Author Archives: keenosafc

The Premier League and Sky Sports rewriting football history

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Last night Chelsea won the league. Fair play to them. Well done. They were the best team in the league, but I wake up this morning to see that Sky and the Premier League are at it again. They are rewriting history.

In England, the FA Cup was founded in 1871. The Football League in 1888. No country has a grander, longer history of the game than us. We are the originators. The forefathers. It is something to be proud of. But time and again, Sky Sports have attempted to rewrite that history.

Alongside the Premier League, over the years they have tried to promote “Premier League era only statistics.” IE since 1992.

The key reason for this is commercial. Sky hold very few highlight rights for anything that happened before this time. So they continually show more recent events, events that they do not need to pay extra for.

They are in hand with the Premier League, who in 1992 decided to ‘break away’ from the football league, and have spent years building up the Premier League brand, and disassociating themselves with what went before.

With both in collusion with eachother, they have been able to brainwash many fans, usually younger who did not know football before 1992, to disregard anything before that date as pointless.

We saw it a few years ago when Manchester City won the league title with the last kick of the game. Sky Sports billed the event (and reported it after) as the closest title race in history, and the best end to a title race. They have since continually shown the footage of Sergio Aguero’s goal. It completely ignores Anfield 89.

Last season Leicester won the league. Greatest story in English football was what was written. Really? Is it a greater story than Nottingham Forest in 1977/98 under the great Brian Clough who got promoted, then the next year won the First Divison Title, and the year after the European Cup? I do not think so.

So we go on to Chelsea…

So Sky Sports report it as Chelsea winning their 5th Premier League title. Moving two ahead of Arsenal into second place. What it ignores is the 100 years+ of football that happened before 1992.

Chelsea last night won their 6th league title. This brings them level with Sunderland, 6th on the all time list. Behind Manchester United (20 league titles), Liverpool (18), Arsenal (13), Everton (9) and Aston Vila (7). Not quite as impressive now is it?

That is a tweet from the Premier League’s own Twitter feed. Not some shitty little photoshop created by some 14 year old in the UAE.

Chelsea are the first team to win the Premier League title on a Friday

Chelsea have not made history. By my reckoning, the top flight of English football has been won on a Friday night at least 5 times. Including Arsenal at Anfield in 19889 – that season Sky refuse to talk about.

Chelsea yesterday made history by winning their 6th league title. But it was personal history. In the grand scheme of 140 years of English football, it was not historic. They now have as many league titles as Sunderland, who just got relegated.

Of course, some Chelsea fans (and even some Arsenal fans) will comment on things such as your’e turning into Liverpool fans, banging on about history. You might be right, by it is not me who bought up history. It is the Premier League who claimed that Chelsea were making history, and Sky Sports that count league titles from 1992. They are the ones bashing on about historical moments, whilst ignoring history.

The Premier League is not a new league established in 1992. It is the top flight of English football which dates back to 1888. All that has happened is it has changed its name, got a new trophy, become more about making money then the football, and slowly killing the English game for most real fans.

English league football. Est 1888, not 1992.

Keenos

The Arsenal Revival Continues

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What is it about Arsenal performing once there is little else to play for? We have seen it time and again in recent years, a late end of season run when we have a dozen+ points off the title, off the pace from top 4, and then we put a run together to secure Champions League football.

It is almost as if our mindset changes when we start to be written off in the press. Disregarded by the footballing public. The odds on top 4 extending. And this season it is déjà vu.

After we as a club, a fan base, a team, hit rock bottom on a Monday night 3-0 defeat against Crystal Palace, we were all done. It was time to pack up and go home. 4 wins in 12 games, 2 of which were against the might of Sutton United and Lincoln City. After the defeat to Crystal Palace, an FA Cup exit against Manchester City was on the cards.

A month to do the day of that defeat against Crystal Palace and things look a little better. A run of 5 wins in 6 games has seen us get into the FA Cup final and claw back points in the race for the top 4. The only game we dropped points in was that awful defeat against Tottenham Hotspur.

The revival comes as Arsenal moved to the 3-4-2-1 formation.

Personally, I refuse to give Arsene Wenger any credit for changing formation. It is too little too late. And this is where this positive happy blog takes a darker turn.

Just because I am happy Arsenal won, it does not change the fact that Arsene Wenger needs to go.

The fact he took so long to try out another formation is sickening. By the time we moved to 3-4-2-1, the title had gone, finishing ahead of Spurs had gone, we were 6th. Fans have been calling for a change in tactics for years, and it took an awful run for Wenger to react. It sums up Wenger’s second half of his Arsenal career. He is a reactive manager rather than a proactive one.

He follows other teams tactics rather than develops his own. If his side wins a game one week, he puts out the same side the next, not thinking about the opposition. He has struggled. He has been left behind. Winning 5 games from 6 does not suddenly make him a poor manager. Does not justify the 2 year contract that has allegedly already been signed.

Too many of our fans are fickle. The protests have dwindled. The noise on social media hushed. A couple of victories and everyone has fallen back in line. You do not have to be one or the other. You can want the team to win, whilst still calling for the managers head. Still celebrate victories whilst demanding Wenger Out.

I glance across at Juventus and see them in the Champions League final. Their second in 3 years under Massimiliano Allegri. Allegri flirted with leaving Juventus at the end of this season. He has since signed a new contract.

Was it just a power player to get more money from The Old Lady? Or was he genuinely looking to leave? It certainly felt on Tuesday, whilst watching them celebrate making the final, of a bit of Bully “here’s what you could have had”.

Did Wenger’s situation at Arsenal stall the club on making a move of Allegri? How many other top managers will we miss out on as Wenger digs his heels and stays? Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have already gone, Carlo Ancelotti and Unai Emery also recently made moves. Reports are today that Diego Simeone could be making a return to Inter Milan. Another we have missed out on.

Wenger’s arrogance, his ignorance, his stubbornness is damaging Arsenal. It is meaning we can not move one. Then again, if you were due to earn £19m over the next two years, why would you step down?

Lets turn this blog into a shit sandwich and finish on a high.

Beat Stoke on Saturday afternoon and the pressure is on Liverpool on Sunday when they visit West Ham. Victory will leave us a point behind Liverpool, 3 behind Manchester City (assuming they beat Chelsea in the early kick off).

With home games against Sunderland and Everton to finish the season off, you would not beat against us sneaking into the top 4. 8 wins out of 9 will give us great momentum to face Chelsea at the end of the month. And ultimately that is the real trophy.

Give me the FA Cup over top 4, over progression any day of the week.

We are all in this together.

Spurs make cut backs on £800m stadium project

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When news broke recently that the cost of Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium had sky rocketed to £800m, everyone in the red side of North London laughed.

The costs had more than doubled from the £400m first quoted seven years ago.

Arsenal struggled with the financing of their stadium, and it gave Arsenal a rough 10 years where we were having to sell to cover stadium debts. Sponsorship deals were front loaded to pay off debt, leaving us short at the back end of the deals. It was hard work, but Arsenal got through.

Spurs were always going to struggle more. A lack of regular Champions League football and them simply being a smaller global club than Arsenal means that their turnover was already fair below what Arsenal’s was in the early 00s (relatively speaking). The Spurs project at £400m was already a tougher financial task to make ends meet. No matter how many NFL games, cheese rooms, boxes and extra seats they had. When this price doubled, I imagine, Levy, Enic et al got an itchy arsehole.

And now the cut backs have begun,

Plans for a hotel as part of its new stadium development was recently put on hold due to it being “unviable”.

The proposed building on the corner of Tottenham High Road and Park Lane, which includes a 180-room four-star hotel, a basement car park, pool, gym and serviced apartments, will cost £67.8m to build, according to planning documents submitted to Haringey Council by the club last month.

A new financial appraisal revealed “a worsened overall scheme viability, largely due to construction cost inflation and the impacts of Brexit”, according to the club.

The club have said it “remained committed to building [the hotel] as soon as practicable” and described it as a ”key place-making component” of the overall scheme.

A letter from the club’ head of planning Richard Serra to Haringey Council said: “Hotel construction cannot commence… until after the completion of the new stadium, by which time the viability of the hotel may have improved.”

The hotel element of the complex, which covers 167,000 sq ft, will cost £31.8m to build, while the 49 serviced apartments on the upper floors will have a total build cost of £16.8m.

The serviced apartments have been redesigned from the original planning application submitted in 2015, with balconies and oversized units added, while residents will also have access to the hotel’s 3,230 sq ft roof terrace, as well as gym facilities, as part of the amendments.

The rooftop restaurant (£1.6m), and the health centre fit-out and swimming pool (£1.6m), make up the remaining costs of the hotel building.

The football club added that new ramp access into the stadium basement car park from Park Lane has resulted in a “significant increase in the cost of the construction of the basement beneath the proposed hotel”.

Earlier this week, the club received planning permission from Haringey Council to add extra seats at the stadium, with the £800m development now set to hold 61,559.

In recent weeks, Spurs have also done a deal to rent Wembley. With talk already about having to spend 2 years at the national stadium, costs will continue to rise.

How many players will they have to sell this summer just to finance the ongoing costs?

Keenos