EPL Talk » Arsenal

Arsene Wenger’s Wise Words on the Fiasco in Paris

Eric Altshule — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:42:13 +0000

The appetite for commentary on the farce in Paris still seems strong, and I thought Arsene Wenger had a very wise take on the entire situation today. Wenger is, obviously, a French supporter and very close with Henry. In fairness to the Irish fans, the world football community, and for the sake of Henry, he called for the game to be replayed.

For Wenger, labeling Henry a cheat is too far. Cheating implies a degree of conscientious decision-making, and in a play that takes a fraction of a second and in the height of an emotional encounter, “cheat” is too harsh a word. As Wenger said, “For me people who bought referees, who took drugs, they are the real cheats in sport.” That is a healthy bit of perspective.

Moreover, the people who really let the football world down are the people who refuse to allow modern technology to correct errors. Wenger said that he is sure that that as the referee moved back to the circle for the kick-off, he knew there was something very wrong with that goal. But what could he do about it? He did not see the handball, and he can’t change a call because Shay Given was outraged, whether Given was right or not. FIFA left the referee alone to take the blame, and was not there to help him when he needed it the most.

Finally, this is what Wenger said about the impossible position Henry is now in: “A player of his stature has a massive pressure on his shoulders and if somebody has to do something for Thierry, it is French football and France as a country, not to leave him out there alone against the whole world. France has to say ‘yes it was a handball and we offer a replay’.”

You cannot be more fair than that.

Is This The Arsenal Side to Redeem Wenger?

Brian Louie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:05:06 +0000

Gooners should be forgiven for indulging in optimism. With 36 goals in 11 matches, talk of Arsene Wenger’s gun slinging side has done much to impress, and you can sense the Frenchman is a few wins away from making some sort of bold prediction, ala the Invincibles. To be five points from leaders Chelsea with a game in hand, and especially with such a heavily-populated injury list, the Professor must believe his seemingly eternally-young side has the best shot at a domestic title since the Gunners’ monumental collapse two years ago.

Two years ago, Eduardo’s injury, William Gallas’ tantrum and a successive streak of draws dismantled the North London side, and Arsenal fans were left with an empty, sick feeling in their stomachs, a bit like the minute Jens Lehmann got sent off against Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League Final. Only, this time, there was the horrific nature of the Croatian’s injury and the realization that Arsenal were a young and callow team that crumbled to pieces. Now, and the Gunners are playing some of their best football. Robin van Persie has become more of the striker he was when he first became a first-teamer for Arsene Wenger, Cesc Fabregas is a seasoned 22, and Andrei Arshavin can only be labeled a success, especially considering Wenger sold Kolo Toure for for about 2 million less to Man City.

36 goals in 11 games is impressive, reminding us of the old Arsenal, just after “1-0 to the Arsenal” became ironic after Wenger’s arrival. But the Gunners still seem a bit thin on the bench, especially in that back line. Thomas Vermaelen has been more than excellent, as Gallas seems to maintain his level of play despite all the distractions of having a crap personality and age. Once one of those two pick up an injury though, and Wenger is left to pick from Phillipe Senderos and Mikael Silvestere. Perhaps Senderos picked up incredible knowledge and quickness while he warmed the bench at Milan, and perhaps Silvestere will defy age and the two will be able to pick up the slack at times for the rest of a long season. Either way, the Gunners will have to keep scoring at will to catch Chelsea, who seem to be much tighter defensively, or at least don’t seem to fall asleep on set pieces as much.

It would be nice to see Arsenal regain a little bit of it’s luster, at least to break up the monotony of Manchester United and Chelsea. With Liverpool their own worst enemy, and struggling with a thin bench, they’re seemingly out of the picture. There’s very little staking-of-claims on the title going on between the Blues and the Red Devils, and the clash between them last weekend was akin to a pair of battering rams knocking each other senseless in the middle of the park, with a few little handbags thrown in. A push into the top four by Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur has seemed to have fizzled out, as the former spend their time performing in front of ownership in Qatar, and the latter deal with well, being Spurs.

The Gunners have yet to hold their own against a tough side. The season’s only a third of the way through, and who knows how durable Fabregas and Arshavin will be all season long. Perhaps we’ll know a bit more at the end of November, when Chelsea come to North London for a visit. With Jose Bosingwa, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole out, now’s the Gunners’ best chance to make up a bit of difference and become a threat for the title.

Arsene Wenger likes to talk about being patient, letting his young team develop, all the while holding that belief is the central tenet to winning. Gooners, do you have belief that your team can win the title this year? Have they matured enough, and does Wenger have the right pieces to bring some silver back to North London?

The Cold War For Arsenal Continues

Paul Bestall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:54:24 +0000

Stan Kroenke has purchased even more shares in Arsenal today taking his holding to 29.9% of the club. With only another 0.09% required to reach the threshold to make an offer for the rest of the clubs shares, Kroenke has purchased 627 shares this week for the princely sum of £5.3 million. The oddest part of the share purchasing is that 100 of the shares were purchased from Arsenal chairman, Peter Hill-Wood.

Hill-Wood seems to have had a change of opinion about Kroenke, after originally stating that the club didn’t need his money or his sort back in 2007 when he purchased his first shareholding in the club. Now the club seem to be relying on him to protect themselves from a takeover from Red and White Holdings, the share vehicle of Alisher Usmanov and ran by former Arsenal vice chairman David Dein.

Now for me, there is no doubt that Stan Kroenke is man who knows his sport. He owns 40% of the St. Louis Rams, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Rapids and Colorado Avalanche. Perhaps annoyed that he doesn’t own a MLB franchise, Kroenke set his sights on Arsenal and has quietly and effectively gone about his business with a minimum of fuss over the last 30 months. Now I know why they call him “Silent Stan”, as his refusal to answer questions about his intentions at the recent Arsenal AGM saw.

British football still has a somewhat rose tinted view of foreign ownership and with the comedy roadshow at Portsmouth shows, with such investment comes a high degree of risk. Yet, British football is littered with teams destroyed by English and Scottish owners who had no idea how to run a football club. Xenophobia is still alive and well in the Premiership, but it is something we English based fans have to get used to and since Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea, most fans would welcome any Billionaire to splash the cash at their club.

When you see the damage people like Geoffrey Richmond, Robert Maxwell, Ken Richardson, Darren Brown and Anton Johnson did to clubs, the chance to bring in proven sporting expertise from outside of the UK becomes an obvious option for me. I’m sure the fans of those clubs almost destroyed by such mismanagement would gladly pay for people to fly over and buy their beloved clubs.

Arsene Wenger must be getting a bit fed up about the constant questions about the share dealings going on, two press conferences this week seem to have missed the fact that his side have climbed nicely in to 3rd, tucked in nicely behind Manchester United and Chelsea and qualified to the next round of the Champions League. All questions focused on the money changing hands in the financial markets and quiet correctly, Wenger calmly and politely avoided answering the questions with a stock answer.

“I do not know what Kroenke will do,all I know is the rules, that if he gets to 30%, he has to make a bid for the club. At the moment, he flirts with the 30, but is not there. I do not know what his intentions are, I have not spoken to him about it.”

With his side bucking all the preseason predictions of falling out of the top four, playing some lovely football and with a Billionaire shoring up his stake in the Gunners, Arsenal could be on the cusp of a wonderful new era. In to the next round of the League Cup and European football once again assured after Christmas, Wenger has continued to keep his head when everyone outside of Arsenal thinks the dream is over. Shame I’m a Spurs fan but that’s life.

Benitez Cannot Buckle Under Pressure

Paul Bestall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:05:21 +0000

“It is difficult for us to qualify, but not impossible,We have to win our game and see what happens with Fiorentina and Lyon. Then we will approach the last game.” Benitez has certainly fought his corner today after the galling last minute equaliser Liverpool conceded in the Stade Gerland last night. Of course, the nay sayers and doom merchants are already drafting Rafa’s last rites as the promise of last season seems already consigned to the dustbin by mid November.

Even Liverpool’s most feverish critics must be surprised how quickly the wheels have fallen off this season. 5 league defeats, knocked out of the League Cup and facing demotion to the Europa League have seen Benitez under the most pressure he’s ever faced during his tenure at Anfield. With the financial situation at Liverpool as tight as it can be, the key achievement for Liverpool to aim for this season is to finish in the top 4 in the Premier League.

Of course, Lyon may win in Florence in 3 weeks time and Liverpool could win the last two games, making sure they beat Fiorentina by 3 clear goals to finish second, but it’s a straw that is swaying away from Benitez. With Torres still carrying a groin injury, Gerrard injured for who knows how long and Carragher having his ropiest period in a Liverpool shirt, the Reds 3 key players are all suffering in one form or another.

During the summer, all the predictions pointed to that it would be Arsenal who would be the one side in the big four that would be the most nervous about retaining their place at the Premiership’s top table. With Manchester City, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Everton all waiting to pounce, no-one considered that Liverpool would be the one with the most to lose.

Without the stadium revenue that Manchester United and Arsenal can pull and without the billionaire sugar daddies that Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham can call on, the financial rewards that the Champions League has to offer is crucial to Liverpool’s continued success. They NEED to be in Champions League to continue progressing, regardless of reputation, Manchester City have already shown money can attract players above their current station.

Yet Liverpool will not find it any easier and by December 13th they could be staring up at the top four and hoping that they can find a vein of form that has so far eluded them this season. They’ve failed to beat every decent side they’ve played this season, with the exception of Manchester United two weeks ago and that in itself is a worrying trend. With massive matches against Manchester City, Everton, Fiorentina and Arsenal in the next five weeks, something needs to sorted and quickly.

Of course, Benitez has a position of strength in the fact that he signed a 5 year contract in March this year and Liverpool’s finances would tend to support the argument that the club can’t afford to sack him. Liverpool fans tend to support their manager through thick or thin, only Graeme Souness lost the fans in the last 30 years and at the moment the attention for the fans frustration is the owners.

Chelsea sacked Scolari when the club were fourth, 7 points behind Manchester United. Liverpool are currently 6th, 9 points behind and whilst we may assume what Hicks and Gillett do, would it surprised anyone if they pressed the panic button? Unfortunately not. Trouble is, they may call on Jurgen Klinsmann, which shows just how little about club football they actually know.

British Journalists Have a Lousy Deal, and the Fans Suffer for It

Eric Altshule — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:03:28 +0000

I once read about a British sports journalist’s amazement at the access that American sportswriters had. The British writer was visiting Chicago and asked to tag along with the Sun Times reporter who covered the Bulls. First, he went to a Bulls practice, and after the practice was over, the Chicago reporter ambled up to Scottie Pipen and Phil Jackson and asked a few questions. Then they went to the game, and afterward walked straight into the Bulls’ locker room. There, the Sun Times scribe spent five minutes with Michael Jordan getting his thoughts on the game while Jordan dressed. He asked Jackson a few more questions, and then went upstairs to the office that the Bulls provide to reporters so he could finish writing his story.

Does that sound amazing to you? To Americans used to reading their daily sports section, it sounds as remarkable as finding popcorn in a movie theater. To the Brit, it was flabbergasting. The writer explained that he could go an entire season without once being able to ask a major soccer star a question. Outside of a manager’s weekly news conference and the quotes that are broadcast in the banal two-minute interview that happens after a game, he rarely has the opportunity to talk directly to the star players he covers, let alone the ability to get their insights after each game.

American sports journalists have a simple arrangement with the teams they cover. Journalists are allowed in the locker room after the games and can ask as many questions as they want. If a baseball relief pitcher blows an important game and is in no mood to talk, they are still obligated to answer questions until the reporters have the quotes and insights they need. In exchange, sports reports have to report the news. Like any other journalist, they have to source their stories, provide context to their reporting, and cannot make up falsehoods just to increase their readership.

As a consequence, American sports consumers have access to an amazing amount of behind the scenes information and insights. An American sports fan can read stories about far more than what happens on the field – stories about how the personalities interact, how the team prepares, and how the organization may be planning for the future.

British sports fans are comparatively left out in the cold. Teams control strict access to the players, who in turn will sell the rights to a few interviews a year to one of the major papers in England. Daily sports journalists are left in the stands, watching the same game as the rest of us, and forced to write up an article with no more information than what the rest of us have already seen with our own eyes.

Before last week’s North London Derby, Tottenham’s Robbie Keane was one of the few personalities from either Spurs or Arsenal to answer a question about the game to a reporter. His trite comments about how Spurs may have the deeper team were regurgitated by every major London paper for several days. Compare that to a rather ordinary article on the LA Galaxy – Chivas game that appeared in the New York Times. The article quoted four different players along with Galaxy coach Bruce Arena, and gave the reader a detailed sense of the level of admiration and conflict between the two teams.

Because the British reporters have so little access, they end up writing a lot of stories that have little relationship with the truth. This is especially true when the transfer window is open, and articles pop up full of tripe detailing how every star player is headed out the door and around the bend. Without access, sources or official quotes, journalists have no choice but to report rumors as fact in order to fill their copy space. From the reader’s perspective, they can either read these fictions or chuck the whole sports section in the trash.

This has created a vicious cycle between the British press and the teams. In the absence of access to their subject matter, the journalists write all manners of compost, so the teams do not take the press seriously. They see no reason to work with the writers to give them access, so the writers are forced to fill their fishwrapper with even more guano.

I personally experienced this last week while I was researching my article on how Arsenal scouts for future players. I came across the story of Danny Karbassiyoon, the only American who has ever scored for the Arsenal senior team (see him receive the pass from Fabregas and slot it home against Man City in this clip). After a knee injury destroyed his career, Karbassiyoon became Arsenal’s full-time scout in North America. Sounds like an interesting guy with a lot to say to American fans of the EPL! When I e-mailed the Arsenal press office asking for an interview for a podcast, despite Arsenal’s desire to reach out to American audiences, I was summarily turned down. They simply could not be bothered.

The mystery of all of this is that, with a ravenous press population eager to promote their product and a worldwide audience ready to consume every nuance and tidbit, why do teams deny access with such militancy? As Americans learn more about how wonderful a game soccer is, perhaps the Brits can learn something from Americans about how to better market their product.