Arsenal didn’t need their absent captain to win a trophy, the Fox’s Glacier Mint Cup is soon to be nestling in the trophy cabinet. As for Robin van Persie, he was allegedly seen house-hunting in Hale although curiously enough there were no photos taken of said house-hunt and I understand he was also seen at The Bamboo House in Crouch End, collecting his Egg Foo Yung before he jetted off on holiday. Quite why either story has taken so long to surface is beyond me.
Reports from the Markus Liebherr Memorial Trophy are a time for the football writers to get back to their high standards, training for them also. Rik Sharma’s rustiness was underlined in this morning’s Heil on Sunday by claiming that, “Slack defensive play saw De Sutter in early to convert what he believed to be his second goal of the day, but he was offside.” So it wasn’t slack defensive play but an offside trap? Steve Bould has much to answer for already, confusing journalists with this new-fangled defence thingy.
Highlight of the day was not the contrived penalty shootout after the 1-1 draw with Southampton but the equaliser from Gervinho, not quite a Kanu Believe It moment but a great goal nonetheless.
That was after Henri Lansbury had marked his return to the club with the winner over Anderlecht
Match reports for Anderlecht and Southampton can be found here and here on the official site.
Elsewhere, all of the first team squad report for training on Monday morning, those who were at Euro2012 have had their holidays and now begin to integrate new signings into the fold ahead of the departure for Asia next weekend. That will be the first that we get to see Podolski and Giroud in action for the club; it is perhaps too much to hope that a new player will be on board by the time the plane leaves.
It’s a time of back-to-back meetings for Arsène, with van Persie reportedly meeting the club this weekend, fending off a £15m bid from Manchester City, Theo Walcott’s contract to be sorted and negotiating the sales of those no longer wanted whilst persuading Ganso to come to The Emirates as well as Yann M’vila and Ibrahim Affellay. Just what the club needs, another wide player. And Matt Law’s move to the Mirror has already led to complacency, erasing the creditable point gained at St James Park last summer from memory with Liverpool now the first home game of 2011-12 season.
No doubt the club will be itching to use the £2.50 received from Manchester City from the sale of Emmanuel Adebayor. City we are frequently told needed to get Adebayor off the books in order to be FFP compliant; they didn’t. All players whose contracts were signed in June 2010 or before, are excluded from the calculations of profitability at the this moment in time. There was a genuine financial reason in terms of saving money but for FFP? No, siree. Another loophole being exploited.
Football Governance is under scrutiny as never before but with loopholes through which a coach and horses can be driven, there is a genuine doubt about whether anything more than lip-service is being paid to such matters. The latest rumour is of Adebayor’s wages being paid by City in part; I think that unlikely, more an interpretation of the extraordinarily low transfer fee being paid. Any residual contract payment has to be made in accordance with the terms agreed by the player; continuance of the salary differential likely to be part of the pay-off to appease the player not subsidise Tottenham.
As it is, Adebayor (and Bendtner for that matter) exemplified the problems with the loan system for differing but similar reasons. City have stockpiled talent in pursuit of glory; loaning players a way of recouping costs. Arsenal had promising talent that never developed at a particular point in time; loaning players a way of recouping costs. Neither player could participate in a match against their parent club. Both players had their wages paid in part by that parent club.
Where to begin?!! For starters, the clubs who loan the players cannot be allowed to pay part of the wages; all or nothing, I am afraid. Spurs qualified for Europe next season in part because of City’s subsidy. That is not right; clubs who want to borrow players have to be able to afford them. Players if they want to play, have to take a pay cut. Equally, the rule of not playing against a parent club is ludicrous. It challenges the integrity of the individual; it challenges the integrity of both clubs. Condemned before there is even a chance to prove their worth. Most loan players are on the transfer list nowadays; long gone is the lower division training ground for youth. Now the loan is a shop window and I suspect that a player is going to try harder rather than take it easy against his parent club; the manager has deemed him surplus to requirements and points need to be proven. Ego is a powerful motivator.
’til Tomorrow.
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