Up For Grabs Now

The fanshare scheme (recently announced)
Grants fans the chance to purchase up to 12% of the club
This is more than a ninth,
But less than an eighth.

It is good news for fans of sharing
Shares in fans remain unaffected

Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith has no interest
Alisher Usmanov,
interestingly
Has too much.

Stan Kroenke is interested in lip hair.
But disinterested about splitting hairs
Over club shares. Which is interesting.
A share is just a hunny
Usmanov’s just a cunny

Mr Gazidis
I hope that you read this

(For)

I don’t mean to be demeaning,
But I”m a fan of your scheming.

Afternoon all, and as we approach Christmas there are lots of intriguing and some amusing developments about all things Arsenal.

The amusing first. In an interview with the Guardian, Boss Nass the Usbeki rapist has said how he would love Arsenal to buy Andrei Arshavin, saying that he would fit well with Arsene Wenger’s footballing philosophy.

Now to my mind this seems a bit of a silly thing to say, particularly when you consider that in the same piece he also says that he is only interested in Arsenal because of his faith in Arsene Wenger, when Arsene Wenger has explicitly denied wanting to buy Arshavin (see yesterday’s entry).

Quite right too, if you ask me. Arshavin had a couple of good games in the Euros, and is clearly very keen to play for a bigger team than Zenit (ie any team not in Russia), and suddenly he’s being touted as the best new thing. No. Too old, to expensive and unproven at the highest levels, if y’ask me.

In the rest of the article he talks about how he’s not interested in buying any more of Arsenal at the moment, since he doesn’t have the means, and neither does anybody else. This is good news. If we can stave him off for long enough for the Premiership bubble to burst in a couple of years then the club will no longer be such an attractive proposition. We’ve just got to hope that they keep resisting the seige.

Part of the reason this blog comes to you somewhat belated is that I was at a party last night where I cornered a man deeply knowledgable about the boardroom shenanigans, and he had some interesting things to say.

Apparently the ruckus has really been over how the story has broken, rather than the ‘ousting’ itself. What began as a professional disagreement over the appointment of Gazidis, and generally being sidelined by the board, became a much bigger issue when the story emerged that Bracewell-Smith had been fired – it had been agreed that she would be said to have resigned. She felt, quite rightly, that it was a shoddy way to treat somone with a massive shareholding and who has done a lot for the club over the years.

Richard Carr felt, because of his family connection with her, that he had to resign too, but (again because of the manner of the story breaking) he and Bracewell-Smith are now at loggerheads as well.

Apparently she isn’t speaking with any of them at the moment, but the general feeling is that she won’t sell (much as she herself said the other day) as she loves the club, but at the same time if the board continue to make it a massive hassle for her she might decide it’s not worth the trouble to carry on being involved, particularly when she has to spend so much time with her very unwell husband.

I suppose  as fans we’ve just got to hope she carries on long enough for the dust to properly settle. I’m sure Fiszman and Hill-Wood are aware that they’ve made a complete hash out of a situation which by the sounds of things didn’t need to be hashed. It’s been bad PR and bad for the club’s stability at a time when we could really use it. Hopefully in time they can offer NBS an olive branch and get her back onside.

Just for the record about the Liverpool game, I thought the booing after the sending off was an amazing phenomenon, and played a huge part in sapping Liverpool dry. 55,000 people booing every Liverpool touch for well over ten minutes was extraordinary, and seemed to stop them playing. The only time i’ve experienced anything comparable was the last game at Highbury, where for the first fifteen minutes nobody seemed to play any football, as they were too aware of the huge chorus of ‘We’re the north bank, the north bank, the north bank Highbury’, echoed by ‘We’re the clock end…’ It was impressive then, and the booing was impressive on Sunday. Would the crowd could do that at every game, and the Emirates might become the fortress it’s yet to develop into.

Finally, a word on Cesc. It looks as if he’s out for 3 months, proving Guillem Balague right but crushing fans everywhere. If ever there was a chance for Song, Diaby and Denilson to prove themselves at the highest level, his is it. Poor Cesc, but it makes it all the more important that we buy at least some quality in January…

So we’ve got Roma to look forward to in the next round of the Champions League. Is this a good thing? I think it probably is. In the olden days I was very scared of playing Roma, but now that I’m older I realise that this was only because they had Francesco Totti when I was impressionable and in the throes of my Championship Manager 2000-2001 addiction.
I’m done with that now.

Undoubtedly they still have a strong (ish) side, but we tend to play well against the Italians, and I think the team at the moment is better suited to playing in Europe. So out of the available teams I can’t say I’m too disappointed. Of course the match everyone was looking forward to is Barcelona, but with them in the form they’re in just now I can’t see us doing much over two legs. I’d love to play them, but hopefully later when we’re a bit better than we are now and when we might not lose horribly. Is there honestly anyone who can say they’d enjoy the sight of Leo Messi and, er, Thierry Henry and, er er, Alex Hleb (alright the last one’s not so bad) bearing down on Song and Silvestre?

Didn’t think so.

The shares saga is rumbling on too, with LNBS, or ‘Bracers’ as she’s known in the dressing room, issuing a statement saying how disappointed she is to have been ousted like this. It’s a bit rich to expect us to believe that the board room ousted her – even the most trusting fan would have difficulty swallowing the idea that Hill-Wood et al. removed her to create the sense of turmoil. You can imagine the conversation, can’t you?

P H-W: So, things at the club have been a bit smooth and perfect really.
N B-S: Yes, I quite agree.
S K: Yeeehaaaaawwww.
P H-W: I think we should stir some shit up.
N B-S: What do you mean.
P H-W: You know, change it up and shit. Ruffle some feathers.
N B-S: We need to dispel the image of the club as well-run and stable.
P H-W: I quite agree. How about I fire your ass, then everyone in the world can speculate about how Arsenal Football Club could be about to fall into the hands of a Thieving Usbeki Rapist.
N B-S: But, but, but Pet-
P H-W: Quit your jibber-jabber bitch. Getouttamyface.
N B-S: You haven’t heard the last of me.
P H-W: Sure, sure.
S K: Yeeehaaaawwwww.
A U: (In background) Mwahhahahahaha. Now I can steal and rape Arsenal, just as I have stolen and raped everything for my whole life. I’ll get started just as soon as I’ve finished raping this person and stealing these things.

Perhaps not. But it’s a sweet idea.

Here is a fun little video of van Persie that’s been doing the rounds. What should the team be for Liverpool?

A very happy Thursday to you.

But a somewhat less happy Thursday for Arsenal, with the news that Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith is to leave the board with immediate effect. With no word on what she plans to do with her rather hefty slice of the club’s pie (15.8%), we can only speculate that this is the most likely moment for full-blown takeoever Alisher Usmanov has threatened for so long. Were he to add her stake, or even some of her stake, to his existing 24% he would reach the 30% needed to trigger a takeover bid.

Clearly the immediate reaction to this, from all discerning fans, is to gasp in horror and perhaps faint.
In keeping with their aesthetic footballing superiority, it’s the Arsenal way to assume a kind of moral superiority over other clubs about this sort of stuff too. Whilst I don’t doubt that Usmanov is a slightly dodgy cat, I think there’s more than a tinge of the casual xenophobia about the man – were he not the twin of Boss Nass I’m not sure people would be nearly as upset about his presence. I know that he’s supposed to be a Manchester United supporter, a thug and a rapist, but so was van Persie (for a bit at least), and Wayne Rooney still gets picked for England…

There’s a lot of hypocrisy in those who want a billionaire to take over the club, but not his sort of billionaire.

On the other hand, there also seem to be lots of people who were very unhappy with Stan Kroenke’s presence, but who then willingly acceded to him when it became clear what the alternative was.

To be honest there’s a level on which I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Whilst we’re all familiar with the likes of Hill-Wood etc, and most of what comes from the board level seems sensible enough, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way to run a football club. And the fact that these guys are prepared to pay vastly over the odds for Arsenal shares speaks volumes. It’s the nature of football clubs that they are far from reliable investments, and to get the share price to rise the team has to do well.

You only have to look at the uncertainty that greeted the Liverpool and Man Utd takeovers, but it doesn’t seem to have affected them negatively too much does it?

You don’t become a billionaire by accident, or by having no sense of how to run a business, and if you are a billionaire you don’t go making investments at random. Anyway. We have to wait to see how the chips fall, but I for one am keeping an open mind. It might all be a lot of worried talk. And if it’s not, then at least we’ll have lots and lots to talk about…

My, don’t I feel rough today? After I had between twenty-five and a million beers I got home and felt nostalgic for my childhood, so prepared myself a soft boiled egg and dipping soldiers, then ate it quietly on my own as I thought fondly of my youth.

Anyway, this now means that I can’t have that for breakfast, much as I’d like to, because I ate my last egg. Which is a pity, because right now I’d love to eat it quietly on my own and think fondly of the Arsenal of my youth.

But speaking of the youth of Arsenal, it has buggered itself, in the form of  L’il Theo Walcott dislocating his shoulder and being out for three months. Three months! I’m sure that I’ve seen people in documentaries like Rambo dislocating their shoulders, popping them back in and then heading back to snog a girl and fight a war. The least Theo could do is pop it back in and head back in time to beat teams like Hull City.

Honestly. Theo? Why Theo? Why not Gallas, or Eh?boohim? Or Bendtner? Eh?boohim could be out for a thousand years and I wouldn’t worry, except that he might get bored with his Buckaroo and finally reveal What Arsene Did Last Summer. Not that I wouldn’t like to know What Arsene Did Last Summer, but I fear it might make for an awkward mid-season.

Anyway, in practical terms what Theo’s injury does is give us a bit of a headache in midfield. Without him on the right the boss has a few questions to answer, particularly since his width has been one of the best things about the team this season. One option would be to put Nasri on the right, though with Sammy playing so well on the left it seems a bit unlikely. In that scenario you could put Carl on the left, and give him a chance to start darting inside like Rob Pires. I wonder about his defensive qualities, though, especially with Gael not quite at the top of his game either. I expect Wenger will play it cautiously, and that we’ll see a lot of out of position Diaby, perhaps broken intermittently by inappropriate outbursts of Song.

Ach. I’m beginning to depress myself. If anyone’s got non-depressing ideas I’d love to hear them, particularly if they involve Young Jack Wilshere or the Ramzoid.

Aside from his headache, Arsene’s likely to be furious, as he never likes the timing of international matches like these anyway, and least of all when people leave the comforting bubblewrap of Arsenal and go and injure themselves horribly with their national teams. I mean what do they put in the water? Maybe someone was jealous of his trainers and barged into him before stealing his lunch money.

Le Grove has a depressing piece about the possible financial and ownership implications of another season without silverware, though I have to say I disagree with it. I think the fans are more patient than that, and also the small-stake shareholders he’s talking about, who might want to sell, were probably never in it for profit anyway but instead have shares to express their love for the club, however frustrating it might be sometimes… worth thinking about, still.

I don’t want to end on a depressing note, so here’s this from a couple of years ago… Still very funny, though it has a certain horrible hubris now. Much as it did in the original, I suppose.