The Perfect Pitch

Our last big game of the season (no disrespect to Portsmouth). If we win this one, my earlier prediction will be a step closer to reality (and it did take a huge step towards becoming true, now that it’s an AC Milan v Liverpool final).

Our beloved friend Ashley “I nearly swerved off the road” Cole might be back. He might get a convenient injury just before the game to miss out, but that would be too obvious. If he plays, make the crowd can chat “£ 55,000″, and maybe he will swerve off the pitch. Could this also be Mourinho’s last game in charge against us? If so, we must win, since we haven’t done it yet and might not get a chance again in the future.

I hope Rosicky is fit - he makes a difference on the pitch. Otherwise we’ll start Baptista, and he owes us a “Beast” like performance before he is probably sent back to Spain at the end of the season.

2-0 to the Arse.

0 to 10th minute: Good football, it’s easy to see why Fulham are down at the bottom. Deserved goal. Should have been 3-0 up.

11th to 77th minute: Lazy, complacent, half-hearted play (except for Adebayor, he never stopped giving 100%), mixed with some good stuff and chances that should have been put away. If we continue to play like this, we’ll concede and waste all the good effort we’ve put in already (all 10 minutes of it).

78th minute: They equalise. What a surprise. Wrong decision by Lehmann- he’s been doing a lot of that recently.

79th to 90th minute: We finally start playing some football again, and guess what, we score 2 goals. Now wouldn’t it have been nicer to have scored 3 and then become lazy/complacent/half-hearted, rather than the other way around. If we have scored more goals a bit earlier, at least the “fans” that left around the 82nd minute could have enjoyed a couple of more goals.

A good 3 points, but we really should have finished them off in the first half, or at least earlier in the second half. This whole lazy/complacent/half-hearted, mixed with “the fear” (of being the one to give away the ball, and to cause us to concede, and hence to play well within oneself and not try anything too difficult), meant that we always makes it harder on ourselves. Some players also let their heads drop after missing a few chances - the old Arsenal team used to miss tons of chances as well, but they would never stopped trying just because they feel sorry for themselves. Plus the lack of noise really doesn’t help things either.

The end of the season is near, we’ll take points off Chelsea next week and end their title hopes. My other predictions includes us getting 3rd, Liverpool winning the Champions League, Chelsea winning nothing from now on, and Tottenham getting 7th place. It’s not what I want (apart from us finishing 3rd), but that’s my prediction anyway. Don’t ask me now how I came up with this prediction, but I might tell you about my prediction system if I’m right.

Ljungberg and Rosicky are out (aren’t they always) for our game against Fulham. We need the 3 points, but probably not as much as Fulham, who are still not safe against relegation. Manchester United and Chelsea play Everton and Bolton a day before us, and if the top 2 teams win as expected, then 4th place is guaranteed before we even kick a ball this week.

Diaby will probably come in, hopefully he will play in the middle where he is most effective, although I’m not sure who will play on the wings (Hleb and somebody else? Denilson?). It just goes to show we need more wingers.

Anyway, I think we’ll win. 3-0 is the score that I predict.

Following on from my thoughts from the other day, here is a very good, if somewhat long, article about the same thing from arseonline.com:

http://arsenal.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=880&p=2&stid=8444900

This quote from the admin of the UWS website is the best bit from the article:

Damn right.

Happy St. Totteringham’s Day!!! The day that Tottenham can no longer finish above Arsenal in the league, an annual holiday that is so popular, even the Spurs players were celebrating it at the end of the match.

Spurs players celebrating St. Totteringham’s Day

We were poor in the first half, much much better in the second, deserved to win, but the luck (3 shots hitting the post, 1 perfectly good goal disallowed, 4 minutes of injury time - where did that come from?) and the usual problems (Bye Bye Baptista) were against us. A draw is still a credible result, and considering how we completely outplayed Tottenham in the second half (without key players I might add), it just goes to show the divide between the quality of the two teams. I was so close with my prediction about Adebayor scoring the winning goal, but he did score, so that’s a good thing.

With Bolton and Everton both losing, this means we are 9 points ahead of the chasing pack, with 3 games left. With our superior goal difference, this should be 4th place all but secured - a point in our next 3 games would ensure it mathematically.

As for the Dein/Kroenke matter, some are saying we don’t have a right to complain about foreign ownership considering our foreign players and manager. There is some truth to this, in that we shouldn’t complain about foreign ownership just because the owners are foreign. As I mentioned a few days ago, the issue is not whether the new owners are foreign, it’s whether they are Arsenal fans or not and also how they plan on running the club. Even if the new owners are English, I would still not want them here if they weren’t Arsenal fans or if they plan to run the club like Roman Abramovich with Chelsea. As Wenger said yesterday, it would be much better to live at the top level with our own resources (which is perfectly possible as we are predicted to become one of the richest clubs in the world in the next 3-5 years), rather than getting someone to pump cash in and artificially holding the club together.

So to sum up, foreign players are necessary if you want the best players in the world (the players most likely to win the Premier League player of the season awards, Drogba and Ronaldo, aren’t English). Foreign managers are necessary if you want the best managers in the world (none of the managers of the top 4 teams in England are English). To have the best owners/board, this means having fans of the club with a fantastic plan for the club, and this is exactly what we have at the moment. No change needed.

With all that has happened in the last few days, one could be forgiven for forgetting that we have a big game on tomorrow (forgiveness only applies if you do not happen to be the Arsenal manager or an Arsenal player).

Cesc could miss out due to a virus, which is a shame. He’s on a scoring streak, and I would fancy him to score one again tomorrow. I fully expect Adebayor to score a goal, the winning goal perhaps, that’s what he’s good at.

This will be their cup final, so they will be up for it and it’s never an easy game up there. However, they’re shit, so we still have a chance if we can somehow manage to be less shitter.

And if we were to get at least get a draw, then that annual holiday St. Totteringham’s Day might just come slightly early this year (compared to last anyway).

Following Dein’s departure yesterday, now might be a good time to discuss if a takeover is something that will be good or bad for Arsenal Football Club.

3 of the top 4 clubs in England have all been taken over by investors that have no previous links and history associated with these clubs. Note I did not mention the word “foreign”, since I don’t believe it is a big issue. The big issue is whether these investors are here to make money, or to be part of a football club which they support.

Chelsea’s situation is different to the other two in that its owner is not interested (at this stage) to run Chelsea as a business, and so the usual rules about spending less than what you make does not apply to Chelsea. Chelsea have spent more money than most other clubs in the Premier League are worth, and while this has “bought” success, it is not guaranteed (their first season was trophy-less, this season they are not running away with the league like previously). Liverpool has only just been taken over, so it’s not clear what the new owners’ intentions are. Liverpool is also seeking funds to build a new stadium, and if the new investors can provide the funds, then this would have been a good reason to sell to them. It is worth noting that Liverpool have won the Champions League recently and are in the semi-finals without the help from any investors. Manchester United has been bought by the Glazers, and they are doing well on the pitch at the moment. However, very little financial investment has been put in by the Glazers, Manchester United’s success has little to do with players that were brought in after the Glazers’ takeover. If anything, Manchester United reminds us that good teams playing good football win trophies, not investors throwing bundles of cash into the mix.

Arsenal’s situation is different to all of these clubs’. We have just spent an enourmous amount of effort and funds to build a brand new stadium, and the benefits from the move will not be evident until a season or two down the track. In the short term, we might need investment to allow the manager to buy players, although looking at Wenger’s past records, it’s unlikely we will spend big even if we have the funds. So the advantages of having an investor step in right now would be to provide short term relief, which would not guarantee success. And even the short term investment would not be guaranteed if the takeover was expensive.

Looking in the mid to long term, the increased revenue from increased capacity at the stadium is already having a positive effect on the financial side of things. Figures for the first half of this season show that turnover has nearly doubled, operating profits rose a massive 150%. Although an overall loss was recorded, this was due to the once-off cost (£21.4m) of relocating stadiums. Without this once off cost, we would have seen a profit of nearly £16m, and this is only for half of the financial year. The new stadium is expected to generate significant profits for Arsenal, even after the debt repayments.

There is also the new TV deals starting next season would also see revenue increase significantly. Even the team finishing bottom would see around £26m, that’s only £4m less than what Chelsea received last season for winning the league. While all clubs would enjoy the benefits, Arsenal would benefit more because its current owners are not in it for the money, and money will be put back into the club. Investors at the other club might also put money back into the club as a means to bring more success (and hence, more profit), but there will be a point where they would expect money to be made and this means taking money out of the club and away from football.

In any case, Arsenal’s mid and long term future means we do not need any investment from anyone. Arsenal have already done the hard part (re-branding, built up our reputation as a major football club with the help of Wenger, building a new stadium), and we are just about to start seeing the rewards. This is perhaps why Arsenal is seen as a fantastic target for a takeover, a club on the verge of a financial boon.

Another issue is that in order to buy Arsenal at its current value of more than £500m, this would require the new owner to seek loans much like what the Glazers have done in purchasing Manchester United. It is still not clear what effects the Glazers’ financial situation will have on Manchester United, except that a once debt-free club is now debt-laden, and unlike Arsenal, they do not have a brand new stadium to show for it.

With all of these points considered, I can only come to the conclusion that a takeover would not benefit Arsenal Football Club in the short or the long term. The combined wealth of our current owners is as great if not greater than the wealth of someone like Kroenke, and this is without going into heavy debt to fund a potential takeover - there is no reason nor need to sell for the good of Arsenal Football Club.

The biggest news today is that David Dein has left Arsenal after 24 years at the club. He still retains his shares, but is no longer a director nor the vice-chairman of Arsenal.

David Dein - up close and personal

It’s hard to know what to make of this, but it obviously relates to the plans by Stan Kroenke to take over Arsenal. It does look like David Dein has been negotiating with Kroenke, perhaps behind the other board member’s backs (hence the “in the dark” statement issued by Peter Hill-Wood a couple of days ago regarding the plans of Stan Kroenke). Going by the statement on the official site, it seems the other major shareholders, Danny Fiszman, Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith and Richard Carr (who own a combined 44% of Arsenal), have entered into an agreement not to sell their shares for at least a year. While this sounds like a very short term agreement, it is still a very strong signal of intent to Kroenke. Dein seems to have been sacrificed for his support of the takeover, a very brave move by the board, and it looks like we will be actively resisting any takeover bids, at least from Kroenke, for the time being.

What will be interesting is Danny Fiszman’s thoughts on all this. Fiszman bought his shares from Dein and has recently sold shared to Stan Kroenke. If Fiszman wanted to sell, and therefore do not agree with Dein being ousted, then the board could be fragmented. It seems unlikely though, due to his agreement to not sell further shares for a year.

A lot of hacks have put two and two together to come up with five, suggesting that Dein leaving means Wenger and even Henry will be joining him soon. Dein was instrumental in bringing in Wenger and a lot of the players at the club, but that would be expected of any vice-chairman. It is true that he has a close relationship with Arsene, but Arsene’s relationship with Arsenal and *his* team is way stronger than any loyalties he might have towards Dein. The current Arsenal team is Wenger’s project, not Dein’s.

But will all of this stop a takeover from happening? It’s hard to say at the moment. There are still lots of shares out there that Stan Kroenke can purchase, but the hostility of the board towards a takeover might put him off, at least for the short term.

As for David Dein, he has been a great servant of Arsenal Football Club, and has been instrumental in changing the direction of our club and making it one of the biggest clubs in the world. Regardless of what he has or hasn’t done recently, his accomplishments needs to be acknowledged, and I am sure his presence will be missed.

Two wins in a row! That’s no defeats and no draws in a whole two games! And people say we’re in transition …

As the game was on 4:45am local time, and wasn’t being shown on TV anyway, I slept in. A good way to wake up to a result, and once again it was Rosicky, Cesc on the scoresheet (plus the “Beast”). I ended up watching the match through downloading the torrent for it.

Sneaky Rosicky

We started very brightly, very much in good confidence from beating our old friends Bolton. Rosicky scored almost an identical goal to the Bolton one … he really likes to sneak up from behind and score in the box, erm … or something. Ian Darke and Trevor Francis went on and on about how quiet our stadium was, which they probably have a point. “Could hear the drop of a pin”, “quieter than the Sahara Desert as night” (does desert wind count as sound?). It really is a problem sometimes, of course for someone who has only ever been to Highbury (and only once at that), maybe it’s not up to me to say, but a little noise definitely helps the team (although too much noise, like during the last match at Highbury, might disrupt our team since they are not used to the noise). It’s sad when the loudest noise the crowd makes during the entire game is the booing, followed by the sound of 30,000 people leaving around the 85th minute.

Still no goal for Adebayor. He needs a goal the most now. Hleb too (at least he got an assist in this game, sort of). Ade has a habit of scoring important goals, so a hat-trick on Saturday would be nice. Diaby should be back for that game, and what a great tackle that lead to our first goal.

We’re 3rd temporarily, and hopefully we’ll still be 3rd by this time tomorrow.

• A must win game
• Win will help cement 4th place, get us up to 3rd and maybe stay there depending on what happens on Wednesday
• Same team as last game please, maybe Diaby for Ljungberg if Freddie is injured
• Up the Arsenal!!