Interesting news today, away from real life: Samir Nasri has been offered the same contract as Cesc, £110,000 a week, to stay at Arsenal. Whether it's true or not, it comes as a good sign. If it was a story planted by Nasri's agent, then it may indicate a paving of the way to the signing of a new contract: 'we fought the club and won a better deal'. If it is a story planted by the club, at least it shows that they're trying to assert some control over the story, and if the player is eventually sold, it would not be because of penny-pinching on Arsenal's part. As I stated in the last post, I'm not at all convinced that the whole Nasri story wasn't stirred up by the agent to gain greater leverage in contract negotiations with the Arsenal - to sell him to Man United, even for £25 million, would be folly and (symbolically, for the fans) an admission of defeat. Personally, I would rather the club forced Nasri to stay and run his contract out than sell him to United this summer. The perils of player mobility yet again.
And once again, the shrill plaints from the arseblogosphere, calling Wenger out for his lack of activity. I don't know what some of these 'fans' want: for Arsene to declare that he's intent on signing Player X and have the price of the player go up, put the other club on the back foot and be less likely to do a deal, and (most importantly) indulge himself in precisely the same kind of public tapping up that we all so deplore with regard to Barca's pursuit of Cesc? No.
Now, let's begin with a few assumptions about next season.
1. Cesc is sold to Barcelona, some time in late August, for about £37 million.
2. Nasri signs a new contract.
3. Bendtner, Denilson, Squillaci and Almunia are eventually offloaded for varying amounts, sum total about £15 million.
4. Gervinho arrives early next week, for £11 million.
5. Arsenal sign a centre-back; let's say Cahill for £17 million.
6. Arsenal sign a dynamic, experienced, defensive centre-midfielder (Motta, Vidal, Barton, who knows?).
Some of the young players will go out on loan again: JET, Aneke, Miquel, Afobe for the first 3 months. I would keep a couple of others at the club who have been knocking around for a while: Henri Lansbury and Kyle Bartley. Both did really well on loan last season, the latter gaining Champions League experience with Rangers, and must be a better option than Squillaci as a fifth central defender (and with our recent injury record at this position, 5 players in this position in the squad would make a lot of sense). Lansbury did well at the Under-21 Euros as a sub for England, outshining Jordan Henderson, who Liverpool paid £20 million for. (Today's speculation is that Norwich will offer £2million for Lansbury - this seems a gross underestimate of his quality.) I'd also see whether Frimpong can come back from his year of injury and be the physical presence in the middle of the park he appeared to be last pre-season.
Here, then, are two teams that we could play from an updated squad, both playing 4-2-3-1:
Sczeczny; Sagna, Vermaelen, Cahill, Gibbs; Song, Wilshere; Gervinho, Nasri, Walcott; van Persie.
Fabianski; Eboue, Djourou, Koscielny, Jenkinson; Diaby, Frimpong; Ramsay, Arshavin, Miyaichi; Chamakh.
Add to this: Bartley, Lansbury, new central midfielder, Rosicky, Mannone.
I think this looks a pretty good squad. I hope Miyaichi can get a permit: I've seen extensive highlights of last season, when he played left-wing for Feyenoord, and he was electrifying. Great acceleration, very quick, skillful and with a good trick or two, played with his head up, good finisher. He is small, granted, and it was 'only' the Dutch league, but he reminded me of two other small, dark-haired wingers who had a great impact in their short Arsenal careers: Anders Limpar and Marc Overmars. Like the latter especially, Miyaichi is fast, direct, and can cut inside from the left and finish well off his right foot. I really like the look of him.
Miyaichi and Gervinho would give the Arsenal what they've lacked for a few seasons: directness and pace. I'd also start Walcott on the left, just off van Persie, as a striker rather than a wide player. If a new, dominant, dynamic central midfielder played alongside Wilshere instead of Song (the ideal being Paddy at age 24) then we'd have a hell of a team.
I do think Arsenal fans underestimate the qualities of some of our own players; I do think that, despite the collapse at the end of last season, the current squad is very good and could, with a bit of luck and a tweak in style (and fortitude), pick up a trophy. I don't think it needs major surgery - a bit more time, and as Arsene said today, 'one or two more' important cogs in the team, and there would be every reason for optimism.
And that would be true even if Nasri is sold.
Friday, 8 July 2011
Monday, 4 July 2011
Clichy/ cliche
I've fallen off the wagon - after months of keeping away from the Arsenal blogs, I'm back on NewsNow, searching for transfer news, the inside dope. The dope, however, is me - I'm going to swear off again.
A bizarre article in The Guardian today by Dominic Fifield is, to all intents and purposes, a call for Arsenal to break their pay structure and to pay its players what they receive at Chelsea and Man United; a demand for financial irresponsibility, in other words. It's curious how twisted the logic gets. Rather than lament spiralling wage bills (which have, and will continue to produce, calamitous and near-catastrophic consequences for large clubs - does no-one remember Leeds or Portsmouth?), the article attacks Arsenal's parsimoniousness. We should pay Samir Nasri (who has half a great season to his name) £120,000 a week, opines Fifield, because United or Chelsea or Citeh can. Well, Arsenal shouldn't. In fact, if these really are his wage demands, they should sell him, preferably abroad, and in 5 years time he can look back, as I'm sure Hleb, or Adebayor, or even Nico Anelka do and he can ask himself: 'what did I do that for?' I have a strong feeling that a lot of the Nasri tittle-tattle is his Mr 20% stirring the pot to strengthen their hand in negotiations, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to read that Nasri's staying in the end. However, you can't really expect Arsene or Ivan Gazidis to comment on this if it's all ongoing.
A little honesty from the club wouldn't go amiss, though. If there's little to spend, say so. If the Arsenal cannot compete against the 'financial doping' of Chelsea, Citeh or United, say so, loudly and often. Remind the fans that Arsenal are currently trying to play an equitable game against the house (the football-media-spectacle complex), and wins against the house are rare.
And so to Clichy. Farewell; a good player, but suspect defensively, caught out by not having a left-midfielder to track back ahead of him, leaving too often exposed. Arsene expects a lot of his full-backs - not only do they (in gridiron parlance) have to be 'shutdown corners', snuffing out the threat of opposing wingers, they also have to create the width going forward. Clichy didn't quite match up to Ashley Cole, or Sagna, or Lauren, or the blessed Nutty. He might do well in Mancini's more prosaic, defensive ethos. But a catastrophic loss? No. After all, he was part of the team that ended last season with a record that bespoke relegation rather than challenging for the title. (So was Nasri, let us not forget.) Replacing him shouldn't prove that costly or difficult, even if Gibbs's injury-prone young legs do not prove more robust. Even if what we have instead is a more stay-at-home, defensively minded player.
In fact, I wouldn't mind at all the signing of some meat-and-potatoes players, some gritty workers (for despite what Martin Samuel says here, Arsene has never bought superstars - he makes them). Perhaps Benzema would set the front line alight, but he might not, and he hasn't exactly done so in Madrid. I can't say I'm excited by, or give any credence to the Kevin Doyle rumours (nor Stewart Downing for £20m, etc) but if we did buy, say, Leighton Baines, and Parker or Barton, and Samba or Cahill, none of these are 'superstars'. But I wouldn't be unhappy with them. Add in Gervinho, and maybe one other, and I think we'd have a pretty good mix with our current squad, even without Clichy, Nasri and even Cesc. This Arsenal team needs more Ray Parlours, not more Thierry Henrys.
A bizarre article in The Guardian today by Dominic Fifield is, to all intents and purposes, a call for Arsenal to break their pay structure and to pay its players what they receive at Chelsea and Man United; a demand for financial irresponsibility, in other words. It's curious how twisted the logic gets. Rather than lament spiralling wage bills (which have, and will continue to produce, calamitous and near-catastrophic consequences for large clubs - does no-one remember Leeds or Portsmouth?), the article attacks Arsenal's parsimoniousness. We should pay Samir Nasri (who has half a great season to his name) £120,000 a week, opines Fifield, because United or Chelsea or Citeh can. Well, Arsenal shouldn't. In fact, if these really are his wage demands, they should sell him, preferably abroad, and in 5 years time he can look back, as I'm sure Hleb, or Adebayor, or even Nico Anelka do and he can ask himself: 'what did I do that for?' I have a strong feeling that a lot of the Nasri tittle-tattle is his Mr 20% stirring the pot to strengthen their hand in negotiations, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to read that Nasri's staying in the end. However, you can't really expect Arsene or Ivan Gazidis to comment on this if it's all ongoing.
A little honesty from the club wouldn't go amiss, though. If there's little to spend, say so. If the Arsenal cannot compete against the 'financial doping' of Chelsea, Citeh or United, say so, loudly and often. Remind the fans that Arsenal are currently trying to play an equitable game against the house (the football-media-spectacle complex), and wins against the house are rare.
And so to Clichy. Farewell; a good player, but suspect defensively, caught out by not having a left-midfielder to track back ahead of him, leaving too often exposed. Arsene expects a lot of his full-backs - not only do they (in gridiron parlance) have to be 'shutdown corners', snuffing out the threat of opposing wingers, they also have to create the width going forward. Clichy didn't quite match up to Ashley Cole, or Sagna, or Lauren, or the blessed Nutty. He might do well in Mancini's more prosaic, defensive ethos. But a catastrophic loss? No. After all, he was part of the team that ended last season with a record that bespoke relegation rather than challenging for the title. (So was Nasri, let us not forget.) Replacing him shouldn't prove that costly or difficult, even if Gibbs's injury-prone young legs do not prove more robust. Even if what we have instead is a more stay-at-home, defensively minded player.
In fact, I wouldn't mind at all the signing of some meat-and-potatoes players, some gritty workers (for despite what Martin Samuel says here, Arsene has never bought superstars - he makes them). Perhaps Benzema would set the front line alight, but he might not, and he hasn't exactly done so in Madrid. I can't say I'm excited by, or give any credence to the Kevin Doyle rumours (nor Stewart Downing for £20m, etc) but if we did buy, say, Leighton Baines, and Parker or Barton, and Samba or Cahill, none of these are 'superstars'. But I wouldn't be unhappy with them. Add in Gervinho, and maybe one other, and I think we'd have a pretty good mix with our current squad, even without Clichy, Nasri and even Cesc. This Arsenal team needs more Ray Parlours, not more Thierry Henrys.
Saturday, 2 July 2011
The crisis narrative
Arsenal in crisis, yet again. Cesc, Nasri, Clichy, even RvP to be sold? The first three, anyway. What can we make of this, other than the Arsenal really need some media managers who are (a) more competent at handling the traditional media outlets and (b) are more pro-active at getting positive stories across the Arse-blogosphere, even by (as some American sports teams do) by personally engaging with them in q & a's or other kinds of communication? At the moment, the club seem prepared to let the hysteria blow itself out, a risky stratgey considering the negativity around.
There's an excellent post at the Yankee Gunner blog about the 2007-8 team, which explores what happened to the side that nearly (and should have) won the title in 2008, then lost Flamini, Hleb, Adebayor, Rosicky and eventually Toure and Gallas and Eduardo over the next couple of years through a variety of reasons. What struck me was that the 2008 team was itself remarkably different from the 2006 Champions League finalists, which was the last hurrah for the Invincibles. Here are the two starting line-ups:
2006: Lehmann, Eboue, Toure, Campbell, Cole, Pires, Silva, Cesc, Hleb, Ljungberg, Henry. Subs: Almunia, Flamini, Reyes, Bergkamp, Van Persie, Senderos, Clichy.
2008: Lehmann, Sagna, Gallas, Toure, Clichy, Hleb, Flamini, Cesc, Rosicky, Adebayor, Eduardo.
and for purposes of comparison, a starting 2010-11 line-up:
Fabianski, Sagna, Koscielny, Djourou, Clichy, Song, Wilshere, Cesc, Walcott, Arshavin, van Persie.
In effect, Arsene has been forced to reconstruct the side twice in five years. Cesc and van Persie are the only points of continuity. In a previous post I noted the importance of player mobility and contract status, which has, if anything, accelerated in the interim. The problem now for Arsene isn't money - Arsenal have never spent the kind of sums that rivals like Man United and Liverpool (or latterly Chelsea and Man City) have afforded, in terms of fees and the wage bill - it's time. Not in the sense that Carlo Ancelotti might understand it, but in terms of building a team; a team not built from off-the-peg superstars, but from specific components that Arsene sees as re-shaping the dynamic of the team. If the right player costs £5 million rather than £30 million, all well and good, but it's the role they play in the overall shape of the team that's important.
And if Arsene has 'failed', I don't think it's in his unwillingness to fork over £30 million of the club's cash, nor in the 'youth project' (which I would understand at least in part as a response to the increasing problem of player mobility, as well as to the changing economic landscape of European football) - it's the shape of the team that has come into being since 2008. Recent acquisitions have placed technique over size and power, which is fine, if you want to play that way (it works for Vermaelen). However, what has been lost is pace, and penetration. There's no Overmars, there's no Henry. In terms of the squad, I think it's time to move Walcott off the wing and into a central role, as a striker - Arsenal need to rediscover the art of the through-pass and the searing burst of pace. The threat of this would make opposing defences play deeper, giving the midefield more room - and even if Cesc and Nasri go, we still have quite a few creators.
I'd also suggest a move back to 4-4-2, but the 2002-style formation, when we still had Ray Parlour on the right, tucking in to form a central 3 when necessary; and a goalscoring, attacking player wide left, switching with the support striker and the left midfielder as necessary. (Arshavin, bought to play there, doesn't like the role.) One possibility would be to switch Theo to the left - to play the Overmars role, cutting in from the left and striking with the right foot. The current Arsenal team need to pass and to move with greater pace, to switch positions with more creativity, to play on the counter more effectively. They need a tempo player in midfield, a strong centre-back and either a left-winger or a striker. Even losing Cesc and Nasri and Clichy, buying good, effective players in these positions would be an excellent first step towards undoing the damage of the end of last season.
There's an excellent post at the Yankee Gunner blog about the 2007-8 team, which explores what happened to the side that nearly (and should have) won the title in 2008, then lost Flamini, Hleb, Adebayor, Rosicky and eventually Toure and Gallas and Eduardo over the next couple of years through a variety of reasons. What struck me was that the 2008 team was itself remarkably different from the 2006 Champions League finalists, which was the last hurrah for the Invincibles. Here are the two starting line-ups:
2006: Lehmann, Eboue, Toure, Campbell, Cole, Pires, Silva, Cesc, Hleb, Ljungberg, Henry. Subs: Almunia, Flamini, Reyes, Bergkamp, Van Persie, Senderos, Clichy.
2008: Lehmann, Sagna, Gallas, Toure, Clichy, Hleb, Flamini, Cesc, Rosicky, Adebayor, Eduardo.
and for purposes of comparison, a starting 2010-11 line-up:
Fabianski, Sagna, Koscielny, Djourou, Clichy, Song, Wilshere, Cesc, Walcott, Arshavin, van Persie.
In effect, Arsene has been forced to reconstruct the side twice in five years. Cesc and van Persie are the only points of continuity. In a previous post I noted the importance of player mobility and contract status, which has, if anything, accelerated in the interim. The problem now for Arsene isn't money - Arsenal have never spent the kind of sums that rivals like Man United and Liverpool (or latterly Chelsea and Man City) have afforded, in terms of fees and the wage bill - it's time. Not in the sense that Carlo Ancelotti might understand it, but in terms of building a team; a team not built from off-the-peg superstars, but from specific components that Arsene sees as re-shaping the dynamic of the team. If the right player costs £5 million rather than £30 million, all well and good, but it's the role they play in the overall shape of the team that's important.
And if Arsene has 'failed', I don't think it's in his unwillingness to fork over £30 million of the club's cash, nor in the 'youth project' (which I would understand at least in part as a response to the increasing problem of player mobility, as well as to the changing economic landscape of European football) - it's the shape of the team that has come into being since 2008. Recent acquisitions have placed technique over size and power, which is fine, if you want to play that way (it works for Vermaelen). However, what has been lost is pace, and penetration. There's no Overmars, there's no Henry. In terms of the squad, I think it's time to move Walcott off the wing and into a central role, as a striker - Arsenal need to rediscover the art of the through-pass and the searing burst of pace. The threat of this would make opposing defences play deeper, giving the midefield more room - and even if Cesc and Nasri go, we still have quite a few creators.
I'd also suggest a move back to 4-4-2, but the 2002-style formation, when we still had Ray Parlour on the right, tucking in to form a central 3 when necessary; and a goalscoring, attacking player wide left, switching with the support striker and the left midfielder as necessary. (Arshavin, bought to play there, doesn't like the role.) One possibility would be to switch Theo to the left - to play the Overmars role, cutting in from the left and striking with the right foot. The current Arsenal team need to pass and to move with greater pace, to switch positions with more creativity, to play on the counter more effectively. They need a tempo player in midfield, a strong centre-back and either a left-winger or a striker. Even losing Cesc and Nasri and Clichy, buying good, effective players in these positions would be an excellent first step towards undoing the damage of the end of last season.
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Whaddaya got?
I gave up on blogging on the Arsenal about 18 months ago now, because, in a sense, my original plan was completed - I have given up on the Arsenal. Well, that's not entirely true. I have given up on the Premier League. I despise the hype, the boorishness of its culture, the poverty of the analysis that surrounds it, the breathtaking idiocy of some of its blogs, the blindess of its tribalism. I hate its reactionary petit-nationalism, its unthinking commitment to up-and-at-'em, its sexism. I hate its nth-degree consumerism, its assumption that money makes right, its ethical vacuity. I hate MotD and Sky.
But I do like football. I watch Championship matches when they're on the tv, Europa League, the odd Champions League game on ITV (if I can stomach Tildesley). Arsenal runs in my blood. And so...
Looking back over my old posts, it's surprising to note how little has changed. The keynote is still frustration; we need to sign crucial players; the future of several stars in uncertain; and so on. It's as though Arsenal has now assumed a place in perpetual present, a Groundhog day wherein Arsenal always finsih 3rd or 4th, always 'blow it', a vocal minority always calling Wenger a c**t and demanding his removal, an equal weight of voices advising reasonableness and caution. Round and round and round and round.
What's the way forward? How can I or we gain positivity? How can I watch Arsenal TV again with pleasure, rather than in the run of results at the end of 2010-11 where each woeful effort meant I couldn't bring myself to watch it?
I dunno. But the crucial thing, surely, in not to get caught up in the moment's frustration. Man United sign Jones and Young, so Arsenal fans demand signings NOW! And what if they don't happen until next week? I dunno. Nothing, probably.
So: Arsenal in exile. I'm exiled from Arsenal, because I've come to despise the league in which they play. They themselves are in exile because their manner of playing and behaving does not suit the current state of the Premier League. I wish Arsenal were exiled to Ligue 1 or the Bundesliga so I could follow them with less corrosion to my soul.
I no longer support Arsene in everything he does; teh end of last season put paid to that. But I don't think removing him (and replacing him - with Ancelotti or Coyle or whoever) would solve the problems. Because, for me, they're systemic, institutional, cultural. Arsene has done brilliantly in a job, the complexity and difficulty of which I can only guess at. For many younger supporters, he's now a father figure who many would like to see dethroned because they've known no other manager. I can understand this. I agree that Arsenal may not win anything else under Arsene. But he demands my respect. And what happens when Daddy is no longer there?
'What you rebelling against, Johnny?'
But I do like football. I watch Championship matches when they're on the tv, Europa League, the odd Champions League game on ITV (if I can stomach Tildesley). Arsenal runs in my blood. And so...
Looking back over my old posts, it's surprising to note how little has changed. The keynote is still frustration; we need to sign crucial players; the future of several stars in uncertain; and so on. It's as though Arsenal has now assumed a place in perpetual present, a Groundhog day wherein Arsenal always finsih 3rd or 4th, always 'blow it', a vocal minority always calling Wenger a c**t and demanding his removal, an equal weight of voices advising reasonableness and caution. Round and round and round and round.
What's the way forward? How can I or we gain positivity? How can I watch Arsenal TV again with pleasure, rather than in the run of results at the end of 2010-11 where each woeful effort meant I couldn't bring myself to watch it?
I dunno. But the crucial thing, surely, in not to get caught up in the moment's frustration. Man United sign Jones and Young, so Arsenal fans demand signings NOW! And what if they don't happen until next week? I dunno. Nothing, probably.
So: Arsenal in exile. I'm exiled from Arsenal, because I've come to despise the league in which they play. They themselves are in exile because their manner of playing and behaving does not suit the current state of the Premier League. I wish Arsenal were exiled to Ligue 1 or the Bundesliga so I could follow them with less corrosion to my soul.
I no longer support Arsene in everything he does; teh end of last season put paid to that. But I don't think removing him (and replacing him - with Ancelotti or Coyle or whoever) would solve the problems. Because, for me, they're systemic, institutional, cultural. Arsene has done brilliantly in a job, the complexity and difficulty of which I can only guess at. For many younger supporters, he's now a father figure who many would like to see dethroned because they've known no other manager. I can understand this. I agree that Arsenal may not win anything else under Arsene. But he demands my respect. And what happens when Daddy is no longer there?
'What you rebelling against, Johnny?'
The first time I saw Arsenal (from Untold Arsenal)
Highbury in the dark, a cold December afternoon. Floodlights pick out Jimmy Rimmer standing in front of the Clock End, he’s had nothing to do all match. My Uncle Allan, who had taken me to the game, sees me watching Rimmer and says, ‘He’s been in his armchair all afternoon.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but Arsenal were in the middle of a terrible run of form, winning only 4 of 18 games from Autumn through to early Spring. We’re grinding out a one-nothing win against Burnley, who would be relegated come May. I’m cold, I’m six years old, and the warmth of ham sandwiches and a flask of stewed tea is long, long gone from my stomach. But I feel something else in there now. Arsenal are going to win, and it’s a few days before Christmas.
I’m hooked.
We’d finish a moribund 17th that season, and I was there with my Uncle Allan on the infamous opening day of the next season, 1976-7, when we lost to a promoted Bristol City side on a beautiful August afternoon. I enjoyed it all the same, at the time, but I realised only today why I’ve always remembered watching Final Score on the opening day of a later season, 1979-80, sitting in the forbidding front room of my Auntie Margaret’s flat in Harlow. Arsenal won 4-0 at Brighton to top the embryonic table, and I was unreasonably excited. The first day of the season, it’s not a proper table, I know, I know; but I’d never seen Arsenal top of the table before.
Of course, being six years old at the Burnley game, I didn’t know how terrible that Arsenal side were. The bounty of Wenger’s time throws those Barren Years into stark relief. Uncle Allan had bought me a glossy book from the stall beneath the West Stand called ‘Arsenal, Arsenal’ and I’d marvelled at grainy colour pictures of Arsenal scoring against Ajax in the 1970 Fairs Cup semi-final – against Ajax of all teams, the kings of Europe, whose players I’d idolise during the 1978 World Cup – and knew that I supported a club with history. A great history.
Highbury, on a cold dark afternoon in December 1975, against fellow relegation-candidates Burnley, still spoke of grandeur, of tradition, of that great history. The glorious nights against Ajax and Anderlecht still shimmered behind the mundane performances of the 1975-6 team, who were scratching around the bottom of the Division One table as though the Double had been fifty, not five years before. It would be more than thirteen years until I’d see Arsenal win another title, and at times, supporting the team seemed a bit of a thankless task. But I never doubted we were a great club. You only had to go to Highbury to see that for yourself.
What really thrilled me and terrified me, that day, was the crowd. Being seated in the West stand, it wasn’t the surge that lifted you clear of the ground that I’d feel as an adult, standing on the terraces, that shocked me, but the sound. The songs, the shouts of the fans, the swearing at the players. Being a young boy in a mass of men, who generated some kind of visceral, primal, exhilarating and gut-wrenching swell of voices, voices in unison, as one entity, one thing, the Arsenal, it was an unearthly experience. Like nothing else I’d experienced, and by God, I loved it.
I was totally hooked.
The ham sandwiches and the flask of tea were packed in a small vinyl holdall, with a red-brown tartan on the side. As I watched the final minutes of the match, it was at my feet under the West Lower seat, and it also contained a programme, which I’d pored over for an hour while we waited for the match to start. Uncle Allan and I would later board a bottle-green Eastern National 400 bus back home, back to Essex, from King’s Cross coach station, which to me seemed as outlandish and dangerous as the Cyclops’s cave. The dark city outside and the dark station inside blurred together, an overwhelming swirl of dark and light and smells and sounds. I’d read the programme over and over again as the lights on the A127 swung by, reliving the whole day in my head.
It’s the sounds that stick in my memory, 35 years later. The press of people and the whooshing air being pushed in front of the Piccadilly line train as I edged nervously backwards on the Kings Cross Underground platform, the wind tugging at my hair as pieces of litter began to swirl about. The urgent roar of the Arsenal crowd as the team tried to drive home an attack, my own boyish shrieks as I attempted to join in. Overheard banter of men, North Londoners, alien but reassuringly familiar, sounding like my Granddad Jim and my Dad who, like his brother Allan, were part of the post-war London dispersal. And the release, the relief, of the full-time whistle, the clunk of the seats returning to upright, and the shuffle of thousands of feet on the steps.
The return journey has gone from my memory, in truth. I only really remember the bus rides and Underground journeys to the ground, not the ones taking us back home. There’s only one return journey I remember, literally skipping across the road as Uncle Allan and I went back to my grandparent’s flat in Laindon (part of Basildon) to meet up with my Mum and Dad, my heart full of joy for Rix’s sumptuous strike from the corner of the box. In my memory it’s early summer, a hazy sun still in the sky in early evening, golden light and long shadows. I don’t know now whether I remember what was outside or what was inside, whether that Saturday evening was real (I remember it as a 3-1 win against Villa, but trawling the records I can’t find a match that meets the criteria) or whether it was unreal, just some kind of amalgam of my memory, my emotion and my imagination.
Jimmy Rimmer, though, standing somewhere near the penalty spot, all alone, his team-mates attacking the goal at the other end, he’s real. Why was I looking at him rather than at them? I don’t know. It must say something about me. But he’s there still, at Highbury in December 1975, in a green goalie’s jersey, clapping his hands together to keep out the cold, inside my head.
I’m hooked.
We’d finish a moribund 17th that season, and I was there with my Uncle Allan on the infamous opening day of the next season, 1976-7, when we lost to a promoted Bristol City side on a beautiful August afternoon. I enjoyed it all the same, at the time, but I realised only today why I’ve always remembered watching Final Score on the opening day of a later season, 1979-80, sitting in the forbidding front room of my Auntie Margaret’s flat in Harlow. Arsenal won 4-0 at Brighton to top the embryonic table, and I was unreasonably excited. The first day of the season, it’s not a proper table, I know, I know; but I’d never seen Arsenal top of the table before.
Of course, being six years old at the Burnley game, I didn’t know how terrible that Arsenal side were. The bounty of Wenger’s time throws those Barren Years into stark relief. Uncle Allan had bought me a glossy book from the stall beneath the West Stand called ‘Arsenal, Arsenal’ and I’d marvelled at grainy colour pictures of Arsenal scoring against Ajax in the 1970 Fairs Cup semi-final – against Ajax of all teams, the kings of Europe, whose players I’d idolise during the 1978 World Cup – and knew that I supported a club with history. A great history.
Highbury, on a cold dark afternoon in December 1975, against fellow relegation-candidates Burnley, still spoke of grandeur, of tradition, of that great history. The glorious nights against Ajax and Anderlecht still shimmered behind the mundane performances of the 1975-6 team, who were scratching around the bottom of the Division One table as though the Double had been fifty, not five years before. It would be more than thirteen years until I’d see Arsenal win another title, and at times, supporting the team seemed a bit of a thankless task. But I never doubted we were a great club. You only had to go to Highbury to see that for yourself.
What really thrilled me and terrified me, that day, was the crowd. Being seated in the West stand, it wasn’t the surge that lifted you clear of the ground that I’d feel as an adult, standing on the terraces, that shocked me, but the sound. The songs, the shouts of the fans, the swearing at the players. Being a young boy in a mass of men, who generated some kind of visceral, primal, exhilarating and gut-wrenching swell of voices, voices in unison, as one entity, one thing, the Arsenal, it was an unearthly experience. Like nothing else I’d experienced, and by God, I loved it.
I was totally hooked.
The ham sandwiches and the flask of tea were packed in a small vinyl holdall, with a red-brown tartan on the side. As I watched the final minutes of the match, it was at my feet under the West Lower seat, and it also contained a programme, which I’d pored over for an hour while we waited for the match to start. Uncle Allan and I would later board a bottle-green Eastern National 400 bus back home, back to Essex, from King’s Cross coach station, which to me seemed as outlandish and dangerous as the Cyclops’s cave. The dark city outside and the dark station inside blurred together, an overwhelming swirl of dark and light and smells and sounds. I’d read the programme over and over again as the lights on the A127 swung by, reliving the whole day in my head.
It’s the sounds that stick in my memory, 35 years later. The press of people and the whooshing air being pushed in front of the Piccadilly line train as I edged nervously backwards on the Kings Cross Underground platform, the wind tugging at my hair as pieces of litter began to swirl about. The urgent roar of the Arsenal crowd as the team tried to drive home an attack, my own boyish shrieks as I attempted to join in. Overheard banter of men, North Londoners, alien but reassuringly familiar, sounding like my Granddad Jim and my Dad who, like his brother Allan, were part of the post-war London dispersal. And the release, the relief, of the full-time whistle, the clunk of the seats returning to upright, and the shuffle of thousands of feet on the steps.
The return journey has gone from my memory, in truth. I only really remember the bus rides and Underground journeys to the ground, not the ones taking us back home. There’s only one return journey I remember, literally skipping across the road as Uncle Allan and I went back to my grandparent’s flat in Laindon (part of Basildon) to meet up with my Mum and Dad, my heart full of joy for Rix’s sumptuous strike from the corner of the box. In my memory it’s early summer, a hazy sun still in the sky in early evening, golden light and long shadows. I don’t know now whether I remember what was outside or what was inside, whether that Saturday evening was real (I remember it as a 3-1 win against Villa, but trawling the records I can’t find a match that meets the criteria) or whether it was unreal, just some kind of amalgam of my memory, my emotion and my imagination.
Jimmy Rimmer, though, standing somewhere near the penalty spot, all alone, his team-mates attacking the goal at the other end, he’s real. Why was I looking at him rather than at them? I don’t know. It must say something about me. But he’s there still, at Highbury in December 1975, in a green goalie’s jersey, clapping his hands together to keep out the cold, inside my head.
Arsenal, the cult of personality and the collective (from Untold Arsenal)
Another week, another defeat, another round of Chicken Licken posturing from the Arse-blogosphere. I’m not going to dwell on the painful realities of the loss to Chelsea, here, but offer another long-term perspective of Arsenal’s situation. I will start with the cult of personality that informs much football coverage in this country.
If you think about it, there’s very little penetrating analysis of football in the British popular media, from tabloid journalism to MotD to Football First. It often concentrates on personalities, where it does exist: how did so-and-so play? In the worst of the Arse-blogosphere this descends into invective against perceived offenders (the perpetual Denilson, this week Clichy, in the past Song and Eboue) or, of course, calls for Arsène’s resignation, as he’s to blame for every bad performance, not the players.
On a few blogs you read how Arshavin is clearly unhappy, the other players don’t like him and neither does the manager. (If this were true, and if Arsène has total control of footballing matters, why did Arsenal buy Arshavin and why still play him?) The cult of personality has the institution of Arsenal FC, its team and tactics and strategies, replaced by Arsène himself, a one-man band, an obsessive, a crank. I refer you to my previous post for more in this line.
Myles Palmer, himself the cheerleader of the Chicken Licken faction (and who does it for reasons of personal animus and the journalistic ‘story’, it seems, rather than emotional investment in the club) has written recently that Wenger is not a good tactician, rarely winning games through tactical adjustments or substitutions. Instead, Palmer calls Wenger a ‘choreographer’.
In part, I would tend to agree that Arsène is not the greatest manager at tactical switches on-the-fly, but I think it’s important here to make a distinction between those tactics and strategies. Tactics are short-term decisions or procedures that implement a broader, long-term plan of action, a strategy, to achieve a certain goal. While Arsène may have weaknesses as a tactician, as a strategist I think that he is without peer.
Most managers are not, and indeed in the current footballing culture of instantaneous success, cannot afford to be strategists. It is to Arsenal’s credit as a club that in the mid-1990s they employed world football’s most innovative strategic thinker, then completely unheralded in this country, to take the club forward, something that Bruce Rioch was signally unable to convince Dein and other board members that he would be able to do. Since when, Arsène Wenger has overseen the complete remodelling of Arsenal’s training facilities, its move to a new stadium, its re-imagination not as ‘boring, boring Arsenal’ but as the most thrilling footballing side in England, its backroom culture, its recruitment strategies with regard to players. Everything is different now.
What, then, is the current strategy? If we ignore the ‘blame game’ and cult of personality rhetoric which sees Arsenal’s football planning in terms of one man’s stubbornness or whimsical desire to ‘experiment’, how can we analyse what Arsenal are doing with a long-term perspective?
The ‘youth policy’ is fundamental. This is far from being a whimsical experiment to see whether he can win the league ‘with kids’. It’s a strategic plan that responds to long-term developments in football that have still to fully unwind. It begins with the arrival of Sky monies, the transfer bubble, the spending of 70-80% of revenues on salaries which sustained the English Premier league from the mid-1990s until 2008, which has also had the side-effect of producing large numbers of institutional casualties: Leeds United, Charlton, Norwich, Southampton, Portsmouth, and so on. Thankfully, Arsenal have not placed themselves in debt to finance the acquisition of superstars. It’s now clear that Arsène saw the inevitable deflation of the transfer bubble coming and decided upon an alternative long-term strategy to maintain the club’s position as an elite European and Premier League institution. Spending on younger players allows Arsenal to maximise the value of its outlay.
It is also well-known that Arsenal’s current internal culture runs counter to the prevailing English one of nightlife, celebrity and conspicuous consumption. This is why Arsenal develops its own players, to educate them in a different kind of lifestyle. Even media superstars like Thierry Henry behaved differently to Beckham or Terry; Arsenal players like Jermaine Pennant and Ashley Cole, who clearly were attracted to and were part of that English footballing culture, left the club, and it’s to be hoped that Jay-Emmanuel Thomas’s recent misadventure is not a bad omen for him.
That’s not to say that the club rules its players with an iron hand. Instead, the club (and Arsène) is criticised for insulating its players from the world, that they’re ‘pampered’ and ‘soft’. Clearly it would be absurd to take Arsène’s public statements of support for his players as a sign that he is incapable of criticising them in private (though some do), but the crucial thing is that Arsène constantly emphasises group responsibility, group mentality, group togetherness.
This emphasis on teamwork is, I think, a response to developments in the relationship between player and club/ employer over the last 10 years. While the Bosman ruling gave players the necessary freedom to leave a club at the end of a contract, it tended to dissolve the bonds of loyalty that were once the norm. We see very few ‘one-club’ players now. If fans are now customers and consumers, players are contractors, willing to move from team to team if opportunities arise to earn more, or win more trophies. Fair enough; but this must have a negative impact on group dynamics, on team ‘chemistry’. This is also why Arsenal consistently, and rightly, refuse to abandon their wage structure.
It is also the reason why Arsenal have spent the year re-signing young players to long-term contracts. Player mobility is only controlled by the club if they have two years or more on their contract to run, and player value is determined partly by contract length. Vieira and Henry might have seemed undersold at the time of their sales, but contract length as well as age limited their sell-on value. (And if you don’t think sell-on value is important, remember that Manchester United have changed their own transfer strategy to target under-26s, and that Liverpool struggled mightily – and failed – to offload unwanted players like Babel because their estimation of the player’s value was too high.) Limiting player mobility allows for the group to develop together. Incoming players are intensively scouted in order to maintain this team dynamic.
Today’s Arsenal, even though Arsène necessarily embodies the club in the public sphere, is actually wedded to the opposite of the cult of personality: the primacy of the collective. Adebayor and Toure were purged in the summer because their cliques disrupted the collective, and the team has been healthier for it. The primacy of the collective is also the primacy of the strategy over the tactic, the long-term over the short-term, the development of a team rather than the acquisition of a roster of stars.
And here comes an unexpected conclusion: Arsène Wenger is contemporary Arsenal’s Virgin Queen. Like Elizabeth I, Arsène Wenger understands that the long-term continuity of the institution is far more important than the merely personal or individual. Elizabeth rejected the dynastic politics of the 16th century (where geo-politics was conducted through marriage and personal alliances) in order to construct a different nation state that would survive her: ‘England’ was her child, she needed no biological heir. Arsène Wenger has constructed a different Arsenal that will survive him, in terms of its finances, its facilities, its scouting networks, its group of players; and like Elizabeth, a cult of personality surrounds him that obscures, in the popular eye, what he has truly done. Perhaps he likes it that way.
If you think about it, there’s very little penetrating analysis of football in the British popular media, from tabloid journalism to MotD to Football First. It often concentrates on personalities, where it does exist: how did so-and-so play? In the worst of the Arse-blogosphere this descends into invective against perceived offenders (the perpetual Denilson, this week Clichy, in the past Song and Eboue) or, of course, calls for Arsène’s resignation, as he’s to blame for every bad performance, not the players.
On a few blogs you read how Arshavin is clearly unhappy, the other players don’t like him and neither does the manager. (If this were true, and if Arsène has total control of footballing matters, why did Arsenal buy Arshavin and why still play him?) The cult of personality has the institution of Arsenal FC, its team and tactics and strategies, replaced by Arsène himself, a one-man band, an obsessive, a crank. I refer you to my previous post for more in this line.
Myles Palmer, himself the cheerleader of the Chicken Licken faction (and who does it for reasons of personal animus and the journalistic ‘story’, it seems, rather than emotional investment in the club) has written recently that Wenger is not a good tactician, rarely winning games through tactical adjustments or substitutions. Instead, Palmer calls Wenger a ‘choreographer’.
In part, I would tend to agree that Arsène is not the greatest manager at tactical switches on-the-fly, but I think it’s important here to make a distinction between those tactics and strategies. Tactics are short-term decisions or procedures that implement a broader, long-term plan of action, a strategy, to achieve a certain goal. While Arsène may have weaknesses as a tactician, as a strategist I think that he is without peer.
Most managers are not, and indeed in the current footballing culture of instantaneous success, cannot afford to be strategists. It is to Arsenal’s credit as a club that in the mid-1990s they employed world football’s most innovative strategic thinker, then completely unheralded in this country, to take the club forward, something that Bruce Rioch was signally unable to convince Dein and other board members that he would be able to do. Since when, Arsène Wenger has overseen the complete remodelling of Arsenal’s training facilities, its move to a new stadium, its re-imagination not as ‘boring, boring Arsenal’ but as the most thrilling footballing side in England, its backroom culture, its recruitment strategies with regard to players. Everything is different now.
What, then, is the current strategy? If we ignore the ‘blame game’ and cult of personality rhetoric which sees Arsenal’s football planning in terms of one man’s stubbornness or whimsical desire to ‘experiment’, how can we analyse what Arsenal are doing with a long-term perspective?
The ‘youth policy’ is fundamental. This is far from being a whimsical experiment to see whether he can win the league ‘with kids’. It’s a strategic plan that responds to long-term developments in football that have still to fully unwind. It begins with the arrival of Sky monies, the transfer bubble, the spending of 70-80% of revenues on salaries which sustained the English Premier league from the mid-1990s until 2008, which has also had the side-effect of producing large numbers of institutional casualties: Leeds United, Charlton, Norwich, Southampton, Portsmouth, and so on. Thankfully, Arsenal have not placed themselves in debt to finance the acquisition of superstars. It’s now clear that Arsène saw the inevitable deflation of the transfer bubble coming and decided upon an alternative long-term strategy to maintain the club’s position as an elite European and Premier League institution. Spending on younger players allows Arsenal to maximise the value of its outlay.
It is also well-known that Arsenal’s current internal culture runs counter to the prevailing English one of nightlife, celebrity and conspicuous consumption. This is why Arsenal develops its own players, to educate them in a different kind of lifestyle. Even media superstars like Thierry Henry behaved differently to Beckham or Terry; Arsenal players like Jermaine Pennant and Ashley Cole, who clearly were attracted to and were part of that English footballing culture, left the club, and it’s to be hoped that Jay-Emmanuel Thomas’s recent misadventure is not a bad omen for him.
That’s not to say that the club rules its players with an iron hand. Instead, the club (and Arsène) is criticised for insulating its players from the world, that they’re ‘pampered’ and ‘soft’. Clearly it would be absurd to take Arsène’s public statements of support for his players as a sign that he is incapable of criticising them in private (though some do), but the crucial thing is that Arsène constantly emphasises group responsibility, group mentality, group togetherness.
This emphasis on teamwork is, I think, a response to developments in the relationship between player and club/ employer over the last 10 years. While the Bosman ruling gave players the necessary freedom to leave a club at the end of a contract, it tended to dissolve the bonds of loyalty that were once the norm. We see very few ‘one-club’ players now. If fans are now customers and consumers, players are contractors, willing to move from team to team if opportunities arise to earn more, or win more trophies. Fair enough; but this must have a negative impact on group dynamics, on team ‘chemistry’. This is also why Arsenal consistently, and rightly, refuse to abandon their wage structure.
It is also the reason why Arsenal have spent the year re-signing young players to long-term contracts. Player mobility is only controlled by the club if they have two years or more on their contract to run, and player value is determined partly by contract length. Vieira and Henry might have seemed undersold at the time of their sales, but contract length as well as age limited their sell-on value. (And if you don’t think sell-on value is important, remember that Manchester United have changed their own transfer strategy to target under-26s, and that Liverpool struggled mightily – and failed – to offload unwanted players like Babel because their estimation of the player’s value was too high.) Limiting player mobility allows for the group to develop together. Incoming players are intensively scouted in order to maintain this team dynamic.
Today’s Arsenal, even though Arsène necessarily embodies the club in the public sphere, is actually wedded to the opposite of the cult of personality: the primacy of the collective. Adebayor and Toure were purged in the summer because their cliques disrupted the collective, and the team has been healthier for it. The primacy of the collective is also the primacy of the strategy over the tactic, the long-term over the short-term, the development of a team rather than the acquisition of a roster of stars.
And here comes an unexpected conclusion: Arsène Wenger is contemporary Arsenal’s Virgin Queen. Like Elizabeth I, Arsène Wenger understands that the long-term continuity of the institution is far more important than the merely personal or individual. Elizabeth rejected the dynastic politics of the 16th century (where geo-politics was conducted through marriage and personal alliances) in order to construct a different nation state that would survive her: ‘England’ was her child, she needed no biological heir. Arsène Wenger has constructed a different Arsenal that will survive him, in terms of its finances, its facilities, its scouting networks, its group of players; and like Elizabeth, a cult of personality surrounds him that obscures, in the popular eye, what he has truly done. Perhaps he likes it that way.
English Football's code of omerta (first published on Untold Arsenal)
I was listening to the radio in the car, driving back after family commitments, when I heard that Aaron Ramsey had been assaulted on a football field in Stoke. I was emotionally thrown back to the day of Eduardo’s injury, ten minutes after which I told an Arsenal supporting-friend: this has finished our season, and Eduardo’s career. And as on that day, I wondered what on earth I was doing in giving my support to a sport that allows the violence of a Smith, a Taylor, or a Shawcross to take away a year or two of the careers of very bright young footballing talent. In these moments, I’ve had enough of English football. It makes me physically sick.
I read the howls of rage, of disbelief, and of grief too, on this blog and others. Like Arsene, likeTony, and like you too I would guess, I believe that Ramsey’s injury is no coincidence. It is the product of a way of playing, a product of aggression and of the tacit condoning by the authorities, by referees and by the footballing media of an over-physical approach by Arsenal’s opponents because they do not have the footballing ability to match our team. ‘Ramsey was too quick for him’, I’ve heard it said. Perhaps. But being slower than another player is not an alibi for breaking his leg.
Tony Pulis’s reaction, to defend Shawcross the person (‘his Mum took him home’) while refusing to acknowledge the horrible severity of the act, should be placed on tape with McLeish defending Taylor, and the ‘tackles’ on Eduardo and Ramsey. It should then be shown to Pulis, to McLeish, to all players and coaches and managers and administrators in England, to show up their self-deception and expose the recurrence of a self-serving and self-deceiving rhetoric of English ‘honesty’ that seems to mitigate or even cancel out the violent act. ‘Honest’ and good men can do horrendous things, even by accident.
Anger in the Arse-blogosphere has been universal and understandable. However, the usual closing of ranks in the mainstream football media has not been consistent. On Sky’s Sunday Supplement talkshow, which I had previously abandoned for its ongoing commitment to the terminally banal (and unwitting exposure of the empty heads of most football correspondents), Brian Woolnough tried to shepherd the panel towards a familiar denunciation: that Arsene had gone ‘over the top’ in his pinpointing of the physicality other teams use against his team. Patrick Barclay and others refused to follow the party line; no, they said. Arsenal are ‘roughed up’ more than others. Wenger does have a point, and his anger is understandable. Barclay went further, to say that there is a ‘wildness’ in the English game that leads inevitably to injuries like that of Eduardo and Ramsey. Arsenal are too often the victims of this ‘wildness’. As the program went on, Woolnough became increasingly tetchy with this show of independent thinking.
Also mentioned in the programme were Craig Bellamy’s comments after the Chelsea-Citeh match. Bellamy, admittedly a loose cannon, said: ‘I know what JT is like and nothing surprises me about it, so I’m not going to comment on that. I think everyone in football knows what the guy is like, but that’s off the field. On it he’s an outstanding player. He’s a great captain for Chelsea.’ ‘Everyone in football knows what the guy is like’: including the journalists who now express such qualms about Terry’s private life but who were happy to keep quiet to enjoy a chummy relationship with ‘JT’.
Bellamy’s comments, like Bridge’s refusal of the handshake, were a breach in the code of silence that informs what I would call (with a big nod to, of all people, President Dwight D. Eisenhower) the ‘football-media complex’: the FA, the Premier League, Sky, the BBC, the news media, the referees, the clubs, the players. This code of silence, what is called in Mafia terms omertà, is ‘an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority’ based on concepts of honour and shame, that is also enforced by fear: ‘He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace’ (Sicilian proverb).
Such a code of silence protects the individual from immediate further harm but perpetuates the corrupt system: individual acts of vengeance are permitted within the system of omertá but not informing to the authorities, because that would disrupt the system itself. The midfield ‘enforcer’ is the emperor of omertà: if your team-mate is kicked, you kick right back. Harder.
In the English ‘football-media complex’, too many things have been taboo, left deliberately unspoken in the code of omertà. But the cracks are beginning to show. In this spirit, here is an incomplete list that can be diagnosed from this week’s football:
1.The FA and Premier League have been criminally negligent in their financial dealings and practices, encouraging a boom-and-bust economic cycle that is now claiming high-profile victims.
2.The level of understanding and reporting of these matters in the mainstream media has also been negligent in the extreme, and has been left to sites such as Untold to lead the way to a better understanding of the economic morass now threatening to swallow weaker (and some stronger) members of the Premier League.
3.The FA has been criminally negligent in its fostering of an internal footballing culture that would help young men with too much money, and too little developed an ethical sense, to negotiate their way in the world without harming others. JT shitting in his own nest, so to speak, has finally revealed to the population at large what the industry has known for a long time: that football is now up to its own ankles in it.
4.The FA has been criminally negligent in the coaching and technical training afforded to most professional footballers. Aggression and strength covers these limitations but fatally weakens England national teams at the highest competitive levels and ultimately leads to Ryan Shawcross’s assault on Ramsey. Shawcross is so technically deficient in the tackle that he deliberately drove his foot as hard as he could through where he thought the ball was, snapping Ramsey’s tibia and fibula. If you look at a picture of the incident, Shawcross’s studs are not up, but he is well over the ball. He is not attempting to injure Ramsey deliberately, but nor is he trying to win the ball cleanly, with technique; he is attempting to drive through ball and player with crushing force. By contrast, think of Moore on Jairzinho in 1970, the ‘greatest tackle ever’. I’ve just watched this again on YouTube. Moore uses no force. With timing and skill he reaches out his right leg and pokes the ball off Jairzinho’s instep, then gets up and plays on. Or think of Bob Pires on Paddy Vieira at Highbury: knee over the ball, foot on the ground, clean and decisive.
5.The FA, Premier League, and the ‘football-media complex’ pays ironic homage to Arsenal and Arsene Wenger’s achievements by reinforcing its exceptionalism (a double edged-sword, as Arsenal’s difference is often used as an alibi for its negative treatment). In reality, in terms of the coaching, culture and financing in place at Arsenal, the club should be held up as a model for emulation.
It’s time, then for ‘Clean Hands’, a thorough investigation into the economics, the culture and the practices of football in England, that lets down players, fans and clubs alike. We need to know what happened at Portsmouth, why Chelsea seems to be decaying from within, why English players are so much less than they could be – and why three of Arsenal’s players have had their legs broken in 5 years. And finally, after the courageous win at Stoke, how about a Premier league title for Arsenal, against the odds, without megastar spending, without unsustainable debts, ‘with kids’? If we could do it, with a different economic and cultural field to play on, why not others?
I read the howls of rage, of disbelief, and of grief too, on this blog and others. Like Arsene, likeTony, and like you too I would guess, I believe that Ramsey’s injury is no coincidence. It is the product of a way of playing, a product of aggression and of the tacit condoning by the authorities, by referees and by the footballing media of an over-physical approach by Arsenal’s opponents because they do not have the footballing ability to match our team. ‘Ramsey was too quick for him’, I’ve heard it said. Perhaps. But being slower than another player is not an alibi for breaking his leg.
Tony Pulis’s reaction, to defend Shawcross the person (‘his Mum took him home’) while refusing to acknowledge the horrible severity of the act, should be placed on tape with McLeish defending Taylor, and the ‘tackles’ on Eduardo and Ramsey. It should then be shown to Pulis, to McLeish, to all players and coaches and managers and administrators in England, to show up their self-deception and expose the recurrence of a self-serving and self-deceiving rhetoric of English ‘honesty’ that seems to mitigate or even cancel out the violent act. ‘Honest’ and good men can do horrendous things, even by accident.
Anger in the Arse-blogosphere has been universal and understandable. However, the usual closing of ranks in the mainstream football media has not been consistent. On Sky’s Sunday Supplement talkshow, which I had previously abandoned for its ongoing commitment to the terminally banal (and unwitting exposure of the empty heads of most football correspondents), Brian Woolnough tried to shepherd the panel towards a familiar denunciation: that Arsene had gone ‘over the top’ in his pinpointing of the physicality other teams use against his team. Patrick Barclay and others refused to follow the party line; no, they said. Arsenal are ‘roughed up’ more than others. Wenger does have a point, and his anger is understandable. Barclay went further, to say that there is a ‘wildness’ in the English game that leads inevitably to injuries like that of Eduardo and Ramsey. Arsenal are too often the victims of this ‘wildness’. As the program went on, Woolnough became increasingly tetchy with this show of independent thinking.
Also mentioned in the programme were Craig Bellamy’s comments after the Chelsea-Citeh match. Bellamy, admittedly a loose cannon, said: ‘I know what JT is like and nothing surprises me about it, so I’m not going to comment on that. I think everyone in football knows what the guy is like, but that’s off the field. On it he’s an outstanding player. He’s a great captain for Chelsea.’ ‘Everyone in football knows what the guy is like’: including the journalists who now express such qualms about Terry’s private life but who were happy to keep quiet to enjoy a chummy relationship with ‘JT’.
Bellamy’s comments, like Bridge’s refusal of the handshake, were a breach in the code of silence that informs what I would call (with a big nod to, of all people, President Dwight D. Eisenhower) the ‘football-media complex’: the FA, the Premier League, Sky, the BBC, the news media, the referees, the clubs, the players. This code of silence, what is called in Mafia terms omertà, is ‘an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority’ based on concepts of honour and shame, that is also enforced by fear: ‘He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace’ (Sicilian proverb).
Such a code of silence protects the individual from immediate further harm but perpetuates the corrupt system: individual acts of vengeance are permitted within the system of omertá but not informing to the authorities, because that would disrupt the system itself. The midfield ‘enforcer’ is the emperor of omertà: if your team-mate is kicked, you kick right back. Harder.
In the English ‘football-media complex’, too many things have been taboo, left deliberately unspoken in the code of omertà. But the cracks are beginning to show. In this spirit, here is an incomplete list that can be diagnosed from this week’s football:
1.The FA and Premier League have been criminally negligent in their financial dealings and practices, encouraging a boom-and-bust economic cycle that is now claiming high-profile victims.
2.The level of understanding and reporting of these matters in the mainstream media has also been negligent in the extreme, and has been left to sites such as Untold to lead the way to a better understanding of the economic morass now threatening to swallow weaker (and some stronger) members of the Premier League.
3.The FA has been criminally negligent in its fostering of an internal footballing culture that would help young men with too much money, and too little developed an ethical sense, to negotiate their way in the world without harming others. JT shitting in his own nest, so to speak, has finally revealed to the population at large what the industry has known for a long time: that football is now up to its own ankles in it.
4.The FA has been criminally negligent in the coaching and technical training afforded to most professional footballers. Aggression and strength covers these limitations but fatally weakens England national teams at the highest competitive levels and ultimately leads to Ryan Shawcross’s assault on Ramsey. Shawcross is so technically deficient in the tackle that he deliberately drove his foot as hard as he could through where he thought the ball was, snapping Ramsey’s tibia and fibula. If you look at a picture of the incident, Shawcross’s studs are not up, but he is well over the ball. He is not attempting to injure Ramsey deliberately, but nor is he trying to win the ball cleanly, with technique; he is attempting to drive through ball and player with crushing force. By contrast, think of Moore on Jairzinho in 1970, the ‘greatest tackle ever’. I’ve just watched this again on YouTube. Moore uses no force. With timing and skill he reaches out his right leg and pokes the ball off Jairzinho’s instep, then gets up and plays on. Or think of Bob Pires on Paddy Vieira at Highbury: knee over the ball, foot on the ground, clean and decisive.
5.The FA, Premier League, and the ‘football-media complex’ pays ironic homage to Arsenal and Arsene Wenger’s achievements by reinforcing its exceptionalism (a double edged-sword, as Arsenal’s difference is often used as an alibi for its negative treatment). In reality, in terms of the coaching, culture and financing in place at Arsenal, the club should be held up as a model for emulation.
It’s time, then for ‘Clean Hands’, a thorough investigation into the economics, the culture and the practices of football in England, that lets down players, fans and clubs alike. We need to know what happened at Portsmouth, why Chelsea seems to be decaying from within, why English players are so much less than they could be – and why three of Arsenal’s players have had their legs broken in 5 years. And finally, after the courageous win at Stoke, how about a Premier league title for Arsenal, against the odds, without megastar spending, without unsustainable debts, ‘with kids’? If we could do it, with a different economic and cultural field to play on, why not others?
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