Monday, March 09, 2009

Phil Brown does Arsenal a favour: Could excitement turn to a big wet water balloon or a fireworks display

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
Charlie Ash - Come Back Lover
Little Boots - New In Town (Fred Falke remix)
Jong Pang - Small Cut Sensations
Katy Perry & Yelle - Hot 'N' Cold (Yelle Remix)
More Hot N Cold Mixes
Don Diablo vs The Ting TIngs - That’s not my rave
Mr. Oizo - Steroids (Mr. Oizo’s Remix) With Uffie I think...

So here we come - not long left now and so much to be decided upon with some big games coming up - players returning and a masterful plan needed to get things into motion.

It seems we've got all the ingredients to really quick start this situation. The players are high, the players need it but what more is needed? Our greatest problem has been consistency and continuity of goals? Things can go pear shaped at any point and overall, if that happens we'll be heading for another set of questions and fingers pointing.

But can it get bad?

Doesn't appear to be the case. At present the players are playing with a new fluidity and determination. I think what we have here is a blessing in disguise and that blessing came from Phil Brown.

Phil Brown's anger can only build up an impetus and a retaliation against everything. What he intended to do was wind us up but this kind of behaviour only brings a team together?

Did Phil know he was doing this? Did he do us a favour? I can't see how a manager can miss the element of siege mentality and the possibility of giving that siege mentality to a team when they need it must.

Somebody should light up the touch paper.

Premier League curse of Broken Long Term Strategies - Analysing Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal

Royksopp - Remind Me (Ernest St Laurent Moonfish mix)
St. Vincent - The Strangers Mixed up epicness
Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You Cool - Morrisey meets YYYs
Little Boots - Day N' Nite (Kid Cudi Cover)
Kid Cudi - Dat New New (VIKING Remix)
Mylo - Drop the Pressure 2009 (Electro Bass Mix)
Alphabeat - Digital Love (Daft Punk Cover)
Mr Oizo - Positif (The Exo 'What The Fuuuck' Remix) JESUS This is GooD!!!

Everybody wants to be on the winning team. God knows why if I'm honest. Everybody wants to win. The whole "it's the taking part that counts", I get somewhat. It's like saying if you weren't there, they couldn't have won. Your representation counts towards somebody else achieving something but does anybody care? In this day and age most fans would love to curse other teams, other players, other managers and anything other than what they can justify with all kinds of strange reasonings than they are the best. Everybody wants to be top dog.

Maybe I could come up with same philosophical reasoning behind why - but maybe one reason why humans have continued to be greedy buggers for millenia is the fact we trample over the weak and make a big song and dance about it. For many many years.

We all want to be attached to that.

When United went on a never ending winning spree during the 90s, people called their fans glory hunters. I have to say right here, it's very easy to pull yourself off as a real fan these days. With an arsenal of internet forums, news sites, news channels etc etc, you can take sound bites and highlight how much you know about the club you are a fan of. You can talk strategy and highlight the games you have been to and if it wasn't for the inability to get tickets and/or the fact you live miles and miles away you'd go to more games to support the team, said with the ferocity of going to war. This supposed Glory hunting isn't some new design in the world today. Even the weakest team in the world has Glory hunters. Support your local team they say. I guess this is a badge of honour. An immense exhibition of one's defence of where they live. Just as stupid as supporting a team miles away (I say writing a blog on a football team) which is just as stupid as supporting a football team (I say writing a blog on a football team).

I guess, football clubs know this. They know we need to be winners. Whether you are a follower of a weaker, lower league team or a team known the world over by camera hogging football fans. Football Clubs know that, the more you expose yourself as winners or even in the weaker clubs case, you expose yourself as a strong club fighting against the world and the might of the world (so as long as you remain in ownership and make profit or whatever - you survive). So as it comes to pass, this is what United did and other clubs followed suit.

What exactly is the G14 but a group of clubs interested in a common interest to use their might to stay at the top of the game. This is done via the new Champions League. A money hogging Bionic Marketing scheme. And that's what it is. Marketing strategies.

If you can do something spectacular. If you can present yourselves as unique in some way or other then you can grip the public and therefore you can make money. Let's not beat around the bush about this. That's what this is about. For all the failures the world has - there is something we can grab to be a success and it costs money - or maybe the price of a football shirt.

The Arsenal problem arrived after the Invincible season. We had player after player demanding the club live up to their expectations to win things. Nothing special - but to win things. That's it. It's not difficult when you are a club like Arsenal who makes the money it does - unless you make it hard for yourself. After winning two doubles and then the Invincible season - Arsenal had to up the game to bring in more supporters. This was in my view, the winning with kids strategy.

This was such a brilliant strategy that, it had money written all over it. With all kinds of changes in the game, on contracts and fees and rights to players you have developed, Arsenal would make a killing.

Basically, Arsenal became too greedy and unfortunately, it was not in a footballing sense.

United had done the Treble years before. This was a huge achievement. A mammoth achievement. Absolutely huge. Yet, if you like at United and also Liverpool, they are clubs that have had a history that brings in the fans and if you give fans history then they will continue to come back for more. Liverpool winning the UEFA Cup, FA Cup and League Cup was one thing that gave them the impetus to hold onto fans. The fact that they had a future and were building towards something. All the board needed to do was show that - and this is what United did too. They just showed the fans and the players that they had ambition.

Arsenal didn't. Arsenal went for the kids strategy and the playing beautiful strategy. As I said before, there is no price for lost years. You lose years out of Stupidity or Greed or Both in Arsenal's case, then there is no turning back. You can only go forward. It's like, you can lie and once you've lied, you can never go back. The truth on the other hand is quite flexible because, it's real.

It did work to get fans. Arsenal continued the playing beautiful rhetoric and the talk about kids. It's all about saying a lie long enough and loud enough that everybody believes it and the fact that the papers and the fans and everybody on the internet was saying it - we all bought it. Because we're all a bunch of glory hunters running around believing all we hear because we want to be brilliant football fans who know our football. Just sound bites and rhetoric can do that.

So what is the new strategy? God knows. It all went weird when we stopped holding on to players. How mental can you get!? For the sake of looking good and being brilliant we went and sold real resources, substantial resources so the club can go for the new grab a fan strategy.

Personally, it has opened the new world of football (maybe the old world of football) for what it is. Broken and corrupted.

If it was all about winning. We'd see it on the pitch. But we don't see that do we.

Labels:

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

There is no price for the years we have lost.... Arsenal aren't really a football club are they - we're lost our ability to be that good.

Emiliana Torrini - Heartstopper ('stop Hearting' Mix By Mm)
Tiga vs. Jack Frost - Mind Shout (Tronik Youth Mix
Ladyhawke - Paris Is Burning (Alex Metric Remix) Some other good tunes here too
Jay-Z, M.I.A., T.I., Lil' Wayne and Ka… - Swagger Like Us (Grammy Awards 02-08-2009)
music go music - warm in the shadows Blondie type electronica
N.A.S.A. - Gifted Feat. Kanye West, Santogold, Lykke Li
Yeti Lane - This Day - Lonesome George Beck meets Cocteau Twins


Because if Arsenal we're a football club then, I guess we'd buy players or we'd make an effort to get back up there at the top.

I think we're just not as good as we once were. Ultimately we have lost our ability to be that good. We just have. We are a lesser team than before. It's quite an unfortunate outcome to be (after a year where we were dominating) languishing outside the top four and maybe looking at finishing sixth as well.

How can this be acceptable? We were idiots to be running behind Usmanov taking over the club. Now that was hardly a problem was it. We were talking about our legacy and we're better than others and here we are behind teams getting charities as sponsorship and being considerate and compassionate enough to lower ticket prices. Who are we? Quite pathetic to be accurate.

Now we've got supporters groups who are quite frankly more interested in generating atmosphere from a small corner of a 60k stadium (???????) and another group that thinks 1 share makes a big difference (????) and another that appears to be more interested in name rather than nature. We're hardly the club and fans we once were and our pandering to Wenger as supporters like some leader of a cult instead of being openly and objectively critical of him cost us deeply.

There is no price for the years we have lost.

We've lost it through greed of our board members. The arrogance of our manager. The arrogance of our fans. The rose tinted glasses of power hungry football fans.

The real football fans, the real Arsenal fans can stand up and be proud now. They stood up to the club and the board and questioned the arrogant xenophobia against Usmanov and Kroenke. The questioned Wenger when needed and used his words against the critics. It's laughable that we used the cheap credit that has caused a national and global catastrophe to build a stadium and fall down the premiership. What a complete and utter joke.

Yet we class ourselves as a football club. We think we're better than other clubs. We're not. I say this because I want to be great and I want to be the best and I want the greatest team in football to actually mean something because - where as clubs would bend over backwards and be beaten black and blue to have our money, we've merely glorified in accounts and finance and looked stupid as we disappeared into obscurity with only our vanity and arrogance to hold as trophies.

The good thing about having a good solid self sustained income (Thanks Danny Fiszman) at a Football club is you can take risks. You can be bold and aggressive and go out there and fight and this is intention. Intention to achieve and win. This is what we lack. How stupid. We can't even be a football club. We're blinded by business and suits.

We fail one year - (as we have done) then we spend again next year and make something of the money we have and you know what? We'll make money, we'll have left over as we sell players. It's so simple but our number crunching is nauseatingly sickening. I feel like I'm a fan of some Blue Chip company - not a football club.

Fat load of good our income is doing is. Sad and Pathetic.

There is no price for the years we have lost.

Three Months and Counting - This could get dirty

Milosh - Awful Game (Troublemaker Remix) Very Neo-Radiohead like
Marina & The Diamonds - Obsessions
MSTRKRFT - Easy Love Giorgio Morodor Disco type
Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me (Don Diablo Remix) Pet Shop Boys meet Faulkner - awesome
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career Scottish band like Stone Roses meet Cranberries
My Little Pony - Do You Really Love Me, Or Am I Just In Your Network?

After a complete turnaround of events and the acquisition of one Andrei Arshavin we have found what could be the team that will sail us straight into the Champions League finals. We could consider from this point our only obstacles.

At present we have

Van Persie, Eduardo, Arshavin, Vera, Adebayor for Striker duties and then the usual possibilities for midfield and what we could fashion from that. A strong set up but obviously it remains another season that has yet to find some glory but with this team we can get something. This looks very pretty.

I am sure other teams are looking on and realising while they weaken we're brimming with confidence and have a strong unit at our disposal. A very clear cut and laid back Champions League and FA Cup before the balanced chilled out end to the season.

For once we can be realistic in the fact - we're strong again.

Monday, February 16, 2009

At Arsenal is everything an International Incident!

Matt & Kim - Daylight
LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
Kid Cudi - Can I Be
Justin Timberlake - My Love (Diplo Remix) Using the same track to mix others.
Tiga - You Gonna Want Me Sounds Re-engineered
MarissaNadler - River of Dirt Not another girl with a guitar
The Notwist - Boneless
Metric - Help I'm Alive

Yes, we know, he has been out for almost a year and he had to have surgery and required rehabilitation etc etc and maybe this that and the other and you saw monkeys in a tree outside Highbury which means that Peter Hill Wood to all our benefit may explode with Piles - FOR GOD'S SAKE FOUR EYES PLAY EDUARDO!!!

Is he fit? Yes. Is he available? Yes.

Then play him.

Why in the hell is everything at Arsenal like a panic attack for? At other clubs, at every other club in the world it's a case of - wahey, play him, he plays for us. No messing around no pathetic drama - just play the player. We lose, we draw, we win - it's like it's the end of the world and if we don't give a one thousand man press conference everything will fall apart. It's like Arsenal as a club needs these couch sessions with reporters and PR men to keep breathing. It's our own personal tragedy over and over. We really need the attention.

I really do believe there is this need for Wenger to stand in a press conference and really feed these reporters with numerous little sound bites so that later he can say, "oh look, I saved the day - Eduardo didn't have a dangerous itching attack on the field. You know why -? It's because I'm fab and do a funky dance at the dug out."

And we lap it up. It's like Football really is an Arsenal fans personal Kumbay Yah - a gross need for all the Churchy songs we had in Primary School Assemblies to come true. First it was Adams and before that O'leary and before that Brady and before that any old sod and before that Charlie George - ignoring every other super player we had at the club at the time but right now every Arsenal fans Mini-Me, locked away in their sub-concious is singing "I was cold I was hungry in the North Bank, were you there? Were you there? I was cold I was hungry were you there? And some silly corner of Arsenal fans obsessed with Atmosphere wouldn't help me - were you there?" so we have to replace that "Kumbay-Yah Wenger, Kumbay-Yah" with little quotes and sound bites in our own little collection of the Bible called the RED TOPS!

Just deal with it. People are losing jobs - the country isn't growing, everything is slowing down. Our Greed - our selfishness - which is what Religion today is all about - Feeding the self and feeding it with rubbish and not reality, which has led this country to a downfall, doesn't matter right now.

Just show us football, Entertain Us and please play this player because God knows we've got rid of every other decent player who was worth a damn (with the most stupidest superficial Pseudo-Religious Nonsense excuses) but shush shush, we're not supposed to talk about... because he was right. He has the foresight. He is the master. NO! He is just a manager who likes to have a chin wag to the press about nonsensical nothingness and should be out there focussing on real football matters - getting players to shoot, to be this CREATIVE thing we're supposed to be!

Now we're still behaving like these guys have never seen a football before and Wenger has created an android who needs to observe, analyse, store the data then later process it for like 24 hours in some highly complicated Mathematical sub-routine before he can play football - and even then it would be a case of in true Wenger style passing the ball around just to get a feel of things. Oh Yes, we've seen it all before. Every new bloody player at Arsenal comes on the field to do one-two effing passes!!

JUST SHUT UP AND PLAY HIM!!!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Crunching at Credit and the gap between Rich and Poor

Royksopp - What Else Is There? ft. Karin Dreijer (Thin White Duke Remix) Dancey
Andrew Bird - Oh No Simon and Garfunkely
Little Boots (MGMT Cover) - Time To Pretend Cute
WZRDZ - Smells Like Teen Spirit (WZRDZ remix) Dance mix for Smells like Teen Spirit
Gang Gang Dance - House Jam (Hot Chip Remix) Very interesting mix
Gui Boratto - Haute Couture Chilled out Trance

I'm watching and reading like everybody else and seeing all this talk about hard times and difficulties. I remember the last recession you see and it wasn't because of hard times - it was because it was defined as a recession and people talked about it and people blamed the Tories and I just carried on as I was and just doing my thing. I didn't feel it. I know a lot of people did, they lost jobs and things died down but not everybody felt it.

A lot of things go through my mind during this recession. It's I guess a matter of essentials and having the essentials in life and nothing more but then if you are still working and you're taking home lets say about 2 to 4k (plus) a month in wage then maybe (depending on circumstance) you won't feel it as much. Then other things come into play.

I think we create our distractions in life and for some of us it could be spending and being busy while for others you could be distracted by absolutely nothing - and everything else is an annoyance. Doing nothing is a welcome distraction while everything else is an annoyance. You see I met someone this week - the school bike that he was, now married and two kids but busy it seemed and for me it was a case of stepping into a role of getting busy and getting on with things.

This is on a par with somebody else I met, an ex-teacher who told, you get busy so quickly and then you realise you're almost dead.

Your life is supposed to flash by before you pass away and it made me wonder what really matters and when you have all that money what would you really miss? Have you heard stories of people who lose everything during down times and then re-build it during up times? It's this that makes me see that eventually it's very difficult to see what really matters around us and how subjective our notions of achievement are in the greater scheme of things.

For instance I have to renew my membership for a charity and I for the life in me couldn't find the membership renewal on their website so I clicked on "Vacancies" (at a Charity) for a laugh, and they were giving like 40k, 50k salaries and giving maternity leave vacancies at 40 to 50k as well - along with being according to some "quality" newspaper one of the best work places in the country. It had won awards.

The best? A charity paying so much and lacking volunteers? It was bizarre for me in this climate but I guess this charity gets a lot of money - well a lot of it goes on admin it seems.

Eventually, we all live to that ripe old, well the majority of us do, by hook or by crook we get there whether we are rich, poor or whatever, we all get there and we all have our sense of achievement but for me it's about what somebody does with their money. I realised that as we're all surviving during this period what would somebody do with money during this period. Like me, you could think and think a lot and wonder where your money is going even when Gordon is saying spend spend spend I'm wondering how bizarre that is.

I cut down because I thought it seems to be a bad time and so I do but I don't know many people who have lost their job... - well hardly anyone to be honest but I hear about it and it seems some businesses are there surviving making their way through in tough times and I guess it's all businesses changing what they do to accommodate survival and respect of wealth. You have to get by how you can...

So why is it with all our wealth at Arsenal we can't do this? The fear is very strange but if it's that bad - get in good quality staff and resources to almost guarantee success. Respect the wealth you have because many people don't have that and what would somebody without money do with that wealth. Would you squander it or do something amazing because those are the things that matter? Money must be respected rather than saved but what can any of us do with money?

I had the most strangest question given to me once - like, "do you ever go to restaurants?" It was said as though, "I know I do but I bet you don't". And it showed how ugly and dirty ambition is and greed and arrogance is but this is what some people do with money.

They go to restaurants.

And that's all some people can do, unfortunately.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

O leary's impossible possible. Eduardo returns, Arshavin is new - Sell Adebayor - buy a DM

The Bird and the Bee - Love Letter to Japan Some plinky plonky coolness
Futurecop! - Class of 1984 (Anoraak Remix) Sasha meets Underworld
Lykke Li - Breaking It Up (Pocketknife Loosefoot Remix - Extended Version)
Junior Boys - Dull To Pause Tales of the Unexpected electronica like
Snow in Mexico - You and my Winter Pet Shop Boys meet Suzanne Vega
FooFighters - Everlong (DiscoTech Remix)
Radiohead - There There (The Twelves Remix)

We've got problems at Arsenal and I bet we'll get top dollar for Adebayor. It's about time we just let him go on his way and played the lifestyle of superfly Pimp extraordinaire and let us get on with playing football. Eventually, for some reason the Arsenal fans will get on the back of one player and see him and only him as Arsenal and this is our problem.

We don't tend to see the massive efforts of the less notable players. We just let them fly by. Very few people admired Eduardo until he had to disappear from the game for a year - it was huge detrimental but it was also hugely detrimental because we made errors elsewhere. We sold huge important players - more important than Adebayor and we were left with a less able team struggling away for efforts that were unquestionable right merely months ago. That is funny isn't it.

That in itself tells you why it's a problem. Who would have thought Villa would be ahead of us with a Charity sponsorship, American owners and a in the large part, English team? Who?

SO funny. All the things a lot of our fans think are impossible, Villa have proved are possible and we say Wenger says it is impossible. O'leary and Villa have proved the impossible is Possible!

We can't do that. We have more money, we have more income and we can't do that. We make excuses - it's laughable. Slowly we are being found out for the fakes we are and it's a crying shame.

Time to re-engineer our team and stop lying.

Not playing Arshavin is like throwing away the skin at KFC

Don Diablo - Black Heat (Whitenoise Remix) Electro Trash
Beirut - Transatlantique Morrissey meets Simon and Garfunkel
Beirut - My Wife, Lost in the Wild More from Beirut, but electronicky
Little Boots - Meddle (AC Slater & DJ Skeet Skeet Remix featuring Goldielocks) Little Boots meets Quality Grime
Dear Reader - Never Goes Fiona Apple/Regina Spektor but haunting
Bloc Party - One Month Off (Filthy Dukes Remix - Vocal) Nice mix
Enorma Sass - Japan
The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name (LA Riots Remix) Tings Tings Meet The Eurythmics

So we bought this player, we need wins and we need some change and then we go a player down and how do we respond - oooh, I know, we'll defend. Now somebody will come up with this logic that this is what you do.

But you don't do you. When you need points, you aim for points. Why buy a player and not player. What's all this crazy cautious player? Let's treat it like a business and say - a broken player is a leech on the club's finances so we're afraid a player will be injured and out. This is the accountant screaming down your throat.

So we're cautious - our possession. The accountants drive to get more goals in a cautious manner is to hold possession and hold it for a long time. The propoganda of beautiful football is in fact a finance office saying, look after the players - they are the club's bread and butter because if they're injured we will lose money.

The real reason behind penny pinching at a club. Not football - God who wins from all this? It's the Directors. My previous post highlights clearly that we've been fishing for free money in a credit crunch that would bleed dry the nation. Our board of Directors have let us down - make no mistake of it. There will always be people saying that Arsenal are the pinnacle and we know how to make money - like that is so important.

But until we give our sponsorship away to a Charity and lower our Ticket prices (like Aston Villa and Sunderland respectively) we will be behind the pack. Somebody pays for the low interest rate we got in a credit crunch. I am sure the accountant/business speech in getting that low interest rate was more jobs and boosting the economy in North London. Where as we will get somebody else in the country to pay the interest rate we SHOULD be paying by losing jobs and so forth.

Welcome to Arsenal's position, moral and ethical as it is, in the credit crunch.

We're nasty.

Everything is coming full circle and as much as I hate to admit it, all our critics regarding our finances and poaching young players were absolutely right but our rose coloured - or was it raspberry the colour of those shirts? Well rose coloured spectacles are just as close to blind.

One day we will return to being a football club. One day... No idea when but I am guessing with the way the economy is moving - 2010/2011 season. Or then again people may grab and run with their money.

Anyway, if we want to win we have to play our players but that depends on what those up in the crazy office will say and whether it's "cost effective".

Ashburton Grove's place in destroying the economy - EEK

Pet Shop Boys - Love Etc Goldfrapp meets Vangelis
Figure – Steaks & Vodka (Jesse Jamz Remix) Like something Eddie Halliwell would play
Couer de pirate - commes des enfants (and remix by andy carmichael) Nice
Royksopp - Happy Up Here
Foals - Electric Bloom (The 9000 remix) The Clash meet Little Boots
DJ Shadow feat. Mos Def - Six Days (Remix) Brilliant (Hip Hop/Breakbeat)
Lil Wayne - Lollipop (Verdis Remix) Lil Wayne Electro Trash (ish) mix
Architecture in Helsinki - That Beep Another Great Australian Electro outfit
Mo Do - Ein, Zwei, Polizei (Mustard Pimp Remix) Excellent Electro Hard house

Just watching the Bankers who lent us money "apologising" on TV.

It just came to me that if we hadn't had this credit crisis and idiotic bankers throwing money around then we wouldn't have had the stadium at such a stupid interest rate. Let's face facts, some poor family around this country - some poor family? A lot of poor families around this country are suffering because of the low interest rate we paid on the 100s of millions of pounds we used to make a stadium that the board and the investors will make money from.

Hey, you know what is even more funnier? It's like Kreonke and Usmanov were thinking this all along. Forget about taking out a loan - why not leech and sponge off a Football Club that has taken advantage of a crazy economy instead - what a laugh.

And we thought we were a club led on moral and ethical grounds. The benchmark of the beauty of football. I'd give that accolade to Aston Villa and Sunderland at this present point in time. The Winds of Change and all that and what a kop out - it's all too good to be true.

Here we are - this is hilarious, in fact it's quite sickening. Here we are saying, wow Wenger, he's so shrewd, he's an ECONOMIST - :D, he is an ECONOMIST. He has given us this STADIUM. Oh God that is so funny - when in fact we took advantage of an exploding economy to build a stadium that not, that will not be favourable not to the supporters who wait in vain like Religious people wait for their respective salvation/promised land but the board of directors and you know what? This is why Peter Hill Wood always talks down about our players because he is there for the money and the investment and the ripping off of the little man with strangeness of strangeness that bleeds the populace via The City - that is where he and his counterparts were schooled.

It's all very ugly and nothing to be proud of, in fact it's disgusting. We look at Chelsea and laugh at the fact they have one owner or Manchester United and their debt and Liverpool's squabbles but they're not like us using somewhat immoral means. OK they were available and we took advantage but somebody loses out and at present it has been the fans and it has been the public who will pay for this with a crunch, losing jobs, falling house prices, rises in taxes and an uncertain future for their family.

OK, some people could say some football clubs did the same but not as bled and destroyed as we had done. Our advantage would be in the biggest and the best and spending tonnes of money in a time where everybody was spending money - especially the construction firms and other businesses we employed to make this happen. Everything was bleeding the economy of money that wasn't there - for our favour.

This is how you destroy. :oD

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Arshavin, Tottenham and 20 years return of the North London Rivalry

Metric - Help I'm Alive Kate Nash meets someone posh
Wavves - So Bored The Strokes Meet The Pumpkins
Sugarcoin - Acidly Royksopp meets Johnny Cash
Feist and Ben Gibbard - Train Song Simon and Garfunkel meet Kate Bush
Barzin - Let's Go Driving Slow acousticy song
Nil - Ma Disconica Justice meets Jarre
Beni - My Love Sees You (Classixx Remix)Kraftwerk meets Tori Amos


I don't think Tottenham have been our rivals since the late 80s or early 90s but now with more investment and a greater drive to turn things around, Tottenham have finally reached that phase. I know the table can be deceiving in this light but Tottenham are playing a thoughtful approach to a quick return to being contenders - well not at the top but important players in the premiership who can break a teams run.

On the other end, while Tottenham are able to make these quick changes with the aid of a huge support - we take things slower and buy one player. He's a great player, brilliant in fact but I think this is a player that will keep us at 5th place not move us forward.

Arshavin, I don't believe is a player who changes a teams fortunes but is an insurance player who can guarantee you retain your position. We should face facts that he is not a big league player but a Russian league players - a big difference. Apparently we have him as a playmaker and one has to wonder how he will grasp the teams he will be up against as well as the players. Some of these he has seen before, others never but he hasn't played against some of the brute reality of the game.

That's for the current top four though. Against Tottenham, I think they will be destroyed fairly easily as long as Arshavin and the players around him can find some balance and stability - at any point in the game. This doesn't have to be a 90 minute game. We just don't want to walk into this game and never gain even a glimmer of confidence.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Arshavin surplus to requirements or the new Jesus Christ?


CLICK


Close Enough - Pain and Pleasure Coldplay meets Jay Z
Passafire - Ghost Man Some Nu-Reggae
Some 808 State
Heloise & The Savior Faire - Illusions (Modus Vivendi Golden Remix) Blondie meets Goldfrapp
Kings Of Leon Vs. Lykke Li - Knocked Up (Rodeo Mash Up) Kings of Leon meets Lykke Li
Coeur de Pirate - Comme des Enfants (Le Matos remix) Awesome - Cute French Girl meets Jarre meets Paul Van Dyk
Metric - Help I'm Alive (Acoustic) Lykke Li meets Duffy
Faded Paper Figures - Metropolis Crystal Castles meets Suzanne Vega
Depth Effect - One day or so feat. Cyne Lightning Seeds meet Def Jam
Mightyfools - Addict (Original Mix) Tony De Vit meets Fedde Le Grand
Technotronic Vs MSTRKRFT - Pump up the Jam
Technotronic meets Kraftwerk
Simian Mobile Disco - Upside Down Jamiroquai meets Mylo
Lil' Wayne - Ay Man feat. Pharrell (Neptunes) Action Movie music meets Hip Hop
Justin Timberlake - Better not Together Portishead meets Michael Jackson

I once bought a DVD Recorder and it was well ahead of the time it was first released. I thought it was the best thing ever considering the technology involved but then like 6 months later I realised it was pretty defunct and done for.

Arshavin is coming closer and closer to 30 years old and you have to wonder is this going to worth it? Forgive me for being confused, maybe being 27 isn't such a bad deal and it's the double speak from the club that makes me feel this way.

I do agree that we have to get em young (24/25 seems logical from learnings of Arsenal's calamities) and then get them into the squad to be blood for the future. We were either getting them too young (cause they're cheap) or too old (cause they're cheap) but now we get someone who is, let's say 28 by the time we can see his best.

It would be nice to see this guy to be the best ever and a turning point but there are so many issues to deal with, all the responsibilities on one pair of shoulders just makes me continue to wonder. It's a big ask. All kinds of things could go wrong from injury to no position, to adapting to Arsene's carefully constructed Heston Blumenthal footballing world (which isn't to everyone's tastes anymore).

I think it is kind of the step in the right direction. It is a risk, it is a bit dodgy, he is a very good player, we could take a different direction and hopefully build from this. We've got rid of like 4 or 5 kids to pay his wages so at least we're trying to do all things at once still...?

My view is defending is the new Counter Attack.