First of all – a massive shout out to Kieran’s article yesterday – it had me laughing throughout it – some hilarious one liners… especially about super kid, Gibbs:
The frightening thing is, Gibbs looks ready to take his place but it seems like Gibbs can’t play more than 10 seconds without his foot dissolving – maybe it’s entirely due to the water on the pitch and the fact that he has feet made of dispersible aspirin, but if he gets his chance I fully expect it to last less than 90 minutes before he’s stretchered off and taken to the corned beef factory.
Excellent stuff Kieran – and for those of you have not read it… do so now!
Onto the main subject of today’s blog and the questions you have to ask yourself is aren’t you glad we’re not Liverpool. The mess up in Merseyside is amazing considering how well the club has been run historically. In fact, before the likes of Arsene Wenger, and the rest of the guys – which includes David Dein, despite he default years later – we could have been headed in the same direction. However, thanks to great management and even better forward thinking and financial planning, we have done all the things we set out to do, the stadium, the squad, the training ground and above all, the financial stability and debt management that has seen us shoot up the rich club list and see us spiral down the debt amounts owed.
Peter Hill Wood (our chairman) said this:
“What’s happened at Liverpool is a football tragedy. They were always a model for how a club should be run. Now they have got themselves in a terrible muddle. I really hope it gets sorted out because I have so much respect for Liverpool.”
But more importantly for all Gooners, continued with this:
“We don’t have an owner who has saddled the club with £250 million worth of debt. The way Arsenal is run at the moment, what has happened at Liverpool could not possibly happen here. We are aware of who our shareholders are and we have a view on their suitability. And the majority of shareholders feel the same way as the board.”
And with fanshare kicking in – where more fans can own the club – in the next five years, we’ll be owned by more and more people, rather than just one owner, whose only asset is the club. The recent bid from Singapore billionaire, Lim, for Liverpool is a whopping £320m, and he promises not to saddle the club with debt – but regardless of the size of the wealth, why would anyone invest any money anywhere – if not to be an ultimate profit maker. The £320m Lim is putting in is key to generate him the £500m he wants in 10 years time – but surely this just shifts the debt from one person to another?
At Liverpool, the sell-outs were the previous board and owners, the Rick Parry’s and the rest of them, who are sitting on a nice tidy sum of cash without doing the proper research on who was taking control of their club. That’s a clear case of money before passion, love and the right thing to do.
I am personally so damn glad we’re not Liverpool and never will be. We are Arsenal, one of the best run clubs in the land, and long may it continue.
Meanwhile, in other news… the International break has taken out Bacary Sagna for a month, which sees an injured XI of:
Almunia
Sagna – Nordtveit – Vermaelen – Gibbs
Ramsey – Frimpong
Walcott – Cesc – Van Persie
Bendtner
And that is quite a good team!
With a whole load of people involved tonight, let’s hope that we come through with enough players to play on Saturday…
I’ll leave you with some title-race talk from Jack Wilshere… who else?
“It’s still early days, we’re definitely still in it. I know we are seven points behind, but I think Chelsea will definitely drop points and we’ve just got to capitalise when they do. Hopefully there aren’t too many injuries [ahead for us] but if there are we’ve got a big squad and we can cope.”
Come on you Gooners… til tomorrow…
