Injury potential: He got an ankle injury in November last year and that about did it for him.
Brilliance potential: An England full back aged 21. If the maniacs of international football can leave him alone he should be ok, but if not, then anything can happen. Can you imagine being coached by Mr Cappuccino for a week?
Breakthrough potential: If everyone is fit, then little chance other than in cup games and towards the end of the season when we are ten points clear with two games to play. But he is exactly the sort of cover we need to hang on to. Trouble is the midfield is so strong he’s not even likely to play there. .
Personality: Yet another of whom we can say, “Never seem to hear anything bad.”
Crowd potential: He’s English, and that should help an immediate rapport.
Clichy
Last Season: 32 starts, 1 as sub, 0 goals
Injury potential: He had his time out, and came back not looking so good, but then got his form back. We have cover in his position, so probably on the law of it never happening where it matters less, he’ll play all year.
Brilliance potential: Signed in 2003 and showed his potential after Cole got sent off at Leicester for a stupid tackle. Been doing it ever since. His return from injury this year was uncharacteristic – normally solid.
Breakthrough potential: Solid first choice left back.
Personality: Another Mr Quiet.
Crowd potential: It wasn’t the crowd that turned against him when he came back from injury but the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal blogs and their Tottenham supporting buddies on TV who really got on his back. Two poor games and they were screaming for him to be released. If you ever needed proof of what is seriously wrong with part of the Arsenal blogworld, that moment gave it.
International Disruption Potential: French regular, in the world cup, so now suspended.
Koscielny
Last Season: 40 appearances in all competitions last season
Injury potential: Nothing we know about.
Brilliance potential: Highly rated by Wenger. Voted Best Player in Ligue 2 for the 2008/2009 season by his fellow professionals
Breakthrough potential: His main problem is that he will be compared with Vermaelen.
Personality: ?
Crowd potential: “He doesn’t do it for me”: the AAA.
International Disruption Potential: Born in France, but uncapped (so they might want him with 23 players currently suspended). Could also qualify to represent Poland.
Djourou
Last Season: 0 starts, 1 as sub, 0 goals
Injury potential: Out last season due to an injury picked up playing for Switzerland.
Brilliance potential: Has played over 60 times for Arsenal, and looked to have great potential.
Breakthrough potential: When either of the first two are injured he must be first choice to replace them.
Personality: On Arsenal TV interviews he came across as a lovely guy.
Crowd potential: Depends if the AAA get their teeth into him.
International Disruption Potential: Will start playing for Switzerland any day now.
Traore
Last Season: 12 starts, 0 as sub, 0 goals
Injury potential: Hard to say.
Brilliance potential: Has had limited chances – at the end of the season he played against Blackburn but then not against Fulham.
Breakthrough potential: Perhaps as a midfielder?
Personality: He was linked with a move to Paris Saint-Germain by the rumour mongers and immediately did an interview saying, “I just want to say I am fully committed to Arsenal. My heart is with Arsenal and the manager. I want to stay here. I want to work hard so I can eventually play for the first-team. My dream is to play for Arsenal week-in, week-out and to be the first choice left back. If I work hard and improve my defensive duties then I think it is a strong possibility. But I am nowhere near leaving.”
Crowd potential: Depends if the AAA get their teeth into him as “second best”.
International Disruption Potential: Will start playing for France during the big change around.
Nordveit
I believe he is now on a proper first team contract, which has already been extended. He’s just 20, and after two years on the road with Nurnberg and Salamanca he looks ready to be part of the squad. Not quite sure how he manages with the passport stuff, but no one seems to have raised that point, so I guess it is ok.
He can play defensive midfield and at centre back and at right back – just the sort of guy you need. I would not be surprised to seem him as our fourth or fifth centre back this season.
Eastmond
Central holding midfield, or full back – maybe even a centre back. Surprised everyone (well me anyway) by breaking through last season out of nowhere – and playing with aplomb. That was 30 December 2009 at Bolton, playing alongside Fabregas and Diaby.
New long term contract signed in January.
In other positions
Song – I believe Wenger sees him as a centre back at some point, and he could certainly drop back there if we have cover for Song in the middle from Diaby, Denilson, Eastmond or Frimpong.
Eboue – is now listed as midfield, but obviously can play right back too.
And the others
Arsenal.com still has Campbell listed as a player – maybe they just haven’t taken his listing down, or maybe he is coming back as cover.
Also in defence we have Miquel, Bartley, Cruise, Gilbert, Hoyte – that’s not the full list of reserve defenders, but it is the list of those most likely to make the breakthrough this year.
The supporters’ rebellion at Manchester United this summer was supposed to involve season ticket holders not renewing until the last minute.
But the trouble with rebellions is that they can sometimes get a bit out of control. I am not sure that the middle class members of the 3rd Estate in France in 1789 quite wanted their reforms to end up with the Terror of 1791, any more than those who campaigned for the end of the maximum wage for footballers quite wanted wages so high that the players would be in part responsible for the bankruptcy of clubs. (Not that there is any link between football wages and the Terror, you understand).
But there is trouble afoot in both Man IOU and Liverpool territory, just as the Anti-Arsenal blogs that pretend to be Arsenal blogs (one might call them Anti-Arsenal Arsenal) are getting more and more worked up with their tales of impending doom, and I am just starting to wonder how far it is going to go.
As we know Liverpool teetered on the brink throughout last season and are now run by the banks who have installed a Chelsea season ticket holder as the chairman of the club. Oh what must the kop enders be thinking. 20 years without winning the league, utterly bankrupt and supported only by a bank that wants its money back and run by a Chelsea man. No wonder the manager is rather worried about playing in the double extra pre-preliminary extra round of the Dopey Cup this week against Bloghurstein Village Juniors. It is going to be a tough one.
But back to Man IOU. The great revolution involving wearing scarves of different colours from the team (while still wearing a shirt of the team) has always looked a little odd to me, but we were promised a much more vibrant campaign when the season ticket holders held off renewing until the last minute.
And those season ticket holders have done just that. In fact their watches must have stopped as they were looking for that last minute because Man IOU are now anxiously trying to flog 4000 regular season tickets.
Of course 4000 season tickets probably only represents around 8% or so of the total volume of season tickets on offer at Very Old Trafford (100 years old this year – see “Making the Arsenal” for details of its birth). But there are two facts to note.
One is that these are regular season tickets – not club class or anything like that.
Two is that there is no waiting list at Man IOU for season tickets.
Now this summer there was a very real attempt by some of the anti-Arsenal Arsenal (AAA) blogs to try and suggest that the Arsenal season ticket waiting list had gone and that something like 80% of season ticket holders were walking away. Apart from this being a thoroughly bizarre statement given the fact that every game sells out, all the evidence is that this is not true, and indeed it is hard to find many people who have given up their season tickets this year. Likewise the waiting list seems as strong as ever. But more on Arsenal and the AAA in a moment.
First, what’s to be learned from the downturn in demand at Manchester IOU?
Clearly it can’t be the lack of success on the pitch. No, it is something else – the feeling about the club. Some people just don’t want to be a part of the Glazer machine any more. They don’t want to feel that the money they pay for their tickets goes into the Glazer created interest account used to pay the banks and others for their borrowings.
Of course we have no way of knowing if this decline in interest will continue any further. Searching back through old messages on the Man U supporters sites http://community.manutd.com/forums/t/14459.aspx for example it is clear that in 2008 there was a waiting list and that many people who were on it were not getting season tickets that year.
Back in July 2007 Man U were reported by Channel 4 to be saying that they had 56,000 season tickets and 40,000 on a waiting list.
All these figures are hard to validate, and many don’t believe them. Arsenal FC constnatly state that there are 40,000 on the Arsenal waiting list now, but many of the anti-ArsenalArsenal blogs reject this figure – largely it seems based on having a number of mates coming along and offering to do illegal deals over season tickets with AAA site owners.
But let’s ignore the constant, endless attempt by the AAA blogs to destroy our club and its support, and look at what seems to be a real decline in the Man U situation. From 40,000 on the waiting list to 4000 unsold and no waiting list in 3 seasons, two of which included winning the league.
Certainly if this continues then either this year or by next year there will be gaps on the Man U seats, and we will truly have seen a wholesale revolt of supporters against owners. In three more years Very Old Trafford will be half full.
So could we see that too at Arsenal – with the AAA orchestrating a campaign that gets Wenger out?
It seems unlikely simply because Wenger has a massive level of support – you only have to go to the games to hear the pro-Wengerian chants. At Man U you can’t find a single person who supports the Glazers. Apart from the board.
The fact is that nothing can redeem the situation at Man U, whereas Wenger’s continuing success in keeping our club profitable and in the top four, with an astonishing array of talent coming through, gives hope to many who think about Arsenal in the broadest sense.
While the AAA shout and scream that we have only bought two players this summer, the real supporters know that we have in fact also got a bunch of teenagers of amazing ability coming through – Wilshere, Frimpong, JET… all of whom will be featuring for us this year.
That’s really the point – there is a solid and clear reason to support Wenger and there are tens of thousands of people without tickets who would love tickets, who do support Wenger. Thus the waiting list stays solid. At Man U, no one likes the Glazers, and people are simply walking away.
Interestingly, because the AAA’s campaign to destroy our club is not making much ground they are trying new tactics – you may have spotted one of the most amusing creeping into Untold with comments suggesting that I am a Tottenham supporter in disguise, and that Untold itself is anti-Arsenal because it talks so much about money in football. There was another one yesterday, saying that I really ought to learn something about football before I tried to run a blog.
Fair enough – each to his/her own opinion. There’s no problem with these comments, because unlike some of the AAA sites Untold doesn’t change people’s comments once they have been posted. If they are copied from other sites, or if we find people writing in using different names to try and make it look like they are several people rather than one, yes I do take action. But otherwise, its an open forum.
Perversely I quite like the attacks on Untold and these wild stories about 80% of season ticket holders giving up, because when the ground is once again full for games next season, and we see yet another brilliant team produced by nurturing young talent, it really is very funny.
Having watched the couple of games so far, I am getting a really strong buzz about this year. I think we might not only be able to beat the other clubs, but also deal with the injury jinx. At last we might have just enough bodies to survive the onslaught of the anti-football clubs.
In the olden days each season was pretty much the same as the season before. There’d be two new clubs in the First Division (usually West Ham and Blackburn, if memory serves) and every other year we would have a new centre forward (probably Scottish).
If there had been a world cup through the summer then England would have done badly unless allowed to play every game at Wembley, and our failure would have been explained as being because of
a) foreign players who cheat
b) foreign refs who don’t know the rules.
Bloody foreigners. Without them we could win the world up every time.
But apart from the unchanging issue of the failure of England and the excuses given, these days its all different. We now have a new routine and the rule is “you must always follow the routine”. Players, clubs, journalists, and the FA rules by Sir Hardly Anyone all know the rules and play the game.
So clubs go bust, and chairman say they are “surprised” and “disappointed” by the Revenue and Customs action, and claim that they will pay the money owed as soon as they could find the jacket they left the envelope in contatining the wadge 50 euro notes they just brought into the country.
Clubs also announce the building of wonderful new stadia, and then clubs fail to build wonderful new stadia because of that pesky thing called planning permission (and the fact that they have lost their jacket containing the envelope with all those euros in it).
Take for example Tottenham Hotspur’s £400m new stadium. Cheaper than Arsenal’s ground, more intimate than Arsenal’s ground, and opening in the summer of 2013. Now if we pause for a second, we’ll see that it took Arsenal took 2 years six months to raise the money to build the Ems and something like 2 years six months to build it.
So if the Tiny Totts get out of their prams and everything goes according to plan on that time scale they will be ready to play on 2015.
Except for one thing. The Ems was built on land that just had to be flattend and cleaned. Not a nothing job but still not impossible. The new Tiny Land (as it is to be named) is being built on an around the existing ground, with very little spare space anywhere to park a truck to take away the rubbish.
That’s a bit of a problem, because these days the police commanders and their colleagues on the council like space. Lots of space. All round the ground. Space for people to move easily when the game ends.
That has been accommodated at the Ems because there was a lot of space beyond the ground, and those who want public transport generally head out in three directions (Arsenal, Finsbury Park, Highbury and Islington stations) and that separates the rush. There are no underground stations at Tottenham. You come out onto the High Road.
Now that is how it has been since the Tinies were in the Southern League, but it all seems to have come as a bit of a shock to the owners who claim to be “working through” the issues.
There is no planning consent yet, and without planning consent you can’t raise the money. (Some Tiny Supporters are thinking that their man in the Bahamas might raise the dosh for them, but I think that is pushing it a bit. He wants the new stadium and the Tinies in the Champs League so he can sell the club and cash in. Putting his own money into the ground doesn’t really help him much.)
Here’s another way to be stupid.
If you want to wreck a football club, you separate the ownership of the club from the ownership of the ground. Almost every club that has a separation of ownership ends up in trouble. Crystal Palace is a fine example. So is Southend, where apparently Sainsbury’s supermarket is keeping the club afloat as it (Southend Utd) tries to come out of administration, in order to be able to buy the land from the club at a knock down price, and then re-house Southend outside the town on a ground that is rented from Sainsbury’s. It may be the only way out for Southend who are utterly bust, but it is surprising to see another team wanting to follow the model.
So when John Fry, chairman of Yeovil Town speaks on such a matter, we want to know what is going on. Arsenal and Yeovil are very closely linked since it was agreed that every Arsenal player called Luke will play for Yeovil either on loan or permanently. (Check the summer dealings if you don’t believe me).
But Mr Fry says, “The professional advice received has indicated that it will be significantly easier to attract the appropriate investment if our property assets are separated from the football club.”
Yes that is true. The trouble is that advice comes from men who have jackets with envelopes full of euros in their pockets – they take your land, kick you off it, and your club sinks into the mire.
But there is more…
Sheffield Wednesday are the latest club to have been issued with a winding-up order by Rev and Customs owing the taxman over half a million smackers.
The club statement is worth a further top up to the Untold Index all by itself. Try this for size…
“Sheffield Wednesday would like to inform supporters that their club is not about to be wound up, nor is it about to enter into administration. We have been involved in dialogue with HMRC for a number of weeks. As such we have been somewhat surprised and disappointed by their decision to seek a winding up order at this time.”
OK guys, if you want to say something, at least try and write your own press release, not one copied from Cardiff City with the name of the club crossed out and your club’s name written in, in crayon.
“We will continue to work together to create the best environment possible for the club to move forward, including on-going dialogue with potential investors that will seek to secure the long term financial health of the club.”
Yeah yeah.
Einstein famously said that the best definition of insanity involved finding something that clearly doesn’t work, and then doing it again. So I think that gives us a ranking of just about 10 out of 10 on the Untold Index of Footballing Insanity for the week.
The start of the new season at Arsenal has been given an enormous boost as all 23 players in the world cup squad of France have been suspended.
It might only be for one game, but ensuring that at least three of our top players are not selected for France in the forthcoming round of Car Thief Friendlies (named after Wenger’s description of international managers as a bunch of car thieves) is great news.
Thus it is that when France play Norway in Oslo on Wednesday, 11 August, Diaby, Sagna and Clichy will not be there and so will not be injured.
Of course there is a danger that the French Football Federation and their head of Car Theft might choose someone else from Arsenal to play for them, but if so we should do our level best to persuade whoever is selected, not to go. (They could of course turn to Vieira, but that’s not a matter for us).
Nicolas Anelka, who was sent home for insulting the coach Raymond Domenech was immediately awarded the Untold Services To Humanity and Sanity Medal by this site. Nikky baby, we salute you.
So who is now in danger of injury during a mindless game of nonsense?
Traore, Nasri and Walcott are all possibles.
Traore has played for France under 19, under 18, under 17.
Nasri was excluded from the French squad in South Africa, which didn’t help the French much, but undoubtedly saved him.
Walcott’s inclusion in the list may surprise you, but his mother once went on a cross channel shopping expedition for Calais while she was pregnant with Theo, and thus he qualifies under the Landri- Boulanger-Legrand Interpretation of the Fifa rules on nationality.
Traore, Nasri, Walcott – we urged you – do not be tempted. Do not go.
Blanc, the new car thief, will announce his squad for the Norway game on Thursday, 5 August.
Meanwhile there are clear indications from Arsenal in Foreign Parts that Jay Emmanuel “The Tree” Thomas and Emmanuel “Untold hasn’t thought of a stupid nickname yet” Frimpong are both fully fledged members of the first team squad for the season ahead.
Great News.
Fortunately neither have ever been to France. The Tree is totally English, and so won’t be called up, since England doesn’t use Arsenal players, but Frimpong is Ghanaian so will sadly be lost to the African Cup of Nations. But he could choose to play for England, and so would not play. (Hey – don’t tell him about not playing – just let him choose).
Last, thanks to everyone who trotted over to my history site, “Woolwich Arsenal” to read up on the ideas about a monument to Herbert Chapman at the stadium. The idea is expanding and there will be more about this on that site shortly.
If anyone still had any idea on what Fifa stands for and on how Fifa is looking at it’s job to see if all the clubs do the things according the rules we know now.
Yesterday on Fifa.com this article appeared and I will copy it like it was written.
Xavi confident over Fabregas
(PA) Wednesday 21 July 2010
Barcelona midfielder Xavi believes Arsenal are merely “delaying the inevitable” by preventing Cesc Fabregas from joining the Spanish champions.
Fabregas was the subject of a reported £30m approach by the Catalan club prior to the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ but the Gunners are reluctant to part with their prize asset, who has five years left on his current contract.
Arsenal appeared to gain the upper hand in the protracted saga when Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola conceded on Monday that the north London club would have the final say on the 23-year-old’s future. But Xavi, a member of Spain’s victorious FIFA World Cup squad alongside Fabregas, is confident a deal will be reached to take the former Barcelona trainee back to the Nou Camp – be it this summer or next.
“We know where Cesc wants to be this coming season, but perhaps there is not enough time for Barcelona and Arsenal to agree a deal,” Xavi told the Daily Express. “Arsenal need to understand they are only delaying the inevitable.
“If we don’t manage to get his signature this season then Arsenal only really have him on loan for a year – because there is nothing they can do to stop him joining next summer.
“I haven’t given up on him joining us this season but, if he doesn’t, it won’t be more than a year before he is back home. His people will have a whole season to sort out the deal between the two clubs and it will happen at the very latest next summer.”
Xavi claims Fabregas told his international team-mates he was keen on joining Barcelona while on FIFA World Cup duty. “We were all with him for five weeks in South Africa and we know he wants to be at Barcelona, he made it very clear,” Xavi added.
“But he will under no circumstances do anything that will upset the Arsenal fans. And that’s probably why we are going to have to wait for him for another year.”
This article came on their news site. Now we call all argue a bit on the notion what “news” is but this had nothing to do with news. News would be : “Eduardo signs a deal with Shakhtar Donetsk”. This is news.
The fact that a Barceloanus player tells that they want Cesc to come over to Barcelona is not news. It is tapping up a player. And we all know that Fifa have made rules against tapping up players. But does Fifa act? No they throw extra fuel in the fire. They publish articles in which they give credit to Barceloanus players to help the tapping up of Cesc. And believe me this is not the first article on Fifa.com about the tapping up of Cesc. There still are articles on the site with Rossel talking about Cesc coming to them.
Fifa is by publishing articles like this helping Barceloanus in making a gap between Cesc and the Arsenal fans. I have warned for it before : Cesc will not leave for money but if he feels that the fans don’t like him anymore at Arsenal he really will want to go to Barcloanus. So Fifa is an accomplice in helping Barcelona to get Cesc out of the Emirates.
Fifa who should be telling Barceloanus : Now wait a minute you. Arsenal have turned down your offer. Cesc has still 5 years on his contract. Arsenal have made it public that Cesc will not leave and that they will not sell. They have made a public statement on this on their website and told this to the whole world (including Fifa). So Barceloanus you must tell your players, your board and all who are member of your club that they should stop speaking about Cesc coming to Barcelona this season or next season. As far as my calculations are right 5 years from now means that next summer he still will have 4 years left on his contract and I don’t know if Fifa thinks otherwise but this still is very much under contract in the part of the world I live in.
So for those who still believed in Fifa as a trustful and honourable organization, you can think otherwise. They will do nothing to help Arsenal but are very willing to spread more rumours about Cesc going to Barcelona and to divide the Arsenal fans on this.
But thanks to the reaction of some Arsenal fans and a very strong article on Goonerholic (credit for this to them) all of a sudden the article was taken of the Fifa website. Thanks to someone attentive I have the article copied to my computer before this happened. Just the fact that Fifa removed the article from their website confirmed that they are doing wrong in this. And who knows maybe they start thinking a bit about this and who knows maybe they will act and talk to Barceloanus about this. I still doubt they will do this as they usually are an organisation that knows no shame.
But for me they have lost the last bit of respect that I had for them. I think they are a despicable organisation. The only way they can gain back some credibility is by an open apology to Arsenal and their fans for them not action according to their own rules. An open apology for not warning Barceloanus to stop tapping up Cesc. An apology to all football fans over the world for not applying their own rules and punish Barceloanus.
This is the only way Fifa can have some credibility in the future for me. But I won’t be holding my breath to see those apologies appear on the Fifa.com website. And if they do, I will love to acknowledge this on this website. But I don’t think you have to stay up to wait for this to happen.
I reported that Roma have been put up for sale even though they came second in Italy – and that they have loads of debts.
Now I find (in an article on Italian-Calcio Blog) the Italian football federation has announced that Serie B side Ancona and 20 Lega Pro sides have been kicked out of football will not be readmitted to their championships. All clubs in Italy must prove their financial stability to the Covisoc financial committee before they are allowed to register for the year. It was announced that 42 Series B, Lega Pro Prima and Seconda Divisions failed to pass muster.
The federation board meeting which decided on the new measures was not attended by representatives of Serie A or Serie B in protest at the recent decision to allow clubs to only buy one non-EU player this season rather than the previous two and there is talk of strike action.
Changing countries, Ajax in the Netherlands are 25 million euros in debt apparently. IM Scouting says so and it was on Radio 5 too.
As for Spain, well we know really, but here’s Football Economy’s take on it this week: “La Liga is in a worse financial state than the Premiership according to Stefan Szymanski, football economics guru at the Cass Business School… He said that apart from Real Madrid and Barcelona, all the teams in La Liga were in financial trouble (and even Barcelona have their problems). Asked why Real Madrid were able to splash out so much cash year after year, he said that their finances were not very transparent but there were evidently political considerations involved.”
Moving on, I’ve talked about Scotland before – particularly Rangers who are seemingly run by their bank, like Liverpool. Here’s what Herald Scotland said this week…
“This summer, football finances have hit an extreme low. It is hard to remember a more austere time for our game, with fewer jobs for players available. For many years I have been encouraging players of all levels to look at football abroad. Now, this may be a necessity for some.
“Of course not all players can play at that level but countries such as Cyprus, Iceland, Finland, Australia and even India now are looking for Scottish players to play in their domestic league. A decent living awaits those who are bold enough to try something new.”
Back to Football Economy, and try this one for size…
New research published by the International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship suggests that football clubs are using insolvency as a business tactic.
“The research, which analyses insolvency events in UK football in the past 20 years, shows that many clubs have gone into administration more than once and that there is little regard for creditors, particularly government agencies such as the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.
“Lead author of the report, John Beech, head of Sport and Tourism at Coventry University, concludes that the inference is undoubtedly a willingness to enter administration as a business decision.
“‘Among members of the Football League Division 1 and 2, more than half have suffered an insolvency event in recent years. Because the process of entering Administration is designed to help ailing businesses rather than hard-pressed creditors, it is seen as a relatively soft option by football’s governing bodies.’
“The findings suggest that there are five basic triggers that lead to financial difficulty:
1. Clubs fail to cope with the financial consequences of relegation;
2. Clubs fail to pay government authorities such as the Inland Revenue on time resulting in cashflow problems and in consequence suffering winding up orders;
3. Soft debts, such as those from wealthy benefactors, become hard debts, which clubs have not budgeted to repay;
4. A loss of stadium ownership and the consequential reduction in revenues;
5. Repeat offenders, which have difficulty recovering from the impact of earlier insolvencies, or which decide insolvency is an acceptable process to clear debt.”
The research shows that 62.5 per cent of clubs in League 2 had suffered an ‘insolvency event’, whereas only 20% of Premier League clubs had done so and only Portsmouth had while actually in the Premier League.
47% of repetitions happened with four years and 68% within seven years.
Looking at repeat offenders the web site says,
‘It might be argued that the clubs had not learned their lessons. In only four cases (Darlington 2009, Luton Town 2007, Swansea City (2003 and Swindon Town (2002) were debts at a lower level than in the preceding insolvency event.’
So what of Portsmouth? Sad to say they have another problem because the newly active Revenue and Customs (the UK taxman) has challenged their administration, alleging “material irregularities” in the creditor vote that led to the company voluntary arrangement being approved last month. The Company Voluntary Arrangement (the move out of administration), prepared by the administrator proposed 20p in the pound to all creditors over a four-year period, which would have allowed the club to exit administration.
However the jackbooted tax man (more powers than the police so don’t rub them up the wrong way) believes Andronikou overlooked its legitimate claims and is pressing for the CVA to be revoked. If the high court appeal is sustained, Portsmouth would then have to set up a new company through which to make an application under “exceptional circumstances” rules to be admitted to the Football League. Even if that was approved, the outcome would be a huge points deduction for still being in admin at the start of a season.
The almighty Leeds United went through this in 2007 and got a 15‑point penalty for their pains.
But there is a bigger implication – if Revenue and Customs win then that’s the end of football debts getting priority over Revenue and Customs, and that changes the whole landscape.
So what of our old friends, Liverpool Insolvency. They have bought Mr Cole for zero but are paying him £90k a week until he is past his sell-by date (well over 33). How come if they are bust.
The answer is that the bankers who run the club want their £300m back, and another £90,000 a week going out is neither here nor there given that they are releasing and selling players, and they need to keep the operation afloat while they continue to look for a bidder. The worst thing for the bankers would be for Liverpool to sink into the relegation mire, so they are propping up the edifice, in the hope that an angel appears sometime soon. they have managed, through this free transfer to get Radio 5 talking about Liverpool returning to the top four, which is obviously good for the banking business, although more than likely a load of footballing tosh.
And to end…
Manchester United remain the most valuable sporting club in the world, according to Forbes.com despite their insane level of debt.
The publisher released its fantasy league of the world’s most valuable teams yesterday, with the Premier League club having a positive rather than a negative value!
The Dallas Cowboys were second followed by the New York Yankees, Washington Redskins, New England Patriots, Real Madrid, New York Giants, Arsenal, New York Jets and Houston Texans.
Ah fantasy economics. Doesn’t it just remind you of the criminals and crooks in the banks. I am told that there is a campaign to bring back hanging for being a banker. Seems fair enough.
Untold Arsenal - everything you never wanted to know and more
Untold Woolwich Arsenal – everything you never even imagined happened to our club in the past.
I could hardly believe the news I heard today. They said you were leaving and that you were going away. So I had to go to Arsenal.com and there it was red on white: Eduardo joins Shakhtar Donetsk.
Well to be honest I could believe it. And most of all I could understand it.
I remember when TH14 left us and Arsène Wenger pulled you out of the hat. Eduarwho was the reaction of many supporters and I admit that this included me. I had hardly heard of him before he joined us. But who am I to know all the players in Europe or in the world? Arsenal does know them because of their world wide scouting system and they had found you and brought you in.
At first it was difficult. To come from the Croatian league to the EPL is a very big step and it takes time to adapt. And it took you some time to adapt. But what was clear was that you were a player who had a good scoring record but also a player who could link up with the other players. A player who had an eye for the teammate. And one of the things you had was that awareness that you cannot learn: being on the right spot at the right time. This is something that you have or you don’t have, and Eduardo had it.
Wenger gave you the time to learn the EPL and he even played you in the Carling cup where you scored some great goals in that 2-3 victory against Blackburn on that cold evening. And from then on it got better and better. Goals against City, the goals against Burnley in the FA cup.
I remember a match commentator shortly after that saying after you finally had missed a chance: ‘So Eduardo can miss a chance’. This summed you up in January. You had made the transition from the Croatian League to the EPL and people recognized why Wenger had bought you. It looked like a fairy tale coming real.
Most of the real Arsenal supporters remember that fatal day in February in Birmingham. I still remember it and I think I will never forget it. It was one of the last games I did not see live of The Arsenal. I remember waiting for one of my sons to have finished his match as a ref to drive him home. And I knew that another son was sitting at home to see the game. And mostly he sends me the half time score or the final score when the game is over.
But he didn’t send me any messages. I felt something was wrong. Had they lost? In a way they hadn’t lost but in the same time they had lost it all. When I came home my son was speechless. When I asked him have they lost? He couldn’t answer me but to show me the pictures he had ready on the website with the terrible and horrific injury that happened to Eduardo.
I’m a grown up men, standing in the middle of my life, and I think I can say that I am rather down to earth and not that easy shaken up by something. But those pictures did hurt me as deep as can be. Not only because I have had a similar accident on a football field, but most of all because it happened to him. Eduardo, that quiet player always with a friendly smile on his face. Those eyes who always looked friendly at the world. Not him.
But it did happen to him. And I must admit that from the first moment I thought this would be the end for him. It was for me some 30 years ago and I realized the hard way he would go through in the next months. I also knew that getting physical ready was in fact the easy part. But the mental side of the injury would be the hardest hurdle to come by.
But he showed remarkable character by coming back. I was in the Emirates when he came to the field at the Emirates cup and I admit that it brought tears in my eyes to see him there. And I must admit that I was very emotional when he came back on the pitch for the very first time after his injury. And I can admit that when he scored his first goal after his comeback that I again had tears in my eyes again. I think I never celebrated a goal so intensely. I was so happy for him and I wanted him to get back to his very best form. And for a moment I thought he would come good completely when he scored that amazing volley against Burnley. This was the Eduardo we knew from before the incident.
But what I feared somewhere down deep inside did happen. At first I saw it in glimpses. You sometimes could see a slight moment of hesitation in his play. And I noticed it more and more. It is something that happened to me when I started playing again some 25 years after I had stopped after my broken leg. I could see his brains looking for safety. I could see him hesitate and take the safe road. And it became more visible even for the people who never went through such an injury.
He still had that notion of where to be when the cross came in but when the ball felt to his feet you could see him freeze. When he tried to shoot on goal and a tackle came in he lifted his standing leg to be sure that the tackle wouldn’t hit him while standing firm in the ground. But by doing this he unbalanced himself and his shots flew not in goal and were not hard enough.
Again I could have cried for this as I knew it would spell the end for Eduardo not only as an Arsenal player but also maybe as a football player in general. So Shakhtar Donetsk is giving Eduardo a new chance. I really hope for him that by going away from some of those criminals that play in the EPL he can find back the peace in his mind. I hope he can ban the fear from his head and stay firm on his feet when shooting at goal. I really hope that we can see his big smile back on his face when he plays there and scores the goals he wanted to give us.
I think no one at Arsenal or with the fans will blame him for trying his luck in another league. I think most of us find it sad that it had to end this way. We find it sad that the fans cannot wave him goodbye in the way like he deserved a proper goodbye. So we can only feel happy for him and hope that he finds a new footballing life in his new club and wish him well. And we can, once again, feel very sad and angry for that *********, ************ b*****d whose name I don’t want to mention anymore, who destroyed a very promising career before it really had started.
Eduardo, from the bottom of my heart I can only say to you in English, Portuguese your mother language and in Croatian, the language of your new adapted country :
So there it was, there you have it, makes you think, this is it.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Stewart Robson, co-commentator extraordinary had said any of that. He is a man who although he was a fine footballer, has never quite mastered the finer points of the English language – which is a trifle sad for a commentator.
Such as…
Four is not the maximum number of words that can be had in an English sentence
Nouns and adjectives are allowed
Inflections upwards at the end of a sentence are not de rigour in English and by and large should be reserved for questions.
Anyway, we played, we won, it was a saunter, and JET, Nordveit, and Nasri all done great (remember that one Mr Robson – don’t think you said “done great”. It’s a verb… I done great, you done great, the boy Nasri done great…”)
The pictures were rubbish. Now I know this is mostly due to my computer which only has 5 furlongs of RAM and a fortnights worth ROM, but even so, can’t they do something better? It looked half the time as if it was pouring with rain. Although maybe it was. But for one pound I suppose I can’t complain. (Actually I just did).
Any way, the fact is that the kiddies we have watched over the past years are coming good and the older timers are limbering up for the episodes ahead…
is simmering nicely – not putting himself out too much you understand, but getting into the swing of things
is coming along too, played the whole game, while showing the promise so cruelly cut short by the morons of international car thievery
is calm quiet and composed and can play central midfield as well as the next man who happens to be
JET is the player we all knew he could be, sauntering around looking too big to be a player and then with seemingly no effort he just meanders pass players who stand there thinking, “where did that bloody great tree come from and what is it doing running with the ball?”
Lansbury scored with aplomb and then seemed to lose interest having done his thing
Nasri was great once again which shows what he can do in the middle and
Nordtveit played masterfully and is certainly ready for the first team squad.
Gibbs is the fine player we knew him to be before his injury.
Unless my eyes deceived me Traore played full back went off at half time and came on as a second half sub in midfield and did rather well.
And our Jack showed he hasn’t completely got the hang of the laws and got booked for a rather nasty looking studs up which he then denied.
Once more, Algenon Fitzgibbon-Beater, the new Mongolian signing from Ulan Bator Carpets failed to play. Rumour is that he is demanding a new yak.
So that was that – it all went rather well and it shows that without any of our players who were foolish enough to play in the bent world cup we have a decent squad and a half.
Sorry to see Eduardo go, but such things happen, and once again Almunia was not there, so we had two Polish keepers called Zxschzchazyz, who had nothing to do so we couldn’t really say too much about them.
S Robson managed later on to venture into the world of new pronunciations with Peeeeeeenas (a player for Zarg) and Giles Suuuuuuuuuunu who apparently plays for us. At any minute I expected to find out that we had a player called Walcottttttttttttttttttttt on the wing (who worked hard but just doesn’t have it at the moment, although “it” will undoubtedly turn up tomorrow.)
We won by 13 shots to 6 and 3 goals to nuffink.
Next match is next tuesday by which time we will have all the men who fraternised with the car thieves back at their desks. I hope they feel “up for it” as the journalists say.
Tottenham must be playing their Champs League qualifier soon, aren’t they? Wouldn’t it be rather droll if they lost.
Midfielders: Diaby, Wilshere, Fabregas, Rosicky, Nasri, Denilson, Ramsey, Song
By Tony Attwood
This article continues in the format established earlier in a review of the forward line. Also at the end is an update on which of the reserve players are not at the summer camp, and whether that means much…
So, onto the midfield…
By way of explanation I should add that Arshavin and Eboue are included in the Arsenal midfield list (I’m putting them in as a forward and defender respectively) while Vela and Walcott have been listed by Arsenal as forwards by AFC and I included them there.
And what do we find…
I started off the similar piece on forwards saying I had not seen a set-up like it before, and I feel the same about the midfield – it is an extraordinary selection. I read a piece the other day saying that when a team is made up of 27-28 year olds it can only improve a few percent through increasing awareness of each other. When a team is made up of younger players it can improve by 30% in a year. I am looking forward to it.
Of the list Diaby, Denilson, Song, and Frimpong are players who could play in the defensive role in front of the back four. At a push so can Ramsey and Fabregas, although naturally you would want them further up the field – and indeed giving Diaby licence to roam makes more use of his skill.
Diaby
Last Season: 35 starts, 5 as sub, 7 goals
Injury potential: He’s had his year out following a Shawcross type assault against Sunderland, and seems to get just the odd muscle pull. 35 starts last season shows his resilience.
Brilliance potential: Still don’t think we have seen the best of him – but the great thing is he can play all over the midfield – and move into attack too. Remember that game he played in attack with Theo in Turkey (I think) and we were about 4-0 up in 13 seconds. OK my mind plays tricks but he played as centre forward that day.
Breakthrough potential: If everyone were fit then we might just see a midfield of Cesc, Denilson and Song, but leaving that aside I would expect him to be a regular first choice.
Personality: Never seem to hear anything bad. After that awful own goal against Man U last year he showed extraordinary nerves to be able to get on and keep playing. Seemed to conduct himself with dignity for France in the world cup.
Crowd potential: Not quite there with the crowd but a good season will turn everyone around.
International Disruption Potential: French regular, so not too far to go for home games.
Wilshere
Last Season: 7 starts, 8 as sub, 1 goals
Injury potential: Seems to be unaffected by the injury disease that has swept the club.
Brilliance potential: Outstanding and the Barnet game showed he is several centuries beyond where he was last year. It is all coming good and is about to get gooder (if you see what I mean). Doubeplusgood in fact.
Breakthrough potential: Presumably not yet first choice, but with the inevitable injuries he will get a place and do his thing. He now seems to realise he can play football and not beat the entire team every time he gets the ball.
Personality: Looked to have a lot of aggression in him which sometimes came out the wrong way – but then he is hardly out of nappies so allowances are made.
Crowd potential: Adored as the first of the Youth Project kids. Can do no wrong for those with any sense of history who remember seeing Rocastle and Merson for the first time.
International Disruption Potential:Please don’t let the evil maniacs who run English football destroy him. Mr Cappuccino – he is no good honest. Absolute rubbish. Don’t touch him.
Fabregas
Last Season: 35 starts, 1 as sub, 19 goals
Injury potential: Well, you know. But if he can just get a bit of a break sometime it might help.
Brilliance potential: Stratospheric. First choice obviously. And 19 goals!
Breakthrough potential: He broke through aged 3.
Personality: I tend to view it as a young man torn by demands of his family who want to be with him in Barca, and his devotion to Wenger who made him what he is. When an entity the size of Barca use you as the football, rather than using a football, you have to be strong, and he is getting stronger.
Crowd potential: If anyone near me boos him I’ll smash his fucking face in. Well, no I wouldn’t what with me being of the elderly persuasion, but I will remonstrate with the fellow most severely.
International Disruption Potential:Plays for Barca when they pretend to be Spain, and has idiots pulling the wool over his face. Fortunately is mostly used as a reserve since he doesn’t play for Barca the club.
Rosicky
Last Season: 20 starts, 13 as sub, 3 goals
Injury potential: Hard to say. Last year was his comeback year and I’d say it went better than it might have done. If the little injuries are all over, maybe he’ll fire up again.
Brilliance potential: When he came he was sensational, and then the injury started and his career was intercepted. He is better in the middle than on the wing, but when he gets going on the wing he is on fire.
Breakthrough potential: This season he has to make it all the way through without serious injury, helping relieve the pressure on other players as the games come up in mid-week. I’d love to see him remind us of his pure football by cutting inside from the wing.
Scoring potential: Could get many more, but needs to be there regularly and able to cut inside to shoot from just outside the area.
Personality: Seems a nice, balanced young gent
International Disruption Potential:Czech Rep, and didn’t qualify for the bent world cup. Captain of the side last time I looked. Hopefully won’t qualify for Euros either.
Nasri
Last Season: 29 starts, 5 as sub, 5 goals
Injury potential: Apart from the odd broken leg in the training camp seems to be immune.
Brilliance potential: Won the goal of the year through sheer determination to go through and score. More of the same please.
Breakthrough potential: He is there, there is nowhere to break into. When fit he should play – except that if Song, Cesc and Denilson are fit, I wonder if he does. Too many players that’s the problem.
Personality: We saw him get angry a few times. Not a bad thing (they don’t like it up em) if he can then turn around and smile in a charming manner to the ref. Keep the aggro but calm down faster, that’s the way to do it.
Scoring potential: Could get more – just look at that video of the winning goal again.
International Disruption Potential:Not picked by France although clearly he should have been, but long may that situation continue.
Denilson
Last Season: 25 starts, 3 as sub, 5 goals
Injury potential: It seems high – that back injury kept returning, but hopefully all is now sorted. Although he missed Barnet with an injury so it seems.
Brilliance potential: I rate him like Gilberto – the master of the interception, knowing exactly where the ball will be and picking the spot to walk off with it. I know half the universe disagrees with me and the other half doesn’t support Arsenal, but when I did a report on a game for a paper the season before last and just watched him, it was extraordinary the way he just seems to know. But some total prat one day called him “lightweight” and every paper picked up on it. Just go back and watch the opening game of last season, and ponder why he is so rated in Brazil.
Breakthrough potential: High – he has broken through but he now needs to do it again to convince the doubters. But if he is moved into the Brazil first team now, he will be like Vela – endlessly jet lagged.
Personality: Another Mr Nice Guy.
Scoring potential: Could be more – mostly from 30 yards out.
International Disruption Potential:If with the change of ownership in Brazil he is moved into the first team now, he will be like Vela – endlessly jet lagged and with more injuries.
Ramsey
Last Season: 12starts, 17 as sub, 4 goals.
Injury potential: Everyone knows. When will he come back? Say December and hope for earlier. Maybe this year he has finally got over the horrors.
Brilliance potential: Staggering. I was raving over him every time he came on the pitch last season until the evil maniac Shawcross did him, and the evil maniac who manages England then picked Shawcross that evening to play for the country. I suspect Cesc will go in a year or two, and then like Vieira, Henry, Anelka and others, he will regret it absolutely, but Ramsey will just step up into his shoes and we won’t notice the change.
Breakthrough potential: Total.
Personality: Yet another seemingly nice young man.
Scoring potential: Anything Cesc can do….
International Disruption Potential: Played for Wales since the age of two and will probably be their captain before he even gets fit again. But they don’t qualify for things so that’s a relief. Should do a Giggs and never turn up for friendlies.
Song
Last Season: 37 start, 1 as sub, 1 goals.
Injury potential: Moderate.
Brilliance potential: Potentially staggering.
Breakthrough potential: I have started reading comments on blogs saying that he really needs to get his game together. OK I admit it, I am from another planet. This guy is re-defining defensive midfield all on his own. Maybe the doubters are aware of what they said about him after he had that bad game at Fulham.
Personality: Gets booked a lot. (That’s not really personality, I know)
Scoring potential: Who cares, he protects the back four.
International Disruption Potential: Is African and therefore will miss the mid season, not this year but next. And I think the one after (I read somewhere that they are doing a thing where they will play two African cups one year after the other).
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Backup – Pick anyone from…
Frimpong, Lansbury, Emmanuel Thomas, Barazite, Henderson. In fact pick all of them since they are all brilliant beyond belief. Frimpong – see the Barnet game, Lansbury – see the last game of last season, JET – see the youth cup games…
So we need three players on the pitch and I have 8 listed in the squad (excluding Vela and Theo) and I have five listed for breakthrough. This seems to me like the ultimate protection against injuries.
This suggests, well, I am not sure. They won’t go on the school trip to Austria, but so what? If we take the general view that Simpson is back up to the back ups then we might also say Barazite is the same, and that this confirms Randall is just playing out time until he can find a club.
Murphy, Watt, Ozakup and Miquel are rising stars, so either they have a loan deal already fixed (or about to be fixed following the friendlies in England) or they are staying in the reserves ready to lend a hand in the Diddley Cup.
Which also asks the question (for another article) what sort of team do we play in the the Diddley this year.
Overall then the team selection for the reserves last night tells me nothing. No surprise there.
Tomorrow the IFAB (International Football Association Board), the committee that is deciding upon the rules in football will have a meeting on Wednesday. The meeting will be held in Cardiff.
And on the agenda of the meeting is only one item. And this item is to study and eventually approve the demand of different Fifa members to be able to put 2 extra refs in their competitions in the next two seasons. So if the IFAB approves this change in laws it could be possible that in the EPL we have 2 extra refs standing near the goal to help the refs with the pulling, the holding and the wrestling in the penalty area.
We all have seen this in the Europa League in the last season. And to be honest I don’t know what I have to think about it. It is something that you could put older refs in who are experienced but who have passed the maximum age imposed by Uefa and Fifa for international games. That is if those refs are willing to do this. But it is a position where you don’t need much physical strength as most of the time you are standing still or just walk a few yards from left to right.
So I am not against it but I think that Fifa or Uefa should come in the open with some clear rules about this. What is he allowed to do and what not. Can he signal a penalty offence to the ref and does the ref have to follow it or not. Now it is rather in a somewhat twilight zone and nobody knows exactly what they could, should or must do.
But you will probably remember that one of the reasons that Blatter had rejected the idea of technological assistance to help the refs was that the game is played according to the same rules all over the world and at all levels, and this was the reason why football was so popular. I previously wrote (after Blatter said this) that he was talking nonsense as the game is not played in the same way all over the world now. But can you expect from the president of Fifa to be is aware of this? He should be but we are talking about Blatter so I think it is normal that he doesn’t know how football is being played at lower levels or youth level.
But by introducing these two extra refs as a result not all games will be played according to the same rules. A notion of which Blatter was so proud.
Most of us will also remember that in the world cup we had two major incidents where the referees made a mess of it. The not given goal from England against Germany and the blatant offside goal from Argentina against Mexico. And after those incidents at the world cup Fifa-president Joseph Blatter said: “that it would be ridiculous to not reopen the discussion about technological assistance to help the refs after these incidents.”
And we can also remember that at the start of this year Blatter was in favour of technological assistance all of a sudden but only to change his mind a few months later when IFAB voted against it. He suddenly was against it as well. In fact he changes his mind more than often on this subject. Maybe together with putting on a new shirt I think.
And now on the meeting they will not even talk about technological assistance. So the only conclusion I can come up with is that Sepp Blatter is a ridiculous person and Fifa is a ridiculous organisation. He himself has used the words ridiculous and his own words come back to bite him.
So apart from in some leagues having two extra refs standing next to the field, nothing will change. And some things will be left to humans and their shortcomings. The fact that a ball crossing the goal line is up to the human eye will keep the result sometimes open to some teams being done injustice. I deeply regret this and I think that Fifa can change the rules just for world cups, European championships and introduce the use of goal line technology at least.
Fifa and Uefa earn a lot of money in these tournaments and all they have to do is to put a few extra devices in the goals and it will be clear for everyone if the ball has passed the line or not. The refs will be able to concentrate on dealing with the fouls, and this task is already difficult enough, and off sides.
But that is not the way Fifa want it. Almost every sport in the world has moved on and has welcomed any possible technological help on their fields. And if I hear the fans and the players from those sports, like tennis, cricket and rugby most of them are very happy with this. But Fifa want football to stay in the stone age period. And with people leading this organisation who are from that period, what can you expect.
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There are things told and things untold, and there is Untold.
What a great day this was. When I came home from work and went on the internet and saw the Arsenal website I read some great news. It said over there that from this season on I am going to be a Clockender.
Ever since we come over with the Arsenal Benelux supporters we get tickets in block 123 and from now on this block is part of the Clock End. We will be having the clock at our end and this will bring Highbury back in the Emirates. As I like history a lot and find it very important that we keep remembering our history and tradition it is something that I have been waiting for all these years since we moved to the Emirates.
Whenever I saw a game on TV in the old Highbury days, or when I saw videos on you tube, or on the former Arsenal Benelux site where they had a video when the fans of the North bank sang their famous chant: We’re the North bank, we’re the North bank, we’re the North bank, Highbury, it always send shivers down my spine. And certainly when the reply came: We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, Highbury. More shivers down my spine.
Maybe this was something that we have been missing during our first years at the Emirates. I couldn’t’ imagine myself singing: we’re the green quadrant, we’re the green quadrant… It looked so silly so no one ever tried to sing it anyway.
But now, from the Blackpool game we will turn back to the old names we used to know and we used to feel comfortable with. Some people talk lightly about the Arsenalisation of the stadium but I really think and have the feeling that it is something that had to be done. In fact it took us far too long to have done it. But ever since last year and every time when I came along the stadium had changed. The outside of the stadium turned in to a circle of legends embracing our club and our stadium and the fans in it. A very nice symbolic thing.
On the inside great moments in our history were brought to live with pictures, text and paintings. I sometimes was left behind from the other members as I am one of those who want to read it all and relive the memory I had of those days or evenings. Lucky I didn’t miss the train back home by doing this.
And from the first game we come next season, and I can’t wait to come over, I will be sitting in the Clock end for the very first time in my life as a clockender. And Tony will be sitting in the North Bank on the opposite side of the stadium. And he will be singing in tune ‘We’re the North Bank” and I will be answering him, totally out of tune as I can’t sing at all, but with all my heart and passion in to it: We’re the Clock end….”.
The only thing that I feel personally that we cannot shout, say or sing anymore is the word Highbury at the end of the chant. I think we will have to leave Highbury behind us in this case. If I’m informed right it was clear from the start that the name Highbury would not travel along to the new stadium and would stay forever linked to our great home for all those great, and some not so great years. But we cannot use the word Emirates at the end of this chant as it is a temporary name and who knows maybe if another company buys the naming rights in a few years time we need to change the chant. This would be silly if you ask me.
But I would think that we just use the name of our club at the end of the chant. : We’re the North bank, we’re the North bank, we’re the North bank, ARSENAL. And I will be singing to Tony from my side of the stadium: We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, ARSENAL.
This would be a chant that we can keep for eternity and no matter which company owns the naming rights of our stadium our club will always be named Arsenal. And I think by using the name Arsenal at the end of the chant it will also stimulate the players on the pitch. Hearing the name Arsenal bouncing around the stadium like a pinball would bring an atmosphere in the ground and on the field that we all have been missing a bit in those first years at the Emirates.
Compare it with moving to another house. It takes you a few weeks and even months before you really feel at home in your new home. You have to decorate it with some personal things and memories before you really feel at home. As the Emirates is a home we only stay in a few hours and two or three times during a month, for the lucky one of us, it takes you longer than in a real home.
So I think that from now on I will change my name in Clockender Walter. Well it may look silly from my part but I makes me even hungrier for the new season than before. And God knows that I was hungry already. So I just will start practicing the chant so that at my first visit I will be singing it from the bottom of my heart: We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, We’re the Clock End, ARSENAL.
And the fact that Arsenal felt that this had to be done is another example on how the people who are working for this club are aware of those things. They might look as minor details to many people but I think it is a great thing that they have done this. I think many fans will agree on this. I also think that from this season on with the clock back in place, the renaming of the stands and bringing the old names back, the things they have done before to make it more a home this might be the things the fans have been waiting for to really make it our fortress.
See you all then in a few weeks/months, as a Clockender. Now that sounds very nice.
Our review of the finances of Tottenham Hotspur was read by more people than any other articles we have published. With such interest Phil Gregory has taken a further look at Tottenham, the finances of football and the conclusions we can draw.
A big issue for fans and clubs is one of knowledge. Anyone needs at least a rudimentary financial knowledge to make heads or tails of a club’s financial reports. Naturally only a very small portion of the fan base has this and so they take what the club says at face value. This leads to issues where the club can shift the goalposts (such as Spurs quoting a record pre-tax profit, which had more to do with player sales than anything else, rather than pointing out that the operating profit is down) and this gets regurgitated in the media by journalists who have no more of a clue than the average fan.
For me, this is partly an issue of regulation. If I had my way, clubs would have set performance indicators that they must quote every year, which would eliminate the whole nonsense of shifting the goalposts. A fan-friendly initiative such as this is important: football is not like any other business, where the only stakeholders in a firm hold a financial stake and so apprise themselves of the situation. Every football fan has an emotional stake in their club, and so I believe the club has a responsibility to go the extra mile to make sure fans know what is going on. If clubs aren’t doing well, they can’t be expected to publish bad news off their own back, so such regulation would have to be implemented by the higher powers in the game.
Anyone who has followed my financial review articles will be familiar with the issues I’ve had in terms of clubs not breaking down their turnover. How can a fan know what is going on inside their club if they only have a general figure for turnover, with no breakdown into constituent parts? And yet the regulation that concerns the reporting of various segments of a business contains a clause which states:
“when, in the opinion of the directors, the disclosure of any information required by this accounting standard would be seriously prejudicial to the interests of the reporting entity, the information need not be disclosed; but the fact that such information has not been disclosed must be stated”
What does that mean? Well, it means that at the discretion of the club directors, they can decide not to break down their figures. Of course, they can only do it when it would be “seriously prejudicial”, but how deems that? Why do some club routinely not offer a breakdown of the figures? When the clubs who decide to exercise this right include Hull and Chelsea, we start to see what type of management would deem it necessary to not disclose all the relevant information. More transparency is needed.
Anyway, back to Spurs. My other issue, one which in hindsight I didn’t explain at all clearly was that of “player trading”. In the interest of clarity, I’ll briefly restate my position:
When a club sells a player, any profit made is not calculated as a difference between the transfer fee paid or received, but as the difference between the value of the asset at the time of selling and the fee received.
The value of the asset is affected by amortisation (transfer fee received divided by number of years on the contract) and amortisation is charged as a cost each year. Hence, as the player’s value falls, the club incur a cost over a period of time.
After a few years however, the players value is diminished in the accounts and is often well out of kilter with the market value, hence when a player is sold, a large profit is realised in the accounts. Bear in mind that part of the reason for this undervaluing of the player is the process of amortisation that occurs over a number of years.
My issue with this system is that once a player is sold, the profit is recorded in a single set of accounts, hence it has a distorting effect on the bottom line. Naturally, such a distortion can be avoided if you look at operating profit figures as I mentioned earlier in the article as being a better judge of a club’s core financial sustainability.
Such issues are tough to resolve, and many commenters pointed out the difficulties of valuing players at market prices as opposed to using the current system of amortisation. I’m inclined to agree with them now, and think it’s best to maintain the status quo for lack of a better alternative. With the proposed introduction of specific compulsory performance indicators, such issues would be diminished with the end of cherry-picking the number that shows the business in the best light.
My other issue with this links back to my concern at fan understanding of the club’s workings. Quoting “player trading” profits when a side has spent £120million on buying players makes no sense to a fan, as to you or I a player trading profit cannot be made if you sell a player for less than you bought him for. Ultimately this is an issue of definitions, but Tottenham’s accounts cite the £56.5million figure as both a profit on intangible assets and a profit on player trading. It is the former, but it isn’t really the latter if we go by the popular definition of a player trading profit being when the fee received is greater than the fee paid. They are well within their rights to do this but does it help the fans understand the workings of the club?
These are just a few of the issues that I’ve come across in the course of looking into the Premier League’s finances. My own view is that greater transparency in the game would go a long way in aiding both the authorities and fans in spotting another Portsmouth before it comes to a head. But I don’t think it is about to happen.
According to Sky with its story, “Wenger steps up preparations” Arsenal are going to have to sell players to make space in the squad, because of the 25 player rule.
They say,
Meanwhile, Wenger has hinted that he may look to move a few players on this summer, with new Premier League regulations stipulating that top flight sides must work with 25-man squads, with eight of those players having to qualify as home-grown.
They then go on to say that Wenger said he would have to sell to fit everyone in.
Untold Arsenal has been reporting on the 25 rule and analysing the situation month by month – and of course I am sure that a news organisation as eminent and trustworthy as Sky with all its billions of Murdochian money behind it, it knows what it is talking about.
The official detail from the league on the 25 rule is here and there is a simple run down of exactly how it all works at the end of this article including what “home grown” means and how overseas players can be “home grown” at the same time.
So to look forward to the six new players, here’s the list, and here’s why we know it has to be six…
Our current “25″ squad….
1 Almunia
2 Fabianski
3 Mannone (Home Grown Player No 1)
4 Sagna
5 Eboue
6 Vermaelen
7 Djourou (Home Grown Player No 2)
8 Clichy (Home Grown Player No 3)
9 Song (Home Grown Player No 4)
10 Denilson (Home Grown Player No 5)
11 Diaby
12 Fabregas (Home Grown Player No 6)
13 Rosicky
14 Arshavin
15 Nasri
16 van Persie
17 Eduardo
18 Bendtner (Home Grown Player No 7)
19 Chamakh
20. Koscielny
Places 21-25 are currently vacant for players over 21. If all five places are filled one of these will have to be a home grown player. If Campbell were to re-sign for us he would count as the Home Grown player we need.
Now you may be wondering what has happened to Theo, Traore, Gibbs, Jack W, and the rest. The fact is they don’t count in the 25 because they are all under age.
I’ll come back to the kiddies in a moment, but the key thing is that Wenger has five spaces available for players over 21, only one of whom has to be “home grown”. So clearly he is going to fill those five places first. Which means if we have to sell a player to make room, that means we must be buying at least six players over 21 years old!
Amazing!
The only other explanation for Sky’s story is that we might be holding onto Simpson who is home grown but is now over 21. Let’s say that’s the case and that we sign Campbell again, they could be numbers 21 and 22. That leaves three spaces – and that would mean we could sign three more and be in the rules – anything after that and we need to sell one of the 25.
So even with Campbell signing and Simpson staying, if we have to sell one player as Sky says then we will be buying four. Four new players plus Campbell and Simpson.
Wow!
There is a further explanation - but it really is a bit too silly to contemplate. It could just be that Sky are such a bunch of debilitated drongos that they don’t actually know about or understand the “25″ rule and so don’t realise that we have loads of room free on our list.
But no, this is a serious national broadcaster who has the rights to most EPL games. The EPL wouldn’t sell their rights to a firm that doesn’t even know the rules.
Would it?
Anyway, back on planet Earth, the under 21 year olds who don’t count in the “25″ are below. No limit on numbers who can be on this list and I think many of us expect a few additions. But here’s the list we had based on last season (they have to be under 21 on 1 Jan 2010). The Home Grown issue is not relevant on this list, but I have included it as a guide to what happens when they are 21.
1 Szczcesny 19 Home Grown
2 Gibbs 20 Home Grown
3 Traore 20 Home Grown
4 Eastmond 19 Home Grown
5 Ramsey 19 Home Grown
6 Wilshere 18 Home Grown
7 Walcott 20 Home Grown
8 Vela 20
Now we might care to add, at least,
Frimpong
Emmanuel Thomas
Lansbury
Wellington Silva after January
The rules
Squad registration list must be submitted at the end of the transfer window: 31 August 2010, and then again on 31 January 2011.
Squad size limit – Maximum 25 players over 21 years. No limit for under-21 players.
Age definition – 1 January of the season’s starting year. 1 January 2010 for the 2010/11 season.
Home-grown quota – 8 of the 25 squad places can only be filled with home-grown players. Thus, only 17 foreign-grown players (over 21 years) are allowed.
Home-grown (1) age – All club registrations before the age of 21 (at the end of the season).
Home-grown (2) home – All clubs registered with the English or Welsh FA.
Home-grown (3) length – Minimum period of 3 seasons or 36 months (continuous or not).
The recent world cup final was contested between a technically gifted Spanish side and a very hard working and talented Holland. The Spanish victory was hailed by Alan Hansen and co, as a good result for football. They marvelled over the passing game and technical brilliance of Spain.
Yet I was not impressed, probably because I have been accustomed to this calibre of total football week in week out at the Emirates. Pundits were throwing out superlatives as if it was confetti. Conversely they could not wait till they condemned the Dutch as aggressive hooligans who simply ruined the spectacle. As it happens I completely agree with what they had to say. What is mighty irksome is the fact that they are not consistent.
Re-wind to Saturday, 27 February 2010. An away premier league match at the Britannia. Arsenal, much like the Spanish, pass and pass to unlock even the most stubborn of teams. It is this attractive football that makes me feel proud to be a gooner.
The match was marred by the horrific injury to one of our most coveted youngsters, Aaron Ramsey. I can’t help but compare the aggressive style of football Stoke utilized to what the Dutch did to counter the Spanish passing game. And yet the very same pundits were straight to the defence of Tony Pulis’ side. Their game plan was always to roughen us up saying that our foreign contingent can’t handle it. What I cannot understand is why that is acceptable when it comes to players like Ramsey, Eduardo, Diaby, Nasri etc and not when it is the Spanish national side. The standards change as soon as it’s anyone but Arsenal.
All of this makes me think of another similar situation when double standards were once again used. I remember when Eduardo was accused of diving against Celtic and was awarded a penalty. Yes in hindsight I can accept that the challenge was fairly innocuous. But that did not justify the witch hunt which proceeded. The situation is made worse when players like Rooney and Gerrard do the exact same thing, yet when they do it it’s called being a clever footballer but when it comes to Eduardo he is labelled a cheat. Could this all be out of envy?
Arsene Wenger has transformed the world of football. He has improved diets, shown that a football club can be run without a billionaire owner, finish consistently in the top four of the most competitive league in the world and won trophies along the way. And all this was not at the expense of our identity, tradition and history unlike our blue London rivals.
When I go to the Emirates I always have a smile on my face when I see parents who bring their children. I feel at home at the Emirates. And yet when I go to any other stadium I never have the same feeling. This speaks wonders for our fans and speaks wonders for our manager. Someone who has assured our future in a very competitive market has to be applauded. Maybe it is all this that makes the tabloids and pundits inclined to take every opportunity to take a swipe at the gunners?
All I know is that our squad is improving and with possibly a new goalkeeper and one more defender the project that Wenger started may finally come to fruition. For this we must be very proud.
On this site and on many occasions we have showed you how careful you have to be when you read something about Arsenal.
Only a few hours ago I saw this with my own eyes. On Goonernews there was a link to an article on Skysport. And it said: Cesc stands by Barca wish. And the article had as a headline: “Cesc Fabregas is refusing to discuss his future, but claims he stands by comments he has made in the past.” And then they go further and make it look that Cesc is hinting at leaving Arsenal and wanting to go to Barcelona as soon as possible.
Then the article went further on and on about the same old things we have seen the whole summer long.
So if you are an Arsenal fan and read this, and believe this, you will feel once again: “He will go, it’s clear now, it’s definite, he is gone, verschwunden, partie, weg.” You can go on blogs and vent your frustration about how ungrateful Cesc is, how disrespectful he has behaved.
But if you don’t believe anything the press and the media is telling you it might be worth looking at what, for example, the Dutch media are telling about Cesc almost at the same time that Sky has its daily load of crap released at us.
This is an article that appeared yesterday in the Dutch media and I will give it you completely in Dutch and then translate it in English. The reason why I also give the text in Dutch is that you cannot be careful enough. I want to show you the difference between the way the media in two different countries report on this story and in fact I expose one of them as liars. But by giving you the original Dutch words you can try to translate it yourself, there are applications on the internet but don’t be surprised as they show an English you cannot understand as those translation things are not very reliable.
But I like to think I am reliable enough and I will translate it for you in what should be understandable English, I hope.
So in Dutch:
Fabregas blijft kalm en denkt alleen aan Arsenal
Cesc Fabregas geniet momenteel nog van zijn welverdiende vakantie. Een paar dagen na de huldiging van het nationale elftal verblijft hij nog steeds op Spaans grondgebied, waar journalisten hem het hemd van het lijf blijven vragen over een mogelijke transfer naar FC Barcelona.
Ook na afloop van een door Cesc gegeven training aan de jeugd van een amateurclub was het raak. De wereldkampioen bleef uiterst koelbloedig onder de geruchten en gaf aan dat hij puur en alleen met Arsenal bezig is. “‘Hoe minder er over FC Barcelona wordt gesproken, hoe beter”, aldus de nieuwe aanvoerder van The Gunners tegen de Spaanse pers.
Tijdens de huldiging van Spanje kreeg Fàbregas een shirtje van Barça over zijn hoofd getrokken, maar dat was een misverstand volgens de verfijnde middenvelder. “Ik schaamde me heel erg, maar ik ga ervan uit dat Arsenal begrip heeft voor de situatie.”
And in English it goes like this:
Fabregas remains calm and is only thinking about Arsenal
Cesc Fabregas is enjoying a well deserved holiday for the moment. A few days after the celebrating with the national team he still is staying in Spain, and journalists are hunting him down and keep asking about an possible transfer to FC Barcelona.
So once again after a training session given by Cesc to a youth team from an amateur club they were at him again. The world champion stayed very cool when the rumours surfaced and he indicated that he purely and only is thinking about Arsenal. “The less we speak about Barcelona the better” said the captain of the Gunners to the Spanish press.
During the celebrations some players pulled a Barca shirt over his head but that was a misunderstanding according to the fine midfielder. ”I was deeply ashamed by this, but I hope that Arsenal has understanding for the situation I was finding myself in”.
Now you can compare this with what was written on Sky Sport and don’t they(Sky Sport) look reliable at first sight? But what about the Dutch media who follow all that is Barcelona as the Dutch have a bit of a special link with this club since Cruijff played there long time ago and all the Dutch players and managers who have worked there.
The Dutch media will not sell more newspapers if they write that Cesc will be going to Barcelona, or if they have to say Cesc will stay at Arsenal. For them it is the same. If Cesc would go and come to play in the Dutch league you could imagine that they could have an interest in this news. But now? The only interest they have is to tell the news the way they have heard it.
But the British media do have an interest. It is a player from the EPL and a player from Arsenal. A player that if he leaves Arsenal would certainly make Arsenal weaker. And maybe they would like it that Arsenal gets weaker? Maybe they would rather like it that another team wins things instead of that foreign looking team called Arsenal and that French manager Wenger.
I don’t trust much of British media when it comes to Arsenal. I have seen on many occasions that they will do anything to put Arsenal, Wenger and the players in a bad light. If I have the choice on who to believe between the English media with their anti-Arsenal agenda at times, and media from countries who have no involvement and interest in where he will play, I know who I will believe.
This was just an example of what I found today and in fact I just went from the one article to the other. And I found it so bizarre that I wrote a comment on the Sky Sports site under the article. But it didn’t appear yet on their site. Maybe because I asked them why there was such a difference between what the Dutch media is telling and what they are telling. Maybe they didn’t like it that I told them it looked that they were telling lies?
“Well we all want Cesc to come to Barcelona, but can they pay for him?”
By Walter Broeckx
Today is my last complete day in Cataluña. And I must say that I feel rather glad about it. I will be returning to a colder place, with less sunshine but with a media and press that is a bit more factual than the rubbish I had to see in the last week.
Today the headlines were about Cesc having a face to face with Wenger. Yesterday they told it was on Thursday, today they tell it is today and tomorrow …well they will invent something new I think.
One toilet paper, I can’t remember it’s name anymore, even had a nice flight plan on the front page indicating that Cesc was flying to London, in a very straight line and then had another line from London to Barcelona. I don’t have to draw that out to understand the picture I think. Cesc going to London to tell Wenger to let him go and then fly to Barcelona. Followed by a few pages full of all the claims Barceloanus has made during the summer on this subject.
And also a small article about Cesc being in the picture of the advertising of the new home shirt. They couldn’t understand this as Cesc was leaving, why would Arsenal put him in the advertising boards? Er, maybe because Cesc isn’t leaving my dear dumb Spanish newspaper making friends? If you are Spanish and feel offended by this I want to make my apologies as I don’t want to insult the Spanish people but yes I do want to insult the brainless chickens that make something they call sporting newspapers.
The other newspapers are following the same path and the same headlines al be it in other words. I could have missed it but not one of the sporting lying papers did raise the question: “Well we all want Cesc to come to Barcelona, but can they pay for him?” No the debt from Barceloanus is not important for them. A bit like the lonely battle Tony has been doing about the financial problems in the EPL and the official press never took notice until the bomb exploded right under their nose. So maybe there are a few people in Barcelona that understand that Barceloanus can hardly make an offer as they have almost no money left but it sure looks like they are not as easy to find as a needle in a haystack. In Catalan : una agulla en un paller.
Leaving a place where you have spend a (little) bit of your time is always a time to take a look over the shoulder. And I must say that back at home I didn’t realize what it really was in Spain to have to cope with the sporting press they have. I feel sorry for the people who have to face a press like that day in and day out. I think it is reasonable to imagine that after a while you live in another universe and you believe it all.
But when you imagine that it are those same papers who are running their stories like they do now and did last week, who not so long ago were proclaiming as a fact that: Cesc would sign for Barceloanus before the week was over (somewhere in May), Cesc would sign for Barceloanus before the start of the world cup (begin June), and the list continues. I wonder how on earth can any Spanish or Catalan citizen of this warm and sunny country believe one word these pathetic liars are selling them on paper? But it seems that they are buying the stories and maybe they don’t believe them all but they sure hope they become truth.
So this will be my last report as a special correspondent for the Untold Arsenal from Cataluña. I loved the weather, I loved the sun (the thing that is standing in the sky during the day, not the paper), I loved the people who are mostly very friendly even for persons who are wearing Arsenal caps, but the one thing I will love to not set my eyes on for the first period is the sporting tabloids that are printed in this country. They have the same class as Barceloanus FC this summer: none.
As I leave this place to go home, the Arsenal will kick off at the same moment against AC Milan. So I will not be able to see the game live and this is really a sad thing as I was looking forward to this game a lot. But that’s life.
Give my fellow gooners from the Benelux, who are coming to the game tomorrow a nice and warm welcome, and support our Gunners from the first moment and let us show them that even without our two best players, Cesc and RVP, we are the best team the world has ever seen.
See you in a few days, ens veiem en uns dies. This is the same but in Catalan so that Cesc can feel a bit at home in the Emirates, if his DNA is bothering him.
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The entire publishing team within the empire of Micrododo Publishing Ziggurat of Rutland who publish Untold would like to thank our special correspondent for his valiant efforts during the past week the face of overwhelming and insane provocation from the local media. We are all deeply grateful.
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Cesc Speaks Decides on his Future and Gives His Reasons
All the rest of untold Arsenal
What Walter should have been reading on his holidays, instead of the local papers