Morning as we begin the final work before the season starts.
Good win over Atletico Bilbao on Saturday as we continued to ramp up our fitness and get match sharp ahead of the Premier League start.
It was only pre-season, but good to finish our preparations on a high. Side note is those who are quick to comment when we lose a pre-season game are conspicuous with their silence when we win. It is almost as if they thrive on us losing and being able to spread their negativity.
We have done great business this summer, and I expect more to happen depending on outgoing. However we need to ensure we avoid “shiny new toy syndrome”. Some of the left wingers I see is being linked with (Lookman), are not in Gabriel Martinelli’s level.
The Brazilian may have his flaw, but he does set the bar high. There are probably no more than 10 left wingers in world football that would dramatically improve on him. Anyone outside of that group would be coming in to compete with him, not to automatically replace him.
I am apprehensive about Saturday. Man U are not a great team, but they are still Man U, and with the new signings and a pre-season under Almiron they will be an unknown quantity in the first 2 or 3 games of the season.
Enjoy your week whatever you are doing, and we go again Saturday.
Keenos
Throwback to this mug design from a few years ago!
Arsenal forced us to stop selling it as the image was “Mikel Arteta’s intellectual property”
Not sure how true that was, but we always act with caution and prefer to work with with clubs
I have always said that the positive and negative of social media is it has made the world a smaller place.
On one hand, you now hear from people on global issues actually affected by them. A broader viewpoint from across the globe. On the other, you now get to read the view from people who you would not normally converse with and have no interest in.
I recently saw a fun little video on TikTok which summed up my issue with social media.
In school, you are split up into sets. You then go through your education based on your intelligence, with those in top set having top set conversations with fellow students of a similar high intelligence. And then those in the bottom sets having bottom set conversations with fellow students of a similar low intelligence.
Then you go off to university (or not) and the segregation continues as the more intelligent students go to the top universities such as Kings, LSE, Oxford or Durham. Those in the middle go to the likes of Essex, Sussex or UEA. And then those who really do not have the intelligence to go to uni (but want to get £30k in debt “for an experience”) end up in UEL, London Met or Middlesex University.
Further segregation of thoughts happen at university with the courses you take, with those most intelligent taking law or maths, and those least intelligent taking geography, business or something to do with the arts.
Again, throughout your university life, you naturally have conversations with those on a similar intellectual plane as you. Your friends become those who you are at uni with, and often those on the same course. You rarely interact with those at other uni’s, and therefore are not involved in conversations with people who are intellecutally above or below you.
As you enter your work life, the segregation continues.
Many people end up in their job based on their intelligence and ability to think further beyond their nose. And again this leads to a segregation of thought as the doctors, lawyers and traders have different conversations to the recruitment consultants and IT guys. And then you get the secretaries, the day labourers and electricians, and so on.
Even if you work for a major company that employs a wide spectrum of people, you often end up socialising in smaller groups. Thee lawyers will not really socialise with the secretaries (unless they are trying to shag one of them). The traders won’t socialise with the IT guys. And the builders are there to work, not to have a beer with.
Whilst some of you might find this insulting, life is split up into these groups, and it is mainly based on intelligence. You therefore go through life spending most of your time conversing with people of a similar level of intelligence.
That all comes to an end with social media.
Posts are put in front of you by the algorithm from people you would not normally converse with. You end up with bottom tier’s trying to have a discussion with top tiers on top tier topics which they have no real understanding of.
It also works the other way, with top tiers having discussions with bottom tiers on bottom tier subjects. This mixing of the minds leads to bottom tiers sharing their simplified viewpoint beyond their intellectual equals, and top tiers becoming increasingly frustrated with the stupidity of the world.
This is further exacerbated with the fact that social media is global. You get people in countries with poor education systems, and with a lower than average IQ, joining conversations with those with a much higher IQ and better level of education. But the narrowing of the world makes everyone think their view is equal.
I sometimes wonder how Arsenal and Arsene Wenger would have fared in the social media era. The era where those with a low IQ have been given a platform to share their simple viewpoints, with an inability to grasp a subject properly.
Last night we lost to Villareal by a single goal. The same scoreline against Tottenham. This has led to those bottom tiers shouting from the rooftops about how Mikel Arteta should be sacked, about how we have gone stale and that he is taking us backwards. They have all ignored the fact that it is pre-season, and that all teams treat pre-season games differently.
How would these people have survived back in the summer of 2003?
2003 saw us lose to Peterborough United, and fail to beat barely-professional Barnet, SC Ritzing, Celtic and Beveren. The uproar would have been unprecedented. But then we all know what happened that season.
Likewise, I wonder how Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp would have got in during the social media era.
Following his failure to score last night, the pile-on to Viktor Gyorekes has already started:
Two games, no goals Hooked off after 60 minutes Replaced upfront by a defensive midfielder
These are such a simplistic, bottom tier take that is being forced onto the feed of those far more intelligent than those making the comments. It is the sort of comments that you would not hear in the school, university or work. And if someone said it to you in the pub you would just laugh and walk away.
It is pre-season. Gyorekes has been at the club for about 12 days. He has probably had half a dozen training sessions during that time. What were these people expecting? Hat-tricks in every game? Him to play a full 90 minutes?
And you could only imagine the uproar from the same fans if he played 90 minutes last night, when clearly not fully fit, and picked up an injury!
Pre-season, as most of those who are not bottom-tierers know, is a time to get fit. And Gyrorekes is 2 weeks behind in his fitness. The fact he got through 60 minutes of work should be seen as a positive – had he played in our first pre-season game he probably would have only last 45-minutes after wholesale changes were made at half time.
And then we come on to the goals.
Being criticised after not scoring in partial pre-season appearances, as he is regaining fitness and learning to play in a new team, is a new level of idiocy.
Dennis Bergkamp failed to score in his first 8 games for Arsenal. Thierry Henry did not score until his 7th appearance.
These are two of our greatest players of all time. Imagine them in the social media era and the criticism they would have received for their slow starts? It just makes no sense.
But it does make sense to those who have gone through life in the bottom set, or from countries with double-digit average IQ levels. Their sort of thinking is the norm around their contemporaries. And the issue is not that they have their deeply flawed view, but it is now pushed out for the world to see.
Back decades ago, these fools would have been laughed at. They would have been the court jesters or just mocked in the pub. They were the Gumbo’s of the group.
But social media has changes all that, and now many of them believe what they say is gospel because they have thousands of fellow bottom-tierers following them, creating an echo chamber.
Being the smartest in the bottom tier is not something to be proud of. But they celebrate it. And rather than better themselves and increase their knowledge, they would rather stay in the bottom tier, continuing to play to their audience on YouTube and X and get those e-likes.
It used to be easy to block out uneducated viewpoints. You just would not work or socialise with them. But with social media these days, you now have the view of those less educated shoved in your face. And this is beyond football. It is politics and global news as well.
People having their say on the state of the UK, on Palestine, on climate change. Complicated subjects. And sharing that low level viewpoint with the world thinking they are contributing to the debate. And even worse, the media put these sort of people front and centre and use them as if they represent everyone else in a community.
It simply makes a mockery of those who are not bottom tier. Everyone is then tarred with the same brush, and held to the level of the bottom tier’s viewpoint.
The media act like all Arsenal fans share the opinion of a coked-up benefit scrounger, a divvy YouTuber in Spain, or some random from Nigeria who will never go to the game.
These people are no the true representatives of the Arsenal fan base. Nor are they the true representatives of any group on other political discussions. But social media has created a world where those with bottom-tier views are shared widely and promoted as representative.
Some of you will be upset reading this blog. I would have offended you. This highlights somes lack of understanding as the issue is not that people have different views, the issue is that social media now forces those views on everyone else, no matter how idiotic they are.
Enjoy your Thursday.
PS: I was top tier in a very working class East-London school, went to a mid-tier university (Essex), studied law and became a recruitment consultant. I also do not proof read my blogs so do not care if there are spelling errors.
After a year of chasing Benjamin Sesko, Arsenal pivoted and opted to sign Viktor Gyorekes. That decision is looking better and better as each day goes on.
The issue for Sesko has never been his talent. He certainly has the attributes to become one of the best strikers in the world. But Arsenal became increasingly frustrated with both RB Leipzig and Sesko’s representatives throughout negotiations. And it is the later that likely killed the deal.
Whilst Gyorekes and his people were working hard to get a deal done, the feeling was Sesko’s representatives were becoming tough to deal with.
According to those with inside knowledge of the deal, ‘during negotiations, Sesko’s agent Elvis Basanovic had left club [Arsenal] insiders jaw dropped with his shenanigans. One Insider said he presented Sesko as “Messi”.’
I always laugh when fans of a club celebrate signing a player who either let us contract run down, or who’s agent caused disruption during negotiations. These sort of players and agents are likely to repeat the behaviour in the future. And at that point, those same fans who celebrated will be calling them a disgrace (Exhibit one is Alexander Isak behaving the same way at Newcastle as he did at Real Sociedad).
What Andrea Berta and Arsenal execs would have been thinking during negotiations is the long game. A problematic representative now will also be problematic down the future. Like the leopard, they do not change their spots.
At 22-years-old, Sesko probably would have signed a 5-year-deal at Arsenal. That would have seen us having to negotiate with his representatives again in 3-years-time. And considering how they have behaved the last 12-months, that is clearly something Berta had no interest in doing.
You want players to sign for the club who are interested in winning the biggest trophies at Arsenal. Not players who see us as a stepping stone to Real Madrid or Barcelona. It is not hard to foresee after a good 3 years in the Premier League, the representatives of Sesko hawking him around Europe looking to see if they could get their man a better deal elsewhere.
Sasko, after all, is Pro Transfers only decent player. He is their cash cow. And they will use him to try and create themselves generational wealth.
With just Sesko on their books, they likely would have wanted a decent commission off this deal. And then in 3-years time, they would look to make further commission by either moving him clubs, or demanding a huge agent fee for Sesko to agree a new contract. They are clearly the sort of representatives a club would not want to deal with.
Now I will concede that Gyorekes did some unsavoury things to push through his Arsenal move, including failing to turn up to training. But this is a different scenario to Sesko’s representatives continually moving the goalposts.
Gyorekes has an agreement with the former Sporting Director of Football Hugo Viana that he could leave in the summer of 2025 if a buying club offered an agreed amount. And Arsenal did that.
The issue was Viana had left Sporting in early June, and that left Sporting President Frederico Varandas overseeing the deal. He refused to acknowledge the agreement, going back on the clubs words.
It has been reported that had Viana been at Sporting, the Gyorekes would have happened quickly. But with his departure, Varandas moved the goalposts and forced Gyorekes hand. He had to play up a little to get his move and to ensure Sporting honoured the agreement.
Sesko’s issues are not in the way he has behaved to depart Leipzig, but the way his agents have behaved during negotiations. And in 3-years down the line history will repeat itself.
Apparently, Sesko is now weighing up whether to join Newcastle United or Manchester United. It should be an easy choice. Newcastle is a stop off, Manchester is a destination.
Whilst Newcastle but be in a better position short term, it is easy to forget with the way their fans go on that they have won just one League Cup in 70-years. They are not a big club.
Kids around the globe dream of playing for Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool et al. Only kids on Tyneside and in County Durham dream of playing for Newcastle.
What Sesko’s people are doing is seeing who offers their player the most money. And how offers them the most money to get the deal done. And it is grubby.
I for one am happy we made the early decision to move for Gyorekes. Were we chasing Sesko we would still be in negotiations, getting increasingly frustrated.
We have our man, Newcastle and Man U can now fight it out for an overpriced talented football (just 13 league goals last season), who will only cause further issues down the line.
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 