Firstly, yesterday afternoon at Anfield. I was suffering a horrible migraine by the time kick-off rolled around so didn’t watch it live in the pub as I planned. I listened to it on the radio and later watched a recording a friend kindly provided me.
It didn’t make good listening, especially with my head already pounding, or good watching this morning with my Corn Flakes. Undone yet again my some poor, slip-shod defending, Manuel Almunia also at fault yet again, aside from flapping on two other occasions that could have led to Liverpool going further ahead with better finishing on their part.
Going forward we had little of our normal rhythm and flow. The point we’ve come away with was largely due to an error by Pepe Reina in the Liverpool goal. This is the sort of mistake he has a tendency to make far too often to make him a really top-drawer goalie in my view. All goalies, even the very best, make mistakes. The best only make one or two a season. No doubt he’s better than any of our top three goalies. That wouldn’t be difficult at the moment, although I still think Vito Mannone has a lot of promise. I’m now firmly convinced that we’ll win nothing with either Manuel Almunia or Lukasz Fabiański in goal, and both Vito Mannone and (especially) Wojciech Szczęsny are too young to throw in at the deep end. We need a new goalie, lively.
Laurent Koscielny being dismissed for two bookable offences late on could also leave us very short for next Saturday’s visit of Blackpool if Johan Djourou doesn’t recover in time. This also exposes our lack of resources in central defence with four central defenders having left the club this past summer. At least we lucked a point at Anfield. If we don’t step up our performance and tactical discipline and awareness very quickly we’ll be out of the race for the League title before it’s started.
The reception for the news that Arsčne Wenger has signed a three year extension to his contract keeping him at the club until the end of the 2013/14 season has had a mixed reception. The headline of one opinion out there in the Arsenal blogosphere was “No Trophies Until 2015”. I think most Gooners will be pleased though, as frustrating as the last few seasons have been. Personally I’m amongst those who are happy BUT I do have concerns. Wenger is an intelligent man. Surely he can see the same problems the rest of us do? Personally I’m not as concerned about him not splashing the cash like a drunken sailor. I’m far more worried about the continued brittleness and inability to stand up to being bullied physically. I’m even more worried than that about our continued inability to maintain defensive discipline and tactical awareness when we don’t have the ball.
It’s not stylish for perfectly understandable reasons to praise anything to do with FC Barcelona at Arsenal. Let’s remember though how hard they worked at our place as soon as they lost possession in the Champions League quarter-final first leg. They made it all but impossible until the last twenty minutes when they were tiring a little to get anything going. The current Barcelona is a very different animal to the great Liverpool team of the 1970s and early 1980s. They do share one thing though; they can be put under pressure at the back. The problem is that Barcelona’s opponents, like Liverpool before them, hardly ever get to test this vulnerability, spending most of the time pinned in their own half.
If we’re not going to be the eternal bridesmaids we need to address these issues – pronto. We also need to keep on looking at the long, long, streak of injuries we keep on incurring. Chief executive Ivan Gazidis spoke very eloquently about this in his most recent question and answer session with members of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust back in May. We’re now using the latest Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system to track players in training. Good. We need to keep on studying the best practice around the world in sports medicine to ensure we’re doing all we can to prevent and detect early potential and actual injuries, and to treat them effectively and efficiently when they occur.
One country that has often led the way in this field is Brazil. We tend to dismiss Brazilian football administration in this country as chaotic, corrupt and inefficient. In terms of financial management and control it often is, with some shining exceptions. In the field of sports medicine and treatment Brazil has often led the way however. Back in the 1950s it was pioneering a system known as a comissão técnica (the technical commission). Each club has an expert corps of sports doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists and so on, working closely with the team manager and coaches as a co-ordinated group. The former Middlesbrough player Juninho commented at how surprised he was at the relatively primitive state of sports medicine in this country after his arrival from São Paulo FC in 1995.
We’ve developed a cutting edge training centre at Shenley up in Hertfordshire. We need to ensure we’ve learned all there is to learn from other countries and other sports about sports medicine. That’s the Arsenal way.
As promised, I now return to the postings to my blog last Friday on the ownership of Arsenal. “John in Norfolk” said, “You seem to be living in a fantasy where the fans are going to rise up and miraculously produce the money to buy all the shares and run the club as in some sort of Utopian dream world.”
Later in a separate post on the same blog he said, “Whoever eventually buys control of Arsenal will not do it through any philanthropic motives but to make a profit. That profit will come either through the club paying dividends or through selling the shares at a premium. The present stalemate is probably the best option at the moment. No dividends, decreasing debt and expenditure not exceeding revenue.” “Jesus is coming soon” said, “Great facts and history, but I didn’t really see what side you were on. Please make a part two or edit the article. You highlighted things I didn’t know and I thank you, but you offered no solution.” James McDaid said, “…..we are being run very poorly at the moment, another lost summer, sad really, also Ivan the great has some way with words but if the truth is told he keeps spewing out pathetic rubbish, he is a pure phoney.”
I don’t think that the current “status quo” is sustainable for much longer. Danny Fiszman (who has cancer) has already started to cash in, selling down his holding from over 25% to its current 16.1%, raking in £46.75 million. He paid a total of around £16 million for his entire Arsenal shareholding, most of which he bought from David Dein. He’s already up over £30 million. Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith has put her 15.9% stake on the market, trying to get as much money as she can for them. Her holding is a windfall inheritance for which she paid not a penny. They have been in the Bracewell-Smith family for three generations. It looks like the third will be the last.
None of Danny Fiszman’s children appear at all interested in Arsenal. Of the other two major shareholders Alisher Usmanov continues to buy and is knocking on the door of a holding of 27%. Stan Kroenke has a holding just a few shares short of the 30% threshold which would require him to either make a compulsory offer for the balance of the shares pitched at a minimum level of the highest price he has paid for any share on his way to 30% in the year immediately preceding passing the threshold. If he doesn’t make an offer he would be barred from buying or selling any of his shares or making another bid for a year.
The issue of his purchase (or not) of the NFL’s St Louis Rams is still very much up in the air.I doubt he’ll make a move for Arsenal until that’s sorted out, if ever. The latest news on the Rams is that Kroenke wants to buy the franchise in two lots, paying interest to the current owners whilst they hang on to some of a percentage of the ownership. He already has headaches with the NFL’s rules about not owning franchises in other sports in other cities (his plan is to transfer ownership of the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association and the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League to his sons but to guarantee any losses those teams make. He also owns the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer). The whole issue will be discussed at an NFL owners’ meeting in Atlanta next week on 25 August 2010.
Alisher Usmanov is still planning a so-called “Initial Public Offer” (IPO) for the Russian iron ore and steel company Metalloinvest which he controls with a fifty percent stake. Even after capitalising the company’s current debts this would leave him with a huge personal cash pile of several billion pounds with which to bid for Arsenal.
None of the other current Arsenal board members has any big holding in the club. Chairman Peter Hill-Wood is childless. The current ownership structure simply isn’t going to hold for much longer.
On the other hand the role of the “sugar-daddy” like Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan at Manchester City is about to be heavily restricted by the new UEFA financial fair play regulations which will come into full effect in 2015 and are being implemented now. Losses will be “capped” at a maximum level. Repayment of any loans made to the club or for which the club is responsible will be included on the expenses side of the club’s profit and loss account, restricting the amount available for player transfer fees and salaries.
Likewise the new Premier League squad rules, similar to those that have been in effect for the past five seasons in the Champions League will also cap the number of players that each club can register to play in that competition. There will be less room for the distorting effect of sugar-daddy “financial doping” with each passing season.
Of those who might buy Arsenal Stan Kroenke’s principle concern will be what can he get out of it? We’ve all seen what a complete disaster so-called “leveraged” buy-outs have been at Liverpool and Manchester United, where debt has been used to buy the club, subsequently loading the loans onto the club’s balance sheet. Legal (in this country and the USA) but completely immoral. That route will be very difficult in the future with the new UEFA regulations. Kroenke is either unable or unwilling to liquidate other business assets of his to raise the money to buy the St Louis Rams outright (NFL regulations place a limit of US$150 million, about £96.15 million, on debt that can be secured by an owner against their NFL franchise).
So Stan Kroenke isn’t likely to bid for Arsenal any time soon, although nothing can be ruled out. Alisher Usmanov is a more likely bidder, but probably not until after the Metalloinvest IPO has been completed which could, conceivably, be never. In any event none of these two gentlemen is my idea of an ideal custodian for Arsenal. I’d much rather see an increasing share of the club in the hands of the people that care about it most, the supporters. Which is why I’m so pleased that the board and senior executives have worked with the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust to launch Arsenal Fanshare. Some might think the idea of fans owning a large chunk and, eventually, the whole club is fanciful. I don’t.
There is a feeling amongst some that mutual ownership is somehow inconsistent with business efficiency. Just look at which financial institutions have weathered the recent financial melt-down the best. All of them in this country are mutuals, principally amongst them the Co-operative Bank and the Nationwide Building Society. Not one of the building societies that “de-mutualised” and became public limited companies in the 1990s exists as an independent company today. Abbey National has been taken over by Banco Santander, Northern Rock has had to be nationalised as an alternative to bankruptcy. The list goes on.
Others think that Arsenal supporters won’t dip into their pockets in sufficient numbers and in sufficient amounts to make a difference. I disagree. I think enough can be persuaded to make a real difference. If they don’t I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong. I’m convinced however that the safest hands into which to place the club are those of us, its supporters. That’s why I’m backing Arsenal Fanshare and why I was a founding member of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust and was proud to serve on its board for a number of years. Arsenal has a proud history of innovation on and off the field that goes back generations. Arsenal is leading the way yet again. I’m very proud of that.
As for Arsenal being “very poorly run” and Ivan Gazidis “spewing out pathetic rubbish” I couldn’t disagree more. Gazidis is one of the most gifted and intelligent football administrators I’ve ever met. If being “poorly run” equates to not spending money we don’t have then I’m all for being poorly run. I want the club I love to be around and challenging for honours for another 125 years after we celebrate our 125th anniversary in December 2011.
On the field there are clearly issues which need addressing urgently. Off the field we are far from perfect but just look at the sea of red ink that all too many Premier League clubs are sinking into, the new anti-financial doping rules coming into effect and ask yourself who is best equipped for the next decade?
Keep the faith!
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