Stuff and Nonsense

And you know that I love you
Here and now not forever
I can give you the present
I don't know about the future
That's all stuff and nonsense

- Stuff and Nonsense, Split Enz

We're playing West Brom in the Carling Cup.

It's been a number of years since Wenger first turned the Carling Cup over to his youth players, and it's been proven to be an excellent decision. It's turned the Carling Cup from an annoyance into an exciting, thrilling glimpse into our possible future. It's Wenger's chance to sell us the future, and most of the time it is such a thrilling, fun future that you get swept up with enthusiasm.

I thoroughly enjoy the Carling Cups. I rarely have the time to watch a match, but it's still enjoyable to click on the link on the Guardian Football website and read about how our latest batch of 18 year-olds ran rings around a Championship side. And who knows? If I find myself awake at 4 o'clock tomorrow morning, I might even get out of bed and have look at Jack Wilshere, Fran Merida and the rest of our Carling Cubs.

But sadly, part of the reason why the Carling Cup is infused with such optimism is because it plays no significant role in our season whatsoever. It doesn't matter whether the kids bomb out or perform, because the Carling Cup doesn't really count. Remember the original Carling Cubs? Denilson, Diaby, Bendtner, Walcott... the side that thumped Liverpool at Anfield and which made it to the final against Chelsea. And what's happened to them? Occasional brilliance in a youth side doesn't translate to sustained brilliance in the senior side.

So if you're watching the kids tonight, just enjoy it for what it is - an entertaining performance by a bunch of precociously talented kids. It's unfair to put too much pressure on them and to extrapolate future success from Carling Cup fixtures. They can give you the present, but I don't know about the future.

That's just stuff and nonsense.

And in other news, Kevin Whitcher had this to say about the Highbury Square development:

“The problem is that the club have either got to push through the Highbury Square development or cut their losses and effectively declare that part of the organisation is bankrupt and walk away from it. They’ve got a £120m debt repayment to find for next April. The club have always maintained that the football and the property business are completely separate, and legally that is true, however, if they are going to see it through they do need to find money from somewhere. What I can foresee is that the club will pay back as much of the debt as they can by next April, but I heavily suspect they will re-negotiate the loan of what is left and this situation will drag on as long as Wenger is prepared to tolerate it.”

Well, at least we know where the £40m from the Man City sales went. I'm just glad the Club didn't use it to pay for Peter Hill-Wood's Cigar of the Month subscription.

Arsenal's Fiscals, Part 2

"It (the housing criss) does not impact the club because we never based the budgets for the club on anything that happens at Highbury and the two are ring-fenced from each other."

- Ivan Gazidis, chief executive of the Arsenal and favourite puppet of the dastardly Danny Fiszman and inept Peter Hill-Wood

It's an international week, and the Arsenal don't have a match until the 4th of April, a home tie against Man City. Which gives us about two weeks to contemplate our collective navels and think nice thoughts about the Arsenal. Or for me to support the Socceroos in whatever match they're going to play.

Been thinking about the interim financial report a bit. Kept me up last night, actually. That and my dream about killer spies from Thailand. Man, that was a cool dream. I kept trying to play it out while I was awake in bed. I got up to the stage where I was underneath a bridge and sniping FBI agents when I realised I should probably be doing something productive at 6 o'clock in the morning.

But I'm digressing.

Peter Hill-Wood spoke a few weeks earlier about how the Highbury Square development and the footballing business are separate from each other. And it's altogether possible that that's true.

On the footballing side of things, it's looking pretty solid. We're one of the few clubs in England which can support the football costs through revenue earned. It might take a 55,000 crowd to do so, but we're capable of sustaining that. And we might not like our lack of spending, but if it meant that we remain in the black, we'd reluctantly accept it as a necessity as long as we still qualify for the Champions League and still play attractive football.

On the property side of things, it's a bit grimmer. The Queensland Rd project, which looks like a pile of brown-bricked crap when seen from the stadium, looks as bad financially as it looks superficially. The success of the Highbury Square project is dependent on a Singaporean investor who has the option on 100 of the apartments getting the funds to purchase, and dependent on the Arsenal to accept payment in installments, rather than upfront. Which means that the Arsenal will have to extend its loan on the Highbury Square development, which means that the Arsenal will be in the property game for a lot longer than we'd bargained for.

All of this will make the footballing piggy bank, with its nice, black budgets and the healthy crowds, look increasingly attractive to Peter Hill-Wood and the board. What's the chance that, five years down the road, the footballing side of business will be servicing the loan for the Highbury Square apartments? Pretty darn high, I'd say.

Despite what Gazidis says about the two being ring-fenced from each other, I'd be worried about what effect the apartments have on our finances, and our ability to compete with the big clubs. The problem with ring-fences is sheep-rustlers. And Peter Hill-Wood looks like he fancies a nice plump ewe or two.