Up For Grabs Now

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?

Afternoon all. Many apologies for the tardiness of the post – I was returning from the land of rural dial-up, where I went armed with the wrong shape of cable. Idiot. Anyway, normal service should now be resumed on UpForGrabsNow, taking you through the transfer window and beyond into Arsenal’s 2009. Will be great to have you along for the ride.

I’ll start today by simply drawing out a number of things that Wenger said at his pre-match press conference this lunchhour. At the end of the day, I can blog until I’m blue in the balls, but it’s The Word of Wenger which actually matters. He was predictably barracked on transfer strategy and raised some points which regular readers will recognise as familiar from the ideas we’re always rabbiting on about on this blog:

“I believe that what we want to do is not basically linked with money – I read some ridiculous amounts of money that are completely crazy.

Quite right too. I’ve always said it. All this “we need to spend big” chat is just witless tabloid garbage, which we can do without at Arsenal FC, thanks very much. Back to Arsene:

“When I accepted to stay I knew what would be available and what kind of restrictions would be existing. I deal with that and have no regret and no imagination about how much money is available. What is most important is the Club has built a new stadium and we live in a very strong and healthy situation financially.”

Sounds like we don’t have much of a transfer pot and possibly didn’t have in the summer either. If this is the case then PHW has been telling big porkies. It would also put blogs like Le Grumble to shame, always whinging about Wenger’s apparent refusal to spend. If it just wasn’t available then that’s a whole new barrel of badgers, and Wenger’s loyalty is all the more admirable.

“How many clubs have managed to build a new stadium, have a good financial situation and continue to play at the top? This team is together getting stronger and stronger but what we need to focus on is continually developing and not live in dreamland where we are linked with players of £30-£40million because that’s not realistic.”

It’s nice in that Dreamland, isn’t it? I’ve been there once or twice myself and it was lovely. A youthful Johann Cruyff signed for £497 million, pulled on an Arsenal shirt and nutmegged me before thrashing the ball past Van Der Sar. It was great.

“Chelsea haven’t built a stadium and they lose £100million per year. How do you imagine you can deal with that at Arsenal Football Club without going bankrupt? We have to be responsible.”

And here comes the bombshell. The Big One. The Big Moan that has grown and grown this season got popped, as quickly as it took Arsene to say:

“It is not that we don’t want to spend. I believe that we have gone for a policy and we need to have a logic and a line of conduct inside the Club that has to be respected. We have gone for a policy that is to develop our young players and we have to show some character and strength and not listen to everybody who comes out every day with a new name.”

This suggests Arsene did consider using the Online Community (as that linked article suggests) in dictating his transfer policy, but on balance has decided against it. Probably a wise decision.

 ”If you look at the best players we have had over the years – in the last 10 or 12 years – we have always played at the top. The best players who have made a massive impact here are not always the ones who have cost £30-£40million. I can cite you players in the last 10 or 15 years who have cost £30million and have been a flop. It is not necessarily linked that you spend £30million and get a massive player.”

We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep on saying it: it’s quality we need, not headlines.

Wenger also talked about Arshavin, rather coyly, as seems to be his approach to this particular transfer saga, unlike Arshavin’s tired old whore of an agent who has been flagrantly exposing the transfer-market equivalent of his diseased genitalia all over the red-tops all week. We’ll be calling Andrei a Gooner in a couple of weeks for about £8 million, I reckon.

Finally, Arsene admired Mikel Arteta but said there had been “no enquiry at all about him”. Unlike his flat denial of interest in Shay Given,this doesn’t rule anything out, and it would be nice if we would enquire about Arteta wouldn’t it? It would be even nicer if we offered them a grubby fiver and some of Eboue’s old y-fronts and they accepted with open arms. It is the credit crunch and all that, isn’t it?