A guest post from The Beck .
Yesterday was weird, and it was filled with anti climax.
Draxler-
“Arsene shouldn’t get the final call when it comes to the value of a player”
If I am told I have to work with a budget, I would find it ridiculous to have someone else work/sanction purchases in my favour. Therefore leaving my hands even more tied for whoever I decided to purchase next.
We’re not Madrid or City or PSG when it comes to valuation or fees, AW has to plan for the next purchase, or the next 3-5 purchases in relation to our budget, he probably already has them in his head. He’s always appeared to be a long term planner.
Even if we had £200m in the *warchest* its relatively nothing compared to who we’re fighting/competing against, and how we use it right now that is absolutely vital to our future. There can be no mistakes with big purchases, none of the Torres/Shevshenko kinds.
If financial decisions of the board, affect your personnel decisions, then it seems rational that you have the final say on who comes in and who doesn’t.
Almost all the information about our board comes from the media or people who truly believe they have knowledge about the board. Some speak about the information like it was told to them personally and what you end up with is a lot of hearsay and assumptions.
Many Arsenal fans are very short-termist (this better be a real word) sometimes, especially under transfer window pressure.There is never a summer where things can’t be done better, there is never a better chance to win the league (something I’ve heard for 3-4 years out of the last 8).Always pushing their own personal insecurities, worries about certain injuries onto other fans, letting media clichés and click worthy headlines sink deeply into their souls before they even realize what is actually going on.
We might have played a solid hand of poker with Schalke last week and we probably lost, or maybe we won him/them over for another transfer window, this is something unclear to me and probably will be until the summer.
Draxler is probably injured until late February, it would have been nice to have him in our squad, he appears very talented and versatile, especially with Theo and Ramsey out. But we couldn’t make it happen, even if Arsene/Board thought he was worth £34-37m, we cannot be too sure that Schalke didn’t want more, or had settled for a fee then pulled out and asked for even more.Perhaps they wanted to monitor his progress post injury, his stats this season are not like his last, perhaps there is a far better player who is ready and might be available in the summer for the same price, again, something we might find out later.
There is also an image of Arsene that he has too big a responsibility at Arsenal, if this is true, the man must be a deity to keep us top all by himself for 3 months with just Ozil and Flamini being the major *changes* from last year, when we were near where United are now.
Arsene has Neil Banfield, Bould, Peyton (not Payton), Colbert, O’Driscoll, Harland, Hunt, Akers, Johnson, Lewin, Primorac, Page, Ashworth, Collins, Svensson, literally a line of staff ready to help and assist him and I imagine they do that behind closed doors and in training.
He also has Dick Law, Gazidis and a bunch of other corporate business men at his disposal, he is not as alone as the media paint him to be, he is not this tyrant who has 30 different roles and orders everyone to do as he says.
The board listen to him because they trust him, they trust him because they know him.
I say this because I believe Arsenal wouldn’t continue to employ and support someone like that for nearly two decades unless the man knows what he is doing,that or he must be the best actor in the world and is due 20 Academy Awards.
The media has had an obsession with David Dein since he left, and they’re making Arsenal fans think that Arsene needs a man telling him who to buy or to close deals, when we probably already have a person doing that. Ozil wasn’t luck, getting Ozil was pure genius and that player is so special, it takes hours of watching him play before you fully understand how great he is.
The man knows what he is doing, better than us, better than most managers, I find this constant questioning of him really tiring. Every formation, every game, every bench,
These people are lingering on to things just so that they can feel right/justified about how miserable they used to feel when things were bleak.
Arsene has looked healthier and happier in the last 5 months than in the last 5 years, this squad appears to be challenging and going places, Ozil knew that when he joined, the reactions of some fans is laughable and if you can’t make them understand, I believe its better to ignore, but I speak from a very passive individualistic nihilistic view of how to approach other supporters.
Being a manager is not easy, what’s evident to us as fans, isn’t evident in the same fashion to a manager. A manager could make 20 mistakes in one game and still win, he could be faultless in his tactics and still lose, how fans and the media react afterwards paints the picture, but the manager will know what worked and what didn’t.
Arsene hasn’t been able to get the striker he wants, yet.
Its definitely a yet.
He had Bendtner on standby to leave in the summer, he’s sent Park Chu Young on loan, he’s sent Akpom on loan, gave Chamakh to Palace and stuck with a handsome striker who has played remarkably well for us.
We even sold Gervinho to Roma and he’s done well there, but it shows you the level we’re after, we don’t want to settle unless its an emergency.
Giroud has never really been good enough for people who are now *upper class Arsenal twitter fans* and expect only the caviar all of a sudden, after saying we’d probably just get sausages and finish 5th this year.
Even if Arsene rates what they see as sausages, as caviar, which happens more often than not, it seems they do not learn, and as most homo sapiens do, stick stubbornly to their formative ideas.
Now people are obsessed with this magic striker, especially after seeing City/Liverpool with their dynamic duos, always comparing, always using other teams to bash ours, and its constant.They don’t let go, its always “I wish Giroud was like Aguero” or “Flamini ain’t Yaya Toure”, like we’ve not been top of the league for the months, like everything we’ve done means literally nothing.
The entitlement and sheer spoiled childish nature really takes away from the enjoyment of supporting and just generally enjoying games.
January 12th 2014. “I looked for a striker last summer that could play with Giroud and without Giroud,” said Wenger. “In my mind, it was not absolutely to replace Giroud, it was to play with or without him.”
Its really easy to break down too, since everything else appears so *easy* to folks.
We probably wanted a special striker, went after Higuain openly, didn’t agree with the price, (and people use countless of stats, pointing out how we should have paid more for Higuain and 35m+ was a reasonable price), yet Real didn’t give a toss about his stats (above a man who luckily escaped being charged with sex with a minor prostitute), nor any other top clubs that were in for strikers outside of us and Napoli, or so it appears.
Higuain might not even have been plan A, plan A may have been Jovetic, or even Rooney or whoever you can think of that we pursued behind closed doors .
We then moved on to Suarez, and after Suarez, we flirted with 19th century Ba, among a host of other loanees. Thus again, showing that sometimes you can have 5-6 targets, and still end up with none. That’s how the transfer window works sometimes, even if you’re willing to pay top dollar, but of course, fans will say its not possible and we have no plan B.
We have failed to buy a striker that is better than what we have, and we have also failed to get a better back up than Bendtner.But it depends entirely on Arsene’s valuation of Bendtner and the valuation of the market, its really too simplistic to say “how can we not get someone better than Bendtner”.
It appears that either Arsenal fans underrate Bendtner, or there were no one that could offer better than our Dane would for a reasonable price, a price better paid in the summer for a world class player, or it could be that both happened, or several scenarios, I’m not really great at guessing.
And yeah I said it, we failed to buy a striker, just like Bayern did, until they got Lewa, just like Chelsea have this window, just like many clubs do all the time, they don’t always get what they want, especially when theyare not Man City/Chelsea/PSG.
We tried to get many on loan (it appears), from Vucinic to Klose and if you’re crazy/stupid/lovely enough to believe the Kalou rumour, kudos to you.
Its not about incompetence, or blaming or getting angry at our club/players/manager/chief exec/illustrious Dick Law. Everyone knows by now that we’ve failed to get a striker, mentioning it every game when Giroud/Bendtner/Sanogo misses, or looks tired or we simply don’t score, its just too predictable, try to be a little more exciting in your life.And even when you’ve found someone at Arsenal to blame for us not being able to get a striker that AW/his assistants/board deem great enough, what do you want? for him to lose his job? what if its Arsene? or someone that the board trust no matter what fans say, because he’s produced really great work before and is likely to do so again, do you want him to lose his job mid season, when he could possibly bring you an even better player? or do you want him to get told to shape up (which probably happens within club anyway)?
Its really not as simple as people make it out to be, the kind of changes people want are only to hurry their fantasies, which are Twitter/Fifa/Tabloid/FM created at best.
Asking people to blindly trust the club is not the same as asking them being patient, I believe the club has shown enough over the last year to build trust back with the fans and with our direction.
Sometimes you try and you don’t get, even with all the money in the world.Monaco got Berbatov on loan, Berbatov, after having an injured Falcao and sending Lacina Traore on loan to Everton. Chelsea got no one after Matic. Mourinho’s tears are still in the 19th century.
When Giroud gets injured, we dealt with it before and we’ll deal with that bridge when we get there. People have been obsessing with Giroud and his injuries all season, the man is built like a tank. We’ll deal with it just like we’re dealing with Theo, Diaby, and how we dealt with Theo’s in Autumn, as well as Ox’s, Cazorla’s, Podolski’s and Arteta’s injury problems.
Wenger on Giroud: “He’s a tough, tough boy.when you speak to the coaches after the game, they say ‘Oh, what a player he is’. He has qualities the rest of the squad haven’t got. He always gives us that strength. I compare him to Alan Smith in the way he holds the ball up, distribution and goalscoring.”
With the injury to Ramsey being a big blow, I thought we had not enough cover in midfield, along comes Kim Mikael Källström to save our season. Its not as depressing as it sounds. (perhaps its just hugely underwhelming).By the way, I say *save our season* with sarcasm, we’re not in relegation, we’re not even desperately fighting for 4th. We’re right in the title race. He is needed now that Ramsey is out for a while, whilst Wilshere is having set backs and Flamini has a suspension. This is Arsene, not just hoping injuries will go away, but making sure we have a body there when we might need him.
If anything our season saviours are already on the pitch, doing the business every day, fighting week in week out against financial doping to the extreme, only to be mocked at any failed pass/mistake/miss.But I know how short-termist (still, is this a word yet) we are as fans, City could lose on Monday, we could beat Palace, Liverpool and Utd and suddenly its an entirely different atmosphere.
I just wish we didn’t have to drag ourselves through the dirt to get there every week.
Trust your club cause you love it, love your club cause its Arsenal.
*Not blindly, using hindsight, foresight, minority report, time machines or anything*
Positively Arsenal 
There are no comments because no one has reached the end yet.
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Great post The Beck. Thank you. A post that calmly rebuffs all the arguments of incompetence levelled at Arsene and the board. It is clear to me that the likes of PSG, City and Chelsea have distorted the market, and that is why the Draxler transfer did not materialise. Schalke are pricing according to that market, and will wait until the summer.
Some Arsenal fans are the most stupid on the planet. They don’t see that we have several players who are yet to reach their potential who could yet help our cause. Ox, Gnabry, Sanogo. As you calmly say, money is not always the answer. Patient squad building can also take place.
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Such an interesting transfer for us, Kim. I’ve read him being compared with Tomas, in playing style. We await the reality, but on first glance brilliant decision, no one had a clue. He must have been on a short-list of sorts for some time, in case of shorter term midfield needs; and triggered of course by Aaron’s injury. It seems to tell us, that for AW, the midfield is the non-negotiable, as the route to game dominance and goals – but neither do you want to toy too much with it. It also seems to indicate that AW is not unduly concerned about NB, and that Klose, assuming those reports are true, might have been a third choice or a very useful player off the bench in certain tight games
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Trust Wenger to go with a solid player with a proven track record of what the team actually needs now, a player who can deliver, and not a glory player for the back pages.
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Excellent article from start to finish!!! A brilliant read and what I’ve professing all along!!!
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Draxler may or may come to Arsenal, but one can safely assume simply that the three parties failed to agree, that an Arsenal bid, potentially more complex than we imagine, was being discussed, but had a formal bid not in fact been offered. Makes perfect sense to me. No matter how good a 20-year old may be, his age alone suggests that while not unproven, he is not yet mature, and that a part performance related staggered fee might be in order; Wenger is not about to risk 35m pounds. Andy Carroll anyone?
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Top, top post.
“Always pushing their own personal insecurities, worries about certain injuries onto other fans, letting media clichés and click worthy headlines sink deeply into their souls before they even realize what is actually going on.”
This is the heart of the problem.
“..The entitlement and sheer spoiled childish nature really takes away from the enjoyment of supporting and just generally enjoying games.”
Tell me about it!
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Great post! Some of these so-called gooners are really embarrassing.
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Beautiful article. Very matured analysis. This is the sort of article the true Arsenal supporters should read
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Wait, so chelski got salah but lost mata who is a superior player. shitty, loserpool and the scum didn’t get anyone in. Meanwhile we got an experienced international player with over 100 caps and won titles in two countries. That as cover for couple of players that will be back in a few weeks time. But somehow we end up as the transfer losers. Doomer math
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In short, when it comes to the title race, out of the top four teams, we made the most out of this transfer window.
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The Beck is honest and mature. Can we say the same for most other so-called “Arsenal” bloggers and tweeters? Once again most have shamed themselves during this transfer window “projecting their insecuritie”s on their readers and followers.
Excellent comments by all especially Muppet, Fun, Zim.
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Stolen for twitter Shotta
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It is as OleGunner used to and probably still says: The malcontents want to be owned by a Sugar Daddy, they want to sign all their players from the same agent (preferably Mendes *cough cough*), they wants it and they wants it now!
How do so many experts ignore these numbers?
http://t.co/guhtItItOJ (thanks to team spirit for the link)
We are not talking about Jack or Jonny Walker at Blackburn here but regimes looking to preserve their booty. Abu Dhabi City are the new BCCI. Plenty of volume about changing the name of Hull City AFC to their old nickname “The tigers”. It’s outrageous! ; )
Then there was the pre-meltdown self flagellators meme “Özil is lazy”, any excuse I’m afraid. It’s not a good look!
The way Özil spotted the space left by ‘the amazing’ (yet green) Shaw to set up Carzola’s goal against the Saints was very efficient, the lazy bastard! It must have annoyed him immensely that Flamini’s pass was behind him, forcing him to do some extra work. Imagine the bleating from the gr*tty grizzlers if it had been Jenkinson caught out like that after a jaunt upfield? *shudders*
Arsenal want to whip out their wad of wonga when the best are available. Not on a rookie unproven Andy Carroll, who is not as good as Bendtner, yet cost the same as a mature European Cup winning Mata
Alan Sugar:” Arsene Wenger knows the market”
Who shall we listen to? Someone with alleged ‘contacts’ on the board (don’t laugh, it’s cruel) or someone that used to own a mid table club? Oh, it’s a tough one!
So, what does this top top quality look like?
Iniesta – 631 apps 57 goals 88 assists
Xavi – 896 apps 86 goals 81 assists*
Mata – 378 apps 88 goals 115 assists
Özil – 390 apps 66 goals 151 assists (Arsene, you beauty!)
And when players are good without the stats to back them up we know because other great players say things like: “I modelled my game on that inspiring player” (Reus on Rosicky).
Arsenal Football Club reflects the best of England, and the Corinthian spirit, yet it is that which the malcontents want to see disappear. You couldn’t make it up.
–
*An interesting article on Four Four Two on Cesc F-Word, comparing tactics, freedoms, at Barca and Arsenal. The Endofanera™ revisionists told us at the time of the Tragedy that Cesc would struggle at Barca, because Arsenal players aren’t that good: this immaculate logic explains why Clichy was city’s starting LB last time they won the league. And that Barca’s tactics were better then Arsenal’s because, of course, Vengaaar does not coach D-Fence. Cesc’s own words on the tactics tell us that this distorted gibberish was born out of a desperate desire to discredit the Arsenal manager. The reality was that the F-Word left the club two seasons earlier then predicted to preserve his shins and bruised bones. The experts won’t mention that!
So Cesc has had to play elsewhere around the park till this season as Xavi now nears his retirement from their starting eleven, and now Cesc is playing slightly more often in midfield. The F-Word should now be starting ahead of Xavi now for both national and club teams as a CM ( a bit of a guess there but I’m happy to make it! ), considering the WC is in Brazil, and that Xavi is already planning to go the MLS (he knows!). At the least it’s an interesting call for the Marquis to have to make.
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Ah ! Sanity at last. Great post from The Beck. It has been an extremely frustrating window, not because of our dealings but because of the millions of headless chickens running about on all forms of media. The pundit farmers loping of their heads and then watching in amusement as they run amock shouting Arsene Wenger eat my sister.
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What a last couple of days that was, I have to say I rather enjoyed the madness. Now that Arsenal are ‘out of the storm’, which was only ever some light showers, and on the way back up, I find the hysterics of the online Arsenal world amusing instead of frustrating. The moaners’ empire is crumbling, and this week has felt like its last hurrah.
January is usually a time for mending squads, not building them. People only have themselves to blame if they were convinced that big, big players would be coming in at this time for a push to glory. Liverpool, Tottenham and City have bought no-one. Chelsea replaced Mata and De Bruyne with Salah and Matic. We’ve added Kallstrom. Nobody in the top 5 is significantly stronger or weaker. So very little has changed and January transfers will in most probability have no effect on who wins what.
With so little information available the bloggers and twitter folk will now have themselves a field day trying to fill in the blanks for themselves in order to achieve some kind of conclusion; to ‘grade’ the club on its January, and muster some tough and meaningful questions out of their unqualified and uninformed minds for all of us to ponder with real gravitas. Chins will be scratched, tutting will take place. Try not to laugh.
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Apparently the Swedish paper reporting kalstroms injury was abusing ARSENAL all day yesterday so may be FALSE
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BBC Sport website is reporting it, too.
David Ornstein, BBC SportKallstrom update
“Kim Kallstrom has picked up a back injury and is being assessed by the club’s medical staff amid reports that he could be set for a lengthy spell out….”
If anyone says we don’t have rotten luck, punch them.
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Ornstein is now saying it’s not thought to be serious.
And Spurs are a goal down.
All lovely, then.
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That would be terrible if true Fun!
We may or may not win the league, but you can bet this will be the stick used to beat the manager if we don’t! People have worked themselves into a frenzy about the need for a striker and cannot see the goal scoring options we already have at our disposal. They’ve been good enough to get us this far, so why don’t we try trusting, believing and supporting them? Who knows how far that could take us.
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good ole Charlie Adam GOOOL
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with Park, Chuba, Afobe, all loaned out and Theo injured I wonder if there was a very near miss yesterday. Julian Draxler has spoken on German tv saying Schalke blocked the move to ARSENAL and so you may hear the loud beeping of all those slagging Arsene reversing. Those who this morning were saying ARSENAL coaches were crazy for making kim train also were seen going backwards after it was confirmed his back injury was Not done in training. I think some people just like being wrong and put it on twitter so other people can retweet their ignorance to the world. personally I think its easier to run down the street naked shouting ” I’m a fire engine I’m a fire engine” whenever I want to look silly
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Good stuff
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Hunter
Championship Manager? Me? *coughs*
Kallstrom was a part of that Lyon team that kept on meeting Madrid I think. Another leftie!
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Football supporters are such hypocrites – they were gagging for us to spend £37m on an injured 20 year old and now they are moaning about KK’s back before they even know the true extent of the injury. Why not hope for the best for a change rather than always expecting the worst?
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Fine piece BECK. good reading and I feel your frustrations. I have them too with the way some are acting.
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Chuks:
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That’s a brilliant post, Beck. Unfortunately a tad too long for the short attention span of those people most in need of reading it to the end. Transfer business is never as easy as the media make it out to be and as a huge number of Arsenal supporters now blindly believe to be. Just because we could buy someone like Özil didn’t mean we can buy anyone at any price. We have more money now than we had some seasons ago but, as Arsene once said, that doesn’t mean that “we will do stupid”.
Honestly, I think those past few days have been disgraceful. The crazy amount of knee-jerking going on is shameful. Perusing other blogs and comments sections, I came to believe that we are about to go straight down to non-league football unless we buy a new CB, a winger, a midfielder and a striker (+ a DM and a GK as a bonus). I had to take a sharp dose of reality in by looking at the current league table to understand that we are in a brilliant position. The players that ensured we had the most points in 2013 are probably the same players that will enable us to win the title
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It is nice to see that The Beck is not at the “beck and call” of the “unwashed”.
What pearls of wisdom can be expressed in 140 characters?
The accounts of the Arsenal Holdings plc,, are a summary of the activities of the subsidiary companies in the portfolio.
When one has the annual accounts of the subsidiary companies at one’s grubby finger tips, the details disclosed, fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
The few of us who have these facts at our finger tips, are better informed on the facts, as Mr Wenger would say.
The “few of us” are obviously not in the position to gainsay either Mr Gazidis or Mr Wisley. We, leave such quibbles, to the “unwashed”.
Well done Mr Beck, your war chest of £200 millions is similar to Ali Baba!
COTG
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the irony is of course lost to the guys that proclaimed we can only survive with a shinning new signing
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All good now were top again although how bad was the crowd yesterday? I’ve never seen 50 odd thousand people take part in a sponsored silence before. I can never understand how a club can have such good away support and such bad home support it is perverse. The one good thing about the amount of ” big” clubs visiting over the next couple of months is the atmosphere has to get better. I remember going to ot after a few years of not visiting the place and couldn’t believe how quiet it was for about half an hour until they scored unfortunately we are now the same with most in the stadium refusing to give up their vocal support until the team produces something. There is something very wrong in that and it drives me crazy.
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