Up For Grabs Now

Sooner or later, all good businesses get bought. Arsenal, as we all love, is one of the best businesses around. It was bound to happen. We held out for longer than most. Our sensible financing, our division of shares between a few already-wealthy and interested people, our genuine long-term planning – all of these are reasons that Arsenal took longer than Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs and any number of other clubs to fall into the hands of a billionaire owner.  Arsenal are a profitable and glamorous business.

Once you accept the inevitable, you see that Stan Kroenke is just about as good an option as there is. He has not borrowed to purchase the club, not plundered the equity of the Emirates to reinvest elsewhere in his empire. He has sat on the board for four years, gradually winning over those – such as Peter Hill-Wood – who were initially hostile. He is a fan of Arsene Wenger, like all of us, but like all of us also craves trophies. Like some of us (this blogger included), though, he is not willing to mortgage the future and ethos of the club for some short term silver. He is not Alisher Usmanov, an industrialist of dubious provenance seemingly on a quest to be just like Roman Abramovich.

He is not an industrialist looking for a glamorous plaything. He is a professional sports franchise investor, with as much experience as anyone in the world at making them work. He knows football – our sort of football, not just the American format.

I think these last points are the most crucial. British football, in the past twenty years , has been hurtling towards the American model of sport as entertainment. The purists will hate me for saying so – and I think football does have an egalitarianism and tradition which lift it – but it’s true. Fans do not pay £2,000 a season just for love of the club. They pay to watch world-class entertainment. They pay to watch 22 of the finest athletes on Earth (with due exception for Titus Bramble and Ashley Cole) do battle.  Champions League TV rights go for millions not because your granddad took you to your first game and you grew up near the ground. They go because great football is great football, and is entertaining wherever you’re from.

America has understood this for years. The NFL is the most successful sports tournament on the planet: the Champions League is second. Stan Kroenke understands where football has come from, and where it is going. Arsenal FC is perfectly positioned to carry on being a great club for the imaginable future. If someone has to have their hand on the tiller, I’m glad it’s him.

It’s also worth noting how well our board has done to get us here. The main sources of his new shares, Danny Fiszman and Nina Bracewell-Smith, were both motivated to sell (he by cancer, she by personal animosities), but have still had the wherewithal to negotiate with Kroenke, play a long game and present a united front behind him. Peter Hill-Wood has realised the game is up and planned a smooth compromise. The board has behaved like rational adults, with the long-term interests of Arsenal at heart and in mind. In the context of the modern game, this is nothing short of miraculous. Thanks, gang. UFGN salutes you.

Welcome aboard, Mr Kroenke. You can start by buying some defenders and, y’know, a goalie.

Judging by the comments on the previous post, it seems that the general feeling is that we need some songs for players who don’t already have them.

My humble suggestion is for Bacary Sagna, to the tune of the chorus of The Clash’s ‘Rock the Casbah’

Gooo-ooo-ners like it,
Bac-ary Sagna, Bac-ary Sagna

No posts for ever and then two in a day. I ask you. Is it because of a rash of Arsenal news, or is it because this blog is half-maintained by a procrastination-obsessed freelance journalist? You decide.

I’m upset with the current Samir Nasri song. It is unsatisfying. In response, I have knocked heads with my friend Tom, who pointed out that a much better version can be sung to the tune of the chorus of Tinie Tempah’s popular hit, ‘Frisky’, which you can listen to here.

The new version goes like this:

“Oooh, na na na na
Na na na na na
Oooh, na na na na
Na na na NASRI”

Essentially you replace the word ‘Frisky’ with the word ‘Nasri’. What’s more, Mr Tempah is, I believe, a Gooner, so should be amenable to the adaptation.

Feel free to sing in the pub, stadium, any way you can help to disseminate this.

Anyone got any other good new song suggestions for any of the players?

Another draw, more hysteria. As the Leyton Orient goal went in my head went down, but then it came up pretty quickly again. Frustrating to have to play another game, but what romance for Leyton Orient. It’s hard to see us losing at the Emirates and a plucky little club gets a great day out.

I know some will complain that it’s yet another fixture in an already crowded calendar, but given that it was more or less a completely different team, I don’t see it as a great problem. Some of the first team might have to play some of the match to see us through to Old Trafford, but – hey – they’re all professional athletes. They’ll survive. I doubt we’ll hear too many complaints as we pick up each part of our quadruple. Perhaps perverse to say so, but I thought in some ways it was quite reassuring to see that Almunia and the second-string are just that, and that the first team all deserve their places.

A note on Barcelona. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been written better elsewhere, but two things: first, turns out Koscielny is an excellent defender. Who knew? More like that, please. If he comes good, alongside an ever-improving Djourou, then suddenly we don’t look nearly as vulnerable.

Secondly, the Emirates towards the end last Wednesday was as loud as I’ve heard any stadium. Well done all of us. Perhaps its true that a stadium needs to accumulate successes, like a wok picks up the seasoning of past feasts, in order to become a home.

Quadruple accumulator still on.

I figured I’d blow the cobwebs off this old lady and take the time to respond to some of the pessimism surrounding the 4-4 draw away at Newcastle. I’m not going to defend the team’s performance in the second half. Arsenal should not be in the business of conceding four goals in a match, let alone one half, against anyone. However, I also think some perspective is called for. We had a bad half. A cataclysmic half. Every team has these from time to time – passages where the whole lot just fall to pieces, and your team seems to turn from Champions League contenders into kindergarten retards. It’s never fun to watch, as Saturday reminded us.

But but but. We still drew. Our worst passage of play of the season and we still drew. We conceded four but we’d already scored four, at a canter. If we had been 1-0 behind and equalised at the last minute, nobody would really be grumbling about a draw away at Newcastle – particularly not after they beat us at home. In fact, how many of us would have swapped a draw for a Manchester United defeat? Arsene spoke after the game about the potential psychological impact of the second half, but it won’t be nearly as powerful as the impact on Ferguson’s jolly band of smelly, er, professional footballers. Every team in the league will have a go at them now, and some of them will be successful. United will drop more points. Every team in the league was already having a go at us, and so far we’ve more or less batted them off.

We’re hot favourites for the Carling Cup, we’re still in the FA Cup and, as far as I’m concerned, we’re favourites for the Premier League too. We’ve arguably the best attack in club football, and though our defence is not what it could be, we still look much more up for a ruck than we have during the past few seasons. That said, if nothing else Saturday proved once and for all that Diaby will never be Alex Song. (And who, four years ago, would have imagined that sentence ever being credible?). But there is more to be happy than sad about.

Now all we’ve got to do is breeze over those Catalan chancers next week, and my Quadruple accumulator will be looking rosy once more. Chins up, Grabbos

Squillaci wo-oh. Squillaci, wo-oh
In such sweet rhymes our defenders sometimes go

Willy Gallas fucked off at long long last
Thinking we’d forget his cuntishnesses past

On Sa’day we looked alright at the back
But Blackpool were a pile of tangeriney cack

Who knows what further citrus gags await
Though zesty I fear they might start to grate

Squillaci is a silly-sounding name
But though funny, that line’s no real shame

He has so far plied his happy trade
In Seville, source of wondrous Marmalade

Their famous Barber I presume is known to him
He lacks a single hair ‘pon his Gallic chin

He must Pollyfilla our defensive cracks
Against Drogba make no ill-conceivéd hacks

Welcome, new Gooner Saint Sébastien
We beg no tantrums against Birmingham

Try a bit and you’ll try more than him before
And Harry Redknapp’s mother is a whore.

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.

Well, what a week it’s been.

Eurozone Goal-God-cum-Scandinavian-Rhinocerous-impersonator Nicklas Bendtner smashes three past Porto to launch us into the Champions League quarter finals, then nips one past big bald (bad) Boaz in minute 93 to send us joint top.

Two days earlier, Arsene Wenger described Emmanuel Eboue as ‘the complete player’ to the derision of absolutely no-one.

These are days of strange and wonderful events.

The shoe with which the British media and large sections of the Arsenal blogosphere (to their eternal shame) have spent the last year or two kicking this Arsenal side and Arsene for building it, is now not so much on the other foot as in the process of being gleefully jammed inch by inch down the throats of those who chose to doubt and snipe when they should have hoped and cheered.

Former call-centre middle manager Phil Brown could barely get his whimpering and garbled objections out on Match of the Day, and ought to be branded a moaner in precisely the fashion in which Wenger is every time he gives his opinion on a leading question. All the attention was rightly on how big a goal that could be for Arsenal come the season’s end. Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of which Bendtner deprived Orange Brown so late on turned out to be the margin by which the Premier League was finally rid of Hull City?

Eight games left for Arsenal and the expectation, however much we try to keep it under control, is pretty big right now. When you get into this position it’s misery or glory, no mediocre middle-ground. That in itself is a symptom of success.

If we don’t win the league now, then the very same pundits and bloggers who said Arsenal couldn’t even make the top four with this team will be writing the season off as a failure, even though Arsenal have mounted the title challenge they said would never possibly materialise.

We can win this league. Maybe with the relative run-ins of the top three we should now win it. But if we don’t, let’s hope the fans can at least retain the optimism and togetherness forged over recent weeks instead of indulging the panic-button-bashing tabloids.

Too sad to joke. Another bullying from Drogba and co and we’re nine points off the top.

It’d be tempting to join virtually all the other Arsenal bloggers in plunging headfirst into a shitscreen of negativity.

Some of them really enjoy this. Le Grumble, for example, who spent the whole summer whingeing their favourite gospel of mid-table doom, only to speedily revise their assessment as soon as we thumped Everton at Goodison on day one. From then on anything short of the treble was going to be a bloody let-down. They really get off at moments like this as it gives them the chance to crow their tabloid-addled populist told-you-so crap to anyone who’ll listen. There are a lot of ways to express thoughtless, witless bitterness – it’s just a shame these kind of people choose to blog about Arsenal rather than design tea-towels for the BNP or something.

Then there’s sites who take the chance to rip off red-top scare stories about Fabregas leaving, stories surpassed for their predictability only by Gael Clichy’s singular failure once again to challenge the attacker with the ball. Sigh.

Well there’ll be none of that here, thanks.

Out with the newspapers for a week and the rashes of negative Arsenal stories that will be filling them. Not interested. If this sounds blinkered, it’s cos I am. But then being blinkered is a bad thing only if what’s around you is worth looking at. Which the gleeful media hysteria which descends on any top 4 club that goes through a rough patch is not - witness the general amazement at Liverpool’s current league position just a week or so after most match reports on them read more like obituaries.

What you won’t find in any newspaper is perspective. Here’s some. This may well be a world exclusive:

Every pundit and his dog said Arsenal wouldn’t finish top 4 this season. ‘Spurs have spent a bit of money’, they said. ‘City look good after buying a list of players voted for by Match! magazine readers’, they may have added, scratching their chubby gut. Our last two defeats have been bitterly disappointing, but our whole season so far might be best dramatised by a short play in which Fabregas and Vermaelen, supervised by Wenger, patiently ram the pre-season nonsense back down the throats of the experts (and the brainless bloggers who believed them) piece by stupid piece.

Third place is pretty good. I’m not against marquee signings. I really enjoy shirt-holding-up ceremonies, especially if the player holding up the shirt then puts the shirt on and scores a sackful of goals. It’s frustrating to feel so close to success and that the reluctance to spend the money that is (?) available is costing us championships. But that just emphasises how good the team must already be. Without spending the money. 

With a remaining set of fixtures that look easier than a pun about John Terry’s heading ability, we will make up ground on the top two, hopefully starting with Liverpool on Wednesday, who at least carry none of the attacking menace of United or Chelsea.

Hope that soothed somewhat. Chin up. Oh, and think about Alex Song. He’s so good, isn’t he?

A lot has been said and will be said about the result on Sunday, but now that some of the dust has settled I feel a bit more comfortable talking about it. On the walk (which feels longer every time you do it – weird) from Highbury and Islington to the Emirates I was saying, in a rather un-fanatical way, that I’d be happy with a point. Obviously we always want the Arsenal to urinate on United from a great height, but realistically it’s not always possible, and with the results as they’ve been this season the way we’ll win the league is by taking three points from all of the crap sides rather than duffing the big boys. Leagues are really won in this way – by consistently beating the mediocre sides – winning twice rather than drawing against crap teams is worth more than losing to one of the big sides, though the latter will invariably get the profile.

As it happened, we lost. In the event it looked comfortable for them, and we were certainly ragged at times – particularly when our heads dropped just before and after half time, but I don’t think the game was a foregone conclusion. We weren’t nearly as bad as some of the newspapers would have you believe. Arshavin had a couple of great chances at the start, and if those had crept just the other side of the post the game would have looked very different. It galls losing to a side with an entirely ginger backbone: Brown, Scholes, and Rooney, and particularly one which considers Jonny Evans to be a first-team centre back, but you must remember that this is Manchester United we’re talking about. Even the apparently rather successful advent of 3-D coverage doesn’t begin to approach the hideousness of seeing Wayne Rooney close-up. Marking him must be quite the most onerously disgusting task this side of mythology. It was also a bit unreasonable for Nani to suddenly decide that he can play football, having spent most of this season wandering around like a hapless extra in some disastrous Iberian soap opera.

Song, Fabregas, Arshavin, Vermaelen looked good. Que sorpresa. Others looked a bit off. Nasri and Clichy looked hopelessly weak – the former particularly is really not progressing as you’d have hoped from a man who arrived under the ‘New Zidane’ banner beloved of those whom the gods wish to destroy. He’s got a nice touch, but he neither imposes himself physically on games or mazily dribbles his way through them. One hopes that as our midfield makes its Singer Sargeant esque return from the Triage tent the competition for places will make him pull his socks up. I have fewer fears for Clichy – he just needs a run of games.

A note on John Terry: ha ha ha. I hate international football (particularly England) so I couldn’t really give a hoot either way, but I would say that the real question is surely whether the pleasure one derives from knowing that Wayne Bridge has been cuckolded is greater or less than the misery of John Terry sleeping with a lithe French underwear model(among others) It’s tough, but I think that the fact his liaisons varieux have come to such epic grief compromises them enough that we can celebrate. Well done John! Great cuckolding! Great morale! Great leadership! On which note, do we know yet whether he prefers to lead from the front or the back?

That’s your lot for now, and our hopes for a quick recovery against the Blue lot. It won’t be easy, but don’t despair. Remember last season how we pulled off all those great results when we were against it? Yes. There you go. Soothing. And if not, Liverpool are as self-doubting at the moment as Terry’s PR guy, so that’ll be fine.

What do you reckon?