Should Arsenal accept the reality of debt in the modern world?
For all our talk about beautiful football, we were beaten by it twice last week. It seems that beautiful football is something we have made up ourselves at Arsenal and can only mean what we want it to mean, whether we win or lose. We win, lose and draw with beautiful football so everybody else is wrong apart from Arsenal because we're doing it right.
This is an easy sell. Look at Steve Jobs on his sermon on the mount performances telling the world how he is giving them "what they need" when in fact, it's an idiot's game all this consumerism and branding. You have to be a fool to part with your cash simply because it means something at the expense of all the things in the world that really do matter to us, or should matter for that example.
In football, there is a reliance upon an industry that churns out employees with massive wages at a high cost for the consumer. Arsene Wenger earns millions and millions year upon year so are we to believe that money doesn't matter at all in this game? I want to say right now, that I realised recently Arsene Wenger may very well be the greatest manager in the world of football today but not for the reasons you may be thinking. A club acquires a manager based upon their intent and the board members at Arsenal, need a manager, who will keep them away from having debt and paying debt.
We're a funny company you see. I know the world is saying that debt is bad but we're not living in that world anymore. We're not living in a world where a company is completely built upon its own finance. No matter what the press and their know nothing bloggers and reporters say, debt is good for a company. It can be the saving grace and a very very cheap way to finance a major project. What was our major project? The Emirates stadium at a debt of a very low interest rate built upon the de-regulation of banks that brought all of this about.
When the idea of the stadium was going ahead, the arguments coming from the boardroom were not entirely about what is good for the fans or for football, it was all about the most appropriate financial approach to the game. I still believe, in fact I believe it more so than before that David Dein was thinking on a purely footballing basis when he made his decisions heard about Arsenal. This is extremely rare and for a massive global brand like Arsenal that completely ripped apart football into a corporate object is indicative of nothing more than Arsenal being far away from football and all about money.
I used to hear some fans saying that our board members didn't make that much money - but seriously... 20/30 million is a lot when you've only got 1 million in the bank (and I say only there, but it is a lot) and that's what Arsenal is. The board may not take a wage but they must look after their investment and they are all invested in the club in some capacity and the debt, with the structure arsenal has as a company will be to the board member's expense so they can't allow it.
I'm going to get to the football and Arsene now. Arsene's role at the club is simple. Avoid debt, avoid needing to go into debt and bringing in massive investment (which is possible with a billionaire backer) and play some games that will allow us to stay in the running for TV rights, European and Premiership money to pay the bills and avoid the money needed at other clubs.
The world's banking system will not change over night so as long as a football club can bring in money to the club at a low cost and pay off any costs attached to that debt... they're fine. They could do anything to do this by selling players or changing the way they play football and buying other players. The board members at a club will adjust for any scenario and as much as some clubs have gone into liquidation, how many have completely disappeared? I say this while Leeds are fighting to get back into the premiership from league one? Sounds like a good solid 5 year plan to me.
Now, I'm going to be absolutely honest. Do we need it? I think yes. I think it would be nice to win some trophies and show what Arsenal are capable of but I have some further theories beyond this. What if Arsenal don't win trophies because they know that it's more important for United, Chelsea to win them because of their debt? You are nothing without your competition in football. If your competition suffer, Arsenal will also suffer too. We need the competition in this game to survive in order for us to survive, especially with the financial situation we have chosen with our current board who need that money when the debt, the debt built from a credit crisis that practically destroyed parts of the world, will disappear and so will our board members with a lot of money in their hands.
They will sell it off. Arsenal will disappear once this board has alleviated themselves and the future will show that Arsenal will not be able to survive solely on this stadium. We will have to go into debt because that not only how football is, but importantly how world finance operates and we will be no different from any other club. So get ready for it and stop looking down at other clubs - we will be next.
The stadium was nothing more than a project that will provide a return for the people who run the club and have ownership in the club. Any idiot who thinks there is anything else occurring at the club really needs to work out the world we live in. Football can be fun but I think people are, well I think they are, wiser to what is occurring in the world. I personally find the idea of debt quite, uncomfortable but it works for corporations, it works for the owners of corporations and it operates well for world and building these modern economies that exist around us.
I don't feel the vast majority see this. I think Arsenal could have won a few trophies this season, a couple at least but with the restraints that such a financial structure gives you in football, I don't think even Arsene can overcome this. I recall people blaming the ref or blaming certain players. I think the person to blame in all of this, is, the greatest football manager in the world today, Arsene Wenger; a puppet for the Arsenal board. I feel sorry for him in fact. Here is a man who chose millions for untold footballing glory.
Can Cheryl Cole do this? Simon Cowell and mediocre pound stretching of the premiership
Useless individual in the public eye, one Cheryl Cole, conveniently told by her publicist to exercise the far extremes of a Newcastle accent fails to live up to any qualities that would benefit humanity.
Although she does benefit somebody's wallet. That's usually Simon Cowell who stretches mediocrity beyond its moments of death to the masses - the masses who are fooled into believing mediocrity has merit.
So in light of the world of Cheryl, you can use what you can to your benefit so you are two types of footballer's wife/girlfriend. The one who benefits more from dragging her husband through the dirt and the one who doesn't. I believe that a fair number of footballers do career away from their monogamy and venture out to the world of, well not polygamy, but hedonist modern day make up addicts who dwell in the dark scary holes of loud health hazard music we call night clubs.
Yes, even Footballers with all their money are sent crawling to these nightmares of modern contemporary sinkhole living that are night clubs. For sex I guess and maybe... to show themselves. To parade in some macabre mating ritual because there is nowhere else to show off your wealth. Clothes are so rudimentary and obvious that everyone is wearing your threads. Cars are such and the same that you are no different to anybody else with the same car. So where can you go but these filth ridden effluence of evolution or Hell. Maybe we can get Richard Dawkins to put this area of evolution in his next book and put it next to the chapters on commercialisation and capitalism.
This is where they go. Beyond our temples of dreams and our obeisance to the premiership TV screen, the money gets spent on the drugs of the moment, from extreme fashion, to sex, to alcohol - to any other stretching of mediocrity. That's the sign of our times. We are so finite in our relation to talent that we feel the only thing worth looking at are the publicity echoed through magazines related to sexualised images of nothingness. Well nothing worth nothing.
So Cheryl in all her pretty pointless appreciation of wisdom couldn't see the brilliance of Ashley Cole. Neither could we to be honest and we called him "Cashley Cole" because he wanted another 5 thousand pounds. Such is our fans mediocre appeal to football that we didn't think the once "best left back in the world was worth anything more" but if we look at the premiership today, the appreciation of mediocrity is too far away. Teams that were once giant beaters are dwindling further down the table to be replaced by teams, that still don't garner appreciation regardless of how much their players express brilliance and their managers scowl at the bias and prejudice in favour of the big four.
People still expect Liverpool to do well for all their problems there is no appreciation for the balance we can see in other teams. For all the money spent at Manchester City and Chelsea (basically Billionaire money funnelling organisations), they appear to be no match against the likes of teams that spend far less. Pretty ugly world I think considering how the owners of these clubs made their money.
Pretty much Cheryl Cole in perspective because Cheryl got all her money from being a pretty face and an exploiter of Geordieness and these Billionaires got their money from pillaging and raping the planet. OK, we all do it but there was no talent or brilliance involved so how can we expect them to spend well when it comes to money?
No different is Simon Cowell.
So to summarise and supplement, the electronic digital obeisance with the credit addiction has destroyed global supply chains. We can no longer give the world amazing talent, amazing expression and the world no longer recognises for all the mixed messages of sex, yes, blame sex, sex messages that are sent through the media. Our children are barely prepared for any of this and for all her complete lack of morals and decency - Cheryl Cole is a true example of everything wrong in the world and she exercises behaviour and attitude to fuel this.
No matter how good the premiership becomes. No matter how brilliant the quality in the league is, we will never ever see what is great because of Cheryl Cole, Simon Cowell and Billionaires with nothing but "ownership" and as much talent to do something as a drug riddled junkie locked in an empty room with no windows or doors.
Pretty much like what happens when the X Factor is on.
This morning, by chance, in a greasy spoon, I came across - THE SUN!
A newspaper famous for reporting on non-happenings that appear as happenings by characters from a self indulgent consumerist nightmare.
Not that I'm a regular reader of newspapers these days. I've got too much to do right now and therefore haven't got as much time to go over who plays where for Arsenal. Who plays where for any other team. Which team has bought who and how he plays, how he should play, where he should play and why he is playing. I don't have time for it anymore.
That... is... pretty... upsetting.
There was a time when, like anybody else I craved all that. Just look back at my correspondence from years gone by. Why this, why that, why the hell Bergkamp? Yes I questioned that and after seeing him for numerous games I still wonder that.
Bergkamp is a good place to start. We did have Dennis Bergkamp (you see what I did there? If not... bugger off) and we had him for longer than we should have had him. I think we massaged his ego. I think, by massaging his ego, some of our board and backroom staff massaged their egos. It was a case of "Wow. Look at us. We have a great player and he's still here."
We really should have grown and developed. I like to look at Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes and think, wow... now that is football. In the premiership today we have absolutely quality players who watch what they eat, develop their craft and compete at the highest level in the world right now. We don't do that at Arsenal.
Is that wrong? Or... what is right?
I think... I will say... don't go to football looking for your moral compass or sense of morality. In fact, don't go to anything business oriented. It's ugly. It's devious. It's nasty and people do die horrible deaths because of the way we conjur and create and global market exploiting business today. This from the corner shop to the big supermarket and back again.
If we want morality we should... be honest... be truthful... be good... be kind. It's very simple. We all know how to do that. I know life becomes hard and the struggles become insurmountable but we can at least try and trying is the first step - or is doing the first step. Trying is always filled with effort while doing appears to be a state of nonchalant automation. Just do good.
Yet, as I read The Sun today and read Arsene Wenger has been having an affair (please spare me your criticism, I don't know how true it is - is anything truthful today?) I felt a slight sensation of content. For years I had looked up to Arsenal's words of harmony and integrity and balance believing we were a club who never went in the wrong direction. We had fans, many of whom applied and projected religious principles on the club and we wished to express that.
I don't believe there is anything wrong with that. As long as we hope for good - but not on the basis of hypocrisy I believe. Not at the expense of other clubs who also do good.
So I am saying, I hope we are seen as ugly as business is, where our players and managers are prone to extra-marital affairs and can't keep their todger firmly lodged behind grand sporting celibacy. I do. This is the ugly world of football as entertaining as it is so that the people of football, the fans can go out into the world and find good and hopefully never stop looking for it.
If I could say, I hate the fact people hide behind money and the arrogance and power that money gives people. Why can't these guys be honest. We gasp with horror covering our mouths with our holy hands at how dreadful all this is but it's happening everywhere. Are we so foolish. so hidden, so protected in our lives that this does not occur. I am not justifying it, I am not reasoning it, but my point is that this is wrong, this is brutal (if it occurred) and we should call it for what it is - the ugly image of football. The ugly image of life and gross, nasty, harsh, reminder of disappointment.
So I guess I have a life. I didn't know the caricatures created by The Sun were having affairs but I do know a whole lot worse in real life. Really ugly things. Really nasty ugly behaviour that occurs in real life.
Still, I take solace in the grand pockets of peace that exist around us.
Arsenal was re-born in it's second life under the guidance of David Dein in 1996 which gave rise to lots of new baby activities and spending leading up to the maturity and sudden decline at the hands of the Eastern Bloc powers and all the money that came with it.
Odd that we didn't see this coming but it's also odd how we didn't care about it and didn't want to change or win.
It's time for Arsenal to die. Is there a future amidst this? Is there a possibility that Arsenal can win something sooner or later?
We tend to believe there is a way out of this and why shouldn't there be... I mean seriously speaking, why do we have to consider, incapability due to environmental factors or even financial and internal factors. Isn't this something we can overcome? Of course it is but we've been over-reliant on many things lately which are dead in many ways for us and we are squeezing them for all the juice that they have.
So what is missing is risk and trying. Taking a risk and trying. I believe this is out of fear and fear from failure. There seems to be some fear of embarrassment from losing and in Football that appears to be peculiar because you have to get used to losing in order to have respect for this whole world of football. This I feel is where all of our problems begin from.
There appears to be a huge expectation on the shoulders of the players. It's like we are sending out players who fear for their lives. I'm not sure what has been forced onto these players but I don't I've seen them play relaxed and for fun in many many years. There appears to be no camaraderie. Looking back, if you see huge players like Vieira, Pires and Henry disappear to be replaced with kids under the pretence and belief they will grow to be better is like hoping people will accept an inferior product in the belief it become the best thing ever.
All this faith in one dimensional strategies has brought some results because we paid for quality... didn't we but not mature quality unless you count Arshavin in this and look what happened there. Amazing.
Anyway... it's not about players it's about changing who you are as an individual and accepting that doing the same thing over and over again isn't going to miraculously bear fruits from labours of pointless hope and nothing else. So we can talk about this for hours on end and for days and days when the whole point is not as some fans do, procrastinate on acceptance or even whinge on selection and transfer but realise the club has shifted into mess territory.
If anything I have realised is fear, with the people I know around me, can make you break down principles, faith, ethics, morality and for all the rhetoric people, these great people who speak excessively, spout against politics, media, society, civilisation - isn't nothing more than a projection of the fragmentation of their own psyche? In the state of our present existence, bombarded with synthetic, artificial images of humanity and this is humanity in every sense from the extremes of happiness to sadness, conflict to peace, sex to abstinence, culture to nothingness - we don't know what is right for us and what is wrong for us but we're all so quick to tell the authorities, the mummies and daddies of our institutionalised "now" and institutionalised "society", they are wrong.
In respect of the above, what is right in football is to create a team that wins, and we will see that. We will see that and say, the club is not lying and the club is working on truthful principles because we'll see it.
We can't see it so it's a lie.
Please watch this (without prejudice or feeling): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f2fmnTfoTc
Different things are important to different people.
This is dependent on a multitude of factors from, I don't know, culture, friends, family, occupation - absolutely anything could conjure up the importance. I think, for instance, a lot of our importance, in the west, is an excuse to have a party and a good jolly.
So... you support Arsenal or you support United... because our society equates success with happiness.
Then you get the lower league teams who have support and it's a good time, it's a laugh but there is that need to win and succeed. Amidst that you'll be left thinking, how long do you wait for success and what price does patience carry. Patience can be a heavy heavy burden you have to carry alongside hope and your thoughts.
A lot of my blogs have been around our financial situation and how we can use that to gain success but maybe football is more than that. Maybe football is about the game and wondering what player to play etc. But I laugh because we don't really do that do we. We've had certain problems for a number of years and I think I speak for a lot of fans when I say, we grow tired speaking of the same problems over and over again.
How dull and depressing must that be? Here we are with a multitude of solutions available and we don't try them.
Goalkeeper is rubbish? Change him. Spend the money.
Strikers don't score goals? Buy a better striker.
We're getting good money for a player? Sell him and buy some mature work horses!
For instance... Fabregas is a big big problem for us because he is miles, head and shoulders better than a lot of the players at the club but if we can't build a team around him then we're stuck. We had a good thing with Flamini but we let that slip by.
And now... whooops... there's another problem. Our transfers. Our player management.
Too many problems and you know what... just like our problems in life, even if we took small steps to solve them. Little steps in the right direction then it would give us hope. It would give meaning to patience but we're not. We repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Are we going to win anything this year? No. We are not.
Does it matter? In the greater scheme of things it should but I think our fans have got used to waiting and hoping that it's nothing special. Which is worrying and saddening and upsetting because a club like Arsenal has had and does have a great deal of potential with world class assets and resources and we don't use them. We just don't use them. They are merely there for the balance sheet - to make Arsenal Football Club, the company look great.
Or maybe it's something else. Maybe, we have grown tired of football. Maybe so many deluded perspectives on a sport have been given to us, we've forgotten what it is. Maybe the commercialisation and hollywoodisation of football has tainted our perspective of the competitive nature of the game stopping us from seeing how we are in a clear position to win great things and how that opportunity has passed us.
Where lies are lies and maliciousness becomes vivid.
We're holding players captive and they need to be set free.
Yes we have control over these players. Yes they are our assets. Yes they must work for us.
But we as a club, for all our grand gestures of humanity and the Arsenal way are holding a player to ransom.
This club is dying and it's about time we released players.
We can see Liverpool and Manchester City as clear competitors. We can see Tottenham and Villa as rivals. The dirty game is arising and it's our pretentious, pompous arrogance that puts us in a position that we have forced ourselves into.
We are back to asking the same questions.
Is it too difficult to buy a decent player and pay him a wage with the masses of money at our disposal?
Is it too difficult to buy and sell players when we have a 30 million pound player being argued over across Europe and the world?
Why make life hard for ourselves?
Let's just face facts. We're idiots.
David Dein was right.
OK... forgive the melodrama. Who cares for all that right?
The point is to win things and for all the years of profits and for all the mind blowingly envious assets at our disposal we are merely acting like children when we could be world beaters.
The world has changed Arsenal. It will remain changed. It will not revert back to some never existed utopia. There will be no political revolution (and even if there was, we'd all change anyway)...
Just buy players. Just get them.
I'm going back to pondering why we behave like this...
Islam remains to be one of the biggest news stories in the world today. This will never change because muslims look out for number one and they know that if they support their own kind, if they continue to fight for the greatest achievement then people will listen - and people do, even though nobody believes them because in the greater scheme of things satisfaction is far more vivid than Religious faith.
The same can be said for our punters on Football highlights shows and sports channels. They go on and on about how great managers at the major clubs are - all the while people like Roy Hodgson and David Moyes create greatness at clubs that barely get a shoe in. They don't have the money and the commercial demonism of the big clubs but in the same way, the TV channels know the money is in the big clubs so you have to praise them as much as possible.
You won't find a drug dealer saying his supply is rubbish, will you.
Unless you're called Peter Hill Wood that is.
For this reason, this satisfaction, this lack of drive and looking into the abyss is a disease for the Arsenal fan. It's not realism, it's not positivity, it's a disease. We know the world of football works on money and we know we have money. You will have to be stupid to believe that Arsenal don't have money. Ever year we have made money for the last 20 years... where is all of that money? Do we burn the left overs every year?
We could be demolishing mountains and draining oceans but our support is too busy believing a marketing campaign that has brainwashed them into cult followers with a leprosy for the brand that is Arsenal.
The moment we can say, this isn't working. We're doing so much that is wrong. We're failing - is the moment that we will quickly see that there is glimmer of light in football where a team can achieve great things, just like Portsmouth, drifting into the Championship became runners up in the FA Cup, which is the non-trophy for a North London club that regardless of having a status of one of the richest clubs in the world has one eff all for 5 years.
We shouldn't be considering the logic of a manager and a team or a club, but just putting some faith and belief in change and realising that only if we spend money will we attain something because let's face it, you pay money to get into the ground or follow Arsenal don't you? That's where our answers lie.
fuzzy logic about; Footballers; One Ball; One Club; and everything around them :;
___The_Arsenal_FC;
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.......How they keep the Universe; from falling apart.
Liam Brady being interviewed just after the FA cup final (where they won with
a late goal against Man Utd) he said in his best Dublin accent: "OI's dreadin'
extra toime, cos OI's knackered".
