Back in June I thought : It\’s all about who he sells.
Not who he buys but who he sells.
He won\’t buy anybody good, so it\’s all about who he sells.
How much of his dead wood can he unload?
It now looks like that agenda is being implemented. Clichy has been sold for £7million.Denilson’s gone to Brazil on loan.Eboue is set to join Galatasaray for £4m.Who wants Almunia or Bendtner? Any offers for Rosicky ?
Nasri? I\’m past caring
Fabregas will go..
But the £64,000 question is : When will this manager go?
Is he planning to go? Does he have a workable exit strategy in place? Would he ever own up? Would he ever walk and say : I rebuilt Arsenal and I balanced the books but I couldn’t grow my own team. We didn’t win anything, so my two best players left me.
Will he go to PSG next summer?
Well, he already has that well-established Qatar connection.
Do PSG want to be the Real Madrid of France? Maybe.
But Paris isn’t a football-mad city. And why would PSG hire a developmental manager who hates buying stars and has, for his entire career, always refused to work at a big club with big expectations?
At Monaco, he did everything. At Grampus 8, he was God and ran the show.
At Arsenal he won trophies with an inherited defence and then seized control of the entire club by inventing an economic model which made a profit every season. While the new stadium was being built, he did the work of five men and accumulated more power than Alex Ferguson.
He\’s now 61 and unpopular and the clock is ticking and the CEO has said the fans will decide his future.That’s still the only thing that\’s happened at Arsenal this summer : Gazidis has aligned himself with the fans against the manager .
He hasn’t navigated the CLQ games yet.
Arsenal always win these games. Their CLQ performances have always been good but this time it might be harder. Dynamo Kiev played Rubin Kazan last night in Kiev and the Ukrainians lost 2-0. That is a terrible result that could damage Dynamo Kiev financially. The second leg will be interesting, since there is no love lost between Ukrainians and Russians.
Arsenal could be drawn against the winner.
Barcelona lost 1-0 in Kazan in Septemer 2010.
What about the long-term picture?
Well, Stan Kroenke isn\’t a winner. He just wants to balance the books and keep his head down. He has a tracksuit French accountant running his EPL soccer club and the tracksuit accountant is meticulous about balancing the books. Nobody has a tidier record when it comes to good housekeeping He wrote off a season just to get Chamakh on a free transfer and the striker is now Arsenal\’s worst player.
One of the accountant\’s most recent pronouncements was that the purchase of Gervinho has saved Arsenal a lot of money. He said, ” When you see all the fees around, you become dizzy. We do what we want and we look first at the quality of the player and after if we have the money we spend it.â€
He also said, “In Gervinho’s case, he wanted to join us. He had only one year on his contract so it was a good opportunity for us.”
SUCH AMBITION !
Meanwhile, the silence from Danny Fiszman’s grave in Switzerland is echoed by a louder silence from Columbus, Missouri.
While John W. Henry communicates with Liverpool\’s fans but Stan Kroenke never states his vision for your club. Having acquired London\’s biggest football club, this American “billionaire“, this great “sports tycoon” has said zero zilch diddly-squat fuck all.
That is an insult, Stan. That is a disgrace. How have you got away with that?
FULL DISCLOSIURE : I was wrong about Kroenke. When I realised that Danny had decided that Stan was the man to take Arsenal forward, I became quite excited. The optimist in me hoped Kroenke would be dynamic and imaginative.
Why does Kroenke still do nothing and say nothing? Maybe he wants to sell when Wenger goes and make a big profit.
If Usmanov bought Arsenal today, the tracksuit accountant would get his P45 today.
Unless Wenger beat Usmanov to the punch by resigning before he could be sacked.
This manager has always threatened his gutless board. His mantra for the last decade has been : if anybody interferes, I’m out of here. But the board have never called his bluff because he makes a profit.
His team has been in decline for six years and Usmanov knows that because he attends Arsenal games. He walks to the ground with only one bodyguard.
For me, Arsenal is a club in limbo while their legendary manager tries to manage a dignified exit.
As always, it’s all about him. His 15-year reign has been one gigantic ego-broadcast and the first eight years were exciting and different and rewarding and historic. It was fun and he told us things we didn’t know and for those eight years we saw football that we may never see again. But, as one of my readers recently noted, the last seven have been all about denial.
He recently insulted us all by claiming, “We are not weak defensively.”
That is sheer rubbish. That is utter garbage and every Gooner from here to Vancouver knows it is utter garbage. Wenger does not teach defence and that’s why Arsenal conceded 27 goals from set-pieces last season.
If madness is doing the same things over and over again, and expecting a different result, then this manager is crazy.
Yes, he can build clubs and improve teams.
But he can’t grow a team that will win the Premier League or the Champions League.
That’s why Fabregas wants to go.
It’s not why Nasri wants to go, but it’s why Fabregas wants to go.
If Cesc Fabregas thought Wenger could win the title, he would stay.