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Monday’s Fiver

Good morning kickers.

Before I get into the top five stories that are boggling my mind this morning, there’s something I need to tell you: site traffic is at… an all time low!

My feedburner feed is actually at an all-time high but it looks like what happened is a combination of two things. First, Goonernews.com is now a pay site, requiring the blogs they aggregate to pay £10 a month for the privilege of their news aggregator. Seriously.

The second thing that happened is that NewsNow not only dropped the blog, but it looks like they scrubbed their entire database of all articles I’ve ever published. I contacted them to find out what happened but they are one of the least communicative web sites I’ve ever dealt with and I honestly don’t expect a response.

So, it’s back to square f*cking one with the blog. I’ve gone from a few thousand readers a day and gathering new, dedicated, readers every day to now just a few hundred readers a day. I guess the positive is that you all are my real readers and those other folks were all just posuers but the problem is that I won’t reach new, dedicated, readers without publicity.

So, that’s why the comments have been so quiet lately. I have to start thinking what I’m going to do about all of this. Obviously, I’m open to suggestions.

Number 1: Man City takes the mantle from Chelsea

When Abramovich bought Chelsea and pumped them full of shiny new players it wasn’t enough to just have the best players in the world, they also needed to have the right attitude. By “right” attitude I mean, they were (are) a pack of c*nts.

To overcome the current champions and pry the Premier League trophy from them it helps if players believe that it’s their God given right to win. If anyone tries to get between them and God, they’re going to get kicked, pushed, shoved, and if needed slapped in the face.

Chelsea did that 5 years ago and they won the title. With the recent outbursts of Adebayor and Bellamy it looks like City are full of this “right” attitude.

Number 2: Chelsea look the team to beat, with a bat

Tottenham ran into the Chelsea buzz saw, who are brimming with the feeling that the title is their God given right, and two of Tottenham’s center backs suffered injuries yesterday. It was an amazing physical display all over the pitch: from Terry to Mikel to Essien to Lampard to Drogba and Anelka they are the most frighteningly physical team I have ever seen play. And they have belief.

There was a glimmer of hope when Dogbag went off with what I prayed was a career, nay LIFE, threatening injury. In typical Drogba style he needed to be stretchered off for maximum drama and, of course, the injury turned out to be just a cramp. So, I’m sure he’ll be back to throwing defenders to the ground in no time.

Ugh… Who’s going to stop them? People are already talking about a perfect 10 start.

Number 3: UEFA, Sportsmail, and the Diving Evangelists to blame

I don’t feel an ounce of pity for Robbie Keane not getting a stonewall penalty call yesterday in that Chelsea v. Tottenham match. Robbie Keane is a despicable player and if he never wins another penalty in his career I would feel like the universe was back to normal. That said, I fear that what we are seeing is a knock on effect from the retarded Diving Evangelists’ campaign against “diving.”

It looks like referees in the EPL are no longer going to call a stonewall penalty if there’s any doubt, or if the player doesn’t play for Man U. I don’t need to tell you that this is a stupid and dangerous and ripe for exploitation. Supporters need to feel like their players are going to get a fair shake and if they see a penalty like Wayne Rooney’s obvious dive given while Keane has his legs taken and the ref waves on play, it’s potentially destructive to the whole EPL fan base.

Why is it again that we can’t use video technology?

Number 4: ugh, Wenger’s crusade against “persistent fouls”

Look, I watch MLS, I know what persistent fouling looks like and I can tell you that even clubs like Bolton are no where near the level of persistent fouling that a club like the Seattle Sounders are. I agree with him that the FA needs to take a look at it and keep it to a minimum, but the FA is not going to remove 16 teams’ only means of remaining competitive with the top four.

Besides, why fight it? Why not join them a little? It would be nice if we had more than just Alex Song putting in professional fouls. In fact, I think it’s the only way to stop a team like Chelsea, or Arsenal, so why not use the rules to your advantage?

Number five: the Carling Cup match no one will see

There’s no television coverage of tomorrow’s Arsenal v. W.B.A. match in the USA. As far as I can tell, even the dot com isn’t covering the match live. Ugh… that means some illegal sopcasts or something.

Maybe the dot com will have a replay after the match.

That’s it for today, I’ll do a match preview tomorrow.

City goes for £100m Brazilian, owch.

The funniest story this morning is that City offered £91m for Kaka, Gattuso, and Dida.  Gattuso is injured and Dida is shite, so, let’s be honest and just admit that this is a $100m bid for Kaka. Now, depending on who you read, Kaka is either willing to talk to City or has rejected them outright. City is trying their level best to get to the player by offering him an after tax salary of £13m but when Kaka’s agent publicly says

Kaka wouldn’t do anything based on money. He would never do something like Robinho, who, just to earn more, contented himself with a solution that was not a winning one. (emphasis added)

I rather doubt the player will be tempted.

Honestly though, it’s not the money, it’s not that City are struggling to stay in the Premier League, it’s that established Italian players do not want to come to England in the prime of their careers and have their legs broken by the Mathew Taylor’s and Kevin Davies and Joey Barton’s in this league. Add in that the pace of the game and demands of English football are harder than in Italy, that the English refs are biased against foreigners, and the food and culture is continuously a sore spot and really, even £14m after tax isn’t enough.

In Italy he’s a god. In England, he’s a great player on “the other Manchester team.”

Which leads us to Arsenal target Andrei Arshavin. Sadly, news reports are circulating now that say Inter are getting involved in the bidding and if true I think we have to say our hopes for landing the player have diminished. I really wish Arsene would just look elsewhere for a player. Dealing with Zenit is distasteful at the least and at best it’s starting to look like they are using Arsenal to get the max they can from Inter or City after the Kaka deal falls through.

The team would be better served if they would spend their time on getting a player in, for a reasonable fee, who would shore up the defensive end of the squad. Hangelaand is often linked, a defensive midfielder maybe, you know, that kind of player. Maybe if you want to get realy crazy, recall Traore from Pompey and have him compete for Eboue’s spot.

Cesc Hates Football

Ok, not really, but Cesc did make a rather incredible statement in the match program on Saturday against Bolton and rather than cut it up, let me just give it to you whole

Of course I love watching Arsenal, and I will never miss a game when I can help it, but apart from that I’m just forgetting about everything to do with football. Even my girlfriend is surprised because it’s unusual for me, but to be honest when it comes to football at the moment, I am off it until I can start to get fit again.

I just have to be patient and try to enjoy a holiday. In the last five years I haven’t been able to take any type of holiday because even during the summer I have been playing for the national team, so it’s been constant.

I think in six years I’ve only ever had three consecutive weeks without football. That’s not normal for a 21 year-old. For Arsenal and Spain at all levels I think I have played 270 games – for a 21 year-old that’s not normal so I guess at one stage this had to happen. I want to relax as much as possible, and I’m sure I will come back stronger

Wenger gave Cesc some time off to start the season but clearly it wasn’t enough. I think we all saw a dip in form for Cesc at that time and now we know why, he’s burned out on football. I don’t know what Cesc is thinking but it looks to me like the burden that Wenger put on the young man, playing him 250 times before the age of 21 has started to tell. We all have to hope that these 4 months off see him return refreshed and hungry.

I’d also hope that Wenger sees this statement and understands that we need to bring in some experienced players rather than just throw Wilshere, Vela, and Ramsey out there to the wolves.

Yes, for those keeping tabs, I have changed my mind here.

Rapid Links

Simpson is doing well, winning matches, and earning plaudits from W.B.A. He supposedly scored a great goal, anyone have a link? I’d love to see Simpson help W.B.A. stay up this season and then be recalled back into the Arsenal team and give Ade some competition for his target man spot up front.

Spuds are being cautious with Appiah and will test him out tonight in a friendly to see if they want to sign him permanently.  I have to think that there’s something really, really wrong with him if the normally profligate Spurs are being so cautious. So, erm, good job not signing Appiah, Wenger!

Howard Webb admits he was wrong. No, not about the piss poor refereeing at Old Trafford but about his piss poor refereeing in a Wolves/Birmingham FA Cup match where he admitted that he failed to give a penalty for a clear violation. Now, if we could only get him to admit that he’s Wayne Rooney’s bitch we’d all be better off. “Best ref in England?” That’s an insult to England.

DIC A DUG

For the last week almost, I’ve been writing an article on Platini’s proposal to get rid of debt in football. The article was mostly done on Sunday as I lazed around my living room basking in the labor day weekend. Then, as you all know, the transfer window shut, nothing happened with Arsenal, there was huge fan fallout, and I felt compelled to write the piece I did yesterday about how we all need to put our egos to bed and let Arsene get on with the managing of the team for us.

But something else happened on Monday, a proverbial left footed rocket across the bow of the good ship EPL — the ripples of which are still being felt.  Sometime over this weekend, Manchester City changed hands and as soon as it did, their new owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), signalled their intent in the transfer market.  Brushing aside former world powerhouses Chelsea, they swooped in and signed Robinho for £32.5m.  When that happened, I said to my friend “I bet they just made him the highest paid player in the EPL.”  And yesterday, it turned out to be true.  According to the Mail, ADUG is going to pay Robinho an astonishing £160,000 per week.  Frank Lampard is probably binging on pie over the knowledge that his playboy billionaire can no longer make him the most ludicrously paid sports star in England.

The thing that’s really shocking, though, is that ADUG tabled seemingly dozens of bids all at once for some of the biggest names in football.  Ruud van Nistelrooy, not nearly in his prime any more, is one name that came up but other names include Huntelaar, Eto’o, and Berbatov.  Supposedly, they bid for them all in one day!  How much truth there is to all this, we don’t know at this point but we do have Al-Fahim (ADUG’s head) in his own words saying that he thinks £135m January bid for Christiano Ronaldo is not out of the question.

Ronaldo has said he wants to play for the biggest club in the world, so we will see in January if he is serious.  Real Madrid were estimating his value at $160 million (roughly £90m) but for a player like that, to actually get him, will cost a lot more; I would think $240 million (£135m). But why not? We are going to be the biggest club in the world, bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United.

He’s not stopping there, either.  Next year he wants to pair Ronaldo (not the fat one) with Ronaldinho, Torres, Fabregas, and Lionel Messi.  Why Kaka isn’t mentioned yet, I haven’t a clue; maybe Football Manager 2008 is missing Kaka?

Obviously, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw these quotes because they relay both a naivete and an arrogance that will not serve him well.  Saying that you’re going to tempt Manchester United’s resolve in January with a bid for Christiano Ronaldo is, well, just plain ignorant.  Next summer?  Yes, Ronaldo will be on the table and yes it will cost something like £100m to get him.  But I can’t imagine what Ronaldo’s value to Man U will be in January.  It’s the home stretch, they’ll be playing for Champions League trophies and they will need their best player to help them to win.  He’s not transfering out in January.  Sir Alex Ferguson will take a pen to Ronaldo’s skull and physically kill him before he lets him go in January.

Similarly, his proclamation that Manchester City is going to be bigger than Man U and Real Madrid is naive. Chelsea have proved that to some extent.  Chelsea, remember, claimed they were going to be the biggest club in the world by 2014.  Two years in to their plan and they aren’t even the biggest club in England.  So, it looks to me that for all intents and purposes Manchester City’s new owner is a blowhard who doesn’t really understand football, football fans, transfer rules, or really how anything works in the EPL.  Again, that’s a huge sigh of relief.

Still, while I’m relieved that he’s a moron, I’m very nervous because I do think that his money will have a massively disrupting influence.  Since there will always be mercenary footballers out there (Robinho) Man City will always be able to disrupt deals.  Like they just did.  Man City just pulled a Chelsea on Chelsea and to me that was the biggest shot across the bow.  The club who, up until Monday, was able to lure players away with outrageous salary promises, who were able to buy players for double the transfer fee that rival teams like Arsenal had offered, was nipped by the new guys on the block, at their own game.  

In a sense, my Platini article foresaw this.  Basically, in the article I argue that Platini’s right that debt is bad and that debt will be the undoing of many of these teams but that his plan to basically cut them off from what is keeping them afloat would only accelerate the inevitable: some rich guy will pay off the team’s debts and the team will keep going.  Face facts, Manchester United is too big to be relegated or go into bankruptcy.  No, they have too much operating income to have that happen.  Sure, they are swamped with debt right now, but if someone came in and bought the team and thus cleared the books, all that income that’s going toward debt suddenly is profit.  Liverpool is in the same boat, which is why we’re hearing rumors again that Dubai International Capital (DIC) is in to buy Liverpool off their two dottering old clowns.

No, I wrote, just let it happen on its own, there’s no need to go messing with the rules, just let Man U and Liverpool collapse on their own.  Hell, this year Liverpool was a Kuyt hair away from getting kicked out of the Champions League and without that £30m payout, they would have been (technically) insolvent.  As soon as that happens, some smarter rich Arab (who’s been waiting for the right moment) will step in and buy the team.

At least that’s how I saw it all going down.  I just didn’t expect it to be Manchester City, on Monday. 

So, what’s the answer Mr. Laissez Faire?  Well, I’m not really sure.  Here in America we have a love/hate relationship with salary caps.  On the one hand, they have done a pretty good job keeping the NFL a fun, fair league to watch.  But on the other hand, they are simply a mechanism to keep wages artificially low, which is unfair to the players.  If the owners want to bankrupt their team overpaying people and the fans aren’t complaining (Chelsea) why should government get involved?  It’s competition after all.  There isn’t a “goals scored cap” on the season, so why a salary cap?  On the other hand, salary caps work…  That’s three hands.  Hmmm… maybe the third hand is the invisible hand of the market!

In the end, I don’t know the answer: I don’t feel comfortable just leaving it up to the Michel Platini’s of the world but I certainly don’t want to leave it up to the Al-Fahim’s of the world either. There has to be some way to obtain a balance in the Premier League because the 800lb goriila in the room has finally woken up and I’m afraid something will need to be done to calm him down.