Up For Grabs Now

I think it’s fair to say that we Gooners have seen better Christmasses.

Of course we’ve also seen worse ones too, but I think I’m not alone in saying that hearing the extent of Cesc’s injury confirmed made me feel physically sick. Cesc, our new captain, our engine, and the most loved of all our players, effectively out for the rest of the season. With his time at Arsenal apparently limited to just a few more years it’s difficult to stomach any of that precious time being snatched away.

So in the immediate future we face what suddenly looks a massive game against in-form Villa, without Adebayor or Cesc. And in the longer term we face the rest of the season without any sort of midfield to speak of. There will have to be a lot of gritting of teeth, puffing out of cheeks, and squaring of shoulders from fans and players alike.

Arsene has great, great faith in players like Bendtner and Diaby. Now, more than ever, we need that faith to be repaid by these players. We need to see that they were worth Arsene’s investment of trust. You’d struggle to find an Arsenal fan who honestly believes they are, but we need them to surprise us – and soon.

Today seems to be all about the Great Cesc Replacement Suggestion Extravaganza. So far, we’ve seen names like Parker, Inler, Veloso, Noble, Arteta (an astute shout from the Arseblogger, that one), Barry, Senna, Alonso, Toure Yaya, Defour, Arshavin, Arda Turan and Mouyokolo. You can add UpForGrabsNow’s name to that list. We are willing and ready to fight for Arsenal… jusht ash shoon ash we’fe finished thissh mincshe pie.

Of course, some of these names would obviously not compensate for the loss of Cesc because they play in completely different positions.

The Arshavin saga will rumble on with the bizarre tabloid logic seeing him (a forward who can play on the wing) as the solution to our gapingly empty central midfield. Having heard Wenger yesterday, I think there’s definitely something going on with Arshavin and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him arrive in January, though as a winger, not to fill Cesc’s boots. Arsene was very canny in the press conference on the topic, saying that it was not worth discussing “now” because it was not a ”realistic solution right now”.

To me this just sounds like he wants him but Zenit aren’t playing ball with a realistic price, holding out for an Abramovich-scale bidding war which just isn’t going to materialise. The good thing is that since he is in a big strop (saying he’d only be a Zenit player on paper if he doesn’t get a move in January) they have absolutely no bargaining power and no-one else (of any stature) wants him. If he does come in, expect it to be for a fee some way short of £10m, which is probably not much more than he’s actually worth.

In terms of actually replacing Cesc, I think Wenger will definitely bring someone in from outside the club, “internal solutions” or no.

There’s been some pretty perverse reaction from some of our fans. I’ve read people writing things like “Cesc’s injury is really bad, but at least it will force Wenger to spend money in January”. This is a totally warped point of view, twisted by hours spent impotently ranting against Wenger’s management, an activity which makes the ranter lose all sense of proportion and reason as their whole life-force seems to be channelled towards demanding big-money signings at Arsenal FC.

Forgive me for pointing out that the ultimate aim of football is not to force visionary managers into spending money at the expense of the outstanding footballers they already possess, and that maybe, just maybe, it would have been better not to have lost our best player and be forced into an unpromising market for a stop-gap solution. But at least the bleaters will get their signing at long last, which ought to quieten them down a bit (but probably won’t).

From the names being bandied about at the moment, I like the sound of Arteta in particular. Veloso and Inler are players who seem to be much admired around Europe and who would both be available at a decent price. I haven’t seen either enough to properly form an opinion of them, (and would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone who has) but they are both still very young and I feel a more experienced player like Arteta or Alonso is more like what we need right now.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, though of course the only thoughts which really matter right now are those of Wenger and he’s probably got pretty different thoughts to the likes of us. He doesn’t regret selling Diarra. Gotta say I do regret that. A wee bit.

He also said he was looking forward to everyone coming over very “imaginative” in their speculation. So we can expect to see the Daily Mirror staging an open-air Nativity play in which a wise man, a shepherd and one of the cows are unmasked one after another as expensive South American solutions to Arsenal’s mid-season malaise smuggled into the UK by Arsene under the pretence of popular seasonal drama in order to avoid work-permit complications.

Of course the best thing would be if we could sign God Incarnate, who was rumoured to have been shown round London Colney last Thursday and who would certainly provide a bit of steel at centre-half.

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…

As the reaction to our draw with Liverpool became more and more confused – “Liverpool grab brilliant draw against 10-man Arsenal” (eh? how does that work exactly?) – Arsene was asked in his post-match about the prospect of Carlos Vela being loaned out, his interest in Andrei Arshavin and the possibility of a move for Carlos Tevez.

“No, no, and no“.

This is terrible news for the idle rumour-mongers across the web and in the offices of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, who last week ran screaming headlines about Arshavin and Tevez and followed them up with learned opinions about Arsene’s imminent change of heart. They talked with grave certainty about the enormous sums piled high at the Emirates just waiting to be splashed on a range of long-haired strikers. But they still couldn’t be arsed to fabricate a single quote from within the club or “sources close to Arsene”. What evidence for Arsene’s great epiphany? None, nada, diddly squat.

So it’s bad news for them. They’ll have to find new big names and big new numbers to fill their headlines. Heaven forbid they should actually do some journalistic research. But is it really bad news for Arsenal? Is it bad news for Arsenal’s fans? I’m not so sure.

It seems to me that this season more than any other has seen Gooners aligning themselves with tabloid transfer hysteria. We’re not having a good season, what do we need to do? We need to spend, and spend big. That’s the consensus.

It’s total bollocks. I don’t give a monkey’s how much we spend, I just want good players. We currently require the acquisition of good players on the wing, in defensive midfield and in central defence. Everybody agrees on that. As far as I’m concerned these players can cost 20 million or 20 quid and I wouldn’t care less as long as they’re good enough. Nor do I care if I’ve heard about them, or if I’ve seen them in major tournaments, or if “Sport.com” says they’re really really good. When Eduardo and Sagna signed nobody had the first scoobie who they were and neither of them were very expensive, yet they are both absolutely class players.

But that’s not the attitude most Gooners have right now. Many have bought into the tabloid myth that spending money brings success by itself. In fact it doesn’t bring concrete success to anyone other than the media, who have an easy story which will sell them lots of papers. It’s as if Tottenham’s high-spending and laughably disastrous last 20 years never happened, or we Gooners just weren’t paying attention. 

Where there used to be a certain pride in Arsene’s ability to underspend his rivals and still compete, there’s now a rather ugly antagonism towards him, an insistence that he spend very big on a really big name right now, as if any future success would then be down to every pea-brained nutter who’s been screaming hysterically for a headline signing for the past 9 years, and nothing to do with Arsene.

And this antagonism has spread to infect many fans’ attitudes to certain players, chiefly Denilson and Alex Song, forever the scapegoats this season for any of the team’s shortcomings. Now both of them have put in some pretty dreadful performances, but both of them have also had games when they have been – as yesterday – little short of magnificent. Yesterday was the second time that Song has effectively neutralised the threat of Gerrard. And their performances are recognised by the rest of the squad – yesterday Van Persie singled out both players for praise – so it isn’t just Arsene who rates them. Van Persie is a top class Dutch international who has played with great players at club and international level. He might be worth listening to on this one.

But instead of getting the credit they deserve as young players performing superbly in big games, they get slated yet again. In my opinion this is because these two have come to represent Arsene’s policy of buying very young players very cheaply, then blooding them very early. It’s a very risky strategy, and a strategy which has major flaws as well as major benefits.

I reckon if Song had been signed for £9 million from Lyon in the summer and Denilson had come in last January from Valencia in a nice exciting £12 million deal, you wouldn’t be hearing anything like the dog’s abuse these two get week by week. Nothing like it. People would have way more patience with them and they’d want to see them doing well. You get the sense that some Gooners approach the game wanting Arsenal to win, no doubt, but also wanting to have a right old go at Alex Song. It’s totally perverse.

I’m not saying that either of these players should be first team regulars or that we shouldn’t bring in better players in their positions, I just don’t think they’re getting a fair hearing from Arsenal fans right now.

That’s my opinion. You probably disagree. Let me know, and don’t spare the expletives.