Category Archives: Transfers

Jovetic in naked bust up with WAG drops Arsenal transfer swoop playing FIFA 17 in new PUMA Kit

Wait.

Don’t go.

I know it’s the perfect headline, combining transfer stories, WAGs, FIFA, and new kits and you feel abused now because you were trolled, I know, but there’s a larger point: you are always being trolled but you willingly give in to it all the time.

Why?

You’re probably one of the smart ones out there. One of the people who sees a headline like “Why Jovetic will eat thunder and crap lightning for Arsenal” and immediately roll your eyes, but you click the article anyway. And worse still, you scan the whole thing looking in vain for a small bit of news to add to some growing gestalt construct called “Jovetic at Arsenal”: oh look, this guy calls him a “cool finisher.” Right, “mazy dribbler, cool finisher, will make Arsenal Champions of Europe, the missing piece to the attack, right, got it.”

Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I get why you click. Transfer stories aren’t just “fantasy football” as they are often derided, they are more like porn.

PORN.

I probably lost some of you with “gestalt construct” but got some of you back with my mention of porn.

Porn and transfer stories are basically the same thing, they are a combination of fantasy and exaggeration: they are simultaneously something we wish we had and something we know we can never have. They are the physical made fantastic and the fantastic made physical.

Porn is somewhat about fantasy but more about the exaggeration. Normal people fantasize about sex, sure, but porn takes sex fantasies and exaggerates them. So it’s not just one beautiful woman, it’s two or three or thirteen (you freak). The girl’s not just young, she’s “barely legal” (really? Uhhh, sit down over here). The breasts aren’t just large, they are gigantic (and fake). On and on, every aspect of porn is more about the exaggeration than the fantasy.

The same with transfer rumors.

For example, right now the fantasy is that Arsenal will sign a forward, despite having purchased two and a half forwards last summer and re-signing Theo Walcott, and maybe they will.* The exaggeration of that fantasy, though, is that Arsenal will sign Cavani or Falcao. Those are the really big names in world football right now. So, why aren’t we seeing a lot of stories on them?

Because, the girl next door.

Stevan Jovetic is a veritable children's treasury of homoeroticism

See, we’ve gotten so inured to fantasies writ large like Falcao that we need something we feel is more “attainable” and so we turn to Jovetic, the girl next door. Just like porn, the more “savvy” people become to transfer stories, the more they need to occlude reality with the cover of something “realistic”.

Let’s be realistic. Arsenal would never sign a Falcao. But we could sign Jovetic! Sure, he would break Arsenal’s transfer record but Fiorentina just missed out on Champions League football and they could offer him that!

The trick here is to be “realistic” just like the “girl next door” variety of pornography. Not real. Realistic. Real-like. A facsimile of real.

The next step is that once you’ve tricked the person into believing that he/she has a chance with this fantasy babe, then the fantasy has to be re-branded within the story to make it porn again. No one watches videos of the girl next door reading Chaucer, they want to see her doing something fantastic.

Thus with Jovetic, he becomes:

a gifted player who is amazy dribbler with the ball at his feet. He has excellent vision and passing skills, but is also capable of finishing with deadly accuracy and skill. His poise on the ball gained from Serie A will be particularly valuable to the Gunners’ possession-centered attack

Most of that is fantasy, he’s a 41% dribbler and does have 66 dribbles on the season but hardly “mazy”, his passing skills are actually surpassed by his own teammate Adem Ljajic who has 8 assists on 44 key passes and passes at an 88% rate, and his finishing is not “deadly accurate” as he has just 13 goals on 114 shots with just 43 shots on target — an almost identical rate to last season.** You know who else shoots a lot from outside and has similar percentages, similar goal tally, but from fewer actual shots? Podolski.

But still, you say, we could use him! Yes, in that fantasy world we could use him except just like the porn actress, this too is not attainable. ”I don’t think Arsene Wenger is interested in the boy” said Fiorentina’s Prade today as reality broke into the fantasy world. Maybe Arsenal are interested and this is all just smoke and mirrors, right?*

In many ways everything about sports is fantasy anyway so I don’t mean to disabuse you the fantastic. We buy the shirt with the player’s name on the back because the little kid inside us still wants to be that player despite the fact that we know we will never be able to score a goalazo like he did against AC Milan. We want the team to win trophies because we become champions by proxy, and we ultimately want to get all the big name signings because we feel like we own a little piece of that person when we buy our season ticket or watch them on teevee.

So, by all means, click away on those transfer stories. Go for it and make sure you have lots of tabs open at work and that you hide them when a coworker walks by.

Just try not to get anything on the screen, the janitors are not paid to clean up your biohazard.

*Fantasy must always be given hope
**”He shoots a lot from distance” say people as an excuse for his profligacy

Why would anyone want Rooney or Suarez?

I can’t stand fantasy football. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the allure. It’s Dungeons and Dragons for sports nerds. I know because I used to play fantasy basketball. In fact I won my league two of the three years I played and I was the Seattle Supersonics fantasy “correspondent” for ESPN back in the olden days when fantasy basketball was just getting started. But the end of fantasy sports came for me when I was in the stands at a Sonics game rooting for Derek Fisher of the LA Lakers to hit a three pointer. I needed threes that day and my fantasy team’s playoff position mattered more to me than my actual team’s playoff position. So I understand fantasy sports inside and out. And sometimes I wonder if our, us Arsenal fans, obsession with players like Rooney and Suarez doesn’t come from a bit of a fantasy sports perspective.

I get it, Suarez on paper looks like a beast. The man has attempted 291 dribbles this season, that’s a dribble more per game than Mr. Dribble himself, Franck Ribery. But he’s only pulled off 95 of those dribbles making him simultaneously a “trier” and one of the most wasteful forwards in all the big leagues.

Still, I hear people say, “he creates his own shot” and Arsenal need someone to “create their own shot”. And again, on paper, this is correct, he has a total of 187 shots this season, second only to Mr. Chucker* himself, Christiano Ronaldo. It’s no coincidence that both Liverpool and Real Madrid are number one and number two in shots per game among all the top Leagues — they have the top two shooters. Tottenham are up there in shots per game as well, and Bale is a big reason for that.

As an aside, Juventus are third in shots per game, which you probably didn’t expect. You also probably didn’t expect to find out that they have 8 players who average two or more shots per game and no players who average 3 or more shots per game. They don’t have a chucker, they share the ball.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that shots and shots on goal correlate well with winning football matches. It does, they do, hardly a surprise; you have to shoot the ball to score the goals and scoring goals means winning games. So, it follows that you want a player like Suarez on your team. I get it, on paper.

SUAREZ IS OUT

I don’t get it in real life.

Setting aside the diving, which all players do now and which Gary Neville has said is a prerequisite for playing football. In real life Suarez has been found guilty of biting and making racist comments. In real life, if you watch Liverpool play week in and week out, you see a team force-feeding him the ball like a duck in gavage. Liverpool live and die by what Suarez does on and off the football pitch. Which is big reason why Liverpool are going to finish below Everton this season, in 7th place.

That match against Chelsea epitomized Suarez’ entire career. He places the perfect cross to get Liverpool the opener, then handles the ball to gift Chelsea the draw, bites Ivanovich in a fit of pique, and scores the tying goal in the last minute with a brilliant header.

Another player Arsenal supporters seem to be keen on is Wayne Rooney. And here’s the thing about Rooney: fuck Wayne Rooney. Rooney is one of those players you don’t even take on your fantasy team because he’s unreliable. Even Manchester United’s own fans have grown tired of Wayne Rooney’s shit and they booed him at the team’s victory parade.

Rooney is 27 years old and should be in the prime of his career. Perhaps, if I give Rooney some credit, that’s why he turned in a transfer request. He’s ready to make a big splash in his career and playing second fiddle to noob Robin van Persie after years of service to Man U might sting a bit. What am I saying? Rooney is such a massive ego that it probably stings a lot. But it’s also his second transfer request in two years and the first one was really just all about the money so who knows, this could also just be about the money.

But his career stats and off the pitch antics are worrying as hell. Since 2008, Rooney has had one season on and one season off every year: 12 goals, 26 goals, 11 goals, 27 goals, 12 goals… I suppose he’s due for a 28 goal season! A lot of that record is down to an ankle injury he suffered between 2008-2010, though, he did score 26 goals on a dodgy ankle and a quick search of the press reveals Ferguson saying the ankle is both “not as serious” and “more serious” every other week. So, again, how much of Rooney’s success is down to him and how much is down to management by Fergie is unknown.

Personally, Rooney smacks of an old school footballer. You know the kind I mean, the guy who smokes on vacation, the guy who drinks when he’s injured, and the guy who cheats on his pregnant wife. Rooney is the player who throws a football at a referee and as he’s walking to the shower has a little spit in his direction. A player who looses his temper and kicks out at an opponent, getting sent off ahead of a crucial European campaign. The guy who doesn’t take care of himself and as a result ends up looking like a withered pear; it looks ill, it eats drily. A guy who dives to end Arsenal’s 49 game unbeaten run.

Thanks for the dive Wayne!

So who would ever want either Rooney or Suarez?

I think in many ways players like Suarez and especially Rooney hearken back to an earlier time in football. A time when the footballers were hard men and when the terraces were full of chants like “You’re gonna get your fucking heads kicked in!”

I’ve heard it said by many that Arsenal need some of that, some “steel”. To put it not too delicately, I’ve heard people say that what Arsenal need is “a cunt like that.” And I would agree, Rooney and Suarez are, in fact, cunts.

But I’m not so sure that what Arsenal need is a player who does a zombie impression in big games or a barely manageable half-Gascoigne. Times have changed and players like that are dinosaurs. I get it that you see Rooney busting a gut to beat Denilson that one time and think “why can’t we have players like that?” Orr that Suarez slips past his marker and pokes in a delicate little goal that reminds us of King Charlie in his pomp at Highbury.

But if you’re playing fantasy football and what you want is a player who will bust a gut and who has the talent to leave defenders standing still like pillars of salt why wouldn’t you aspire to have something better than Rooney or Suarez? Take a player whose worst attribute is that he’s had his ears pinned or that he’s a Spurs player!

Take Bale over those two any day.

And if you want someone in this Arsenal team who never stops working for the cause, who tackles hard but fair, and whose put his body on the line time and again for the Red and White, cheer for Aaron Ramsey.

I do.

*A “Chucker” is the player in basketball who shoots every time he gets the ball, rather than pass to an open teammate, see Kobe Bryant.

Grim Thoughts: The Ninjas of Opportunity…

Wotcher Gooners… it’s been a weird few weeks since my last ‘back from the grave’ post gave me the verve and vigour to write again. Thank you all for the outpouring of love… it shocked me how much I missed the interaction with Goonerdom via my particular brand of mindless drivel… and I must say a special thank you to Tim the Enchanter – he who IS 7amkickoff – for his patience with me during my dry spell(s). There are not many who would put up with a part timer like myself so if you like my fluff – make sure you give props to the man himself… thanks Tim.

I’m now just a few weeks away from wrapping up my company here and after the initial shock my mind is now starting to look at its demise as an opportunity which may at first seem; a) weird b) fucking irrelevant to an Arsenal blog such as this…. however as always dear reader, bare with me and let me explain: This season as the last post outlined was a very testing time for me due to that Dutch bloke that left us to play for ManU… my ire at him is, this week at least, tempered by my joviality that he has jumped into the same damned boat that old Cescy did a few seasons ago; i.e. the scenario he left us for only lasting one season. With Cesc it was for his home club and childhood hero Pep, who promptly fucked off after that season… the laughter still echoes in my mind whenever I picture the Barca team sitting being told, the tears welling up… hohoho. With vanSkunkie it was the little boy inside that took SAF at his word that he wasn’t going anywhere, because you DO know that was mentioned in the contract negotiations right? With SAF ManU’s credentials were that with the Red Nosed wonder they were guaranteed to be fighting for silver every season, that’s why vanSkunkie left no; for ‘titles’? Without SAF that guarantee has been flushed like a mid morning turd. Sure Moyes is a sound manager that’s done a great job at a mid-table club… but ManU is a different beast entirely and if he CAN cut it, it will I think take a few seasons first which takes vanSkunkie to the end of his shelf life.

It famously took SAF a good chunk of time to get going after his appointment, time that Moyes is NOT going to have, in addition ManU’s dressing room is full of the sort of prima donnas that I’m pretty sure Moyes wouldn’t have employed at Everton so he’s got an interesting challenge ahead of him balancing that many egos and as of this writing Rooney’s the first to hand in a transfer request. SAF commanded the respect of the squad, but a new manager like Moyes with exactly Zero on his CV and regardless of reputation, may not. Look at how the Chav players treated AVB or failing that just watch The Damned United for clarification of how it can go very, very wrong. My guffawing at this scenario is based upon a simple precedent: Disruption for them is opportunity for us. Think of disruption as a Ninja that’s stalking you. Miss it and it’ll fill you full of shuriken or spider venom. Catch it and… erm, well you won’t be dead. Actually that was a really crap analogy; my point is that the summers main disruptive talking points are OTHER PEOPLES for the first time in a long time.

I’ve written before about the 5+ years of summers marred by players wanting to go home, flashing their tits at other clubs for more money, disagreeing with the ‘direction of the club’ and the ongoing gnashing of teeth about our finances which I suspect were never as rosy as was suggested by many in the ‘spend it now’ side of Goonerdom. The state of AFC finances has always seemed to me to be indefinable because all the figures are out there but we don’t have the minutiae of detail needed to predict the true net worth… Plus, we all know Wenger is about as open with his plans as the CIA is with a Drone Strike program. We also all know that the future of the club was mortgaged to long term deals to fund the building of the Emirate Stadium and that now those deals have run their course. The fruits of the switch, in addition to the end of those old agreements, will see an injection of cash into the club of steroidal proportions. This was all part of the ‘plan’ I’ve eluded too in many a post over the years which is only really visible with ‘20-20 hindsight glasses’ (patent pending).

What I’ve never alluded too and what I couldn’t foresee (nee – did any of us?) was the absolute cluster bomb of WTFedness that’s going to happen in the Summer of 2013. We all knew that the Chavs were going to sack Benitez as he was always a stop gap. Citeh have also just chopped the charming and modest Mancini for being a complete and utter failure by only providing two trophies in three seasons just 12 months after handing him a 5 year contract. Of course this all pales into insignificance next to the laughter fest that is Fergie stepping down. We all have Manc friends (don’t we?) and I have several from whom I’ve had to take gloating from since the invincible season and the huge swathe of disruption since that heady season, worst of all last Summer. For the last 8 years we’ve all taken it on the chin but the one conversation stopper with them ALL has always been; “Oh yeah, what are you going to do when Fergie goes?” Some try to laugh it off with mutterings of “we’re bigger then Fergie” but the fear in their eyes tells a different story. Pure, unadulterated, dread! I would say with some justification…loathe him or merely hate him even this scribe, who has the misfortune to share a birthday with him, has always had to respect his impact on ManU and the game in general. To stay at the top for that long is a massive, massive achievement and now we know Moyes is taking over the pressure is palpable, almost crushing, in the manner of an elephant deciding to park itself on your toes.

Moyes may or may not be the man to take the club forward but with SAF staying at the club in a director position, the ghost of his legacy will always cast a shadow over Moyes’ reign… will he hover like Busby did? Will he hang in the background messing up perceptions when things don’t go to plan as Dalglish did to the Scouse managers, namely Woy? The addition of such mass disruption at most of our direct competitors is at odds to the relative stability we’re looking to have in the summer, plus the big boost to the coffers seems to make 2013/14 a really big opportunity for the squad that has perpetually needed one or two signings. Of course as I type this I’m crossing my fingers whilst gripping wood, throwing salt over my shoulder, dodging all ladders & pavement cracks and heartily stomping repetitively in all the dog shit I can find and, as I live in Marin which has the highest level of dogs-per-capita of ANY county in the US there is PLENTY of that going around which does beg the question; “why do I have such shite luck?” This is not to mention any black cats thinking about coming anywhere NEAR my path over the coming weeks; take note I’ll be carrying a spray bottle and a LASER pointer with me at all times.

Simply put, I might actually be right in being optimistic for once. For where there is disruption amongst ones competition there’s opportunity for one (us). This very circumstance is something that the Chav’s, Spuds, Mancs and Citeh have all taken advantage of in their own ways in the last 8 years. Not even counting the poisonous fuck Cashley, for years the Chav’s transfer policy seems to have basically been to watch whoever we’re linked with and then buy ‘em for 3x the price. The Spuds have been working in relative stability* compared to their own recent past and finally might have a manager that suits them. Up until last summer ManUre had been relatively quiet to be honest with regards to destabilizing our squad, but certainly they’re the main contributors to our downfall this season by taking advantage of the fact all of our Capt’s have left for the last 5 years and that our wage structure is so rigid it makes North Korea look positively cosmopolitan. They waved a guarantee of trophies and a fat stack of cash under his nose and he took a massive dump on his legacy. That of course is not to forget Citeh… we don’t need to go there do we? If you haven’t noticed how many have they taken off us in recent years then you’ve probably just returned from the Bermuda triangle…or something.

Now the boot may well be on the other foot, which is pretty stupid because why would you wear a left sided boot on your right foot? Ridiculous phrases aside** my point is that we’re facing the most stable summer in recent memory with regards to players… in the core everyone’s signed up (please re-sign Sagna!) and are seemingly pretty happy. Buckets of cash will be coming through the door in the not too distant future with sponsorships being renewed and barring the Cocks on Balls there’s massive disruption at all the other clubs we mainly compete with. So while I realise I’m a diehard optimist and my rosy view is not shared by many in the days of “Stan’s robbing us blind” is this not at least some sign for Gooners having a cheerier outlook? Well as someone who’s staring at both the unemployment roster and a very uncertain future after fourteen years as a nerdy publisher I see what many many view as misfortune as simply a step into the new; an opportunity to go and do something different.

STILL not optimistic? Tsk… there’s no pleasing some people.

Grimbo

*How stable can a cock standing on a ball EVER be?

**I’ve never understood “Sweet as a nut” either… because they aren’t.