You’re making him mad, you don’t want to make Gallas mad.

It looks like it’s going to be all rumors, innuendo, and recrimination until August.

First, Captain Gallas has had a go at the press:

They (the media) can say what they want…they will not bring me down, I’m stronger than that. It makes me mad because I don’t think (what happened in Birmingham) was our problem. How can you summarise our season with that thing at Birmingham? That is not why we stopped winning matches.

Good for him. I might disagree with the man occasionally (often) but I think parts of what he’s saying here are right on. The first part about the press saying what they want? Right on the nose. The second part about making him mad? Again, right on! The third part about Martin Taylor’s vicious mauling of Eduardo and Gallas’ subsequent emotional reaction are not what caused Arsenal to start losing matches? Hmmmm…

Look, William, Bill, can I call you Bill? good. Look, Billy, one of the hallmarks of a good leader is the ability to admit it when you are wrong. You say, “I’m sorry” shake hands and try to work on it so that you never do that sort of thing again.

If you look seriously at the last 2 months and cannot see the effect that your petulant display at Birmingham had on the team — specifically the defense which went to tatters after that match, doubling the goals allowed numbers — then I really don’t know what to say to you other than “bon voyage.” The captain of the team, who captains both the team and his defensive squad — where he plays — went to pieces at the same time that the defense went to pieces and you seriously can’t see that people would make that connection?

Bon voyage.

Admitting that you were wrong means that you are willing to learn from your mistakes and make yourself into a better player and a better captain. When you were winning you were a great captain but the measure of a man is not in the high times but in the low. And at Arsenal’s lowest moment, you reverted back to the old Willy; petty, petulant, pompous, and prevaricative. Or what I call “The 4 P’s of Bad Management.”

Speaking of Arsenal captains who practiced the 4 P’s of Bad Management: the press are linking Henry with Arsenal because he said that he “only has Arsenal in his heart” or something.

Let me be very clear (ahem): Thierry Henry is not walking through that door, folks… and if he does he will be old and gray.

Henry is not going back to Arsenal because Wenger has a strict policy against taking back former players as he reminded us all in January when Anelka was again linked to Arsenal.

Nicolas wanted to come back here and I considered buying him because he wanted to put things right, but we have a strict policy that once a player has gone we have to accept it

The “Thierry to Arsenal” stories are worth less than an American Dollar, case closed.

On the injury front, apparently Arsenal will be playing the U-18s on Monday instead of the first team.  Arsene has committed himself to resting players who are set to play in Euro 2008 (Fabregas, Bendtner, van Persie, Gallas, and Clichy) plus Arsenal are missing Hleb, Diaby, Rosicky, Djourou, Sagna, Flamini, and Eduardo due to injury or suspension. So many people are injured I seriously can’t keep track. I need a “who’s injured for Arsenal” widget on the blog so I can keep a running list. I’ll get right on it.

Oh yeah, I told my friend John that the Arsenal game is on Sunday, it’s not, it’s a Monday game, noon kickoff local time. The match is against Derby who are playing for Pride (pun intended) and I don’t think it will be a 6-0 thrashing if everyone is resting. It could be a good match.

Lastly, the Arsenal Women have won the league after a 4-1 come from behind lashing of the Chelsea women. This is the Arsenal women’s fifth consecutive league title. Impressive.

Coaching the Women’s team, Vic Akers has now won 10 league titles, 8 FA cups, and 9 League cups. My GF and I are having a little girl in May and I can only hope that she would one day want to play for a team with that kind of pedigree.

See you tomorrow!

Update: there’s a report coming out of Italy that Juventus is NOT signing Flamini but that AC Milan is… for 4m Euro, which is less than he is reportedly offered from Arsenal. I think this is just further proof that you cannot trust anything you read in the paper.

T-minus 5 days for him to sign with Arsenal.

Money money money money (money)

This transfer season is already set to give me a huge headache but I think I’ve found a coping mechanism. I’m calling it the Rick Pitino coping mechanism.  When Rick was coach of the Celtics, the fans were all over him to buy a bunch of players so they could get back to winning ways.  One day, at a press conference, he broke down and in an attempt to protect his players made his famous “Larry Bird is not walking through that door” proclamation.

Well, to paraphrase Rick: “Thierry Henry is not walking through that door fans, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires are not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door? They’re going to be gray and old.”   After this morning’s spate of telling newspaper articles I feel very strongly that Arsenal are preparing the supporters for an off season with no big signings. So, for my money you can add to that above list Quaresma, Ben Arfa, and anyone else that’s linked to the club.

First, there’s the “I want to keep the club together” thing that Arsene keeps saying as if it’s a mantra to ward off evil spirits. Of course ‘footballistically’ you want to keep a solid team together. Any professional sports team that I have ever followed that broke off even one key player immediately went into what we Americans refer to as “the holding pattern.”

The Seattle SuperSonics spring to mind. One year they are good enough to make it to the NBA finals and take the Chicago Bulls to 6 games and the next year they sign Jim MacIlvaine to a big contract, which causes turmoil on the team, Shawn Kemp leaves, and the team is left with no one but Gary Payton and a few role players. Sure, they make the playoffs, but they never go very far and can never manage to piece together a winning team. That’s the holding pattern: your team is stuck in 4th place until one day, the star gets sick and tired of being on a 4th place team and leaves –  then you’re left with a team rebuilding from scratch. So, from that perspective you definitely want to keep the team together.

But from a money perspective too, you can’t always be transferring players in and out, and no more so than this season. See, if Hleb and Flamini leave, the transfer fee will be only a portion of what they are worth due to the “Webster Clause.” I’ve tried to explain this “Webster Clause/Article 17″ thing before and let me try again: basically, Arsenal would get a transfer fee equal to each player’s salary (for the remainder of their contract) plus a prorated amount based on their original transfer fee, unless the transfer fee has amortized to zero. There are some other rules, such as the club’s ability to dispute the amount that the player is worth, but what I said above is pretty much the long and short of it. That means that Hleb could leave for as little as £8m and Flamini could leave for almost nothing. On the open market Hleb and Flamini would be worth at least £20m. So to replace them is (in the simplest terms) going to cost Arsenal at least £12m out of pocket. And that’s a serious problem if Arsenal’s transfer kitty is as small as some people are reporting.

So, yes, Wenger wants to keep this team together because of team chemistry or adapting to English football or fitting into Arsenal’s system but he also cannot afford (literally) to lose players on what is essentially a free transfer. Every one of those players he loses represent players he must buy just to keep the squad at its current strength, never mind improving the team.

Second, I’m starting to see a bunch of “There’s not as much money as people think” articles. The most dubious of these articles claims that the Arsenal Supporters Trust has discovered that Wenger will have as little as £25m this summer to sign players. I can find no such news release on the AST web site so I report this “news” with reservations. But I am passing it on because there are quotes from the boss that indicate that the piggy bank doesn’t have as much money in it as we all were told. Remember the £70m number? Arsene poo poo’s that number…

There is money there [for transfers], but not as much as I read in the newspapers, because that is not true… It is not as simple as it looks when you read there is so much money available to buy players – that transfer budget also includes the improvement of the wages.

There you have it, two definitive statements from Arsene Wenger himself that there isn’t some £70m war chest lying around that he can crack open to buy Lionel Messi or whomever fans think Arsenal ought to buy. How much money is there? I don’t know. But I do know a “leak” when I see one and this is a leak to the fans that they need to be less optimistic about signing some really big names this summer.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Arsenal only have the money to buy replacements for Hleb and Flamini and neither should you.  Lionel Messi is not walking through that door, folks.

Down goes Murty!

Alex Hleb has admitted to the charge of violent conduct on Graeme Murty and will now serve a three match ban. Since there’s only three matches left in the season, this sad incident ends what had been a very good year from Hleb and may even be his last act in the Red and White.

OK, so you get a three match ban for slapping someone in the face and having them pretend that they have been struck down like Sonny Liston. OK, I accept that.

My only question though, isn’t what Murty did the essence of diving? Feel a little contact, go down, and feign the need for treatment in order to try to trick the referee into giving a card. If so, then, isn’t Murty equally guilty in some respect?  I remember when Cesc went down after a slight elbow to the face from Arteta and everyone cried foul (on Cesc).  Why isn’t anyone crying foul on Murty right now?

Now, before everyone gets in a tizzy over my last comment, let me clarify: Alex Hleb was guilty. 3 Matches is the exact kind of penalty one should receive for this kind of stupidity. Intentionally slap someone in the face, get a 3 match penalty. That seems fair to me.  End of question.

Moreover, intentionally punch someone in the face and break their jaw: 9 match ban? Heck that might even be too lenient. All of this is to say: I am not condoning the actions of Alex Hleb in any way, shape or form.

For me, the fact that Murty “made a meal of it” is the crux of the problem with modern football.  Can you imagine Tony Adams writhing around on the ground and then going off to get treatment after 9 stone Hleb slapped him like that? Roy Keane? Vieira? Flamini? No.  The problem is that the FA can’t really do anything about that kind of dive; someone got hit and went to ground. But think about it, it’s these “justified” dives that lead to the worst examples of diving.

It’s like those infamous “four squares” that supposedly can explain everything in life (I disagree). When two players come together in a clash you have contact/dive, contact/no dive, no contact/dive, and no contact/no dive.

Everyone can agree on the third square there (no contact/dive): when we see a player go down and there’s no contact it’s a dive. That one should be punished straight away with a yellow card and some of us even argue that those should be reviewed after the match just like the Hleb incident.

Everyone can also agree on the fourth square (no contact/no dive), because really that’s just a guy dribbling and falls over for some reason.  He doesn’t look at the ref, throw a tantrum, roll around on the ground needlessly, just picks himself up and continues playing football.

Also, I’m pretty sure everyone can agree on the second square (contact/no dive): it’s refreshing to see a player take a healthy knock in the box and stay on his feet.  It’s refreshing because it’s rare, but it is refreshing none the less.

What we can’t agree on is the first square (contact/dive). Is it acceptable for a player to go to ground when there’s ANY contact, no matter how slight? I would suggest that there’s a range of fan reactions here, depending on who’s team the diving player is on, how much that team’s supporters are used to their players diving, how desperate the team’s situation is, or even some specific team’s supporters and their inbred venom against another team (such as the bizarre reaction that Arsenal generates from Bolton supporters, etc.)

That first square there is what I’d like to call the Murty square. Was he justified in his reaction? I say no and here’s why: those types of dives lead to the more serious and pernicious types of simulation that we have seen invading the game of late. That type of reaction leads, inevitably, to Ronaldo’s famous words “I feel contact? I go down.” It’s the logical outcome isn’t it? But isn’t that kind of dive just as bad if not a worse form of simulation? And when we talk about getting rid of diving, isn’t this the kind of diving that we all really want to see stamped out? The no-contact dive is easy and I’ve actually seen a yellow for that. But the some contact/all dive is almost never awarded a card and I think it’s time to stamp that out too.

The reason Hleb gets a three match ban is because he violated our shared rules of sportsmanship. In the four square of sportsmanship everyone agrees that slapping your opponent in the mouth is a three match ban. But I think it’s almost just as unsporting to play act after getting slapped.

And don’t get me started on how the hell Hleb gets the same ban Taylor got for breaking Eduardo’s leg…

In Arsenal news, the Hleb ban will probably mean that Diaby will get the nod on the left wing. If he’s not fit (he picked up a bit of a knock for the reserves last weekend) then expect to see ye olde 4-5-1 with van Persie slotted on the left. Of course Wenger could bring up a young winger that I haven’t heard of and get him some experience in the last three games. I haven’t seen any news reports so I’m just speculating my ass off here.

Either way, the last three games only matter as far as positioning on the league table. Yes, I’d like to see Arsenal finish 2nd, so fielding a strong side against the final three teams is imperative. That said, the worst that could happen would be to lose all three games and slip to 4th place. In order to get into second we have to root for Chelsea to lose or draw against Man U and then get a draw against Newcastle or Bolton. Hmmm. It all depends. Chelsea could implode here at the end of the season. There’s a lot of tension in their dressing room. A bad loss to Man U and Liverpool at Stamford bridge could be the catalyst that actually destroys the team but they have such talented and experienced players that I just can’t see them going down without a fight. I don’t know, it will be interesting to watch the title race and possibly report on someone else choking for once!

You are also, no doubt, seeing a ton of negative reports about the Flamini deal. As per my new policy I am not giving rumors and innuendo any press here. I will just say this: agents, players, and clubs often try to use the press to their advantage spreading rumor and even lies to change a player’s price, so you all would be wise to ignore any of that stuff. The only press reports about personnel that should be trusted are the ones from Arsenal.com that say “such and such a player has signed for so and so.” Anything else is just a rumor so ignore it.

Speaking of “reported on The Dot Com:” 17 year old Norwegian Captain of the Arsenal Reserve team, Havard Nordtveit, feels like Wenger should choose him instead of dipping into the transfer market. I love the balls on this kid and the balls of the club. First, the kid is 17 and already feels ready to be selected for Arsenal’s first team. And second, this is a club generated story, folks. In my mind that means only one thing: they are preparing us for the fact that the boss is not going to buy a whole pack of established players,  Hell, he might not buy anyone!  Here:

Earlier this season Wenger admitted he had “rarely seen a boy of his age so mature”. If Nordtveit continues on his upward curve, the Frenchman may not have to look far when he hunts for reinforcements this summer.

Uhhh, yeah, I fully expect to see “Nordveit is like a whole new signing” stories this summer. Which is fine with me, I think the team could stand pat and win a trophy, but I just want you all to be prepared for a dearth of signings this summer.

And that’s it for today, see you tomorrow.