It seems like this week has been dubbed National ‘sh*t on Arsenal fans from a great height’ Week, after the couple of bits of news that emerged yesterday and this morning.
Firstly, the FA, who have seen fit to charge Gabriel with improper conduct for not leaving the field of play quickly enough on Saturday. Honestly, there’s so much money in football that if this was such a big issue, the FA and Premier League should probably have touchline Segways to bring on to alleviate such a menace to the game. If my completely lacklustre researching is to be believed, this could mean an extra game for Gabriel, bringing his tally up to four matches missed. Absolute and unequivocal balderdash. The chief protagonist in this will get three games, yet Gabriel – with whom some new angles appeared of his ‘kick’ at the weekend (yeah, I know, ‘kick’ is probably one of the more extreme words that could be thesaraused up. More like ‘slight backwards extension of a leg) – will get one less game than a guilt John Terry was found of racial abuse.
This system of disciplinary action is so out of balance it’s unreal. The fact that Santi Cazorla was also ‘warned over his conduct’ pretty much shows up the ineptitude of our governing body. I don’t think you’ll get many Arsenal fans contesting that it was not a red card – he mistimed a tackle whilst on a yellow – but to suggest that even warrants a stern talking to is farcical. So by that logic, every single player that mistimes a tackle is going to be given a warning by the FA, eh? I think not.
The rumours are that the club will look to us the precedent of Fabregas and Matic (who both had red cards successfully reduced) as examples of how provocation impacted a reaction, but I’d be surprised if the FA listen. They are an archaic body that lost touch with real football a long time ago. We’ll just have to suck up this dismissal I suspect.
Perhaps a positive is that the Capital One Cup game is included in the group of matches, in which I’m not sure that Gabriel would have played anyway, so at least that will reduce the ban by one. Hopefully the club get the ban further reduced and we can minimise his time out of the team, because it looked like a decent partnership was building between Gabriel and Koscienly.
Anyway, it’s done now, much like the three million pounds that have been pocketed yet again by Stan Kroenke for some sort of ‘services’. It’s pretty clear to all concerned what those services to the club were….erm….did Stan suggest Dyson hand dryers in the Diamond club toilets or something?
It’s just another example of a parasite taking advantage of Arsenal, unfortunately, and I don’t use the word ‘parasite’ likely. I didn’t expect Stan to come in and splash the cash on a sporting ‘franchise’ (even saying that in this blog grinds my gears) that he has no real affiliation with, but I didn’t expect the siphoning of money from the club to be so blatant. I thought he’d have enough lawyers in his party to wriggle it out of the club without noticing, but I guess he thought “why bother? Nobody can stop me”.
That’s the biggest shame of all. Nobody can. I used to dream of winning the lottery, sticking all of the money into a random technology that takes off across the globe, then becoming a billionaire overnight. I’d turn up in Colorado with a dump truck of cash and tell Stan to take what he needed and leave The Arsenal be. It’s a fanciful dream, with quite a few long shots in it, so until it happens I’m afraid you’re just going to have to bear with me.
The reality is that Stan is going to keep taking money out for his own use. He doesn’t need to invest in Arsenal because it’s self sustaining and so not only will his asset and share price keep going up, by he’ll be drawing dividends for as long as he can. Heaven forbid we should suffer a drop of Leeds United proportions, but all that would do is leave him selling his shares at a profit and riding in to the sunset. A parasite that we can’t remove.
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