Tag Archives: She Wore

How would long-term Arsenal target Adrien Rabiot fit in?

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Long term reported Arsenal target Adrien Rabiot has announced that he is set to leave PSG on a free transfer at the end of the season.

The 23-year-old central midfielder was linked with Arsenal over 6 years ago; when he was just a 17-year-old who had yet to play a game.

Over the years, he has been in and out of the PSG team and missed out on France’s World Cup success after refusing to be put on the reserve list.

A tall, elegant central midfielder, he has never really fulfilled his potential that he showed as a teenager – with PSG preferring the midfield partnership of Blaise Matuidi and Marco Verratti as he struggled to break through.

Last season under Unai Emery he played 50 games – starting 27 in the league and 8 in the Champions League.  He has continued to be first choice under Thomas Tuchel.

With Aaron Ramsey set to leave Arsenal as a free transfer, Arsenal could well see Rabiot is an indirect replacement.

Signing Rabiot would mean that Arsenal could cash in on Mohamed Elneny and line up with midfield options of:

Grant Xhaka
Lucas Torreira
Adrien Rabiot
Matteo Guendouzi
Ainsley Maitland-Niles

It would be an exciting group of central midfielders with plenty of strength and would more than cover Emery’s preference of playing 2 deep midfielders; with one out and out defensive and the other box-to-box in his favoured 4231 formation.

A sticking point would be as to what role Rabiot would play.

Emery has previously spoken about Rabiot being a defensive midfielder rather than a box-to-box; with the Frenchman believing he is more box-to-box.

Emery said: “Let’s talk about Rabiot. He’s a central midfielder, who is more comfortable playing as a defensive midfielder rather than a creative one. Even if he remains more of box-to-box, rather than a defensive midfielder.

“When you want to play with a defensive, creative and box-to-box-midfielders in fixed positions, Rabiot finds himself confronted to a problem. He has to run, run, run and not play in a fixed position statically. And even less so with his back turned on the action.

“Rabiot doesn’t really like playing as a defensive midfielder, he likes playing as a box-to-box, but I prefer him as a defensive midfielder. That’s why after the elimination against Real Madrid [in the 2017/18 Champions League], I told him he would play as a defensive midfielder.

“In that position, he can be faced with play and switch around with [Marco] Verratti. He is more competitive in these conditions. With certain players, you can’t impose a strict idea. You have to adapt yourself to their characteristics in order to win in individual and collective competitiveness.”

Another sticking point could be salary.

BeIN Sport reported earlier this month that Rabiot had turned down a new contract for a third time, with PSG reportedly offering him £6.32m a year to remain with the Ligue 1 champions. That works out to a little over £120,000 a week.

Granit Xhaka is reportedly on £90,000 a week; Lucas Torreira on £75,000 a week.

All 3 players are equally as talented, and would be in a fair fight for the 2 central midfield roles. What would it do to squad harmony if we bought Rabiot in on twice as much money (potentially) as Lucas Torreira?

Some will say that Rabiot is superior to Xhaka and therefore justifies the higher salary. However Emery is unlikely to see it that way.

Xhaka is box-to-box in the current set up, with Torreira as the more defensive option. Rabiot would more likely be competing with Torreira to play behind Xhaka.

Regardless, all 3 are close when it comes to their talent. To have vastly different salaries could be dangerous.

As seen, Rabiot would not be guaranteed a starting place at Arsenal. Himself, Xhaka and Torreira would be rotated – so would all still get plenty of game time. Would Rabiot go from regular starter at PSG to rotational starter at Arsenal?

A move for Rabiot would be a positive one for Arsenal. There are plenty of minutes to accommodate 3 top class midfielders and still find enough time to bleed through Matteo Guendouzi.

Guendouzi is still just 19 and would not have expected to have played so much this season – 9 starts in total in the league. He is still developing and is not yet at the standard of Rabiot, Torreira or Xhaka.

You can easily see a situation that in 3 years time, Arsenal cash in on a then 29-year-old Xhaka and promote Guendouzi. He will still be just 22-years-old (the same age as England’s next big talent Harry Winks is now!).

Guendouzi, Xhaka, Ramsey & Torreira have started 44 league games between them this season; so it is clear that there are plenty of games to go around.

The one loser would be Ainsley Maitland-Niles, but he would still have a future at the club.

Firstly he is a home-grown talent; which is very important. Secondly he can cover central midfield, left and right back, and is competent on the flanks.

Maitland-Niles is still just 21. He would get plenty of game time in the cups and would get the odd league game. His future at Arsenal is as a utility man.

Would I sign Rabiot on a free? Yes

Keenos

Dispelling a Stan Kroenke myth

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I am not one to defend Stan Kroenke, although in recent days I have found myself doing so a bit on Twitter.

Personally I do not think he is a bad owner. The only thing he did was let Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger sail along too long, earning themselves millions.

In terms of an owner, he buys into the self-sufficient model that ensures longevity of a football club.

It is a self-sufficient model that sees the likes of Juventus, real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Manchester United dominate over long periods – I am talking about 50-years plus.

The likes of PSG, Manchester City, Chelsea. These are boom and bust models.

The owners are pumping in billions and unless they can break the glass ceiling and turn their sides into self-sufficient clubs making hundreds of millions from commercial revenue, they will eventually fall off. Whether it be due to the money drying up, boredom or death.

If you want success over a long period, you need to be self sufficient.

Liverpool run a similar model to Arsenal.

The owners, FSG, do not put in any money. They do not use their own funds to buy players. Liverpool have financed a title winning team due to good recruitment and good coaching; not through their owners pumping in billions.

Stan Kroenke’s biggest criticisms seems to come from an Evening Standard article in 2016, where the headline was Stan Kroenke: I didn’t buy Arsenal stake to win trophies.

It was only this afternoon that I actually read the article. Before, that I had just followed what everyone had said on Twitter. That Kroenke was not in Arsenal to win trophies. This is what he actually said:

Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston he said: “For me, being an individual owner, I have to have some sort of reality involved.

“If you want to win championships then you would never get involved. I think the best owners in sports are the guys that sort of watch both sides a bit. If you don’t have a good business then you can’t really afford to go out and get the best players unless you just want to rely on other sources of income.

“Over there [in the Premier League] it was sort of like ‘well, we’ve got guys from the Middle East, the oil price is over $100, they can spend anything they want’.

“But the problem I saw with all of that; those people can lose interest. It doesn’t mean that they will, but I sort of threw that out there: ‘What happens when the Middle Eastern family, this thing’s costing a lot of money and they decide to go home?’ I said what really happens in those situations is the fans get hurt because the players get picked up and paid if they’re good, the front office gets other jobs.”

At no point did Kroenke say “I didn’t buy Arsenal stake to win trophies”.

So let’s delve down into what he actually said.

We’ve got guys from the Middle East, the oil price is over $100, they can spend anything they want’ – What he is clearly talking about is Manchester City. That the wealth they have is incredible.

If you want to win championships then you would never get involved – The closest quote to the “I do not want to win trophies” misconception.

When you put these two together, it is clear what he is saying.

He is not involved in football just to win titles. That if you came in to football as an owner just to win titles, you are buying the club for the wrong reason. That with the financial wealth of Manchester City owners, even as a billionaire you can not bankroll your club to success.

Whilst Kroenke has a net worth of around $8billion, he does not have billions available to pump into Arsenal. Any fan that thinks he does is unrealistic.

The Manchester City owners are only in football to win championships. Sheikh Mansour, has an estimated individual net worth of at least £17 billion and a family fortune of at least $1 trillion.

As Stan Kroenke says, they can spend anything they want.

Their is a fabulous story around Simon Jordan and how buying a football club is the quickest way for a rich man to become poor. If you attempt to bankroll your club into winning trophies, there will always be someone richer, who can outspend you. And eventually you run out of money.

This is exactly what Kroenke was talking about in 2016.

The Evening Standard were so concerned with the sensationalist headlines that they ignored two key aspects of the interview:

“I think the best owners in sports are the guys that sort of watch both sides a bit. If you don’t have a good business then you can’t really afford to go out and get the best players unless you just want to rely on other sources of income.”

He is talking about running the club like a business. That once you have the business side sorted (ie commercial revenue) you can then go out and get the best players. That then leads to success. You do not have to rely on other sources of income.

‘What happens when the Middle Eastern family, this thing’s costing a lot of money and they decide to go home?’ I said what really happens in those situations is the fans get hurt because the players get picked up and paid if they’re good, the front office gets other jobs.”

Did we not all say similar about Roman Abramovich? What happens when he gets bored? Deported? Or worse? you end up with a club billions in debt, no way to function. And ultimatel it is the fans that lose out.

What Kroenke was clearly talking about is that you do not buy a football club to just win trophies. You buy it to be part of something. To build something.

Just like as a fan you do not support the club you love due to trophies.

If fans only supported their club to win championships, no one would go to the hundreds of games up and down the football pyramid. They would change the club they “support” depending on who is the successful side of the day.

Kroenke is saying ownership is the same. You do not get into football – or any sport – just to win trophies. You need to have “some reality involved”. you can not expect to compete when your opposing owners can spend 1/3 of your net worth bank rolling your opponents.

It is not defeatist.

Look at Leicester. Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha did not buy Leicester to win the league title. He knew that he did not have the financial strength to bank roll them to the league. But they won it. Through good recruitment, coaching and togetherness.

And I bet the Leicester City title success was sweeter than any bankrolled success at Manchester City.

Kroenke did not buy Arsenal with the goal of bankrolling us to success. He bought the club to build something, to grow the side. And we are now growing.

It is perhaps time to put the “Kroenke did not buy Arsenal to win trophies” to bed.

He did buy us to win trophies, but win trophies the right way. Through running a successful business, being self-sufficient.

Kroenke can not bankroll us to success, nor should he have to.

Is the sole reason you follow Arsenal to win trophies?

Keenos

Match Report: Southampton 3 – 2 Arsenal

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Southampton (2) 3 Arsenal (1) 2

Premier League

St. Mary’s Stadium, Britannia Road, Southampton SO14 5FP

Sunday, 16th December 2018. Kick-off time: 1.30pm

(4-2-3-1) Leno; Bellerín, Lichtsteiner, Koscielny, Monreal; Torreira, Xhaka; Guendouzi, Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang; Iwobi

Substitutes: Čech, Elneny, Ramsey, Lacazette, Özil, Maitland-Niles, Nketiah

Scorers: Mkhitaryan (2)

Yellow Cards: Koscielny

Referee: Chris Kavanagh

Attendance: 29,497

Southampton are one of those clubs that we always seem to meet in the league at around Christmas time. As I recall, one of my first matches at The Old Place was on Boxing Day 1966, when John Radford and George Armstrong had equal goalscoring rights in a spectacular 4-1 victory over Southampton. Of course, The Saints provided us with one of our most famous bandits; before all our great goalscorers in the post-war modern era, there was always The Emperor. After signing from Southampton for £6,500 (£442,000 today) in March 1934, Ted Drake scored 138 goals in 184 appearances for us, and is still the club’s fifth highest goalscorer of all time; incredibly his record of 41 goals in 42 matches back in the 1934-35 championship hat-trick season still holds. All that in a campaign that saw him score three hat-tricks and four, four-goal collections along the way as well! Unbelievably, he also holds the record for the most goals scored in a top flight game in English football, with seven goals (in eight shots) against Aston Villa in December 1935. After a period of injury, he called it a day in 1945 after winning everything in the game with us in the late thirties (including five caps for England); he then went into management where he was the first man to win a league championship medal as both a player and a manager, when he led Chelsea to their first title in 1955; Drake finished his managerial days being assistant manager at Barcelona in 1970. A true Arsenal legend, they really don’t make English footballers like Ted Drake anymore.

That was it, then. Our 22-match unbeaten run has finally come to an end today in an inglorious match at St. Mary’s that saw us crash out 2-3 to a Southampton team that may have been well-organised, but at best not the most thrilling of teams. The match itself seemed to be a yin-and-yan game with whatever appeared to happen in the Southampton end, the same came to pass in our area, too. Our defence today was disastrous with Southampton finding their way through constantly and consistently almost at will. They took the lead as early as the 20th minute with a goal that was a howling error in our defence. To be fair, we organised ourselves and grabbed an equaliser less than ten minutes later with a superb header by Henrikh Mkhitaryan, that was an extremely well-taken header. that came almost out of nowhere. For the rest of the half, we more than held our own, despite another goal scored by the home side a minute or so before the break.

On the back foot, we started the second half desperate to make a mark on the game. Another Henrikh Mkhitaryan goal levelled the score after 53 minutes but to be fair, even though we came back into the match at this point, we started to look like the side that was chasing the game. We lost the grip of the game, and it was no surprise to anyone in the stadium (and those who were watching on TV) that our defence was found wanting on several occasions; we leaked the final goal of the game with five minutes to go on the clock, but by then unfortunately, the match was running away from us, and although the final whistle was blown five minutes later, it became a game that we had difficulty containing, let alone controlling.

The problem with this match wasn’t so much as the sterling efforts by the midfield players, but how the defenders were caught out by the Saints’ strikers time and time again. This is a lesson that needs to be learned by our defenders very quickly; if not, then Mr. Emery needs to try to get some commanding defenders signed up in the January transfer window. Overall, a disappointing match from our perspective, but it is certainly one that we can learn from, and quickly, too. Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as these early days are going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Victoria Concordia Crescit.

Steve

Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon.