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

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

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?

Barring something very surprising it looks as if the great Patrick Vieira will be returning to England, accepting the luxuriant Eastlands grass as a new pasture. Who can blame him? If I was an overrated footballer (as opposed to cruelly underrated, which is the truth) with my best days behind me (this is perhaps true) I would head to Manchester City quicker than Andepaymor?’s mother can say sorry. Unlimited cash, low expectations, a new manager – what’s not to like? A team in which well-known violently misogynist moron Craig Bellamy is regarded as wizened elder is one harboring low expectations.

I suspect along with other Gooners, I have mixed feelings about Paddy’s return. Unlike Bergkamp or Pires, I don’t look back on his departure with unbridled affection - his prolonged courtship with Madrid rankles slightly. And ‘Vieira, wohohhoo, Vieira, wohohoo’ won’t have the same ring to it if he’s wearing light blue alongside Andepaymor?, Bellamy, Tevez and the whole sorry panoply of City’s overpaid, granite-idle strike force.

It’s also unclear whether he’ll be able to do a job. He was effective in Serie A, but the games in the main less intense, and he’s never hit his Invincibles-leading peaks. Having said that, with the current state of our midfield I’d welcome him back with a friendly, exposed bosum were he offered. At least for a few weeks.

But while I know that Arsene was reported to have been toying with resigning him at the start of the season, I find it hard to imagine it ever having come to fruition. As Thomas Wolfe said – you can’t go home again. There’s a reference you won’t get on Le Grove. It’s good to be back.

So mixed feelings, all in all. What do you lot think?

In other news the expected weather did materialise, and the club wisely decided to pospone the match. As I suggested below, the was a strong risk of the Bolton fans suddenly feeling at home, running amok; reducing house prices, stealing electronic equipment and brawling with one another in the road. It would have been horrible to see. There is now also a likelihood that we’ll get to play them with the ACN crew back, and possibly Cesc. Satisfactory all round – if matches must be postponed, you want them postponed when our best players are out anyway.

Nice Thursdays?

Has anybody noticed how quickly the name ‘Emirates’ has become totally acceptable? I remember all those doubters demanding that Arsenal fans gang up and insist on the rather more awkward Ashburton Grove. It probably has something to do with ‘Emirates’ not being an very recognisable brand name – more the name of a country. It would be worse were it ‘The Durex Ultra Arena’ or the ‘Mothercare Bowl’, or ‘White Hart Lane’. Emirates is neutral, and not unpleasant to the tongue. Ho hum.

You can ponder that to your heart’s content. Rather more pressing is Bolton’s visit tomorrow night, which will give us the chance of going 2^nd again, one point behind Chelsea. Not many would have given us that when we were overwhelmed by the ghastliness of Didier Drogba last month, and it’s great that we’re so competitive. No chicken counting yet, mind. He’s off to the ACN to ply his brand of muscular offensiveness over there for a bit. It’s a massive blow for them: twattishness is to the operation of that team like petrol to a large, dreadful car, and Didier is like a big fat girlie-haired tank full of the stuff. I’d be extremely surprised if they got through without dropping some points – all that matters is that we capitalise.

We’re not without our own absences – notably Alex Song, who provided a timely reminder of his excellence with a granite performance against West Ham, which should certainly have earned him man of the match had it not been for Ramsay’s  He provokes such confusing sensations, does Song. I spent so long mocking him at every opportunity through the medium of sarcastic praise that now he’s become a Talismanic Cog™ I’ve become all conflicted. He’ll be missed, and with Cesc’s injury proving troublesome there will be high expectations of Diaby and Ramsay. Ramsay I’m hopeful for, Diaby fingers crossed.

If the predicted sub-zero temperatures materialise then the Bolton fans will suddenly feel at home, like the zombies from 28 Days Later in the dark, and the Emirates will be transformed from a hospitable place with a handful of moronic Northerners terrified and cowering from the level of civilisation into an inhospitable Artic place filled with semi-naked moronic Northerners imbued with the confidence of the frostbitten mind. The midfield, in particular, will have to have their angry faces on, particularly if Arshavin’s dodginess is as bad as some fear – he and Big Tom are the only ones really cut out for the cold.

On the plus side, Bolton are unsettled and leak goals like Tiger Woods leaks credibility, and are at present staring longingly at the non-relegation part of the league like Alex Ferguson watching a video of himself when he was younger, before he was transformed into a barmy time-denier who spends his Sunday evenings wandering around complaining that the hilariously benevolent five minutes of injury time was not enough for his team of crack idiotic millionaires to score an equaliser against the Most Unpleasant Side In History.

Sorry for being so intermittent of late. Both Grabs and myself have been indulging our other scribbly personae – mine to forge a living, his to – well I’ve no idea really. But something. We’re back in force for the new year – Gingers For Limpar and others can rest easy.

Come on you reds.

It has been, friends, literally weeks since I (grabber) have posted. I am sorry for this. I had a conversation in the Duchess of Kent with a friend of my dad’s who said that he’d said there was someone in his office who said she read our blog. Since this was the first real-life fan I’d heard of, I was so amazed I nearly drowned in my leffe, and was so startled that I haven’t dared post since, for fear that my waffle might rebound into reality.

Quite a lot has happened since then. We beat Birmingham (yay), we drew with AZ Alkmaar(mmm), we drew with West Ham (grr) and we beat Spurs easily (hahaha). Van Persie’s been good. So has Cesc. Ho hum. We’re ahead of where we were last year. We’re Islington Shuffling less than is usual, except for typical culprit Abou Diaby. Actually on the subject of him – and regular readers will be aware of my strongly-felt prejudices in this area – did anybody see in the newspapers Abou Diaby ‘promising to curb his attacking instinct?’ What? Quoi? His ‘attacking instinct’ is totally irrelevant. It’s like Tom Vermaelen saying “I need to curb my urge to collect cashmere-lined antelope-leather driving gloves” – sure, I think we’d all sleep a bit easier at night, but it’s not going to affect his play one way or the other.

What Diaby needs to curb, put simply, is his shit instinct; the force in his soul which causes him to flatter to deceive season after season. I’ve seen little this season to disprove my previous thought about the man, which is that just before Eboue had his brain wiped, Men In Black-style, of his knowledge of What Arsene Did Last Summer, he whispered to Abou Diaby What Arsene Did Last Summer, meaning that the continuous tradition of players who have known What Arsene Did Last Summer remains unbroken. If readers are bored before the match, why not consider who was the first ever player to know what Arsene Did Last Summer – Remi Garde? Is it possible that we had players who knew What Arsene Did Last Summer even before Arsene joined the club? If this were the case I would nominate John Jensen and pineapple-headed attacking midfield legend Chris Kiwomya.

But that’s just my theory.

In other news myself and some chums attended a screening of “The Gooner Review” the other day, in aid of charity. I went because the film had been well-reviewed on other sites, and also because I like Arsenal. I hate to put the boot in, but rarely have I been so pleased that my money is going to charity. The film was, bluntly, terrible. I feel bad writing this – not nice to put fellow Gooners down, but this is a commercial venture and it’s not up to scratch. Its aim was to present an honest fans’ appraisal of last season, dealing with the lows as well as the highs. This is a noble aim, and for the first ten minutes the charity screening was hilarious – Paul Kaye, who appears as the presenter in the film, introduced it live to the cinema and got the crowd singing some excellent long-forgotten chants – anyone remember “You’re Sylvain… you probably think this song is about you…”

The film then lurched into a “top 10” rundown of moments from our season, as described by a variety of luminaries. There was not a single bit of football shown – we were told that the licensers had refused permission without reason shortly before the screening. But without any football the ‘talking heads’ had to be even stronger, and they were weak beforehand. The ubiquitous Nick Hornby and Amy Lawrence were wheeled out to not say very much, and were joined by a bizarre menagerie of random blokes (guitarists from local bands? ‘Arsenal fan’) and deeply minor celebrities (the percussionist from ‘M People’, anyone?). This would have been fine, had they anything interesting to say, but in the main they didn’t, instead spouting inane clichés about Arsenal’s youth policy, the effect of Arshavin etc. It was like being in a pub full of slightly old boring drunk men after an Arsenal match, when you yourself are completely sober, and have somewhere else to be. The production was clunky, and the video seemed to have been edited who had little experience making, or indeed watching, films. Again I can’t emphasise how guilty I feel about this, but without the football, and some quality insight, I can’t understand why you would part with your hard-earned lucre in a recession to do it. Sorry, Gooner review. I truly wish you better luck next season – it’s a great idea, but this version wasn’t up to it.

Right. Off to the Emirates now. I am taking a friend who trades derivatives at RBS. Can you think of a worse job title this year?

Come on you reds.

So. Another FREE VIDEO on Arsenal.com of the lads in training. We’ve seen this before. And we dealt with it. Not many blogs saw the importance of that footage, but we did, and we shared it with you.

That video was all about an uplifting guitar score which ultimately drove our gigantic Togonian from the club. It offered clues as to the real reason behind his heinous attack on Van Persie’s face. And it instilled, in all of us, a new optimism.

So what to make of this afternoon’s effort?

Well, there has certainly been a seismic shift. Gone and forgotten is the kind of formulaic guitar nonsense that did for Adebayor. But that hasn’t meant a return to Ade’s favoured Togonian hip-hop about shopping. Anything Togonian is clearly musica non grata when it comes to the Colney playlist.

Instead, the players have started training to a bizarre, grungy, grimy sort of electro. Still pretty teenage, and so a good reflection of the fact that most of our bench look like they were born under a Labour government, but funkier, slicker and less objectionable than the sort of puff Arsene made the players jog about to earlier in the season.

As for the training itself, cause for concern, I think. Of course, no-one will admit to a crumb of complacency as we anticipate the visit of Alkmaar tomorrow. But you have to say that a preparation which mostly involves a circle of players giggling in bibs as Emmanuel Eboue does keep-uppies with his backside does suggest a certain laxity may have crept in.

Kieran Gibbs looked baffled about all this, and must have been wondering what Fabio Capello would think if he saw the footage of Eboue and Song doing some kind of synchronised walking. Bad news for any World Cup dream to be associated with such behaviour.

And Boro Primorac looked absolutely furious throughout. And he appeared to be in charge of the whole sorry charade.

Certainly, Wenger wasn’t supervising anyone – he was off in a lonely corner of the pitch all by himself, engaged in a weird Sisyphean passing contest with the metal fence, something I’m sure we’ve all done, but which gets really annoying after a while when you realise that the fence absorbs most of the impact of the ball and it never really comes back to you as you want it to.

BREAKING NEWS: Beneath a picture of Abou Diaby rubbing his face with his shoulder, Arsene has compared his lanky but unpopular enforcer with a magnet.

This, he says, is why he is so attracted to the opposition goal (mostly made of air) and why he frequently appears to have no idea what’s going on, and why he’s never in the right place. All the other players have sat-nav. Diaby still uses a retro compass and a map Gilles Grimandi lent him a while back, but he’s magnetic, or the goal is, and so he’s permanently scrambled.

No idea what to do. Not the foggiest. Definitely not defend.

Arsene has explained that whereas most of us have even less idea of Diaby’s position on the pitch than the man himself, this is merely an interim period before he establishes himself as a fully fledged attacking midfielder. Or as a thoroughbred defensive midfielder. Or something.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Oh, what to make of it all? There was a time when I looked out for the Man Utd and Tottenham results and wanted them both to lose. It didn’t really matter who they were playing, except when they played each other when I generally hoped for a draw, injuries to key players and some long-term suspensions.

Yesterday Ashley Cole scored against Spurs. What was I meant to do?

It was the most emotionally confusing moment since a couple of hours earlier I found myself cheering Michael Owen’s winner for Man Utd. Then I saw the United fans celebrating and I stopped. Then I saw Mark Hughes’ face and I started all over again.

And what’s a Gooner to do when confronted with the spectacle of Craig Bellamy punching a United fan in the face? Whose side are we meant to be on?

Truly, Arsenal are a club surrounded by a wilderness of cunts.

Spurs and United are clubs with a long and despicable tradition of being cunts, whereas Ashley Cole may be the worst bloke alive, but he is only one bloke, not an entirely evil institution with a proven history of cuntishness – and City have only recently become complete cunts, though that doesn’t look like changing soon.

So yesterday was confusing. And there’ll be more like this to come with so many hateful clubs and individuals now in the mix, and that’s not even counting former footballer David Bentley.

My advice is to focus on the player/team that comes off worst, and to revel in their misery.

So don’t think about Cashley, think about Daniel Levy. Don’t think about United winning the Champs League, just remember John Terry making a tit of himself with the most important kick of his career.

In other news, Thomas Vermaelen’s goalscoring, fist-pumping, brave headering start in an Arsenal shirt has forced us to revise our previous comparisons – we now insist that Nemanja Vidic be referred to as ‘A Poor Man’s Thomas Vermaelen’ .

It has also strengthened the impression that new signings are always better than what we already have, not just because they’re new and shiny, but also because they’re better.

This impression only adds to the clamour for more spending, but we’d do well to remember that some signings are absolutely pants, and that Wenger’s recent purchasing of two players (for whom Man City would now almost certainly be prepared to pay £60-70m) for just £25m combined makes him a complete genius.

Signing players this good isn’t at all easy. And seeing as we’ve got very little cash, it’s just a good thing we’ve got the right man spending it.

Talking of Le Gaffer not being a mug, here’s a Gaffer mug. It is, as you might say, up for grabs now  (ahem) as part of our glamorous tryst with our friends at Philosophy Football.

To get your mits on Arsene’s mug simply answer the following question: how many domestic doubles have Arsenal won with Arsene in charge? Please email your answer with name and address to admin@philosophyfootball.com with ‘UpForGrabsNow Competition’ in the subject title. Entries close on the 30^th September.

Let's hope this isn't the only cup with Arsene written all over it this season