Oh dear. The morning after the evening before. Not good. Not good at all.
First things first. Congratulations to Birmingham City on their win and trophy. They made the very best of what they had. They deserve to be celebrating. I say that without reservation or condescension. I hope they partied till they dropped.
That said we were the authors of our own destruction. Twice. Wojciech Szczęsny – a young keeper of such rich promise had an afternoon he’ll want to soon forget. Within minutes of the kick-off he was saved from conceding a penalty and being dismissed for a last man foul. TV replays showed the Birmingham player was onside. He then came and didn’t get for the Blues’ opener. To cap a horrible afternoon he and Laurent Koscielny conspired to commit a piece of real pub team comedy defending to let in Blues substitute Obafemi Martins, a player who has tortured us since he first played against us for Internazionale in the Champions League at Highbury and subsequently at Toon.
Ironically Koscielny had played generally quite well in a less than brilliant team display. Despite not being anywhere near the top of our game we were generally the better side at Wembley yesterday. Aside from the vital matter of scoring goals. Getting more than the opposition is all that matters in the end. The fact that we didn’t score more than Robin van Persie’s excellent goal shortly after Jack Wilshere had struck the bar with a fierce shot was in large part down to some excellent goalkeeping from Ben Foster. Foster had a couple of flaps and showed poor decision-making on a couple of occasions, but you couldn’t fault his shot-stopping. That however is the purpose for which he is employed.
Jack Wilshere had an excellent game I thought. Elegance, skill and tenacity perfectly combined. He was our man of the match by some distance. Samir Nasri also played well. Now start the recriminations. I witnessed a few Gooners going ludicrously over the top post-match. One bloke was pushing and shoving all and sundry walking down to Wembley Stadium station, just spoiling for a ruck with somebody, anybody. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed, principally because the overwhelming majority of Brummies were still in the ground celebrating. The stupid, ill-mannered lout was left to spit his dummy solo, like the classless bell-end he clearly is.
Another Gooner was screaming “We’re shit! We’re fucking shit!” in the queue for the train back into town. I felt and feel his pain but that opinion is ludicrously over the top. If we were really shit we wouldn’t be second in the League, leading Barcelona 2-1 in the Champions League round of sixteen and still be in the FA Cup. As I’ve said before we are however on a plateau from which we appear unable to ascend further into real winners.
I had an interesting exchange of text messages with a fellow Gooner whose opinion and intellect I respect after the game. His view is that our current squad has too many players within it who are “stale and complacent” and that “no one is playing with the fear factor”. He has a point I think although I wouldn’t overstate that. I think any manager has to occasionally put the fear of God into some of his players to get them to perform. Much as I loathe Alex Ferguson as a man, can you imagine the hair-dryings he would have administered in the dressing room at Wembley yesterday? Or George Graham for that matter?
José Mourinho certainly would have our current squad playing tight as a duck’s rear end when not in possession. His football style, a sort of Rolls-Royce version of George Graham’s “first, give nothing away” mantra, would often bore us to death but we wouldn’t be facing a horrible morning being wound up by every Spud that we know.
Seeing the same mental and tactical frailties haunt us time after time is getting really, really old. At some stage the manager has to address this if we’re not to spend another season of so near yet so far. The definition of insanity is constantly repeating the same actions and expecting a different result. If we don’t address these problems we’re doomed to constant disappointment.
Off the field we’re losing too. As a shareholder the chief executive’s quarterly report containing the half year Arsenal Holdings plc interim accounts dropped in to my email in-box this morning. I haven’t had a chance to fully digest them yet but the headline is that we made a trading profit but an overall operating loss of £6.146 million for the six months to 30 November 2010. Half yearly football operating costs went up 2.9% percent compared to same previous six month period to £104.366 million.
This loss should become a modest profit when the final annual accounts to 31 May 2011 are published later on this year. The pay bill will up considerably though given the number of players who have been given new extended contracts on greatly improved terms and conditions. We’re operating on the edge of prudence. The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust is right to be “challenging” the club as it has said in its latest newsletter on whether we’re getting the best value for money from our huge wage bill.
Overall I think chief executive Ivan Gazidis is doing an excellent job. He’s hampered in increasing the club’s commercial income by the long-term contracts into which we’re locked with Nike and Emirates Airways. I’ve blogged before on what strategy and tactics we might employ to get this vital area of income up as quickly as possible. Matchday and broadcasting income are pretty much maxed out.
We need lower ticket prices, not higher and the only way we could expect a significant increase in broadcasting income would be to break up the Premier League’s collective deal. There are all kinds of reasons why I wouldn’t want to see that happening, not the least because I’m not convinced that it would be in Arsenal’s narrow self-interest, never mind the broader game.
I’ve also blogged before on our board and ownership. I’ve been flamed for doing so in posts to my blogs. We’re all entitled to our views so flame away if you feel so disposed and think I’m talking nonsense. Our board however comprises only two of the four major shareholders. Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith is only interested in her Arsenal shares in terms of how rich they can make her. She’s made that entirely clear.
The other major shareholder on the board, Stan Kroenke, is proving himself to be an absentee landlord. His recent takeover of the NFL’s St Louis Rams and his continuing interest in the NBA’s Denver Nuggets (basketball is known to be Kroenke’s real sporting love) and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, plus Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids (who won the MLS Cup – North America’s major prize – last season) and the fact that he lives seven thousand miles away and six hours behind us here in London in Missouri in the American mid-west means that he can’t devote anything like the attention to Arsenal that we deserve.
As for Alisher Usmanov, who lurks like the spectre at the feast, I’d rather have Vlad the Impailer as a major shareholder, never mind on the club board. Of the rest of the board Peter Hill-Wood’s advancing years are starting to show, certainly at club AGMs, Ken Friar is at the age where his ideal role is as a sage and wise adviser to younger men and women driving the club forward, Sir Chips Keswick and Lord Harris are bit players, not central to and not likely to be central to the driving force that club needs at the top. The other major shareholder on the board, Danny Fiszman lives in Switzerland and has health problems with cancer, the true extent of which only he and possibly his close family knows.
Ivan Gazidis is a board member but in the end is a club employee. We saw what happened to David Dein, not only an executive director but also vice-chairman and a senior shareholder when he crossed Danny Fiszman. Likewise Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, a senior shareholder. Both were ruthlessly defenestrated from the club boardroom. There’s only so far that Gazidis, an intelligent man, is likely to stick his neck out. Effectively the direction of the board comes from Stan Kroenke and Danny Fiszman, neither of whom lives in London nor have Arsenal as the central concern in their lives. Both of them view Arsenal as an investment without the emotional attachment that most of us have for our club.
Returning to events yesterday it would appear that we may be facing yet more bad news on the injury front. Robin van Persie’s injury doesn’t look good apparently. Oh my. We just never catch a break with injuries do we? Let’s hope the initial fears turn out to be wrong.
Meanwhile, we have far more pressing concerns – Leyton Orient on Wednesday night. We need to get back on the horse quickly after so spectacularly falling off yesterday. Orient’s support will no doubt be loud and proud. They’ll smell blood in the water and another Cupset in the making. We need to win to get our season back on track. As horrible as yesterday was, we’re still in three competitions. The one that matters at the moment is the FA Cup because that’s what’s next.
Keep the faith!
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