The Perfect Pitch

The mini-crisis over at Chelsea has me thinking about what makes a football club successful. The story that Mourinho not being able to buy the players he wanted and forced to play certain players provides a striking contrast to how things work at Arsenal, where nobody interferes with Wenger on any footballing matters.

The more I think about it, the more I think of a painting. Imagine an artist who is told to paint a masterpiece, but is told by the patron, who is not an artist at all, that he can only use certain colours, can only paint one specific subject matter and then to top it all off, can only use a certain brush stroke. If the artist was talented, then he might still paint a good painting, but the patron is not satisfied with merely a good painting - he had ordered a masterpiece. And pretty soon, artist and patron part ways.

At Arsenal, Wenger is the master painter. He alone chooses the subject matter, what colours he wants to use, the brush stroke and everything else related to the painting. His patron is happy to sit back and let the master do his work, and their reward is the ownership and enjoyment of masterpieces. However, Wenger is not simply satisfied to be ‘just’ a master painter. He wants to re-invent how paintings are made in the first place, to find new colours, new brush techniques, and while some of the earlier experimental works were not quite up to standard, you just know that a masterpiece, possibly his best yet, is to come.

The master painter has enemies too, at home and abroad. One of which wants to impose some kind of nationalistic view on how a painting should be composed, to perhaps use colours that best represent the country, rather than the best colours for the painting. Perhaps French paintings should only contain red, white and blue in equal portions, maybe only orange paintings for Dutch masters, and green ones for the Irish. The Mona Lisa shall have red hair, a white complexion while wearing a green dress. Will this advance art as we know it, or will it simply bring down the level so that even average paintings can masquerade as masterpieces.

Okay, enough with the metaphors.

An important game on the weekend. I know some will say it’s only Sunderland, and that we’ll put 3 or 4 past them. I said before Derby that the game could turn out quite differently than what was expected, but I was wrong. But I just don’t think Sunderland will be easy to beat, not with Roy Keane as their manager. I’ll settle for a narrow win, thank you very much. The Mancs and Red Scousers, hopefully, will drop more points before we play them, and we will hopefully pick up 6 points before then too. We need to build up a big enough buffer for when we do drop points - and December in particular looks very tricky.

So the kids have done it again. And by kids, I mean the slightly younger kids than the usual kids we call the first team. Whenever we get a Premiership team in the League Cup, I always fear that our kids will get knocked out. But they never do, and it’s win after win. Our last five League Cup opponents were Everton (away), Liverpool (away), Tottenham (home and away), Chelsea (final) and now Newcastle (home) … 4 wins (one was in extra time though), 1 draw (2-0 and they fucked it up … haha) and losing to a near full strength Chelsea in the final is a great record against these strong teams, League Cup or otherwise.

The team that played against a pretty much full strength Newcastle (who are sitting 5th in the table, 3rd if us, Liverpool and them all win our games in hand) contained not one single player that could be considered part of our current first choice 11. Eboue, Eduardo, Bendtner, Senderos, Denilson and Walcott and maybe even Diarra might fight their way into the first 11, but in all likelihood, they will be lucky to just get a seat on the bench. The media often say we have no chance of winning the title because we lack squad depth, but that’s only because they don’t know our kids like we do. They may not be full internationals, or may not have attracted million dollar fees, but that doesn’t mean they are not good enough. We have a chance to win the title, maybe not the favourites to do so, but that will suit us even more.

The media then go on to say the Mancs will win the title easily because of their squad depth (two weeks ago they said it was Liverpool, again for the same reason), and then this happens. By my estimates, more than 50 million dollar worth of talent was on show at the end of the game against Coventry (Nani, Anderson and Carrick), and what did they have to show for it? Is this the squad depth that the media was talking about?

This actually got me quite curious, so I drew up this table comparing squads between us, Mancs and Liverpool. The squad list comes from Soccerbase.com, I believe they only include players that have had first team experience (including pre-season friendlies) - they missed a few obvious Arsenal players like Nacer Barazite (who scored against in our first pre-season game) and reserve team captain Havard Nordtveit. It shows the first XI, the bench, “reserves 1″ consisting of players that most people have actually heard of and have made some impact on the first team (first team squad players), and then “reserves 2″ consisting of players that most fans of other teams not know about, mainly because they haven’t played in first team games (League Cup and pre-season apart).

Liverpool seems to have the strongest squad, and they will need it when Benitez rotates his squad every twenty minutes. They have the likes of Babel, Kewell and Sissoko not even making the already quite strong bench. I still think their starting XI lacks class in certain areas though, and our kids have shown that they can beat their “B” team quite comfortably. But if you compare Man Utd to us, it seems that players not in their first XI + bench aren’t really all that good. Okay, they have good players in Nani and Anderson (but worth the price paid for them?), and Ben Foster is a good keeper, but while Fletcher, O’Shea and Silvestre have experience, they are hardly going to win games for you. That’s why the team they assembled could not beat Conventry, and the team we assembled can beat Newcastle. And even on our “reserves 2″ list, we have the likes of Fran Merida, Carlos Velas and Nacer Barazite, and as Arsene pointed out recently, our new reserve captain Havard Nordtveit is quite a player too.

So while we could still use a few more players, wingers in particular, I don’t think squad depth will be much of an issue for us unless we have 8 or more of the first team out due to injuries (we currently have 4 out injured, so it’s not so far fetched), and even then, we’ll just play some of the players that started against Newcastle and they should be alright for a game or two.

As expected, the financial results for the year ending 31st May 2007 has been released. As expected, our turnover is through the roof (up 46%), making us the richest club in Britain. Some may argue that turnover does not equal profit, which is true, but that’s how football club wealth is measured by accountancy firms such as Deloitte, so who are we to argue.

Our cash reserves are at a massive £73.9m, and Keith Edelman has said that if Wenger wanted to spend it all, he could (but we all know he won’t).

Other pieces of interests include details of our stadium loan (which Edelman and Fiszman had already covered in the interview with Rick B, see yesterday’s blog post), which is at a low interest rate of 5.3%. That’s much less than what you would be paying for a typical home loan in the UK or here in Australia (I’m paying 7.6%!). Put this in contract with the American-led takeover at Manchester United, and their staggering £100m annual interest payments with interests as high as 15% for parts of their debt - and they don’t even have a new money generating stadium to show for it.

The club is doing well on and off the pitch (long may it continue, especially on the pitch), and the club is in the hands of some very good people who love Arsenal, but also know that it needs to be run as a business (and they have the expertise to do so). We don’t need a billionaire to “come and save us” under the guise of being a good guy, but really is out to get his hands on the profits we will be generating soon (Highbury Square redevelopment is set to earn us more than £100m in 2009, with additional money from property developments and land sales to come soon as well).

When two other clubs in London imploding due to interference from owner and executives, another near imploding due to debt up in Manchester, and another who are still yet to go through the pain of building a new stadium, just be glad that the board at Arsenal are doing a fantastic job managing the finances while staying out of Arsene’s way and letting him build his best team yet.

Over at Bigsoccer, the moderator of their Arsenal forums, Rick B, has posted a very interesting interview with Arsenal MD Keith Edelman and major Arsenal shareholder Danny Fiszman.

A couple of pieces of very interesting info is in the interview (please use the link above and read the whole thing, my summary doesn’t do it justice). A summary:

• A hostile takeover will never succeed
• An explanation of what a blocking stake is and how it’s basically completely useless for Usmanov to have one
• The board is currently writing a new agreement that extends the current “lock-down” agreement by a further 12 months
• The stadium loan situation is discussed, and our low interest rate compared to the Manc’s £80m (!) per year interest payments
• Who decides on player purchases at Arsenal
• Danny reveals two very interesting quotes from Arsene, one involving our plan to buy Eto’o
• And some other interesting tidbits …

A very interesting interview, and a must read. Kudos to Rick B for taking the time to do the interview and asking the questions us fans have all been wanting to ask (as opposed to the crap questions sport journalists tend to ask).

Just saw this post on Arseblog. It seems the 21% owner of Arsenal, Alisher Usmanov, has been using this lawyers Schillings to threaten bloggers and now they have taken it to the next step and have forced a web host to shut down entire websites.

A quick primer on how web hosting works. A web host will “rent” servers to you on their datacenters. You then configure the server and perhaps hosts your own websites on it - a server can hold hundreds of websites. You may also offer to host other people’s website. Typically, if you want to threaten someone to remove certain content, you can approach all three parties (the web host, the person who rents the server from the web host, or the person who operates the website), but the easiest approach and the one most likely to succeed is to threaten the web host, because they won’t care or even know about the issues that are in play. A good web host will usually consult with the website/server owner. A bad one will simply pull the plug.

Tim Ireland apparently helped to host Craig Murray’s website, as well as his own blog. As you know, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, wrote a book, Murder in Samarkand (to be made into a feature film, released next year), which talked about some dealings that Usmanov had in the past. He recently also posted a very critical article regarding Usmanov buying into Arsenal, where several allegations (which Craig say that he can back up with evidence) were made. It is this post that Usmanov and his lawyers have objected to, and after threats were issued, the post was removed. Legal threats were also given to any website which simply linked or quoted the article, including many Arsenal blogs. Apparently Usmanov was not entirely satisfied with this already heavy handed approach, and wanted the entire Craig Murray website removed too.

Tim Ireland also hosts a couple of other websites which are unrelated to this whole saga, which have also been removed, one of them for prospective candidate for London mayor and Conservative MP Boris Johnson.

More information, and the primary point of contact to Tim Ireland, can be found on the Chicken Yogurt Blog. Here is the complete list of blogs that have covered this issue as of currently (6 October):

Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North, B3TA board, Naqniq, Yorkshire Ranter, The Home Of Football, UFO Breakfast Recipients, Moninski , Kerching, e-clectig, Mediocracy, Sicily Scene, Samizdata, I blog, they blog, weblog, Colcam, Some Random Thoughts, Bel is thinking, Vino S, Simply Jews, Atlantic Free Press, Registan, Filasteen, Britblog Roundup #136, Scientific Misconduct Blog, Adam Bowie, Duncan at Abcol, Camera Anguish, A Very British Dude, Whatever, Central News, Green Gathering, Leighton Cooke (224), , Skuds’ Sister’s Brother, Contrast News, Poliblog Perspective, Parish Pump, El Gales, Noodle, Curly’s Corner Shop, Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft, otromundoesposible, Richard Stacy, Looking For A Voice, News Dissector, Kateshomeblog, Writes Like She Talks, Extra! Extra!, Committee To Protect Bloggers, Liberty’s Requiem, American Samizdat, The Thunder Dragon, Cybersoc, Achievable Life, Paperholic, Creative-i, Raedwald, Nobody’s Friend, Lobster Blogster, Panchromatica (251), Back off, man…, Dan Hardie, Krusenstern, Brendadada, Freace, Boriswatch, Fork Handles, Chris Applegate, Christopher Glamorgan, West Virginia Rebel’s Blog, Instapundit, Powerpymes, iDiligence Forum, Gizmotastic, Demos, Gary Andrews, Neweurasia , Never Trust a Hippy, sub specie aeternitatis, Bananas in the Falklands, The Sharpener, Virtual Light, Stu News, Scraps of Moscow, Danivon, As A Dodo, La Russophobe, PJC Journal, Mick Fealty’s Brassneck, dead brains don’t dance, A Comfortable Place, Bamblog, Robert Amsterdam, The Customer, No Longer at Ease, Rachel-Catherine, Humaniform, Mike Rouse, Chesus Yuste, anticapitalista, Aderyn Cân, Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog (294), Ross200, Disruptive, Internazionale.it, The Obscurer, A Lefty Down Under, Things I Learned or Made Up, Pickled Bushman, Persons Unknown (302)

This reaction from the blogging community is not unexpected. It used to be just the Arsenal bloggers that were outraged, now it’s political bloggers too. A word of advice to Schillings: picking a fight with bloggers, especially political ones, is suicide. If you had wanted this thing to go away quietly, well, the train has left the station I’m afraid.

And a note to Arsenal fans, do you really want someone that operates this way to be the owner of Arsenal? What if the next time it’s an Arsenal supporter’s group that gets in his way? Luckily, most Arsenal fans are against Usmanov’s takeover of Arsenal, and I suspect the current Arsenal board will be even more against a takeover than before.

We won our first game in the Champions League, showing Liverpool and Chelsea how it’s done (and our fans show Chelsea fans just what it means to support your team, ie. show up). It’s quite a start to the season, and I hope we can continue the winning streak on Saturday. A lot of people are saying that we’ll beat Derby by 8 zillion goals, with everyone scoring a hattrick, except for Almunia, who will only score a brace. While I think we should beat Derby, no team are “easy beats” and if we go into the game thinking that, we’ll be in trouble - just ask Newcastle.

The other big news of the day is Jose “Special One” Mourinho’s sacking/resignation from Chelsea. Chelsea are in a mess right now, on and off the pitch, and with an away trip to Old Trafford coming up on Sunday, it’s not looking good for them. It just highlights what I wrote in my last blog, that having a good board like ours, as opposed to a rich owner who wants to play real life Championship Manager, is essential for success. While Jose was a godsend to sports journalists as Dubya is to their political counterparts, his whining, cheating, and (to borrow Arseblog’s vernacular) cuntish behaviour won’t be missed. I’m looking forward to an “reveal all” interview where he will shed light on some interesting insights on Chelsea.

The latest news on the takeover front see Usmanov’s Red and White Holdings increase their shareholdings to 21%, making them the second largest shareholder at Arsenal. As I’ve stated before, I’m totally against a takeover, back then led by Kroenke. My feelings have changed though since. I’m now even more against a takeover, especially one led by Usmanov and also now that Arsenal current board are doing a fantastic job on the financial front without the need for some billionaire owner to start taking money out of the club.

So much at Arsenal is under the direction of Arsene Wenger, that we often overlook the contribution of the board. And the fact that us fans have never really had much trouble with the board means we’ve really taken them for granted. Make no mistake, the current board are probably one of the best in the country. They have very modern ideas and have taken Arsenal in a bright new direction with the new stadium. Arsene Wenger’s new contract reflect this as well, not to mention Arsene actual words of praise for the board. And if you want contrast, all you have to do is to look at the trouble Martin Jol is having with the Sp*urs board, and the Abramovich/Mourinho saga, and realise how important a good board/set of owners is. Do we want to end up like Sp*urs or have Arsene Wenger being forced out due to a difference of opinion with the new owner?

But a series of key questions exist, and the answers of which will determine whether a takeover is going to happen or not.

1. If the current Arsenal board has control of over 50% of shares (as largest shareholder Danny Fiszman has claimed), does this mean that a takeover is practically impossible?
2. If it is impossible, and assuming that Usmanov knows this, why is Usmanov still buying shares?
3. What will Stan Kroenke do with his 14%?
4. Are the Arsenal board really going to hold out against a takeover no matter the cost, or will they fold if the price is right?
5. If the Arsenal board want to keep things as they are, why aren’t they buying up shares to shore up their position?
   

I wish we didn’t have to think about these things, and just concentrate on the football. It’s hard enough to win things these days without having to deal with takeover speculations, and in truth, there is only one man to blame for all of this.

Many people said before the match that Arsenal winning at Sp*rs was going to be too good to be true. Us winning will keep us near the top of the table, we would once and for all end the ludicrous notion of “Top Four Tottenham” (especially when it was supposed to be at the expense of The Arsenal), apply just enough pressure to get Martin Jol on his way and it would be our first away win of the season too.

Adebayor’s Special against Sp*urs

The reality was actually better. 2 wonder goals (one a contender for goal of the season). Hilarious Sp*urs misses (would the game have been as good if they didn’t have and miss all those chances?). Liverpool and Chelsea both slipping up for Arsenal to go clear at the top. If only Man Utd had not scored their last minute winner, then it would have been the perfect weekend.

I quietly said to myself before the game that, if we were to win, then and only then would we be considered title challengers. It’s still far too early to say whether we will have a good chance to win the title or not, and we’ve had the fortune of a fairly good starting fixture list, but if we continue getting the results, in addition to the good things we did last season (for example, beating the top teams), then we’ll be in with a chance. And that, at this stage, is all we can ask for.

From today onwards, The Perfect Pitch will only be about Arsenal (and football) related stuff. I’ve decided to separate the non football stuff into another blog, on my main website Digital Digest. I will have to remove some posts here, and change the categories around a bit, but all of the non football posts are already duplicated on the new blog.

More later…

Blog entry moved to here:

http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/07/02/hd-on-pcs-what-sony-and-toshiba-need-to-do/