Goodbye, Adebayor

We salute you too, Adebayor.

It's lovely how the sale of Adebayor has brought us all together. It wasn't so long ago that gooners were split between the rational, intelligent, good-looking pessimists, the insanely optimistic crazy people, and the band-wagon jumping crew who have long since given up on the Arsenal. We've been at odds for so long over the direction that the current Arsenal management is taking us, so it's nice to realise that there still are some things we can all agree on.

Selling Adebayor to Man City for £25m was one of them.

I don't think we should dwell on who we're going to replace him with, whether it's Chamakh, Huntelaar or internal solutions. That'll be divisive. Instead, let's savour the afterglow of this transfer and be happy that, for once, we can all agree that this remarkable transfer was 100% correct.

In a way, it's a pity it's come to this. On the days he wanted to be a good striker, Adebayor was one of the best in the world. However, once he thought he'd made it, he stopped trying. That to me is the real shame. There's so much to like about Adebayor's game, and it's not nice to see it go to waste.

Let's hope he can peak next season against Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd... everyone except us, really. Because when he's focused, he's a bloody hard striker to play against.

Dirty Arsenal

"Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap
Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap"

- Acca Dacca, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

According to Theo, we've got some dirty deeds to do next season. Last year was a disappointment, due in part to our inability to grind out wins when we weren't playing well. This season, we've got to change. We have to learn to play dirty, win dirty, and um... talk dirty as well.

I'm not sure what's up with Theo these days. First off, he rebelled against Wenger and joined his England mates in the U21 tournament. Then, he got angry - really angry - at everyone, and talked about the necessity of playing angry to win. And now, he's talking about playing ugly. It's a bit of a shock, to be honest. Who's this ugly, angry young man in the Arsenal top, and where did that nice little Theo go?

Maybe it's a case of delayed teenage rebellion. Youngsters who get pressured into high-profile careers too soon can sometimes go crazy once they gain their freedom as adults. Think about Britney Spears. Now, I'm not suggesting Theo will go down that path, but I don't think it's completely out of the question to say that he'll run off and marry to a back-up dancer, have two kids, shave his head, go into rehab, and then launch a successful comeback album after a horrible mimed performance at the MTV Awards.

Stranger things have happened, after all.

I understand what Theo's saying, though. A little bit of grit and determination wouldn't go astray. The Arsenal of last season was anaemic, unfocused and barely interested. There were a lot of lacklustre draws and a number of shocking defeats, and if we'd managed to apply ourselves for all of those games, we could've finished the season a lot higher up - maybe even 3rd.

However, I don't see the correlation between playing ugly and winning matches. The Arsenal played very ugly in the middle of last season, and by all accounts it was our worse stretch of matches since Wenger first took charge. We don't need to play ugly scrappy football to win matches - we just need to play with application and focus.

I'm getting excited about the coming season. With Vermaelen in, Rosicky and Eduardo (hopefully) over their injuries and the kids having gained another year of experience, we look like we've got a pretty good squad. And if we use the Adebayor money to buy a couple of good first-team players, we're going to be competitive. We might not win anything next year, but we should come close.

Whatever happens, I hope we don't have to resort to playing ugly next season. With a potential first team line-up containing Rosicky, Arshavin, Fabregas and van Persie, it'll be a travesty if we resort to ugliness to win. Just pass, move and harass the opposition like maniacal midget minutemen, fellas. That's all you need to do.

An Adebayor's Tale

It's been a frantic couple of days for Adebayor watchers. Reports have been flying in, and it's hard to work out what's happening. It's even harder to believe most of it is probably real.

This is what I understand:

Man City offered Arsenal £25 million for Adebayor. Ivan Gazidis accepted, and then apologised profusely for literally biting Mark Hughes' hand off.

"I didn't realise it was a figure of speech," a shocked Gazidis told the press. "Honestly, Man City offered £25m for Ade, and my mind went blank. Just think about it - £25m. I was expecting £10m, £15m tops. Who pays that kind of money anymore? Hell, I'm taking the rest of the summer off and going to Disneyland!"

The deal looked to be in jeopardy hampered as Hughes was rushed to hospital, but was later completed when Hughes signed the agreement with his mouth.

"I'm not letting Adebayor go," Hughes said tersely. "First Kaka, then Eto'o, now Ade-fucking-bayor? If he rejects us as well, we'll be the laughing stock of the Premier League... eh, even more so."

Adebayor then received a work permit to play for Man City. An inside source said that while he might have failed the exceptional talent criteria on the football pitch last season, he more than made up for it with his snazzy fashion sense and dance moves.

"I can't wait to see him on the dance-floor," gushed Artie the Man City tea-lady. "Can you imagine him and Robinho hitting the town next season? It'll be like the Hacienda days again!"

However, Adebayor then had second-thoughts. He realised that signing a £150,000 a week contract with Man City might look a bit mercenary to his fans back in Togo. He understands that the media can twist a guy's words, after all, and he was worried that his eagerness about joining the Man City revolution might be construed as an act of money-grubbing greed. And as we all know, he's not the mercenary sort.

"There's more to life than just money," Adebayor mused. "I wouldn't leave Arsenal purely for money. I also want all the stuff you can buy with money."

After he thought through the implications of the move, he decided the best way to retain everyone's good opinion was to get his agent to hawk him out to Man Utd for £170,000 a week.

"I thought they'd buy him," Adebayor's agent explained sheeplishly. "I mean, we bought Silvestre last year, so Ferugson owes Arsenal big time. And if they're desperate enough to buy Owen, they're worth a shot, right?"

And back at Arsenal, our proposal to buy Marouane Chamakh has hit a snag - Bordeaux has insisted that we throw Silvestre in the deal as well. I'm worried about this one. Transfer window closes in two weeks - I hope we can stop laughing in time to accept that bid.

Honestly, if it weren't on the internet, I would've thought that this was all made-up.

The Board Have A Cunning Plan

Robert Preston from the BBC has an interesting summary of the rights issue.

Lazard Brothers, the bank Usmanov used to support his proposal, believes that earnings before interest will fall from between £55m-60m in 2009 to £35-40m in 2010, that the Highbury Square deal will turn out to be unprofitable, and that there isn't enough funds to remain competitive with the top sides. On the basis of this, Usmanov proposed an injection of £150m via a rights issue of new shares.

Rothschild, the bank that advised the board, suggested that the money would only save £5 million in year in debt, that there are better alternatives than a rights issue, and that Wenger is'nt hampered financially.

Now, 5 million a year isn't a lot of money for a £Club with 350 million in debt. And I don't think anyone outside of the Club can say whether the current finances circumstances are hampering the development of the squad. But I was puzzled by the second point, which was:

"There are better ways to rehabilitate the Highbury redevelopment, including a putative cunning plan under negotiation right now - and even if the worst came to the worst, there should be no direct financial contagion to the club, since the providers of the property loans have no recourse to the footballing assets."

I admit, I'm not blessed with financial knowledge. Actually, most of what I know about finance comes from Usmanov, Kroenke and the Arsenal. Thanks to the boardroom tussles, I now know about things like rights issues, leveraged loans, the intricate world of property development... who said football can't be educational?

But this is something that got me baffled. What exactly is a "putative cunning plan", and how is it better than getting a free £100 million from the shareholders? My only knowledge of "cunning plans" comes from Baldrick of Blackadder, and most of his plans weren't very good. They usually involve something violently stupid.

I really hope the Arsenal board's plan is a lot more cunning, because I get the feeling that we're sending this team into the season like the British High Command sent troops over the top in Word War 1. As like in Blackadder Goes Forth:

Private Baldrick: I have a plan, sir.
Captain Blackadder: Really Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one?
Private Baldrick: Yes, sir.
Captain Blackadder: As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?
Private Baldrick: Yes, sir.
[another call: On the signal, Company will advance]
Captain Blackadder: Well, I'm afraid it's too late. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of here by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman round here?
[a whistle blows he looks at Baldrick]
Captain Blackadder: Good luck, everyone.

Spending Adebayor's Millions

"Manchester City were last night closing in on an incredible £25million deal for Arsenal striker Emmanuel Adebayor after finally completing the signing of Carlos Tevez."

- The Daily Mail, who seem very excited about transfers

I wouldn't call it incredible, since this is the summer that Melo was valued at £21.5m, Tevez at £25.5m and Valencia at £17m, but it is a lot of money. Actually, considering City are willing to throw £30m at John Terry, I thought they could've given us an extra £5m or so. Adebayor dances a lot better than Terry, after all.

I really hope this one goes through. Adebayor might not be what City need, but getting him out of Arsenal is what we need. Adebayor offers a lot to Arsenal, but it's doubtful whether he's motivated enough to deliver. And if that money can be re-invested in a really, really good player, then we're almost good to go.

I suppose Chamakh's the favourite as the replacement, but to be honest, I'd rather keep the money and splurge on that defensive midfielder we really require. We've van Persie and Eduardo as our main strikers, with Bendtner and Walcott as our reserves. That's fairly strong, provided we can keep everyone healthy. It's stronger than our midfield, at any rate. We really do need someone to partner Cesc, someone preferably more experienced than Blaise Matuidi.

The transfer market is inflated at the moment. Even Alex Ferguson finds it a bit over-priced. So maybe we should prioritise which positions we really need to strengthen. I'd like us to make a bid for Diarra from Real Madrid. He's 28, a destroyer in midfield, and has the experience to lift our youngsters to the next level. And even if he'll cost us 80,000 a week, he'll still be worth more than a disinterested Adebayor.

David Bentley Punched In The Face

'What gives someone the right to walk up and attack me when I'm enjoying a meal?'

- David Bentley, who should've read the fine print in his contract

As reported from the Mirror, David Bentley was having a meal at a restaurant when another diner walked up to him and hit him in the face. As Robert Segal, Bentley's agent, recounts:

"David is pretty shaken. He was in the restaurant with his best friend and their respective partners. A guy walked over and started talking gibberish to him, then he just took a swing and punched him. David's fiancée, who is seven months pregnant, had just been to the loo and saw the whole thing. Obviously, she was very upset about it.

"David's mate jumped up and ran after the man and he got punched as well. It was obviously premeditated because the other people at the table got up and ran out of the restaurant. They had taxis waiting outside."

It's not clever, and it's not something I'd condone... but I've got to admit that I had a giggle over it. It must be quite shocking in the immediacy of the moment, but when you're reading about it halfway across the world, it's got a bit of a Benny-Hill-meets-The-Godfather feel to it.

I'm struggling to figure understand the assailant's motives. A lot of people would've been quite chuffed at seeing an England international. It doesn't happen every day. If they were sycophantic, they might have been tempted to ask for an autograph. But these guys weren't the sycophantic sort. Instead, they sat stewing in their righteous anger all throughout dinner, until one of them decided to get up and hit Bentley.

So why? Or could it be that David Bentley is so obnoxious that his mere presence provokes people into acts of rash violence? He does play for Spurs, after all.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe it had nothing to do with David Bentley per say. Maybe punching David Bentley in the face was on that guy's "100 Things To Do Before You Die" list. Maybe he's from Fight Club and his homework assignment was to get into a fight with a footballer and lose. Or maybe he figured that since Premier League footballers always get into fights anyway, he'd save everyone some time and make a preemptive strike?

I'd be amiss if I didn't dredge up this quote by David Bentley, back in 2007 when he was still a Blackburn player and rival football fans only talked about wanting to punch him in the face while having dinner at a nice restaurant in the presence of his heavily-pregnant fiancee:

"People boo me, but most of them don't even know why. It's all heart and no brains. Sheep following sheep. I play up to it - stick two fingers up at them behind my back to wind them up. It's all good banter and, hopefully, when the pantomime stops, the fans at least see me as someone with a bit of personality on the pitch. I don't want to be boring, and the truth is I enjoy it."

I wonder if he's still enjoying it?

Flamini's not a full-back

They say the next big thing is here,
that the revolution's near,
but to me it seems quite clear
that it's all just a little bit of history repeating

- History Repeating, by the Propellerheads

Mathieu Flamini's angry because he's going to have to play at full back for Milan. He had to fill in as a full back last year due to the thinness of their squad, and he hates the position. As he told Sky Sports,

"I don't want to play as a full-back, I am a midfielder. This year Milan will be strong in defence."

It's a shame, because he's quite good at it

Our 2006 Champions League cup run famously took the record for longest time without conceding a goal. It was such a patched up line up - Flamini, Senderos, Toure, Eboue - that you wouldn't have thought it possible that they'd hold out Juventus and Villareal, and come so close to upsetting Barcelona. It seemed contradictory that such a mismatched grouping could have had such sustained success. And yet, it did.

At the heart of the puzzle was the question of Flamini. He was a mediocre defensive midfielder who'd been shoehorned into the left-back position because of Clichy's injuries and Cole's petulance. He'd never played in that position before. There was no indication, other than his phenomenal work-rate, that he'd be any good at it. But it worked.

He took a stance the next season by refusing to play left back, claiming that he only wanted to be a midfielder. At the time, it seemed like an astonishing bit of petulance. He was a squad player as a midfielder, and probably first choice as a full-back. The pragmatic thing to do would be to play wherever he was needed. But he proved the doubters wrong in the end by playing that brilliant 07-08 season as our defensive foil for Cesc.

When he signed with Milan, I'm sure he did so with the expectation of playing in midfield. After all, he'd played there with Arsenal quite well. The last thing he'd expect was that he'd be forced to play at full-back again.

It'll be quite funny if it wasn't so puzzling.

What problem does he have with playing at left back? It's not like he's playing in a glamorous role at the moment. Flamini's role is basically to chase after the ball until the opposition get sick of the attention. And as Daniel Alves has shown, being a full-back doesn't necessarily mean you can't also shine as a winger, midfielder, striker, centre-back...