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How much royalties can we get for one Song, why United always get the calls, 3 game home stand and more: it’s your Monday Fiver!

Chelsea paid £16m for Obi John Kenobi

This is what I like doing on Mondays — reading up on football history. I don’t know how many of you remember Mikel’s transfer saga but it went a little something like this:

  • Mikel does a presser in a Man U shirt, claims its his dream that he’s signed for them for £4m
  • Whoopsie, he is reportedly headed to a meeting in London with someone else
  • He disappears
  • He reappears making strange claims about Man U “forcing” him to sign with them.
  • He signs for Chelsea after they pay United £12m and Lyn £4m
  • Chelsea sue Lyn and settle out of court

Something like that, the point is that Mikel was a huge talent and Chelsea paid through the nose for him at a time when they had Makalele and Essien. A sub point is that Chelsea have a history of dirty deals and I just now found out about it!

Anyway, back to Mikel, now, at age 23 he’s a regular starter in the Chelsea lineup and one of the purest holding midfielders in the League. But is he worth £16m + the salary they must have shelled out to lure him away from United?

Arsenal, on the other hand, also have a 23 year old holding midfielder who we purchased uncontroversially from Bastia — for £1m. Unlike Mikel, Song has had to scrap and fight, and work his way into his role and still is changing his game — as shown by three consecutive goals.

Would you rather, have a player who cost your club £16m or a player who brings your club £16m worth of hard work?

Why does it always happen in FAVOR of United

I took some stick here and on twitter for “defending Tottenham” over what I and many other people saw as one of the worst refereeing decisions in the history of the game when Mark Clattenburg gifted United a goal.

Look, fuck Tottenham, the point is that United get the benefit of this type of call far more than any other team and it needs to be highlighted every time it happens or it will never stop. As Match of the Day pointed out, Clattenburg has even been at the center of the controversy before as he somehow managed to deny Pedro Mendes a goal that was yards over the line after United’s keeper bobbled the ball. And Gooners have felt the sharp end of this stick as well when Rooney dived to set up the winner and end our unbeaten run in the 49th game.

When it comes to this type of play, I simply apply the Rooney/United test: what would happen if the call went the other way? What would Fergie have done if Crapenburg had allowed Gareth Bale to steal in a sneak a goal? I bet he’d demand a replay.

But more than that, can you even for a moment imagine that goal happening to United? Just look at the differential treatment that the players received when Clattenburg was making his decision: Tottenham were told to leave him alone (and eventually yellow carded) while Rio Ferdinand was allowed to stand there and scream at the two officials during their conversation.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Where Clattenburg messed up is that he should have given a free kick for the handball and not played the advantage because I don’t know where an advantage exists in your own 18 yard box. But that’s the type of subtle gift that referees give, not to the opposition, but to United. Watch any game, Scholes will put in a tackle, in the opposition half, that should be a yellow card and the ball will go back to the center back and the ref plays “advantage.”

It just so happened that this time, probably for the first time in the history of the game, the ref gave an advantage in the 18 yard box and so I feel compelled to highlight it.

Oh and one more thing, fuck Tottenham.

December…

If you’re a Gooner traveling from far away and you want to maximize your traveling dollar and see as many Arsenal games in a week as humanly possible, then November 30-December 8th is your nirvana.

Arsenal play a home game in the Carling Cup to Wigan on the 30th (or the 1st) followed by a League home game against Fulham on the 4th and finally a home game against Partizan in the Champions League on the 8th. If you were going to travel to London for a week and a half  and wanted to see all the sights, plus explore the museums and stuff that London has to offer, I can think of no better home stand to do it. The only shame is that I can’t go, or I would.

Oh, and for the conspiracy theorists who complain about Arsenal’s away games schedule after Champions League nights, we do have an away game at Old Toilet, but it’s on a Monday night.

Injuries

Cesc and Song are preliminarily ruled out of Wednesday’s clash at Donetsk and I won’t at all be surprised to see some heavy rotation in midfield. WilshEre is back, Diaby is probably going to be fit, and Rosicky needs a game so I expect them to start. More on that tomorrow, but here’s the thing I find amazing: WilshEre is already a fixture in this squad.

He is clearly a precocious talent much in the mold of Cesc, though Arsene warned them that they will need to work on their defending in order to play together. With Song playing the role of 7th striker, I think the whole team could use some sorting out in that regard, but nevertheless, ultimately Cesc and WilshEre is an appetizing combination.

Maybe we’ll even get a chance to see it one day  — if Cesc can get healthy and WilshEre stay off the red cards!

Piers Morgan takes a bow

All Gooners should read today’s final Piers Morgan column. I’ve had my problems with Piers and especially the column he wrote calling for Wenger to resign but he’s a real Arsenal fan, a genuine provocateur, and 90% of the time a joy to read.

Good luck taking over for Larry King and if you need any advice on how to watch Arsenal games from the USA, I’ll be here for you.

Mugs and Thugs

Good morning Kickers, I hope you had as good a night as I did! After the match we putzed around the house getting various things done and then I went out and had a few drinks with friends while watching the Sounders beat Kansas City in perhaps the most surreal stadium I have ever seen.

I’ve spoken about the MLS a few times and it’s usually been unfavorable but I’m not going to rip anyone here. Instead I’ll just say that watching football in a Northern League Baseball stadium is quite bizarre, but hey, at least they play on grass! Seriously, I was asking Benny why there were no sideline stands and in fact no stands for 3/4 of the pitch when suddenly I saw a pitcher’s mound off to the side and then it struck me: they’re playing on a minor league baseball ground! It turns out that it’s not even a minor league team, The Kansas City T-Bones are in Baseball’s Northern League, a sort of independent minor league, not heavily scouted by the Majors.

For my readers who have never been in a baseball stadium, they are sort of shaped like a cone. The home plate at the smallest part of the cone and a fence at the largest. In the minor leagues, the seating is all concentrated around home plate with stands running outward from there to the end of the cone. Usually, there are no stands in the outfield and instead there’s just, like yesterday, a little hill where people sneak in or just park a blanket and enjoy a summer baseball game.

Minor league baseball is one of the great joys of America: summer nights, hot dogs, the crack of the bat, some fireworks. If you have a chance, go.

It’s a wonderful bit of Americana but it’s not a place to play football. The only place to fit a regulation pitch in that kind of stadium is all the way in the outfield, where there are no seats! It was weird, like watching a junior high school football match broadcast in High Def. Attendance is listed as 10,000 but I honestly couldn’t verify that, I only saw part of one stand, the whole game.

That’s the state of Professional Soccer in America at the moment. Hopefully, it will get better. More on that at the next Nationalism break.

In Arsenal news, well there is no Arsenal news. There’s a nice little puff piece about the Verminator: 100% guaranteed to have all the quotes you’ve grown to love from him. I supposed Jermain Defoe’s stupid stamp on Saturday is vaguely Arsenal news, since he’ll be out for the Halloween clash against Arsenal. And I haven’t heard anything about Theo’s injury though I’m knocking on wood that he’s ok. That venemous shot he took right after the foul showed that he really wants to play and I’d love to see him get an angry run of form. Shooting from all over the pitch and terrifying defenders with his pace.

There’s still some lingering controversy over Ridgewell’s tackle that I would like to dispel. The Arsenalist has the MOTD highlights and I played that tackle back a bunch of times before coming to the conclusion that it was hard but fair. In fact, it was the same type of crunching tackle that I cheered when Vermaelen wrecked one of their thugs on the sideline in the second half. Ridgewell comes in hard, but it’s one legged, studs down, and he wins the ball. Had Theo seen even a glimpse of Ridgewell coming in he probably would have gotten out of the way. But the fact is that he didn’t. It happens in football, it’s not a no-contact sport. I feel like the intention was there on the part of the Birmingham player but it’s so hard to rule on intention and we have to go by the facts; it was a legal tackle. If he’d missed the ball, or been a little higher, it would be a different story.

The only other Arsenal news that I can make up is that Song collected his 4th yellow card yesterday. I find it funny that before the season a lot of folks pointed to Lorik Cana’s yellow cards tally Ligue 1 as a positive thing and here’s our very own Song now on as many cards as Cana — and has 200% more assists! I’m joking around a bit but only in order to show that maybe we should have bought Cana, we’re going to need him when Song gets his 5th yellow, and when he goes away to the ACN. Who better to play Song’s backup?

And finally, in web site news, I found a place that will print me some 7am Kickoff mugs for a decent price. They are going to be white ceramic, 15oz mugs featuring the Henry logo:

I should be able to sell them for around $15 plus $5-10 shipping. If you’re interested, drop me a note — 7amkickoff@gmail.com

Right, that’s it for today. Unbelievably I’m sitting here rooting for Stinking Wigan, but then again, they are playing Fucking Man City so there you have it, UP THE ATHLETICS!

See you tomorrow, I’ve got to go get in some two-footded knee high challenges at Optimist park.

Best/Worst of 2008 #4; Arsenal 4-4 Tottenham

When Arsenal hosted Tottenham on the 29th of October it was a tale of two seasons. For Spurs, theirs was a season of high expectations, quickly followed by failure and derision that had culminated in the firing of Juande Ramos and appointment of Harry Redknapp. For Arsenal, despite a couple of blips against Fulham and Hull, hopes were still very high for the senior team and the world was delighting over the exploits of Wenger’s youth team. It took just 90 minutes for Tottenham to expose Arsenal’s frailties in the game that shook Arsenal’s 2008/2009 season.

It started about as bad as a game could. David Bentley, a failure of Arsenal’s academy and constant press loudmouth scored the goal of his lifetime. I mean that in the most derisive sense possible because it wasn’t as much a great goal as it was an utter failure on the part of Arsenal’s defense. From the failed clearance to the fact that Almunia was caught out in no-man’s land Arsenal failed completely. To his rat-faced credit, Bentley did strike the ball well but had any component of the Arsenal team had their head in the game it would have been a wasted shot. Unfortunately Arsenal losing their heads has since become a familiar theme.

But the worst part, the part that stings the most is the knowledge that no lead is safe in the hands of this Arsenal team and Spurs amazing comeback proved that to the world. Up 4-2 and seemingly cruising, Arsene hauled off Walcott, van Persie, and Nasri and put on Eboue, Diaby, and Song — you know, to shore up the defense.

Within one minute of the final sub Tottenham scored twice and shredded the once great Arsenal defense. Of course, the final scoreline is not all the fault of the three subs but it’s no coincidence that those three players are singled out for the most fan derision. It seems like those three are most likely to be on the pitch when some once in a lifetime defensive frailty is exposed.

Letting Tottenham back from a 4-2 lead and exposing our supposed defensive players for the quality they truly are would be a huge enough pivot point of the season yet this game had one more surprise in store for us. Several weeks later, in what is easily the biggest fallout from this game, William ‘Cappy’ Gallas decided to let the whole world know, via the French press, that there was a huge dressing room bust up at half time of that game. Gallas threw in some stuff about disrespectful players and people who think they’ve already arrived when they haven’t done as much as his Greatness, and how when he was a kid he had to kick the ball up hill, in the snow, both ways. Oh yeah, and they should all GET OFF HIS LAWN!

Wenger was left with no choice but to strip Gallas of his captaincy. Cesc was the obvious choice and was quickly appointed. Yet, the problem is that despite a brief upturn there still seems to be some unrest at the club over who leads the team and how they do it. Now with Cesc out for four months with an injury the leadership gap at the club is more glaring than ever.

Defensive woes, a leadership gap, and Diaby, Eboue, and Song exposed for their lack of polish. It didn’t all happen at once, but I can think of no better game that highlights those three stories of 2008 than the 4-4 draw against Tottenham.

Transfer News

Reports have hotted up around supposed Arsenal transfer targets Shay Given and Andrei Arshavin. This morning the Telegraph (who are fairly reliable — for an English newspaper) is reporting that Arsenal have offered £8m for the Newcastle #1. He supposedly wants £60,000 a week in salary but I don’t think that would be too much given Arsenal’s bizarre salary structure. Rumor has it that Spuds and Citeh are also interested in Given, Spuds because their world class keeper is on his way back to PSV and Citeh because everyone on the planet is linked to Citeh.

Meanwhile, multiple sources are reporting that Wenger is “mulling over” a bid for Arshavin. I’d rather he mulled a bid for someone like reported Real Madrid target Antonio Valencia from Wigan. The price tag has to be better and we don’t have to do business with those unseemly racists at Gazprom.

Bad news for the people who wanted Arsene to call up Arteta from Everton, it seems like they are reluctant to let their best players leave for some reason. We all knew that was going to happen, really. Everton would be fools to let Arteta go and unless Arsenal did something like unsettle the player and force their hand (which supposedly we don’t do) I can’t see Arteta joining us for less than something like £20m. More?

Worse though is that that article indicates Mark Hughes is in the market for pretty much the exact same players that Arsenal are in the market for: Premiership tested players. This means that Arsenal are likely to end up in a  bidding war with Citeh over at least one if not more than one player.

This is strongly reminiscent of when Abramovich stormed in to the league and basically just waited for Arsenal to make a bid and doubled it. Remember that year? I do, it was a nightmare.

Part 3 of the year in review tomorrow and I’m sure there will be more transfer rumors. See you then.