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Forecast: Arsenal 3 – 6 Liverpool

Posted by R. Green on August 14, 2016 in All Posts

jack-says-you-cant-handle-the-truth.jpg

In that classic piece of American movie-making A Few Good Men, the then fresh faced, unspoiled, up and coming lead-man, Tom Cruise, is playing the part of the newly minted, inexperienced and unenthusiastic U.S. Navy lawyer. He is up against a mean, corrupt, brooding representative of the Establishment, in the form of Jack Nicholson, Hollywood’s ageing warrior whose time at the top of the A-list is drawing to a close. It is the brilliant Mr. Nicholson’s role to disrobe young Cruise of his naiveté about the harsh realities of an Institution like the Navy. Despite Nicholson’s brilliance, which is now part of American film folklore (his reading of “You can’t handle the truth!” was in 2005 voted the 29th greatest American film quote of all time), this being Hollywood, in the movie itself it is the idealistic defender of the system, young Cruise, who is depicted as the hero riding off into the sunset under the beautiful gaze of Demi Moore while Colonel Jessup (Nicholson’s character) we are led to believe is driven to drink and dissolution. Isn’t Director Rob Steiner and writer Aaron Sorkin, two stalwarts of the American film-making, telling a cautionary tale of insiders who happen to blow the lid on the system, 20 years before the persecution of whistle-blowers such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden?  But I digress.

What an apt metaphor for us to commence our pre-match musings. Like Hollywood, the start of a new football season is time for the mainstream media, pundits and the majority of Arsenal bloggers to unroll their portfolio of myths and clichés. Not surprisingly, the universal theme is the biggest spender will be the most successful.  The BBC, that institutional voice of football wisdom, spoke through  its stable of pundits here.

Overall predicted ranking, using all BBC predictions
(using system of 4 pts for a 1st place, 3 pts for 2nd, 2 pts for 3rd and 1 pt for 4th)
1. Man City 2. Man Utd 3. Chelsea 4. Arsenal 5. Tottenham 6. Liverpool 7. Leicester
116 pts 92 pts 58 pts 33 pts 20 pts 18 pts 3 pts

Jermaine Jenas: “When I look at everyone’s squad and the transfer business that has been done, I cannot see City not winning it. “

Guy Mowbray: “It will be harder for Pep than it was at Barcelona or Bayern but he has the players and the financial clout behind him to win the title…”

If not City, then it must be United, another of the big spenders with the biggest cheque book manager of the past ten years.

Jason Roberts: “I think United will win the League as Jose Mourinho has adapted his squad quickly into his philosophy by bringing in an effective spine of quality acquisitions…”

Conor McNamara: “Jose has cleverly brought in some big egos in Ibrahimovic and Pogba. This will give United some of their old swagger back.”

There is universal disdain for prudent Arsenal who haven’t shown similar profligacy as their peers.

Ian Wright: “Chelsea are going to be back in the mix and with United’s outlay and City also spending big, all three of them are going to be strong under Conte, Mourinho and Guardiola. As things stand, with no significant signings since Granit Xhaka, no new striker and injuries to their top three centre-halves, the best I can hope for Arsenal is that they make the top four again.”

Kevin Kilbane: The big clubs have all strengthened a lot, apart from Arsenal – how often do we say that? This might be the year they finally miss out on the top four and Arsene Wenger’s contract is up next summer. “

Maybe the BBC is off-message and ESPN has more balanced and rounded pundits (after all, they have the likes of Arseblog and Gunnerblog giving the Arsenal viewpoint from time to time). Shock, shock, shock. Practically the same results after summarizing the picks here of their editorial team:

Overall predicted ranking, using all ESPN predictions
(using system of 4 pts for a 1st place, 3 pts for 2nd, 2 pts for 3rd and 1 pt for 4th)
1. Man City 2. Man Utd 3. Chelsea 4. Arsenal 5. Tottenham 6. Liverpool
55 pts 50 pts 27 pts 15 pts 11 pts 9 pts

I will spare you dear readers of any quotes from the likes of Iain MacIntosh, Nick Miller, Tony Evans, Miguel Delaney, Julien Laurens, et al who are members of the ESPN stable of pundits. Trust me, it is the same guff as the BBC’s, i.e. future success is guaranteed by the amount that is spent on transfers with one new wrinkle, the importance of a celebrity manager who is willing to spend big in the market.

Nobody is willing to speak the truth that to the contrary, as was proven that 2013 study by Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence; after ranking the ‘big six’ in the Premier League in order of their total net spending on transfers plus wages combined between 2000 and 2012; Chelsea spent most, with £2.078 billion, then Man Utd on £1.43bn, then City with £1.4bn, then Liverpool with £1.3bn then Arsenal with £1.1bn and Spurs on £777 million:

Chelsea did not do better than their resources in any year, under-performing against their wage bill eight times and doing only as well as expected four times.

United did better seven times, worse three times and as well as expected twice.

Manchester City performed better once: when finishing ninth in 2002-03 when wages said they should have finished 10th. They have otherwise under-performed apart from the title-winning season when they did as well as expected.

Liverpool did better than expected four times in the period, worse four times and as expected four times.

Tottenham did better than their wage bill six times – and worse six times, in the period under review.

The best performer by a country mile was:

ARSENAL “who out-performed their wage spending seven times, did as well as expected three times, and under-performed in 2005-06 and 2006-07.”

I am repeating the results of the study because neither the BBC nor ESPN seem to have any interest in educating the public of the wastefulness and unsustainability of the continued gargantum spending by the likes of City and United.

But there is additional data that makes a mockery of their predictions. Twenty years since Arsene Wenger arrived in this League there is some fairly predictable statistics.

  • Arsenal has finished an average of 3rd; no other club except Manchester United has a better average.
  • No other team has a better absolute deviation from the mean than Arsenal at 0.985, meaning that on the average the club’s position will deviate by less than 1. United is the next best at 1.28.
  • All other big -6 team have in 20 years finished lower than Arsenal; City fell away to as low as 47th, way down into the 3rd
  • Arsenal has never finished less than 4th.
  • Arsenal has never finished below Tottenham.

Despite this never, never data there are pundits at the BBC and ESPN who predict that Tottenham will finish above Arsenal. Jermaine Jenas, Chris Waddle, Kevin Kilbane, Jason Mohammed, Tony Evans, and Dan Kilpatrick deserve awards from the Flat Earth Society. How do they get paid for such rank stupidity?

Think that is bad. Fifty percent (50%) of 34 and sixty percent 60% of 15 pundits at BBC and ESPN respectively expect Arsenal to finish out of the top-4. This is a club whose results in the last 3 years progressively improved from 4th, 3rd and 2nd. Who is willing to tell the truth that the majority of pundits in the media are idiots?

I suspect if I was to put the sports executives of the BBC and the ESPN on the witness stand and ask them why they employ people who repeat lies and falsehoods to the public, if goaded enough, in a rare moment of honesty they would respond as angrily as Colonel Jessup:

You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with lies and clichés

In the world of silent, unemotional data including what we know about the risks of spending and the importance of stability and continuity (Nick Harris and Sporting Intelligence), perhaps a more objective tool of predicting next season would be to use the data from last 8 years, since City became the beneficiaries of Sheik Mansour’s and the Abu Dbabi Group’s unlimited largesse, and do some projections.

TOP-SIX : LEAGUE POSITION 2009-16
YEAR AFC CFC LFC MCFC MUFC THFC
2015-16 2 10 8 3 5 3
2014-15 3 1 6 2 4 5
2013-14 4 3 2 1 7 6
2012-13 4 3 7 2 1 5
2011-12 3 6 8 1 2 4
2010-11 4 2 6 3 1 5
2009-10 3 1 7 5 2 4
2008-09 4 3 2 10 1 8
Minimum 2 1 2 1 1 3
Maximum 4 10 8 10 7 8
Mean 3 4 6 3 3 5
Median 3.5 3 6.5 2.5 2 5
Mode 3 3 2 1 1 5
Range 2 9 6 9 6 5
Skewness * -0.82 1.60 -1.04 1.91 1.03 0.99

*Rule of thumb: If the skewness is greater than 1.0 (or less than -1.0), the skewness is substantial and the distribution is far from symmetrical.

If we use the well known statistical tool of time series forecasting , we would arrive at the following predictions of future league position ranked from highest to lowest:

Man United:   2.88

Arsenal:          3.38

Man City:        3.38

Chelsea:          3.63

Tottenham:    5:00

Liverpool:        5.75

Lo and behold, far from the almost universal crowning of City, United is more likely to win the title. Furthermore Arsenal Football Club is not a disaster-in- waiting, it  being projected jointly with City for 2nd place. However as any good forecaster would disclose, past performance is no guarantor of success. In fact as Leicester demonstrated, a club can go from almost last to first, not by spending big, but it in relying on the mental strength of the players. As Arsene Wenger emphasized:

“Maybe they are not the most prestigious in quality of the passing, but they found a way to be efficient and have shown mental qualities that are absolutely top.”

But none of this is sexy enough for the pundits. Instead, they use the time honored methods of appealing to fear and greed, two of the greatest human motivators. Fear that Arsenal may somehow slip behind its rivals as groundless as that has been during Arsene’s tenure and greed for the title which drives so many otherwise well thinking fans to believe that somehow Arsenal can afford to match City and United in their spending to be sure of getting over the line, a guarantee which is equally groundless based on recent experience.

Given my experience of the difficulty in trying to convince most fans with data I am reminded of a quote from a more recent movie The Big Short:

“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.”

I wonder if they will be willing to doubt my prediction that by end of this season it is Arsenal – 3rd, Liverpool – 6th.

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Wenger – The Grinch Who Stole The Transfer Window

Posted by R. Green on August 7, 2016 in All Posts

The Grinch

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” ― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

24 days to…the closing of the window.
Everything about the transfer window reminds me of the commercialization of Christmas:
• The countdown.
• The massive price inflation. This window last year’s 30 million pound player is now 40 million (25%), 20 million is now 30 million (50%), 10 million is 20 million(100%). It’s evident from those percentages that, like Christmas, the higher margin is on lower end product. Always the poor pay more, eh.
• The wall-to-wall media hype allied with the selling of massive amounts of expensive advertizing best exemplified by that 24-hour Jim White-SkySport frenzy on deadline day.
• The widescale brainwashing of football fans into believing that the only way owners and managers can show their love for the fans is by engaging in massive transfer spending. Arsenal fans are arguably under the most psychological pressure because Papa Wenger and Uncle Ivan refuse to join the madness, avoid the pressure to keep up with the Jones, by hardly ever spending a fortune during the summer transfer window.

Predictably Arsenal’s twitterati and the big bloggers are up in arms, defaming the club’s greatest ever manager for refusing to bend to the pressure to spend for spending sake. Many are like children at Christmas who can’t understand why Momma and Poppa refuse to buy them the most expensive plaything.

https://twitter.com/triplec1988/status/761578406119149568

The BBC tactic is to wheel out out an ex-player to attack the club’s transfer spending:

On transfer inflation one tweeter dismissed the club’s prudence.

This fellow has seemingly given up:

One podcaster puts the boot in:

To be fair not all of Arsenal twitter have given in to the pressure.

As usual it is the data which has the final say. Most of you readers are familiar with my mantra:

“Unlike the media [and Twitter], which thrives on emotion, in the silent statistical world, there are no headlines.  There are no narratives.  No excuses.  No hope and no despair. Just data.”

I did my research and not surprisingly, it is Arsenal’s prudence and Arsene’s discipline in the transfer market which stands out like a shining light.

Nett Spend 92/03 – 13/14 Purchased Gross Sold Nett Per Season
Manchester City £1,145,480,000 £316,903,000 £828,577,000 £33,143,080
Chelsea £1,195,199,000 £484,125,000 £711,074,000 £28,442,960
Manchester United £922,950,000 £435,490,000 £487,460,000 £19,498,400
Liverpool £917,805,000 £539,300,000 £378,505,000 £15,140,200
Middlesbrough £237,910,000 £57,680,000 £180,230,000 £7,209,200
Arsenal £587,365,000 £407,674,000 £179,691,000 £7,187,640
Tottenham £686,700,000 £525,167,500 £161,532,500 £6,461,300
Sunderland £327,745,000 £170,580,000 £157,165,000 £6,286,600
Stoke City £149,065,000 £47,630,000 £101,435,000 £4,057,400
Crystal Palace £156,760,000 £59,990,000 £96,770,000 £3,870,800
Everton £349,045,500 £254,586,000 £94,459,500 £3,778,380
West Bromwich Albion £178,650,000 £86,376,501 £92,273,499 £3,690,940
West Ham £303,282,000 £216,782,000 £86,500,000 £3,460,000
Hull City £108,445,000 £57,680,000 £50,765,000 £2,030,600
AFC Bournemouth £78,085,000 £28,595,000 £49,490,000 £1,979,600
Leicester City £123,895,000 £94,195,000 £29,700,000 £1,188,000
Watford £89,345,000 £60,000,000 £29,345,000 £1,173,800
Swansea City £99,427,500 £87,560,000 £11,867,500 £474,700
Southampton £279,687,500 £280,845,000 -£1,157,500 -£46,300
Burnley £53,300,000 £87,560,000 -£34,260,000 -£1,370,400

Publicly available data on transfer spending demonstrate in no uncertain fashion that despite the billions spent by City and Chelsea with United and Liverpool breathing down their necks, none have had sustainable to success, unlike Arsenal. City came 4th last year and had to ditch their manager. Chelsea came 8th and has had three managers since last season. United continue to show ambition at a mouth-watering cost.  None other than Fabio Capello was forced to remark:

‘They have spent €500million (£424m) in three years to win the FA Cup and twice they did not qualify for the Champions League,

 ‘Money is not always enough’.

Despite Liverpool’s willingness to spend whatever the market charged for average players (something Arseblog would no doubt approve) they have never won the Premier League in its 24 years of existence. This appetite for the transfer market doesn’t seem to have changed under Herr Klopp.

What was astonishing to me was how per season transfer spending club by Middlesborough exceeded Arsenal’s during the period under reference. This is the classic yo-yo club which enjoys a spell in the Prem only to be relegated to the Championship. I nearly fell out of my seat when it hit me that they have spent the last 10 years trying to get promoted.

What the data above ignores are the clubs whose owners spent lavishly, like Santa Claus, temporarily endearing themselves to the fans, only to conveniently fall out of sight out of mind to the bloggers and tweeters who demonize Wenger for not “showing ambition”. One such club is Aston Villa who between 92/93-13/14 were not afraid to spend.

Purchased Gross Sold Nett Per Season
$401,890,000.00 $228,575,000.00 $173,315,000.00 $7,290,600.00

Despite their per season average spending also exceeding Arsenal’s, last campaign Villa was finally relegated to the Championship after two-three years of flirting with disaster. American billionaire owner Randy Lerner has had to sell out to the Chinese, after a reported 50% hit to his net worth. One wonders what he now thinks of the advice of the mainstream media and his many spendthrift managers who demanded he spend big every transfer window to strengthen the squad.

In closing let me remind you of something Arsene said about transfers recently:

“I buy players that I feel can strengthen our team. Today, you have to be very strong inside the club when you are responsible, not to just buy to buy.

“There is always a wave of opinions, and people are better informed today than all the players. They always tell you to buy but when you ask who to buy, they become much shorter, because if you look at the market in Europe there is a lot of money available, but not many players that really strengthen the teams.

“And if you look at who is spending the most in Europe, they are not the teams that won the leagues. The global investment of all the clubs around us didn’t stop Leicester winning the league. So we have to focus on our quality, and try to strengthen our team.

“If you analyse well our season, we finished top of the top-four. We lost maximum points against the teams between five and nine. Maybe the games we were expected to win, we did, but against teams like Southampton and Swansea, we dropped too many points.

“On the other hand, we had a good defensive record, overall, but we can still strengthen that. And we were a bit short of goals scored. We didn’t convert enough chances we created. We created the most in the league but our finishing was not as good as the season before. 

“You say we should have won the league, but Leicester lost only three games during the season and won the league. You have to respect their performance. It’s not the name that wins the league, it’s the quality of the performances.”

I would advise well thinking fans to heed the words and deeds of Arsene and just like at Christmas, avoid the hype and psychological pressure. As most of us try teach our kids, in the words of Dr Seuss:

What if Christmas….doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

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Arsenal and the Myth of Transfers

Posted by R. Green on July 31, 2016 in All Posts

why_football_transfer_window_is_great_news_for_uk_property_market

A Myth is quite simply “a widely held but false belief or idea.”

Positivistas, how many of you, like me, first daily instinct during the transfer window is to reach for whatever internet device is at hand to check if there is any new transfer story affecting our great club? Yup, I see many of you shaking your heads in agreement. But I know there is an unrepentant few who are reacting with disgust to such heresy, appalled that there is a majority who weakly submit to the twice yearly season of rumor-mongering, click-baiting and outright lying by all segments of the sporting media.

Despite my admiration for those of us who can resist the temptation to not religiously scan twitter and the lying mainstream media for transfer news, the fact is the buying and selling of players has a powerful hold over many supporters and cannot be ignored. Even yours truly was briefly caught-up in the madness last weekend after EuroSport-France proclaimed boldly that Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez decides to join Arsenal, €50m move close. So much so I became a member of scouting twitterati hanging onto every ball Mahrez kicked in Leicester’s friendly with Celtics that Saturday morning (EST). Predictably, nothing came of the transfer. Less than one-week later it became apparent this was a big con-job by either Mahrez or his agent to get a big wage increase from Leicester, using the same leverage as his team-mate Jaime Vardy; i.e. being publicly linked with Arsenal. Lesson learnt anybody?

So why does transfers have such a big hold on our thinking despite clear and repetitive evidence that transfers are no guarantee to footballing success? Is it because the facts are not compelling? How more compelling can that major 2013 study by Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence for the Arsenal Supporters Trust, of all the people,  when he provided 13 years of data to come to the conclusion that:

“Wenger is telling the truth when he speaks, often, about wanting value in the transfer market, and wanting to buy players when they are better than he already has. Because he knows, from that 2005-06 season, and from the following season and a few others, that all business is not necessarily good business. And too much business can have a negative impact on the team, if selection becomes too ‘unstable’, which we can show, in a general sense, for Arsenal and key rivals, is a bad thing.”

He ranked the ‘big six’ in the Premier League in order of their total net spending on transfers plus wages combined between 2000 and 2012 over the 13 years in question. Chelsea spent most, with £2.078 billion, then Man Utd on £1.43bn, then City with £1.4bn, then Liverpool with £1.3bn then Arsenal with £1.1bn and Spurs on £777 million.

Chelsea did not do better than their resources in any year, under-performing against their wage bill eight times and doing only as well as expected four times.

United did better seven times, worse three times and as well as expected twice.

Manchester City performed better once: when finishing ninth in 2002-03 when wages said they should have finished 10th. They have otherwise under-performed apart from the title-winning season when they did as well as expected.

Liverpool did better than expected four times in the period, worse four times and as expected four times.

ARSENAL out-performed their wage spending seven times, did as well as expected three times, and under-performed in 2005-06 and 2006-07. We’ll come back to that – but it’s better than any rival.

Tottenham did better than their wage bill six times – and worse six times, in the period under review.

Nothing since 2013 in the PL has changed from my observation. To the contrary Harris’ findings have been reinforced by the dramatic results of the last season.  At the end of the 2015 summer window the following was the top-ranking spenders vs eventual league position:

CLUB £MILLION POSITION
Man City 88.06 3rd
Liverpool 77.02 8th
Man United 68.95 5th
Villa 45.43 20th
Chelsea 40.60 10th
Newcastle 39.80 18th
Southampton 23.80 6th
West Brom 22.75 15th
Leicester 21.84 1st
Crystal Palace 16.73 14th
Arsenal 9.80 2nd

Despite Leicester breaking conventional wisdom and proving that one can win the League without breaking transfer records, the usual suspects have been screaming murder and throwing childish tantrums because Ivan Gazidis recently used two major media opportunities to pour cold-water on expectations that the club will “show ambition” in the transfer market. The latest was an interview with no less than the New York Times when he stated:

“We would not be successful if we simply went out into the transfer market and tried to outgun our competitors. We’re run in a self-sustaining way, and a way that we believe in, because we believe it gives us certainty for the future, and enables us to plan our future with confidence. That means we can’t afford to make huge mistakes in the transfer market. We can’t afford to outgun competitors that have far more money to splurge on transfer fees than we do. So we have to be very careful, very selective about how we do things.”

My fellow blogger and friend Stew Black has dismissed this statement as simply “public relations” but I would suggest that for the CEO of the club to make similar statements within a week to both ESPN and the Times, major media outlets in their own right, is a significant message to the fans and other key constituencies. Gazidis was fully aware that there was a major kerfuffle after his initial round of cold water. Even Wenger was forced to comment after the Lens game that the CEO was not ruling out a big transfer if the right player became available. Less than one week later Gazidis repeated the same mantra almost word for word. Outside of Stan this is the voice of the Board of Directors, we ignore him at our peril.

So despite the compelling weight of facts and figures and the admonishments of the CEO, bloggers and tweeters continue to believe that the club is showing no ambition or that Wenger is dithering in the transfer market. It would seem to me that if the club does not find the right player, many are in for a rude awakening.

Sooner or later myths must confront reality.

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Ivan Gazidis Lets Arsenal Fans Down !

Posted by pedantic George @arseblagger on July 24, 2016 in All Posts

“So what have the Romans ever done for us ?”

Well for much of Arsenal blog world in recent days that should read

“What has Ivan ever done for us (that we don’t take offence to)”

Seriously, what on earth has Ivan said that could possibly offend these great minds and leaders of opinion, or the sheep that accept their agenda driven bullshit?

In case you missed it, Arsenal CEO, Ivan Gazidis, gave his usual pre-season interview to some media outlet or other, this time ESPN. I’m sure many on here could, without seeing it or reading it,give a good guess at what he had to say. Now that is not, like the malcontents claim, because we are some sort of cult, inducted into the mantra of Stan’s(or should that be Arsene’s) mouthpiece, and we lap up and repeat addendum. No its because most of us know the history of our club, not just the Wenger era, or the GG era, I go back to the Mee era, and by saying we know the history of this club, i’m referring to not just what goes on on the pitch, but in fact how the club we support, is actually run, and has been run in the vast majority, if not all its, long history. Arsenal is run, and has been as long as I’ve been a Gooner (almost 50 years), as a self sustaining club, that, does not do panic, that by and large, sticks by its managers, its players, and does not let the media influence or disrupt our plans, long or short term plans.

We would have expected Ivan to tell us that Arsenal are

behind our manager
still believe in him
believe in him, not for his history, but cos we know the work he is doing for us now, and that he still has the vision, the drive, the talent and the forsight that is good for the club,
disappointed that we did not win the league last season
top 4 is not good enough and we want to win the league
are continually upgrading all aspects of the club, not just the team/squad, but also analytical, medical, training, infrastructure, you name it, we are trying to improve it
we have, or to be more precise, we are working, to a long term plan
this long term plan is reviewed and amended where needed continually
we have lots of money
but others have more
we can not spend £100M on one player
so we have to spend our money intelligently
getting the right player, is more important than getting the most expensive player
just because a player is highly talented, it does not mean he is suited to our style of play or would improve us,
it’s getting the player that fits,
we buy big too,(Xhaka remains the most expensive player bought by a BPL club so far this summer) but we also believe in promoting from within
Leicester showed that there are more ways than one to skin a cat, and we should copy the best bits from them, just as we copy bits from other clubs as we see fit.

Guess what? Ivan did tell us all of it, – AGAIN, Ivan with the same as he said last year, and the year before, they say, totally missing the point, that we, just as he told them, again, this year, and last year and the year before, are working to a plan, a short term one, and a long term one. So why the feck would we abandon the path we believe in, we believe is right, believe is TRUE, to the ethos of the club?

Now a certain section of the fan base is up in arms, in fact they tell us they are offended, by Ivan’s words. These are the sort of people that like to tell us that Arsenal embarrass them, that they are ashamed to support the club, and on that note, many of them seem to have a very loose definition of what support is, as they never have a good word to say about anything AFC, they say they do not spend on merchandise, and loads of them (almost as many as claim to have been at WHL last game of 71 season, or to be more relevant to most of them, maybe I should say, almost as many as claim to have been at the league winning game at Anfield, in their favorite managers era, yes bung-meister himself George Graham) claim to have given up their season ticket(no wonder there is so much room for the “tourists”).

So the embarrassed and offended fans, don’t have a good word to say about Arsenal, don’t spend any money on it, and don’t go to games, but it’s the fans who back the club, the manager, the players, and agree with the club being run along the lines it has always been, are the ones holding the club back. Well, that is, after Wenger, Ivan, Stan, Per, Ramsey, Giroud, Walcott.

So I say to the offended, go on, be offended, that is your right, its also your problem, and yours alone, if you need Arsenal to help you in some playground dick swinging contest, and Arsenal are not interested, and this offends you, maybe you should have a good long look at yourself, and your reasons for being an Arsenal fan, and maybe, just maybe, it’s not Arsenal, but you, yourself, that the offence originates in, and yes, you should be ashamed, and offended, and don’t ask what has the Ivan ever did for us.

 

Thanks to Eduardo for today’s post

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Arsenal: Another Year, Another Wexit?

Posted by R. Green on July 22, 2016 in All Posts

 

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Greetings Positivistas! Whether we like it or not our football holiday is almost over.  The Arsenal troops are reassembling, there is the smell of gunpowder, canons are being cleaned, occasional explosions are being heard; a clear signal that the competitive battle in the EPL is about to resume.

OK my metaphors may be overblown but today’s game with RC Lens is the definitive sign that the 2016-17 season is almost upon us. Hard to believe that in four weeks 8-9 months of annual football warfare will resume.

While some of us may have been somnolent during this holiday winter, the outside world has been awash with dramatic events which in my opinion will eventually have some impact on our footballing lives.  Chief among them was the BREXIT, a subject which was very precious to many of us on this blog. Despite the temptation, unlike President Obama, I decided against offering an opinion since I am not a Briton and won’t have to live with the consequences.

But the thing that struck me most during and after the referendum is how similar it was to the annual WEXIT we Arsenal fans have had to live through, at least for the past five years. The evidence is abundant.

By 2011, six years had passed since the club had last won a meaningful trophy. After the shock defeat in the League Cup final to Birmingham City, of all the clubs, the unimaginable became apparent. After years of disparaging other club supporters for being fickle and reactive to short term results our fans begun to publicly question the future of their most successful manager.  This was reflected in the mainstream media when CNN’s Ben Wyatt wrote a piece published April 25, 2011 under the headline: Has Time Run Out For Arsene Wenger

“There will be calls for the Wenger tenure to end, for the man who delivered so much to be deposed now his Midas touch has seemingly vanished.”

Later that October, one Mirti Murunj writing for a publication Run Of Play opined that:

“No philosophy, not even the most transformative, should go on forever”

The shit was really to hit the fan at the beginning of the 2011-12 season when Barcelona finally completed its 2-year seduction of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri’s half season goal explosion the previous season was to see him succumb to Sheik Mansour ad Manchester City poking big bills in his garter belt. As Wenger himself was forced to admit, Arsenal could no longer count itself as a big club when it was losing its best players to bigger clubs. Arguably the nadir of the season, exposing how much the club was weakened, was the 8-2 shellacking by Manchester United. The Arsenal Action blog pulled no punches and declared “Wenger Out”. Sounds familiar?

Unlike the BREXIT, despite five years of incessant campaigning by a noisy, whiny, self entitled minority of Arsenal fans who are enabled by the mainstream media, the annual WEXIT has been unsuccessful. Last Spring when I made my first ever trip to the Emirates, I witnessed the last desperate and eventually futile attempt to conduct an in-stadium referendum. As we all know, Wenger was the clear winner forcing even that noisy anti-Arsene celebrity phone hacker, Piers Morgan to concede defeat.

Despite never falling out of the top-four in his twenty years at the club (unlike United, Chelsea, City and Liverpool) and his prudence in running the club despite an era of the greatest ever financial excesses, exemplified by United’s willingness to pay over £100 million to buy-back a player they released on a free only four years earlier, the upcoming season will see more desperate attempts to unseat Arsene.  The Daily Cannon’s Helen Trantum  on Jube 24, 2016 did not express whether she was for Leave or Remain but the headline of her blog was very telling:

“Can we have a referendum on Arsene?”

But the sage of Dublin is taking no chances. He has been stirring up his massive following with portents of doom simply because Ivan Gazidis had the temerity to make an empirical observation in an exclusive interview with ESPN FC:

“The big clubs can’t financially bully the smaller clubs in the way they used to, so I think a lot of the differentiators between clubs become more subtle now,”

“It’s how well you can identify talent. It’s how well you can develop talent. It’s how strong your club philosophy is. It’s how together you are as a football club, what your support services are like in the medical field, fitness, analytics, psychology. All of these things become differentiators.”

As said in the past, the sage usually speaks out of two sides of his mouth and today’s blog was no different. While in the past attacking other clubs spending massive amounts of money on mediocre players and praising Leicester City for defying conventional wisdom by proving you can win the League without spending massive amounts of money, he proceeds to deliver the following howler:

“Look, I’m all for a bit of common sense in a world gone mad, but isn’t the message we get from Gazidis indicative of what frustrates people about this club? We have an absolute fortune at our disposal to use to buy players to make the team better and more competitive – yet the Chief Executive is focusing on clubs who can spend more, and citing a once-off fluke season from a team who will never win the league again as a model for success.”

But inevitably the target had to be Wenger, all others are collateral damage:

It’s not about what other clubs do with their cash, it’s about what we do with ours, but we know that Arsene Wenger is a man obsessed with value.  

WTF you may ask? Isn’t the interview with Ivan Gazidis? Isn’t he the boss, the chief executive? Clearly not, if you go by the sage of Dublin.

Strap yourselves in boys and girls, the fun has just begun.

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Fans Take New Signing Badly ! What’s New?

Posted by pedantic George @arseblagger on July 4, 2016 in All Posts

So ,Arsene Wenger is proven right once again – nothing new there says you ?

Last season the malcontents took umbridge when AW said, when discussing how LCFC were able to sign the likes of Mahrez and Kante, despite the big clubs having the exact same scouting info on both players, that a section of Arsenal fans would react negatively if AFC bought a player for £400k, that they did not want to see an unknown signed.
The malcontents told us this was bollocks, yet look at the reaction of the malcontents to the signing of Takuma Asano.
Not only is there negative hysteria from them, its xenophobic, and in some cases downright racist. We also have the brainless soundbite that its a “commercial” signing, or a “shirt sales” signing.
One of the most laughable reasons (should that not be excuses, as I know they like to use that term, when it suits them), for their over the top reaction to this signing, is that it is “all Arsenal FC’s fault”, as they should know better than to announce his signing when Utd have announced Mkhitaryan and Zlatan. They say AFC should have waited till we had a big name(money) signing done and slip in the news about Asano, with it.
So to compound their initial attacks on both AFC and Asano, they have totally disrespected the player again.
Does Takuma Asano not deserve respect, is he not a full International, is he not likely to be playing at the Olympics, did he not have up to 200 scouts running the rule over him at the Toulon U21 tournament in the summer, is he not a big star in his home country, is he not young player of the year in his homeland(their Dele Alli per say, but without the hype)?

Does he not deserve the chance in his last couple of game for them, to say goodbye to his club, their fans, his team mates?

 

Arsenal announced the deal, cos the story had broken in Japan, Asano was already getting asked lots of questions about it, and he had admitted the move was happening, he even said that the only thing to be decided was if he would join up directly with AFC, or go on loan to get used to European football.

 

A post stolen from the comments section by eduardo792

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A Bird In The Hand

Posted by steww on July 2, 2016 in All Posts

SONY DSC

There’s a priceless piece of dialogue from the pen of the wonderful David Nobbs on a subject which has, just this morning, provided the sand in my emotional Vaseline. His character, known to us only by his initials CJ, is expounding upon the theme of trite, stereotyped phraseology of the kind employed by lazy minds to express popular or common thoughts and ideas. Phrases entirely lacking in originality, ingenuity, and, thanks to their chronic overexposure, expressions which are so devoid of impact as to be utterly pointless.

The speech went something like this:

“Mrs C.J. and I have always avoided clichés like the plague. A cliché to me is like a red rag to a bull. However, it’s the exception that proves the rule, as they say, and there is one cliché that fits my situation like a glove: Necessity is the mother of intention.”

All writers slide into cliché, even humble part time amateur bloggers such as myself are no exception. The trick isn’t never to fall foul of the hackneyed phrase, it is rather to do one’s darnedest to avoid it wherever one can. Where the use of cliché is utterly beyond the pale isn’t when it is used as seasoning in an otherwise ordinary piece of prose. It seems to me to achieve its nadir of useless, shallow emptiness when employed as the central thrust of somebody’s argument.

Today, like birdsong, flowers and late sunsets, that hardy annual of the Transfer window has arrived right on cue to ruffle my feathers and send me running for the Anderson Shelter. Today for the first time this summer, I read the expression ‘to show intent’ in regard to the buying of players to augment our squad.

Arsène (or Wenger as he is invariably and rudely referred to by his own supporters. Or at least people who claim to support the club and therefore ought to be his supporters) needs to spend a lot of money or buy a lot of players or less players but players of the highest calibre because then he will be showing intent.

Now I’m no saint. Like you, I suspect, I’ve typed more than a few shallow, ill conceived lines and bunged them up on the internet in a thoughtless moment. So I don’t condemn everyone who uses this ridiculous phrase. Maybe they intended something else and didn’t get up today with the single intention of driving a splintered length of four by two up my backside.

But come on. Expend upon it the briefest moment of thought and really, what on earth is it supposed to mean? Transfers are complex and difficult to conclude. Expensive, drawn out and fraught with any number of complexities, of which you and I can know very little. What we can know with great certainty is that they serve one of two very simple purposes. To replace players who have left the club and to improve upon those already in the squad. That’s it. You do not engage the services of a highly paid professional footballer to send out a message of intent.

Arsène Wenger’s intentions are crystal clear. He wants to win as many games and competitions as he can. There is no doubt about this, it isn’t up for debate. Were he to buy someone simply to convey some sort of message, I ask you, who would this message be for? His rivals? The media? The fans?

His rivals already know he is serious about his job, if they don’t they’re idiots and need to look for alternative employment. The media have their own agenda and will stick slavishly to it regardless of what he does or doesn’t do. As a fan I don’t want him to spend a fortune of the club’s hard earned just to send me a message. That would be ridiculous.

So please do not repeat this awful phrase. Arsène doesn’t need to show anyone ‘intent’. His intentions are not and have never been in question. Why not watch the remaining matches of the European championships, then when they’re over have a little rest from football. Leave the professionals to do their jobs and buy the players they are able to buy and when the new season starts just try to enjoy it regardless of who did and didn’t sign in  this wretched window.

Oh, and leave the clichés to those without your wit and imagination. You know you can do better.

 

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Arsenal – You do know the way to San Jose ?

Posted by anicoll5 on June 26, 2016 in All Posts

Ck6cKZIWsAA8l-m (1)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 28th 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.

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Just What Do We Support?

Posted by steww on June 7, 2016 in All Posts

By the time you read this it is possible that Jamie Vardy may have been announced as the second major signing of the summer. If so it will be an almost Fergusonian transfer. Buying the star striker of a top four rival, spending big to cover a temporary injury problem on a player with only a couple of years left in the tank. Aggressive, positive and short term. Well, possibly – that is one interpretation.

Of course Vardy might simply prove to be this summer’s Higuaín. A steaming heap of click baiting baloney providing social media know alls and bloggers like me the opportunity to spout ill informed bollocks about something which was never going to happen in the first place.

I’ll be up front with you; I don’t give a hoot either way. Similarly the Suarez transfer never interested me in the slightest quite simply because it never happened and never came close to happening. It was as worthwhile a use of our time and attention as a discussion on whether or not the earth is flat.

I no longer get angry when people follow up on the journalist’s daydreams and discuss them in all earnest – after all like the flat earthers they do no one else any real harm. They’re entertaining a fantasy which engages and amuses them. So what? The real transfers happen in due course and all the stupid pointless arguments and debates about the hallucinatory targets and fees evaporate like the hot air they always were.

So it isn’t the existence of the Vardy rumours which interests me. It isn’t even the moral debate which signing such a player, even in merely hypothetical terms, has provoked among my friends and other contacts. What made me prick up my ears was a conversation with my wife, a person with less interest in football than I have in macramé, as we traversed the car park of our local Lidl.

I’d outlined the problems people were having stomaching the thought of cheering on a man who has proven to be of dubious moral fibre. ‘But you can’t control that’, she said, ‘you have no say in the players you support. Someone else hires them, someone else picks them. In any case they change every year until after a while the entire team has altered and yet still you support it. Heck the manager and coaches change, the kit and the badge change and even the stadium can change, and still you support it.’

Then came the sixty four thousand dollar question. ‘What exactly do you support? If The Arsenal is like some huge, complex Trigger’s broom, what is it you are actually throwing your weight behind?’ My mouth opened and closed a few times as I absently stowed a half dozen bags of cut price and highly tasty groceries into the trusty Hyundai Matrix.

We can kid ourselves it’s the ethical nature of the club and quietly overlook the scandal of allowing people to work in and around the stadium on match days for less than a decent living wage. We can point to our players’ avoiding the tabloid excesses of those from other clubs as if they were saints rather than simply well drilled and controlled. We can dislike the politics of someone from Leicester City and assume none of the current or past squad are raving right wingers in favour of politicians who’s sole aim is the destruction of all that is decent in our society.

We can make a big deal of Arsène Wenger’s decency, the unquestioned statesmanlike dignity with which he manages our club, but then what if someone like Jose Mourinho was appointed in his stead? We wouldn’t stop supporting would we? We’d perform like moral contortionists, make our excuses and go on cheering for the team.

We stand on feet of clay and I suggest we have no option but to find shoes to fit them. It’s distasteful sometimes but what can we do? The only option is to support someone else and good luck finding another team any better or more consistent with your moral stance. I suppose one could just give up following the sport at all, but where would be the fun in that?

So what did I conclude in the supermarket car park? What exactly do I support? If not the players, manager, owners, stadium, crest or shirt then what? In the end I decided all I was left with was the name. It seems that I support The Arsenal. And like my marriage I do so for better or for worse.

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Arsenal Fans Are Being Fooled.

Posted by pedantic George @arseblagger on June 1, 2016 in All Posts
Today a guest post from @foreverheady
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