Tag Archives: Premier League

Jekill and Hyde Arsenal, Lacazette Agenda, Wenger Out Protest and Other Stuff

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Jekill and Hyde Arsenal

Great win, great performance. How frustrating.

Arsenal’s last 4 results in the league are LWLW. Both losses came away, both wins came at home.

Bournemouth (A) 1-2
Crystal Palace (H) 4-1
Swansea City (A) 1-3
Everton (H) 5-1

32 out of a possible 39 points at home, 13 out of a possible 39 points away. As an Away Scheme member, it is frustrating.

But rather than spend a Sunday focusing on what we have not achieved, lets enjoy yesterday.

5-1
Hat trick for Aaron Ramsey
Goal on debut for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
3 assists for Henrik Mkhitaryan

On Mkhytaryan, if a player left Arsenal and hit 3 assists and a 10/10 performance on his debut, we would be saying that’s what happens when a player plays under a decent coach. Well Mkhitaryan left Manchester United for Arsenal and has put in his best performance in England. What should we say now?

A delightful victory to take us into Spurs.

Lacazette Agenda

I really hate Arsenal fans sometimes.

Spend years moaning about lack of options, a weak bench, a poor squad, then we have two £50m strikers competing for one space and the narrative changes.

Now it is how can we fit both in?; how can we keep both happy? Lacazette is the fall guy.

Other sides throughout England, and Europe, have multiple quality players for every position. They do not have their own fans asking these questions.

Manchester City have 3 £40m+ centre backs in their squad (and Vincent Kompany). They have Raheem sterling, David Silva, Bernad Silva, Raheem Sterling & Leroy Sane competing for 3 spots – and still tried to buy Alexis Sanchez and Riyad Mahrez.

Why are we complaining?

And then the lies come in. That Lacazette has fallen out with Arsene Wenger. That he has questioned him.

The truth is Lacazette has scored 1 goal in 12 games so was rotated to the bench. nothing more than that.

Wenger Out Protest

It was disappointing to see so few turn up for the organised Wenger Out protest.

Looking at pictures, it seems their was more journalists than fans there. This has the potential to kill any pressure that fans can put on the club as the Arsenal board will see it as 25 turned up to a protest out of 60,000. And they have a point.

Some will point to the rain – but then thousands are marching for the NHS today (although those marching today are probably using the rain for their monthly wash). Others will say it is apathy. That fans now know longer care about, they do not think they can actually do anything.

These fans are wrong. The recent changes in the club – the employment of the likes of Raul Sanllehi and Sven Mislintat – came due to Ivan Gazidis bowing to fan pressure and reducing the influence of Arsene Wenger.

I feel this protest was always doomed to fail, and it has nothing to do with Wenger or apathy, and everything to do with organisation.

In the past, the likes of GC from this site, the Blackscarf Movement, and influential large Twitter accounts have been involved in protests. It takes a lot of work. It is not as easy as “put a message on Twitter and hope people turn up”.

It takes mobilisation of people to get them out. Canvasing the pubs. A call to arms in WhatsApp groups. Actual organisation. The BSM had around 5,000 turn up a few years back.

This was done done by merely putting messages on Twitter. It was done through actual hard work.

I was in The George from about 2pm yesterday. No one was even asking if people were going to the protest. No one seemed to even know about it.

Having faceless 16 year olds running Twitter accounts promoting and attempting to organise protests is always going to fail. Having 100s of RTs about the protests from fans who do not even go is pointless.

Hopefully this failed protest is a lesson to some of those involved, and those Facebook pages and Twitter accounts who promote the protests.

These protests take make organisation than sitting behind a keyboard. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if many of those organising or aggressively advertising it did not even turn up themselves. They probably do not even go to game themselves.

A lesson to be learnt.

Other

Alexis Sanchez scored and was Manchester United’s best player at the weekend. He also gave the ball away 32 times – the most by a Manchester United player in a single game this season.

Two MOTM games, Sanchez is putting in the same performances for United as he did for Arsenal.

He gives the ball away then more than any other player, gets involved when he shouldn’t be, has one of the worst pass completing percentages on the pitch, but will always be one of the best players on the pitch, one of the biggest threats.

Liverpool v Spurs – The “Won two League Cups between them in a decade but everyone thinks they have been really successful recently” Derby. Are there two sides that have won so little in recent years, yet seem to be praised so much by the media? They are the darlings of the British press.

Pep Guardiola – Interesting to see the difference in opinion on poor tackles. When Wenger complained about poor challenges and players needed protecting (3 double leg breaks), the media labelled Arsenal Soft Southern Softies. Guardiola makes similar comments, and that same media publishes a two page spread highlighting the “9 bad challenges on Man City player this season”.

As for him saying he does not have enough players, I always find it interesting the Jose Mourinho is labelled a “cheque book manager” whilst Guardiola is a great coach – he has spent nearly £500m in 18 months at Manchester City.

 

Have a good weekend all!

Keenos

How much is a Premier League medal worth?

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£25 million.

That is how much Alexis Sanchez is willing to “sacrifice” by joining Manchester City in January rather than the summer, according to reports this morning.

Were Sanchez to move on a free transfer at the end of the season, as history dictates, he and his agent will demand a huge chunk of his transfer value.

Arsenal created the situation of players getting “paid” the transfer fee when Sol Campbell joined from Spurs in 2001.

Instead of paying a huge transfer fee, Arsenal put together a four year package worth £20 million – including signing on fee, bonuses and salary – which back then made one of the highest paid players in world football.

It was reported at the time that his “basic” wage was £60,000, and that Arsenal would pay an additional £30,000 a week over the 4 year period as a signing on fee. This was big money 17 years ago.

This kind of set a precedent in players leaving on a Bosman. They would be paid more due to a lack of transfer fee, with that extra money coming in signing on fees to avoid breaking squad wage structures.

Fast forward to Demba Ba. He left Newcastle for Chelsea when the London side activated his £7 million release clause. His agents estimated that his true value was closer to £20 million.

With Chelsea then getting him “on the cheap” the agents demanded an increased signing on fee from Chelsea.

Ba pocketed £3 million, his agents £2.5 million.

Just last week, we saw Ross Barkley move to Everton for a cut price £15 million. Today it was announced that his agents were paid £7 million for the transfer.

So there is massive precedent of players on a free transfer, or going for a lot less than their “value” pocketed a big chunk of cash as a signing on fee.

Reports are that Alexis Sanchez (or his people) was demanding £25 million to complete a free transfer in the summer. And that he is willing to “sacrifice” that £25 million to join city in January.

Now the story could be written that Sanchez is so desperate to get out of Arsenal that he is willing to sacrifice a big pay day in the summer. Whilst this does have some legs, we are talking about 5 months time. The reality is that it is unlikely that he will want to lose out on £25 million just because he is a bit unhappy.

The truth is that he wants to win a Premier League medal. And that by joining Manchester City in January, he is guaranteed winning one. So he is willing to sacrifice £25 million to win that medal.

A Premier League medal for Alexis Sanchez will be a hollow success.

Manchester City have the league already won. They are 15 points ahead of Manchester United in 2nd place after 22 games. They need just another 11 wins to secure the title. And that is if Manchester United win every game. City probably only actually need to win another 8 games to secure the title.

Sanchez joining now is a player coming late to the race. The hard work has been done. At the end of the season, even if he scores 10 goals and contributes to a couple of wins, City would have won the league regardless of his signing.

He might end up with a medal, but it will be a meaningless one.

Interestingly, in Sanchez’s 10 year career in Europe, he only has one league title to show for it. It probably shows why desperate he is to win medals, however hollow they are.

So Sanchez is desperate for a Premier League medal, despite it being hollow. And he is willing to sacrifice £25 million for what would be a hollow victory.

£25 million to win a Premier League medal.

As a final thought, if Sanchez does join Manchester City this week, he will still get a huge signing on fee. So he is not really sacrificing anything.

Keenos

Fake awards and calendar records

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What is it about all these fake records the media are inventing? It is getting ludicrous.

A few years back we had the “Most points in the calendar year” awarded to Arsenal by those in the media. The majority of us scoffed at this. You do not win trophies for the most points in the calendar year, but the most points over the season.

Then a year ago, you had an award given to Spurs for “most points over the last two seasons”. They finished 2nd and 3rd without a trophy, but they got the most points over 2 seasons. Well done.

Just at the end of last year, Harry Kane broke the “most Premier League goals in a calendar year” record.

Firstly, it highlights how much these records are made up by the media by the fact that it was a Sky-era only record. Secondly, Alan Shearer held the previous record, of which he was unaware of until 20 years after he “broke” the record.

And now Kevin De Bruyne is a record breaker.

Kevin De Bruyne sets assist record.

Was the headline. I wondered what record he had broken. It being January and all, it can not be a calendar year record.

“Kevin De Bruyne became the first player to register 10 assists in Europe’s top five leagues”. That was the record. The first player to register 10 assists in Europe’s top five leagues.

Not the first person ever, not the first person in history, just the first person this season. What a record to hold! What a load of Buzzcocks.

I fully understand why all these records are being created by the media.

In an era of 24 hour news, revenues driven by advertising rather than buyers, media outlets need the clicks, the listeners, the watchers.

This leads to the dumbing down of the media. A picture of Kim Kardashian with her arse hanging out will get more hits than an investigative article into the corruption of unions in the UK. This clickbait thirst has led to the rise of fake news.

Football fans have dealt with fake news for decades.

For years, transfer speculation has been a key income stream for the media. Write an article on XXX joining XXX and the hits will go through the roof. Especially if the club you are trying to link the player with is Arsenal or Manchester United. Fake news gets the hits. The more hits, the more revenue.

And this leads back to fake records and awards.

Young journalists trying to break through in the industry are not KPI’d on the quality of their articles but their quantity. I know someone who works in the field and they have to write 3 news articles a day.

Eventually they get to the point where they are literally making stuff up just to fulfil the 3 articles a day. They create these records to give themselves something to write about.

Then these articles are picked up by other junior journalists who basically rip off the original article to complete their daily quota.

Suddenly every media outlet has picked up on the fake record, and is reporting on it. Then it hits social media (although chances are the originator stole it off someone else) and the record becomes a “thing”.

I watch cricket and they come up with records as tedious as Highest 6th wicket, 2nd innings partnership for England at Melbourne. The difference is cricket is a game for statistic geeks.

The final nail in the coffin for this blog was the award the Daily Mirror gave to Spurs:

Keenos