Internet Commentator

There's a time to dig in...

and this is it.   This blog's Big Cheese, barely muffling a Mourinhoesque chuckle at recent results down Highbury way,  suggests that it's time to have a clear-eyed look at what's going on with  broadsheet darlings, Arsenal, with particular reference to the back four and the holding midfield area.   Let's nutshell this bad boy:

1. Injuries are a tale as old as the time that's elapsed since Spurs (*shudder*) won the double during the Pathé News era.  Man U aren't exactly blessed with cover in any department just now, save upfront maybe, but they're looking a sight lot healthier in the cups area.  Just saying.  I'll admit to African Nations Cup absences and the calamitous lack of left backs, but Campbell just now isn't looking the part and Philippe 'Swiss Tony' Senderos needs to buck his ideas up.  New boy, Djourou, looks no' bad but the youngster can't carry the defence by himself.  Two words: Real. Madrid.  Two more words:  Dreading. It.
2. Diaby is certainly, er, crisp in the tackle but a permanently suspended 'New Vieira' will render a chocolate teapot useful by comparison. 
3. We need to find out what alien mothership currently hosts Ljungberg and Pires, while their pod versions  meander around every away fixture like wound-down clockwork mice, and then offer any necessary Danegeld.  Pascal Cygan has a touch of the Billy Corgan/Mekon about him and may cover the ransom.

Says who?

Today FM's sports correspondent announced a few minutes ago that Rafa's Reds were now installed as "firm favourites" to win the FA cup after they dispatched Portsmouth courtesy of a dubious penalty. This seemed overly confident and rather redolent of the scouse-wishful-thinking which infests the football media so I went to see if the bookies agreed. As I expected, Paddy Power have Chelsea favourites at 5-2, United second at 10-3 and Liverpool at 4-1. William Hill have Chelsea 3-1, United 13-3, Liverpool 5-1. Bet 365 have Chelsea 7-2, United 4-1 and Liverpool 5-1. The best I can come up with for Liverpool is that Ladbrokes and Littlewoods Betdirect have both Liverpool and United as 7-2 joint second-favourites behind Chelsea at 2-1 and 9-4 respectively. So far as I can tell, nobody has Liverpool as outright second favourite never mind "firm" favourite.

It is a terrible, demeaning thing to find oneself on the same side as Rod Liddle

As I'm sure I've mentioned many times, I can't stand Rod Liddle but his piece, in today's Times, on the reaction to Gary Neville's goal celebration, is a cracker:

It may have been a childish action from Neville, but then, the emotions generated at football matches rarely transcend those you might witness in your local infant school playground. And the game is all the better for it, frankly.[...]

Sir Alex Ferguson is angry that Neville should be in the dock for his behaviour. It is a terrible, demeaning, thing to find oneself on the same side as the truculent, tunnel- visioned Sir Alex. But on this occasion he is surely right. And I suspect that even the Liverpool fans would agree, mostly.

Record-breaking Chelsea

I mentioned below that Chelsea, as a going concern, were in a similar situation to insolvent clubs who typically get sanctioned by their footballing associations. Well, it looks like Chelsea are going to smash the record they broke only last year when they announced a staggering (then!) record £88m loss. Having spent £240m on players, with a wage bill of £105m, and, bafflingly, having paid out £25m to Umbro to cancel their sponsorship contract, this year's losses will surely dwarf last year's. Unlike every other team in the Premiership, this vanity project/tax write-off does not pay for itself.

UPDATE: It's £140m. That's 60% more than last year's, itself a record loss and 96% of turnover. That's right: they lose, net, approximately as much money as they earn, gross. Slippery Pete Kenyon maintains Chelsea have a (cunning?) "plan" in place to become a "profit-making organisation" - Do me a favour!

What was that you were saying?

Scrolling through NewsNow the other day, I came across a rather confident prediction from an ebullient Scouse blogger. Perhaps he was emboldened by Liverpool's unbeaten run of games against the likes of West Ham, Aston Villa, Portsmouth, Sunderland, Newcastle and Everton. Even so, it seems a little rash to celebrate victory, against a Manchester United team Liverpool have only once managed to finish above in 15 years of trying, before the game has even been played. Especially so when you carry a headlines feed from the BBC which ends up mocking your hubris:

UPDATE: Here's another one, Liverpool will beat ManU 3-0. What is it with these scouse fans?

Rio in midfield?

Perhaps, what was most noticeable about United's 5-0 victory over Burton Albion the other night was the stellar performance of Italian-American teenager Guiseppe Rossi, one worthy of the ginger prince Scholes in his pomp. Gerard Pique also impressed at centre-half. But, also of note was an experimental formation adopted when the game was safe at 3-0. Sir Alex Ferguson sent on Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville. While Neville slotted into his usual right back berth, Ferdinand and Giggs moved into the centre of midfield. The thought had previously occurred to me that Ferdinand might be able to play in midfield - he is certainly very comfortable on the ball going forward - Ledley King, the Tottenham centre-half, plays for England in this position. If Ferguson is thinking of moving Ferdinand forward, it might explain why, during the current transfer window he has signed two defenders, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra, instead of strengthening central midfield, the area in which most observers feel United is deficient. After all, there are only two central defence positions and, in Ferdinand, Brown, Vidic and Pique four very good candidates. That's not even counting Silvestre (hopefully on his way to Lyon) or Neville and Heinze, both of whom can play in the centre and have able deputies in Bardsley and (I hope!) Evra.

Hobble Chelsea

Most football leagues require participating clubs to remain financially solvent. Indeed, several teams have been relegated from Italy's Serie A precisely for this reason. One supposes that this is not strictly for paternalistic reasons but rather for the good of the league - a club which doesn't operate under the financial restrictions shared by its competitors will surely have an unfair advantage. The thought occurs to me that, from the point of view of a fair competition, the same surely applies to Chelsea. This club, despite its prominence, doesn't pay for itself. Not by a long shot. Now, what is the salient difference, between a club using money extended by a bank and a club using money profferred by its sugar daddy? In each case, it hasn't earned the money through its own success.

I am aware that this is a tricky question and it might appear to be an abritrary line to draw - whether the club earned the money or not. I am also familar with redistributionist policies in American football, where the worst teams get first bite at the promising new players but I don't think such proposals would be appropriate for a league such as the premiership to and from which teams are promoted and relegated. It's not so much the punishing of success that would bother me in the premiership's case, but instead the rewarding of failure. The teams in the relegation slots at the end of the season generally deserve to be relegated, the team which barely misses relegation is rewarded sufficiently already by retention of premiership status.

Further, the success or failure of a team has a lot more to do with the manager and the board - team selections, tactics, wise or foolish transfer decisions etc. - and less to do with individual rookie players. In general, I prefer a laissez-faire approach but it's more than just sour grapes which makes me think that something ought to be done about Chelsea's unfair advantage. Mourinho, is probably the best manager in the league, granted and Chelsea are able to attract top players and pay them the best wages and up to that point I don't have a problem. This merely puts them on a par with other rich European sides.

Where I draw the line is that the approximately unlimited wealth of their patron and the slippery ethics of certain individuals with the club enable them to thwart the attempts of competitors to sign the players they want. United wanted Michael Essien, he went to Chelsea and plays in their first team, fair enough. Arsenal wanted Sean Wright Phillips, Chelsea signed him and he rarely gets a run out, not quite so fair. It's clear that Essien's main advantage is on the pitch, while SWP's advantage to Chelsea is that he doesn't play for Arsenal.

These tactics are also employed for the promising rookie players, Chelsea's underhand attempt to tear up United's contract with Jon Obi Mikel is likely to be successful and they will do their best to try to stop Theo Walcott going to Arsenal.

It seems to me that the Premier League has a duty to deal with these types of anti-competitive tactics, otherwise, until their owner gets bored (diminishing returns will surely apply after the third on the trot) we will all have to be content to sit back and watch Chelsea's annual procession to the title.

Serves me right...

..for poking fun at Arsenal: 10 man United go down 3-1 to 12 man City. What a nightmare, new signing Evra was a disaster - Heinze needn't worry about his place when he recovers from injury - and was subbed at half-time and to compound the misery, the third goal was scored by a dirty scouser: Robbie Frickin' Fowler.

Soccernet: Arsenal in mystery fifth competition

I noticed a curious phrase in the Soccernet report of Arsenal's defeat to Wigan in the Carling Cup semi-final, first leg:

Arsene Wenger opted to remain loyal to those players who had carried Arsenal to this stage, albeit with this tournament also fourth on his list of priorities.

Which rather leaves open the question of which competition occupies third place on that list of priorities. Arsenal are still in the Champions' league (albeit with Real Madrid blocking their path) and the FA cup, which competitions one imagines occupy first and second berths. As Arsenal are 24 points behind leaders Chelsea, we can rule out the Premiership as the third option, which leaves what? The Intertoto cup isn't until the summer and in any case it oughtn't be too difficult for the, ahem, "invincibles" to qualify for the Uefa cup in the orthodox manner. So what is this mystery fifth competition deemed more important to Wenger than the Carling Cup?

Now that's a club in crisis

Somehow the end-of-the-Ferguson-era story is more compelling to football hacks. It is certainly true that Manchester United are no longer the pre-eminent force in English football and by implication that the current squad compares unfavourably to previous squads in the mid-90s and the turn of the century when we were kings (so to speak). It is also probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson is not getting the best out of the squad he has and has tolerated a slipping of standards. Furthermore, United's capitulation in Europe this season has been nothing short of embarrassing. Nonetheless, this is a team in second place behind, probably uncatchable, Chelsea, which has lost only two games and which has managed to deliver Chelsea's solitary defeat.

Consider another club with similar pretensions which has somehow contrived to lose six games already this season, most recently in meekly surrendering their flattering 100% home record to the champions, whose continuing presence in Europe depends on vanquishing Real Madrid and which nestles in eighth place behind such giants as Bolton, Wigan, Man City and most gallingly, their local rivals, Spurs, closer in points to second from bottom club Birmingham than they are to Chelsea. Add to this the fact that their only truly world class player upon whom they are overly dependent, refuses to discuss a new contract and who is eagerly sought by Barcelona, a club with other world class players to play alongside such as current FIFA player of the year Ronaldinho, third placed Samuel Eto'o and Argentine wunderkind Messina not to mention sufficient ambition and resources to win the Champions' league.

So, where are all the Arsenal-are-a-club-in-decline-with-a-manager-who's-lost-the-plot stories? Pushed off the pages by the plethora of United stories, I'd say.

UPDATE: United Rant is of similar mind, At least we're not Arsenal