By Tony Attwood
You might think these are troubled times at Arsenal, but look more closely and you will see some real class and character shining through.
But first look elsewhere. Man U’s ownership has never shown class – that is self-evident – using the club as a cash cow to feed a shopping mall business that had fallen on hard times.
Then there was the business of putting up the Moyes banner at Old Trafford – not just a hostage to fortune, but also a really inept thing to do. You put up statues and banners about people once they have finished their work – not as they just start it.
Next there is today’s proposed fly by the disgruntled with the plane trailing a banner claiming that actually Moyes was not the Chosen One as the in-ground banner proclaims.
Actually there was quite an amusing interview on the BBC station Five Live yesterday in which the leader of the gang who has arranged for the plane to fly overhead during United’s game today said that the issue of who came after Moyes (and whether he would actually want to come to such a club as this) was a matter for the board, not for the supporters.
The supporters it seems just love the power of being able to boot out a manager and complain, not come up with solutions that might actually work. How very 20th century.
Anyway, Moyes has at last fought back saying that even the almighty Sir Alex Ferguson would have had a tough time this season because of this ageing squad.
Moyes has actually been supported by José Mourinho, but with friends like that, you don’t really need enemies.
Meanwhile the AAA make similar noises, seeing the protests at Very Old Trafford as a blue print rather than a warning. For them the fact that Arsenal too have been down this route is of no relevance – for according to their mantra one learns nothing from history.
In 1953 Arsenal won the league, but it was the season the players finally spoke out and said that the Arsenal support with its constant booing and moaning was beyond doubt the worst in the league, and a total embarrassment to a great club. Players interviews in the press and their commentaries in books contained the same theme. How can this great club have such awful fans?
The fans did rally momentarily at the end of the season as the league was won but in the summer there was a desertion of players who no longer wanted the abuse. In 1954, with Tom Whittaker unable to find replacement players who wanted to come to Highbury the club came 12th. We didn’t win the league again until 1971. 18 years.
There was no financial crisis, no new stadium to build, no wars removing our top players. No. Players and managers realised what it was like to work at Arsenal and thought, no, not for me.
So will Man U create the same horror show? They are certainly heading that way. But at Arsenal, as always, a better light is being shone.
Before the Everton game, RedAction, a grouping of Arsenal supporters dedicated to the positive rather than the negative, gathered at in the lower tier North Bank, unveiled a banner saying ‘BELIEVE’.
It got terrific feedback and so it is now being made available as a t-shirt for you to buy. The shirts are being sold in the Rocket foyer from 3pm until kickoff today or from our the Red Action web site.
The banner and t-shirt were both designed by Sam Blackman – his website is here.
All profits from sales of t-shirts go to fund more flags, banners and other initiatives in future. Red Action have done a huge amount over the years at the stadium, and really do deserve our support.
And I guess that is my point. People can chant “spend some fucking money” or hold up signs where the cameras will pick them out, or you can support the team, the manager and the club. We have been down the route that the AAA and their allies in the media proclaim – and we have seen the results.
“Believe” says that the club is bigger than me, the individual supporter. And that’s how it should be.
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal
Believe in continued sadness and frustration due to a highly intelligent man who was once a wonderful Director of Football (never a Manager / Tactician) who has long since been stuck in a time warp of disappointment.
Well done Chris, you’ve completely missed the point. Go and support United please
yes thanks for that Chris, brilliant dialectic, if not United, try Chelsea.
For weeks we have been without Walcott,Ramsey, Ozul and Wilshire, which has meant we haven’t any experience attacking player who can run behind defenses.
Did last night’s Radio 5 ‘experts’ mention this? Nope. Has there been any ‘expert’ mention this as the reason for the problem we have faced in recent games? Nope.
But then again why should we expect ‘experts’ to mention this factor. The same experts who harp on the fact that Wilshire is not playing to his potential and is injury prone but ignore the blatant rotational fouling that Jack is subject to just as the ‘world’s best referees from the ‘unbiased’ PMGOL ignore it.
All we ever here is the mantra ‘Arsenal and in particular Arsene haven’t got what it takes’ which flies in the face of reality.
One other point according to these ‘experts’ at the beginning of the season the improvement in our defense was due to the influence of Steve Bold, (Don’t get me wrong. I am a great fan of Steve, I am not knocking him here.)because Arsene ‘doesn’t do defense’. so who was to blame for our poor defensive display by the ‘experts’ logic?
Is there any point in taking into account the words of these ‘media experts’? Nope.
Why? Because they talk the same rubbish about us and football in general. They all play the same tune and so they keep their jobs and they and their employers are happy and drive us to despair at their shallow pomposity.
@Chris
Youre an Arsenal fan so I wont tell you where to go or who to support but “Never a manage/tactician”. Do you honestly believe that nonesense? Where are you getting it from? This isn’t Bertie Mee we’re refering to here, the physio who had Don Howe as his right hand man. This is Arsene Wenger look up his record; you don’t do that without tactics. You don’t keep Arsenal in the top 4, without the funds to compete with Chelsea, City etc with no tactics. These are mistruths pedalled by the likes of Le Grove and other bloggers and the press. More fool you if you believe it.
The match will be good today, the lads will perform and please the supporters, just hope they reap the rewards of the performance and get us 3 pts, although to most it seems impossible, i have a calm feeling today (hope it’s not resignation creeping in) before the match.
All i want to see is that we have learned from playing ManC before, and that we put what was learned into practice. I just could not cope with us floundering and lost out on that pitch today.
If there was any season in the past 7 then this is it. In which we have been close. If fans can’t stay positive now then when will they.
Come in gunners. Let’s down the oilers
Today is a tricky one. We’ve tried different approaches against the top two on the three occasions we’ve met to date and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve not had a great deal of success. Add ManU to the list too and we’ve struggled there also.
I think the high line attacking approach is well and truly dead, it should have been consigned to the bin after the Liverpool game, but Chelsea away has well and truly burried that approach. Then we have taken the more conservative approach as in draws at home to Chelsea and ManU, games that if we are truly honest we never really looked like winning.
So what approach should we take today? Certainly something different, as AW has said, we need a win today, the bore-fests that were ManU and Chelsea are no good today. I would advocate a more back to basics approach, two solid banks of four and two strikers. Yes, it’s the good old 4-4-2. Our full backs bombing forward has been our downfall before – stay where you belong – do your primary job! We’ve been weak offensively against bigger sides (especially if you realise Theo did the damage at Citeh and isn’t available). So two up top please. City have a strong central core, we’re unlikely to play through the middle. We need to use our wider midfield options well and stay strong in the middle. Concentration is the name of the game at the back.
If this sound sll a bit 1990’s then it’s worth remembering that City like most teams are used to facing a variation on 4-5-1 this season, something different is worth a try. Arsenal are thought to be predictable, so let’s be anything but that. What’s the worst that could happen? other approaches haven’t worked up to now so let’s try a bit of ‘back to the future’.
6pts to leader? And who said we cant win the league? Today we win and we get our believe back again…. Come on people, give ot ur best, if 6pts from top the league is impossible, then it wont be possible at all, ever…….Today give ur best, let the players give their best. And whatever happens, lets do it in believe and knowing we tried our best.
Tony,
Comments are getting lost again.
Just goes on to show what type of fans united fans are, that squad needs to be overhauled. Without the help from refs they would not have won it last year. The AAA are weird people, when we win they retreat into their shells, only to resurface when we have a blip. What.kind of support is that? People like that surely will the team to lose so they can stick the knife in.
Watching united unconvincingly beat Villa, and Atkinson is truly awful as a ref.
Chris , ur intelligence sucks. get a life if you can’t do what u are expected to do as a fan – BELIEVE.
All this ‘Believe’ stuff is all good and well. Personally I find it a bit Hollywood-sports-film. No need to talk about it in that way. Just support your club through thick and thin, and really the thin isn’t all that bad.
With the oil men looking like they are losing we might be in the mix.
Where are the sewer rats ???assholes some you win others you lose. The so called chosen one was looking like a shithole.
We need to shoot, why the fuck dont we shoot in the goal we are not going to pass the ball into the goal,Wenger stand up and tell the boys to shoot in the goal.
It is interesting that Redaction is composed of a very small number of people.
Who have not really been supported by the Arsenal Supporters Trust, The bin baggers, the People’s Liberation Front of Arsenal, The Arsenal People’s lIberation Front…I guess they have all been too busy trying to look at accounts they have no legal access too (just ignore the giant stadium standing right in front of you), working as freelance journalists *coughs*, telling everyone their manager “doesn’t do tactics” and of course attempting to troll (please note use of the word ‘attempt’) non-Groaning Arsenal web sites.
There’s little time for such things in life, supporting your team, when you are so important.
finsbury
March 30, 2014 at 12:45 pm
I guess they have all been too busy trying to look at accounts they have no legal access too
Newsflash! PLC accounts are publicly available!
http://www.arsenal.com/the-club/corporate-info/arsenal-holdings-financial-results
And that tells me how much is in the transfer kitty? How much is spent on this and that. Right
You do undermine your own uncredible posture with such disingenuous gibberish, troll.
Better luck next time.
Notice how the troll attempted to sidestep any contrast between their sado-masochism and redactions work on yet further desperate efforts propagate the same misinformation they have been failing to spread for years.
Good to hear the supporters at the ground yesterday. They certainly outsung the twenty Groaners with their stained bed sheet.
Nice. Ive been called a sewer rat and a troll today. This site really does take the moral high-road. “It makes me pleased I was born with a sunnier disposition.”
finsbury
March 30, 2014 at 1:28 pm
And that tells me how much is in the transfer kitty? How much is spent on this and that. Right
Probably not- but Im assuming you don’t have any financial training. If you did- absolutely yes; it is a relative simple exercise where we can be certain within acceptable levels of deviation. Accountancy intermediate-level stuff.
It is good to see the emergence of some more positive support for the manager, team etc – there have been far too many negative influences trying to undermine the team, including the all too frequent negative self important arrogant troll types.
@bjtgooner
Lol.
I think you’ll find lots of support for the team- it was superb again last night. I can only think of one negative influence that is undermining the team at present.
SurferX
So you continue to inisist with your expert training that you have access to finianclial informnation about the club that not even Usmanov or Red & White Holdings have access to. Where can I get such training! And how do I avoid it?
The dear reader can only conlcude that either you must sit upon the Arsenal FC board, or that you are lying.
And I think we know what that the answer is.
@SurferX
So you have been looking in the mirror. 🙂
Five responses to my comment by this troll and still no actual commment on Redaction and the lack of support they have been given by the bin dippers. All this troll has been capable of is in exposing the disingenuity behind its posture.
Yes. It took the bait.
Hook. Line. Sunk.
Anyway.
Moving on from the constant gibberish of the Experts on Accountancy and How Not To Run A Football Club (see Tottenham), here’s a link to a good podcast on the work done by Redaction, their own thoughts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7PlXG78n10
Re: Stewards. The club have to keep to the council guidelines as I think (not too sure tbh) that they have the authoority to close the stadium if they think too many people are standing and deem it unsafe. Not in the club’s hands.
Safe-standing for me is the way forward. The club can’t do it by themselves. Fans need to get together etc… as is now finally happening.
@finsbury
What are you talking about man? What financial information? Its all there in black & white (no, nothing to do with Jabba).
I’ll try to put this in layman’s terms. A business has cyclical cash-flows. A football-business has relatively simple cash-flows because it actually has certain points in the cycle where cash comes in. If you take any one set of accounts, it will tell you a lot regarding the historical performance of a club over the period of time for which the accounts are submitted. Certain expenses and erevenues have top be detailed and explained, so yes- in answer to your first point we can build up a very accurate picture of where signifcant expenditures are going (so there is no doubt, for example, how much we have paid in wages and salaries over a period).
Balance Sheet and Cashflow accounting is much harder to explain in layman’s terms. The easiest way I can describe is think of a set of accounts as a valuation of a house. If we get 1 valuation in isolation, we can’t tell much at all. What would happen if there had just been a fire? Or is oil had just been discovered in the back-garden- we wouldn’t know whether the valuation was unusual. Now imagine we had 2 valuations, we can look at the changes- and all of a sudden it would allow use to deduce significant items of change. Now imagine we had 20 valuations over a 10 year period; we can get fairly precise in terms of what is happening.
That is why so much can be deduced from the PLC accounts of AFC. Over-time, we can see what has happened to things like long-term creditors (the amount of money we owe); cash reserves; contingent liabilities. Even better than that, as a PLC, the directors are obliged to provide further detail and narrative explaining key facts that may be ‘hidden’ in the numbers. Thats why we know (for example) that even though at the last full set of audited statements AFC PLC held £154m in cash reserves- they disclose separately that £24m can’t be spent as it needs to be held as banking covenant. And so on.
Look, if there is anything I say that you are unsure of just ask. You may disagree with my conclusions- that’s fine- but don’t let your ignorance of these things cloud your judgement.
finsbury
March 30, 2014 at 1:28 pm
And that tells me how much is in the transfer kitty?
SurferX
March 30, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Probably not
–
Sure would have been helpful for the AAA to have such an expert on accounts with inside knowledge of the board room club telling them how the club were managing their accounts between ’04-’13. Could have saved themselves a world of pain
The reader will already have referred to the very recent comments by Dein and every other reliable source on AFC under the sun on the state of the finances for the given period – as it will be known in the future the era before BT. Let’s not even mention the report commissioned by the AST that helpfully informed and reminded them that the manager of Arsenal has been over performing (some occult malarky about budgets and net spends but all that seems to be way to complicated and esoteric for the AAA Experts) . Don’t want to embaress them. 😉
Finally, lest we forget, the Groaners prescription for Arsenal Football Club, the reason why they attempt to troll Untold.
@NeilBrooksAFC
“Loads of people laughing at Spurs. But they’ve only done, what (Groaners) want us to do…sack the manager and spunk all the money.
and they were crying when we didn’t.”
Baldini was definitely laughing. All the way to the bank.