Good Morning Positivistas,

I thought I would out pen to paper this Sunday morning as it is weeks since I have had anything to write about on the Arsenal theme, and the past few days have rather rocked the Positive++ in me to their foundations.

I had hoped some Arsenal news might emerge to hang a written contribution on, but so far nothing. The best I can come up with is that we start out season in the Avaya Stadium, San Jose on the 28^th July, as you all well know. By then we may, or may not, sign a new player or two. By the day no doubt another dozen names will have been in and out of the sorting hat. Those revelations hardly fulfil my mission to inform and to explain though.

Nevertheless there is international football to look forward to today. The opening group round of the Euros were mostly good games, tight contests with a pleasing number of the under-dogs biting the noses of the bigger hounds, most notably group winners Wales and Hungary.

All our AFC lads did well, Aaron, Olivier and Granit, the three most decisive. Tomas departure was a shame, though not unexpected. At least he played his last game in a fighting 2-2 come back against the crazed Croatians, rather than his career being signed off on the treatment table. And Jack ? I suspect if England are to make any genuine impression in the tournament they ( we) desperately need Jack to start, and to be the creative focus of the team. Not one of the starting England midfield appear to have the nous to open a defence up, to play a decisive ball.

Yesterday’s first knock out round, or what I saw, was a bit of let down, and all a bit cruel. A great goal from Shaquiri worthy of wining a tournament was undone by a penalty contest, and the Ulstermen managed to go out to an own goal. The Portuguese and the Croatians both played cautiously I thought, within themselves, and that was a looooooong 120 minutes. Portugal the lucky winners, though the exit of pouting tart superstar is postponed for another night only as they lack quality.

I trust the French and the Irish will release any metaphorical handbrakes and get down to business early today. Mesut follows that and we shall see if the Germans can beat a way through the Slovak lines any more successfully than England ?

That is it – whimsical musing over. Enjoy your Sunday.

Positively Arsenal was created in January 2013 to provide a platform for like-minded Arsenal fans to come together to enjoy their magnificent football club. We who post on PA choose to celebrate the excitement of the football played, the quality of the players, coaches and the manager, and the exhilaration that the attacking style of Wengerball in its pure form. We cheer victory, we commiserate in defeat. We seek the positive and are never despondent. Three years on from PA’s birth, 700 articles, 65,000 comments and half a million visitors suggest it was worth doing. PA will provide an oasis of support amidst, at times, an ocean of doom and hysterical misery.

If you are a fan of the club who needs to vent their frustration by denouncing players who are “Notfittoweartheshirt”, or who delights disparaging the efforts of manager, and the club’s coaches then the site is probably not for you. If you are an expert in the football transfer market, in sports medicine, in the mechanics of running a £1 billion sports business etcetera then it may be that PA is an insufficient platform for that abundance of your accumulated knowledge. There are many other blogs on which you will be much, much more at home.

To enjoy supporting Arsenal is a choice. Choose wisely.

Good morning Positivistas,

I thought I would break into the interminable Summer break, a hiatus that seems to have lasted weeks now, though the calendar tells me it is less.

Turning to matters AFC yesterday’s unveiling of Granit Xhaka was a bright start to the summer and the boy now has a chance to settle into the first team squad and acclimatise to life in England. The early move seems sensible. It may well be that with a significant change of personnel in our midfield, with Mikel, Tomas and probably the Flamster too on his way out that a few weeks is required to fit together all the pieces again.

The young Swiss player comes highly rated and, from what he says, Arsene was tapping him up on the ‘phone a year ago. ( Surely not !).I know very little about him and on the rare occasions I watched Monchengladbach last season, perhaps one or twice, he did not register on my radar. I look forward to being educated over the next few months.

A large transfer fee appears to have momentarily quelled the Scarfist jibber-jabber. I suspect their quiet will not last long once the transfer window is open and others are flashing the PL cash. There is talk of another striker, but who knows ?

Looking a little further forward we have the Euros commencing on the 10^th when the hosts take on Roumania. With a select band of Arsenal players taking part in France there will be interest for us but, apparently, it seems to be a tournament where even now ‘security’ concerns are looming over proceedings. There will be much good football, and a few new names. I look forward to the event. As matters stand England have first to negotiate the ‘friendly’ with Australia on Friday night. Why playing the Aussies is regarded as a good final preparation and fine tuning for the Euros is a puzzle, as even Vardy seems to realise.

Talking of the relentless march of time Ian reminded me that it is 27 years today that “it was up for grabs now”. I can still see the rooftops of Lewisham and hear my voice. Happy St Michael’s day to you all and thank you Ian for the pic.

Enjoy your week and what over here is a Bank holiday weekend.

Good Morning Positivistas,

What a finale to the season ! Ninety minutes that will be firmly fixed in my memory as one of the best final days I have witnessed, even weighed against seasons in which trophies have been won and records set. And memorable for all the right reasons.

Of the game itself we dominated the opening phase and the way we tore into Villa a substantial score looked possible, 6-7-8 ? Having taken the inevitable lead however the second goal did not come !! While the visitors looked horribly inept there was a niggling fear that with no second goal we risked another ‘Crystal Palace’ style stumble, the anxiety heightened as word from St James’ Park swept across the ground. The Lilywhite collapse came as a surprise for me and most I think, but thereafter each new Tottingham calamity met with hilarity and a knowing shrug “it’s Spurs”. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The scale of their breakdown  was stunning and on this occasion there were no third party/lasagne themed excuses to hide behind.

It took us to the 78^th minute for Olivier to hammer the 2^nd goal on the back of Mesut’s 19^th assist. That was a long time and evidence that despite the poverty of the opposition we found it difficult to quite get our game ‘right’. Santi was brilliant yesterday, and, though his work was much more in the background, so was Le Coq who worked hard all afternoon in the engine room. Though in possession of the ball 75% of the time and in control of the game just about 100% we did not really threaten in the Villa box. If I was looking for a reason it seemed to me that with Santi, Ozil, Jack, and Sanchez we had too many players of the same ball-playing at the feet style, all the same size, and trying to do the same job. When we brought on Elneny our shape changed and we became faster in moving the ball, and more direct.

Once the second came the third goal followed immediately for Olivier. Having sat uncomfortably through a few games when nothing has gone right for the Frenchman fortune shone her benevolent gaze on him yesterday, every damn thing went right. All good finishes as well.

Then came forth Mikel to loud applause. Even though our club captain was on the pitch for just five minutes he put his all into that cameo, and was duly rewarded with our final goal. ( Own goal my arse).

Mr Clattenburg duly brought out league season to a very satisfactory end, there followed very warm and sincere tributes to Mikel and Tomas. I do not know how much, if any was shown on the TV, but the Spaniard was really sobbing both on the pitch and later on with his wife and children in the tunnel. I suspect the tears were the realisation that part of his life, the life he has wanted and known from about the age of 8, to be a “footballer”, was over. Our friends at the Telegraph provide this morning’s final picture of the Mikel enjoying the final goal in an Arsenal shirt below.

Finally I am delighted to say that the ‘lap of appreciation’ was performed in front of an 80% full stadium with all of the players, coaches and manager, and their children, walking the perimeter with Gunnersaurus bringing up the rear. All had on Rosicky shirts, other than Theo (Sigh). The glow of good humour from crowd to team and manager you could feel. That is how a football ground ‘should’ be.

Is it only me but was the absence of any reference to/recognition of the Flamster in yesterday’s leaving ceremonies significant ? Might the Frenchman be in for one more campaign ? If not it was a bit of a shame he did not get a good cheer.

On the sunshine bus we all know that football retains the means to confound and delight us, to lift us to a joyous perch, and to drag us toward and then back from the brink of doom. Yesterday the season passed into history in a glow of enjoyment, of goals and of victory.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to write for so knowledgeable and enthusiastic an audience. Enjoy your week, enjoy the close season. We shall return.

A few years ago it was a relatively straightforward matter to feel depressed about the state of The World’s Favourite Game.

For a start, it seemed there was little that was beautiful about it any more, either on the field or off it.

Imagined or otherwise, it felt as though the richest clubs were getting substantially more than their fair share of the rub. Not only that but the governance of the game at the very highest levels, if it was not entirely worthy of the rubbish tip, was well on the way to it, as the whiff of corruption at all levels appeared beyond challenge no matter how pungent the aroma.  The foundations of the status quo ran deep and, like the shady sovereign funds floating the subsidised ‘elite’ clubs, the source of the powers that had invaded our national game was both ephemeral and all pervading.

Down, down.

But now, things are starting to look up and a change is in the air.

This week, Platini joined Blatter as one of yesterday’s men, finally banned for a breach of the code of ethics apparently already in force in football (who knew?!).  And the fate of ‘Platter’ (or Blattini, if you prefer) is just the symbolic tip of the iceberg of change now freely adrift at all levels of the game.

Last weekend, Leicester City FC became the new champions of England.  Meanwhile, lower down the league (much lower), Chelsea set a new record for the worst ever defence of a championship, ever, by finishing in 9^th place [N.i.n.t.h.].

Oh dear, and just as memorable, in its own heart-warming way, is John Terry’s latest two-match ban, perfectly timed to wreck his retirement-from-the-club party. Oh dear, oh dear, as the great and good might say.

In March, football’s new-era governors approved trials of video technology and a dozen or so Football Associations are now queuing up to take part with the trials due to commence in 2017-18.

Meanwhile, up in Scotland, after five years’ consultation, and following on from successful German and Austrian trials, 2,600 Celtic fans will now experience the delights of Safe Standing at every home game from the start of the 2016-17 season.

Ch-ch-ch-changes, as D Bowie once sang.

Added to that is the long overdue over-hauling of the Rules of Football, an 18-month project led by former ref David Elleray, that reduced a 22,000-word document to a more streamlined, consistent and apparently less sexist 12,000-word diktat that will come into effect for the first time during June’s European Championships. Whilst the detail of the changes may be a tad underwhelming, it’s the desire to modernise, on the part of the game’s rule-makers, that is significant. (And, in case you were wondering, it will no longer be necessary for the injured to be forced off the field for treatment, the ball can now be kicked in any direction at kick-offs and the ref will be able, for the first time, to send malcontents back to the dressing room before a ball has been kicked. Marvellous stuff.)

In mid-December I wrote an article for PA discussing the storm of change pulsing through English football. It’s been triggered by the avalanche of cash now entering the game at unprecedented rates. Crucially, the wide distribution of that cash throughout the league is what separates the EPL from its Spanish counterparts and the world’s other two- or three-team dominated leagues.

Unlikely as it still seemed in December, the possibility of Leicester going on to do what is now known as ‘a Leicester’ was already impossible to completely dismiss.

And here we are in May with the genie well and truly out of the bottle.

And yet more cash is about to swamp the English game, with next year’s bottom club (Chelsea) expected to win £99 million for coming last. £150 million will go to the new champions (Arsenal) on top of fees for televised performances (more Arsenal games than Chelsea. Trust me.).

The desire for change in the game is difficult to quantify, but impossible to deny.

The chronic long-term pimple of boredom with the ‘big four’ always winning the league was finally lanced with Leicester’s 2016 triumph and few neutrals will mourn their achievement.

In theory, the clubs with the deepest pockets should always win out but when all the clubs have deep pockets then a new hypothesis is surely required?

Yes, Leicester benefitted from the element of surprise and no inquisition would be complete without a nod to team spirit and her eager bedfellows ‘hunger’ and ‘desire’ in the plucky midlanders’ journey to the top. The game in England desperately needed someone other than United, Chelsea or City to win a fiscally carved up competition that many were rapidly falling out of love with.

The supreme irony that these vast, seemingly uncapped swathes of cash flooding the domestic game will succeed in levelling the playing field, in England at least, where the bureaucratically unwieldy and distinctly ‘European’ Financial Fair Play project all but failed to, is all but impossible to ignore.

Crikey, is nothing sacred?

Well, funnily enough, it seems not.

Let’s briefly consider what will happen to football now that video technology appears to be finally well on the way?

My firm prediction is that VT will never make the game ‘perfectly governed’. But it will eliminate the worst of the injustices, the most aggravating of the poor calls and crucially, the ever-pervading suspicion of foul play from on high. I’ve no doubt we’ll still merrily and good-naturedly debate the decisions. But the nature of those previously ‘dodgy’ refereeing decisions will surely change and with them so too the nature of the debate.  The scope of VT will adjust over time but once out of the bottle, this is another genie that’s never going back.  And the application of video, a prospect said to be welcomed by most refs, will not just help the men in black. Players, once recruited by over-ambitious but under-skilled managers to bend, break and destroy the rules – and with them that precious sense of fair play crucial to any genuine sport – will find the ability to play rather than foul, dive and cheat, become regarded as a far more valued asset.

Football without technology?  In five years, how we’ll laugh.

And what of Safe Standing? Most fans, with some justification, associate the gentrification of the game and its attendant exorbitant costs with the arrival of all-seater stadiums and the diminution of ‘atmosphere’ at matches. The increase in costs have made the traditional father-son phenomenon of old a far rarer sight and there certainly appear to be fewer families going to the game these days. The decay of excitement in stadiums is one of the saddest sights of the modern game and the Lap Of Appreciation witnessed by the few who stayed on in Manchester on Sunday to say farewell to outgoing Championship-winning manager Pelegrini, was wryly described as a ‘Lapathy’ by one observer.

Or Circuit of Embarrassment, by me.

Regardless of the politics of the City situation, the empty stadium is hard to explain given Manuel’s recent trophies and an appearance in the Champions League semi-final mere days ago. Have all-seater stadiums and their near-universal high prices delivered us an unwelcome generation of customers rather than fans?

Has the fans’ love of the club – and of the game itself – been crushed by the weight of consumer expectation?

Is it the ‘customers’ and their ludicrously inappropriate sense of entitlement that currently infests the negative alley ways of social media? Naturally, we all want our clubs to do better (what fan doesn’t) and debate is no bad thing.  But the difference between genuine, thoughtful, evidence-based discussion and the recent singing of songs anticipating the death of Arsene Wenger is more than a little extreme and this hatred of clubs by the clubs’ own fans is surely not a long-standing phenomenon?

It’s my hope that in time, the area behind both goals in all Premier League grounds will be re-designated Safe Standing. And that they will become must-have features of all modern grounds; affordable, buzzing with atmosphere, full of kids, their dads (and mums and grandparents) and those lost adults, genuine die-hard fans, all but priced out of the game in recent years. If nothing else, the widespread adoption of Safe Standing can and will facilitate the blooding of a new generation of youngsters who will fall in love with the game, as did we who now remember football before the Year Zero of the Premier League era.  Good luck, Celtic, and good on you. With grateful thanks from football fans everywhere. Their success, so close to home, will be impossible to ignore from south of the border.

So the iceberg of change is upon us. Cash, governance, video-technology and safe standing are the melt water waves queuing up to wash over us all in the storm that will leave the game refreshed, energised and all but reinvented following the stale years of pent-up corrupt stagnation.  We ain’t seen nothing yet but five years will see these changes come flooding through the game and not a single one can come a day too soon.

To describe this all as a ‘game-changer’ is to understate what lies ahead as nothing less than the entire climate of football will be transformed.

And assuming the heavily contracted World Cups in both Russia and Qatar go ahead in situ, we can but hope they will stand as a memorial to an era when the game was hijacked, kidnapped and bundled off, carved up, re-packaged and separated from the fans by an unholy collusion of government interference, greedy self-interest and naked opportunism.

Farewell, The Ugly Game, you won’t be missed.