I'm leaving on a jet plane…

fuzzy

Well, this is it, I leave for the mecca here in a little over 12 hours. The bag is all packed, I’m well rested (read not hungover) and I’m going to head in to work to tie up a few loose ends, get in a workout, drive to the airport, and then sit around for 4 hours waiting for the plane to take off. 17 hours later, if all things go as planned, I’ll be in London, enjoying the fresh air, drizzly rain, insane drivers, and a pint of my favorite real ale.

One administrative note, I typically publish the blog around 7am PST (3pm GMT) so due to the time difference and length of flight, tube to London, checkin time, and the fact that I’ll be drinking straight away,  means I probably won’t publish a blog tomorrow. I’ll try, but no guarantees and if I do it will be a late blog. In fact, my American reader will get the blog “late” every day, my English reader early, and my Asian reader — well, I’d need to do a combination function and complete the square to figure out what time he will get the post. Gods only know what time my Antipodean reader gets these things, it’s like 3 days time difference down there isn’t it? And if you flush time down the toilet it actually goes the wrong way or something. The point is that after this post, things are going to change for a few days.

Right, on to the news!

My loyal reader knows that I never link to articles from The World’s Least Reliable News Source (The Sun). I don’t care if they fit my world view at the moment or not, that paper is scum and I won’t even give them the pleasure of the few paltry hits I generate. Anyway, they are reporting that they got an exclusive interview with Eduardo and that he’s still waiting for an apology directly from Martin Taylor over the incident at Birmingham. Taylor, to his credit, has somehow managed to avoid giving the apology and has even found time in his busy schedule as a father of three/university student/footballer to give a rather long interview to the press about how bad it’s been, for him, over the last year.

Get f*cked, Taylor. If you want to apologize, I’m sure Arsenal will arrange a public or private meeting with Eduardo — your choice. Irregardless, whatever you do, shut.thef*ck.up. No one, NO ONE, wants to hear your sob story. You’re not a hero to anyone. The best thing you could do with your life is apologize in person, like a man, and then refuse to comment on the issue ever again.

Jesus.

The other big story is, of course, THE IMPENDING DOOM OF THE CLUB WHEN USMANOV TAKES OVER!!!

I just want to point out a couple of things here. First, yes, Usmanov is not the type of person I want associated with the team. At all. I wish he never bought shares in the club, but since they are on the open market there’s little we can do about that.

Second, the fact that this is happening at all is simply a function of the amount of money Arsenal are currently worth. The board instability, the fact that this guy is coming out of nowhere and gobbling up shares, the fact that David Dein sold his shares, etc., all of it is about money. Arsenal went from a club worth several million dollars to a club worth several billion dollars. Moreover, Arsenal’s growth and profits have been extraordinarily stable over the last 10 years. If you throw in the fact that Arsenal is the only club in the Premier League who have positive cash flow and a bright future filled with young stars like Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey, you have to say that in times of financial instability like now, Arsenal look like a great place to stash some of your fortune.

Which brings me to the last point: I don’t think that Usmanov wants anything but profit from the team, basically, I firmly believe that Usmanov is a tick. He’s going to hitch a ride, drain a little blood (he’ll probably ask for dividends soon) from the club, and right before he bursts (when he feels the stock price has reached it’s zenith) he’ll drop off and we’ll never see him again.

No one likes ticks, they are gross and carry disease (I got syphilis from a tick, I swear it was tick, or maybe the toilet seat) but at least they aren’t a pack of c*nts who know nothing about football and want to treat the club as if it was their life-size version of Football Manager — or worse, the Abramovich model of turning the club into a piggy bank.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s going to be damaging to the club. With 25% of the shares he now has the ability to interfere with board decisions, make demands (like dividends), and generally be a nuisance but the one thing we can count on is that The Tick (as he shall henceforth be known) doesn’t want to kill the host. It’s worth too much money to him to keep us alive and ticking over. The last thing he wants is fan unrest, team unrest, and Arsene unrest (it would drive down the value of his stock) so he’s going to do small things to extract profit rather than big things that destroy the club.

No one wants a tick on them, but at least he’s not likely to saddle the club with $1.5 BILLION in debt which in a few years will just break the club. So, while it’s gross that he’s burrowing in, it’s hardly financial Armageddon. By all means, let his holding company know that we don’t want a tick on us, that he’s gross, but let’s not freak out over the deal. I’m saving the freak out for when I find out he gave us Lupus.

Now I feel like I need a shower and someone to check me for ticks.

Oh hey, one last thing… I saw this video of the latest “Next Zidane” and thought you all might get a kick (HA!) out of it. He’s only 6 but word on the street is that he’ll be making his Arsenal debut on Saturday.

Ok, now I’m off, wish me luck and I’ll see you all tomorrow (morning, afternoon, mid-day, in a fortnight).

Related articles