Keown Speaks

There's this really interesting interview with Martin Keown.

There's a whole world beneath the one that football fans inhabit. We tend to skim the surface of things - watch a match, read a report, scream abuse at a player - and have no idea what's happening below that surface. And hence, our version of the reality of a football club tends to be a bit skewed.

So it's nice sometimes to read an interview by a guy who's (presumably) still in the thick of things. Keown's played for the Arsenal, and he's coached our defence to a Champions League Final. He speaks with authority when he talks about Senderos and Djourou and the chances of them breaking into the Arsenal first team. And unlike most pundits, he's actually got an idea about how the club is being run, and why Wenger does the things he does.

I'm not going to go into it in detail, because it's worth a read by itself. However, I did want to comment about one revealing comment he made about the mooted rights issue:

"It’s an interesting angle as it appears that rather than buy shares in the club somebody is still willing to inject money".

It's strange that, despite all the billionaires and millionaires fighting for Arsenal shares at the moment, no one other than Usmanov is willing to put some of that money into the club. Money put into the transfer kitty isn't dead money - used properly, it can be considered a sound investment. Success and trophies are as much a guarantor of financial stability as bricks and mortar. The two kind of go hand-in-hand. After all, those season ticket paying fans wants to see something shiny at the end of the year. And you can't really expect to see success and trophies unless you've got a deep, experienced squad - something we sorely missed last year. Because as Keown put it:

"If I was a young player in the two semi-finals in the FA Cup and Champions League I’d have liked to have been able to look around that dressing-room and seen a bit more experience, just to keep me calm. There was plenty of raw ability but not quite enough experience."