Ignore the unfortunate defeat and laugh at Sir Alex

I don't want to dwell on tonight's defeat, it was unfortunate, Dortmund took their chances and were typically efficient, we just didn't quite have the rub of the green in front of goal, a draw would have been a fair enough result but it was not to be.

Watch the above interview by Jon Snow with Sir Alex Ferguson. It shows what can happen when a decent non-corrupt journalist asks some fair questions, it makes the 'mighty' bully look like a rather small minded idiot who has a lot of dirty linen in the closet. I'm laughing at you Sir Alex, it's just a shame your tactics of banning journalists worked so well for much of your career, as many football journalists are just corrupt little weasels.

Ozil - no more to say

 

Mesut Ozil - I am speechless that we have signed one of the world's finest players in his absolute prime.  It is even more staggering that Real Madrid have let such a player leave for about half of the fee they paid for Gareth Bale, history will judge this one but I suspect Madrid may have made a blunder of immense magnitude.

 

Ozil will roam and be someone who can link the midfield and forwards, he will surely play as part of our front three and not the midfield three.  He will give us so much extra in creative terms, he has a lovely balance and touch to all he does, he scores goals and he assists by the bucket load.  An unbelievable signing, magnificent work Arsene.

 

Obviously other business has seen Flamini sign on a permanent deal, Viviani the Palermo keeper come in on a season long loan deal and Yaya Sanogo come in as depth in the centre forward position.  The only areas in which we look a bit light are centre back and centre forward, given the recent hamstring injury sustained by Lucasz Podolski.

 

As a result Bendtner has been kept back as cover.  This means that with everyone fit we have Giroud, Podolski, Bendtner and Sanogo as strikers, not bad at all.  Certainly there are many issues with Bendtner's character given his dubious off the field behaviour, but there is no reason why he can't do a short term job for us if needed.  Sagna can cover at centre back, while Vermaelen is almost fully fit again, so overall the squad isn't looking bad, not quite perfect, but a lot better.

 

The last minute scramble is the nature of transfer windows.  It is still disappointing that some of this business wasn't done earlier, it is also frustrating that Chelsea have behaved like a spoilt toddler in pulling the Ba deal away from us at the last minute, that club will never have class, just like their criminal owner.  Anyway, just enjoy the fact that Mesut Ozil is an Arsenal player, that should be enough.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

NorthBankBen - the worst side of Twitter

1- Chamberlain has done his cruciate ligaments. Minimum of 3 months out.

2- Either way, bottom line is Ox is out for 3+ months.

3 - It's suspected to be his cruciates. Very serious injury either way for Chamberlain.

4- Don't know exactly the injury to Chamberlain something to do with his "ligaments."

The above tweets are from @NorthBankBen yesterday afternoon. I shall fill you in one some basic facts and then leave you to make up your own minds about @NorthBankBen.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has a knee injury, the extent of which is not yet known and was definitely not known yesterday afternoon at the time of the tweets. He reportedly left the ground on crutches and obviously there are great concerns that it may be a serious injury. It is worth remembering that he has not yet had the knee MRI scanned, a rather key fact. It is impossible to tell the difference between some minor and some relatively serious knee injuries straight away, it may or may not be serious, simply no one knew but the expert @NorthBankBen felt certain enough to say that he 'HAD DONE HIS CRUCIATE LIGAMENTS'.

Such idle and baseless speculation is not only highly ignorant but it is deeply reckless. It is absolutely fine to say that it may be a serious injury and that there are concerns, just as the newspapers have done to today, but to state that a player has done 'his cruciates' when one doesn't know this for a fact is deeply reckless and irresponsible. The player deserves some respect for starters, stupid comments like @NorthBankBen's get propagated around Twitter in an instant, imagine how this is for the player and his family, it is utterly shameful. People should be far more responsible before ignorantly shooting their mouths of in this fashion. @NorthBankBen's further tweets show that he is furiously backtracking and that he doesn't understand much about knee anatomy, he is digging his own hole deeper and deeper. He should simply have apologised for his immensely stupid first tweet.

I hope the Ox makes a rapid recovery, and I shall wait for official news before stating what precise type of knee injury he has sustained. It may be serious, it may be his cruciates, it may not, it may be a collateral injury, a bit of bone bruising etc, we simply don't yet know. So how about we show a bit of respect to the player by not making up statements of fact in the manner of @NorthBankBen? I have been blocked by @NorthBankBen, presumably for daring to point out his immense ignorance. I would encourage everyone to ask him just how he knew that Oxo had 'done his cruciates' before a scan had even been performed? Was it by magic?

Top down system failure

It has been a fantastic summer of sport, we have some truly excellent cricket, golf and athletics most recently.  It is just crushingly frustrating that the club have been so inactive and seemingly disorganised in bringing players in.

The clearing out of useless deadwood has been the one positive piece of work.  However we have brought in just one player to counterbalance this huge loss of squad numbers.  With just a few days til the closure of the transfer window, this is a truly disastrous situation and one that was entirely preventable.

We have big games coming up and the squad is weak beyond belief.  The fact that this is the case demonstrates that our club's management structure is failing, we have bucket loads of money but for some reason the deals have not been done.  The precise reasons for this failure appear complex but there appears little doubt that the manager and owner need to shoulder a decent chunk of the blame.

It is hard to know what else to say.  Most fans with intact logic circuits are struggling to get their heads around out incomprehensible lack of activity in the transfer market.  I am struggling with it too, just how ludicrous can things get before someone takes control of this situation?

Mike Riley demonstrates a complete lack of insight or......

"The balance between physicality and player protection is right.........Fewer free-kicks result in things such as an increase in average goals per game and average shots in the game.........Everything in the Premier League is moving towards an exciting game that people want to see."

This is the stuff of the Premier League (PL) propaganda ministry.  Mike Riley is head of the PGMOL, the not so 'independent' body which runs refereeing for the PL.  Mike Riley was commenting on the fact that the number of fouls awarded has gone down 22% since 2006, sadly he makes the grave error of assuming that fouls awarded is a good marker of fouls committed, it clearly is not.

The original BBC piece is a pretty poor piece of journalism, it fails to objectively analyse the claims made and it simply repeats a few tired old stories.  There is an alternative explanation which does fit well with the facts and is far more consistent with the fact that the PGMOL is right in the PL's pocket.  It is rather worrying that MPs think the PL runs the FA, the lack of strong independent bodies in football to run the disciplinary process and refereeing is highly concerning.

The alternative explanation does not assume that fouls awarded represents fouls committed.  Certainly the PL cares little for fairness and player safety, they are far more concerned with their financial income and a fast blustering violent type of football will sell far better than a calmer more technical type of game.  It is arguable that refereeing has simply become more lenient in recent years and many fouls are just ignored, when compared to other major footballing leagues. This fits far better with what happens in the Champions League and the international game, where discipline is far more strictly enforced and the national England side struggles greatly as a result of this chasm in refereeing standards.  The same is true on dissent, the number of cards for dissent is going down but dissent is clearly not reducing, the way it is punished has simply become far more lenient.

The argument of less free kicks resulting in more goals is clearly ludicrous, Untold Arsenal have exposed this with yet another neat analysis, something that seems well beyond the propaganda minister of the PGMOL, Mike Riley.  The silence from the PL, the PGMOL and the mainstream media on these issues are deafening. In fact the way that the PL and PGMOL behave like communist propaganda ministries is scary, they hide from the public, they never answer questions.   It is also sad that so many football hacks are so deeply afraid of exposing the truth and biting the hand that feeds them in the process.  The PGMOL continues to hide, it plucks statistics from its derrière and doesn't reveal how they were gathered.  Why would these bodies behave like this if they had nothing to hide? Why indeed?

Mike Riley continues to lie

It is really sad that the richest league in the world has such a biased and useless body in charge of its refereeing, the PGMOL, and it is led by the yes-man Mike Riley.  Untold Arsenal have run some cracking stories recently and the way in which PL referees allow violence to prosper is definitely something that holds the English game back.  It results in too many career threatening injuries and it means that England really struggles to develop players with any creativity and technique.  Untold Arsenal have reported some very interesting stats on the number of fouls per game and it makes very interesting reading indeed:

“The balance between physicality and player protection is right,” said Riley. “Fewer free-kicks result in things such as an increase in average goals per game and average shots in the game."

This is Mike Riley's opinion and I doubt many objective observers would agree with this propaganda.  It is also abundantly clear that not much Mike Riley says can be trusted, the PGMOL claim that referees only made 36 'key errors' in PL games last season.    Untold Arsenal didn't review all the PL games but found about 6 times as many errors in only 40% of the total games!  This demonstrates that the PGMOL are only noticing about 5% of their errors, this is utterly shameful.

It is abundantly clear the the PGMOL are a completely useless organisation that has very little independence from the Premier League.  Mike Riley is simply a compliant yes-man who generally hides from the media and simply spouts made up propaganda when he does come out of his corrupt little hole. I have no faith in the PL refereeing and these statistics are yet more evidence that Mike Riley and the PGMOL cannot be trusted one inch.  Shameful stuff.

Keep calm and don't read the tabloids

The summer is too nice to waste it getting worried over stories that have been made up by some sad, bitter and often vindictive Fleet street hack.  What happens in the close season happens and we can do precisely nothing to affect it.  Therefore I suggest everyone rises above the dross that is created to draw readers to tabloids and shoddy websites like Goal.com.

Sadly there are many many journalists out there who have no moral fibre at all.  Many of them simply sink to the lowest common denominator by making up nonsense in order to attract readers with sensationalist headlines.  It is interesting that so many of them deny this is their approach but 99.999% of their stories turn out to be incorrect, they are either very bad or very dishonest, I'll leave you to make your minds up.

 I would strongly urge anyone interested in football to read the Commons Select Committee report on football governance, generally the media ignore it as they have their snouts in the Premier League trough, most journalists don't want to report the truth as it would bite that hand that feeds their slobbering greedy gobs.  These few quotes sum up just what trouble football governance is in England right now:

"Since the FA Main Board will be acting on the recommendations of the National Game Board and Professional Game Board, it is inevitable that, under these proposals, the Premier League will retain its dominance over the Football Association. Arguably, by devolving decision-making downwards, the joint proposals in some respects reinforce that dominance. While it is inevitable that the paymaster will have far greater influence than the other bodies in a representative organisation like the FA, we are disappointed that the proposals have not sought to alter this balance of power."

"We are concerned that a number of key decision areas have been delegated from the FA to the NGB and PGB, with the regulator in effect ceding power to the regulated. It is also a matter of concern that the National and Professional Game Boards—largely composed of vested interests from the top of the football pyramid—will have the power to decide whether or not new areas requiring regulation would fall under the sole purview of the Football Association."

Effectively there is no independent oversight of football in England, the Premier League has all the power and  this is terribly bad news for the national game.  This is because the Premier League cares only for increasing revenue, it cares nothing for fairness, it cares nothing for the grass roots, it cares nothing for the smaller clubs.  It is just shameful that the mainstream media so routinely fail to point out this massive problem, they would prefer to make up transfer stories instead.  Sad.