Hello hello hello, hope you’re well? Anything to talk about today that’s Arsenal related? No? Oh well, bye then!

Of course I’m kidding! You think NewsNow wouldn’t have my a** on a plate if they let me get away with blogs that short? I remember after one of the many utterly abysmal Arsenal performances once, I just wrote something like “this team doesn’t deserve anybody blogging or talking about them” and pretty much left it at that. About three weeks later I got an email telling me that posts like that contravened their acceptable use policy – or some sort of other rule – and continued posts like that would force them to remove my site. 

I did draft a ‘have you even spent 30 seconds looking at the literally hundreds of posts I’ve written on a daily basis’ response, but folded like a pack of cards stacked up in a warm breeze in the end. Mainly because I couldn’t be bothered with actually penning the response.

There is some mumblings about Mesut Özil going to United in the summer to be reunited with Mourinho. If I could use emojis on this platform I’d probably fire a few of those ones that look sideways with that slanty mouth that I think means “hmph. Figures…”. Because let’s be honest, it seems like that’s totally going to happen mainly because there are so many things that would piss us off in the process. Mourinho getting one over on us. Again. Strengthening a rival. Again. Mesut probably joining the team and helping them to win the league. Again. And it’d be on a free. Now we’d know how the Tiny Totts felt when we had ourselves a helping to their Campbell. 

It’d leave a bitter taste in the mouth but at this stage wouldn’t surprise me. Mesut’s PR team would manage his exit from us and transition to United with consummate ease and we’d be powerless to stop except to call him the odd name. Sigh.

But I guess that’s a good seven months away now so we should probably all just enjoy Özil whilst we still have him.

As for the other news swirling around the WWW it’s all about takeovers again and after my worries of Stan in complete control yesterday, we had Alisher Usmanov putting out a statement about not selling his shares. And I talked about Mesut’s PR team being on the money. This man can clearly afford to hire plenty of social listeners and decent copywriters, because he plays the PR fiddle in quite a timely manner. 

What I don’t get is why he wants to keep his shares. As far as we know he’s not an Arsenal fan really, despite professing to do so, because he had no real affiliation before he bought his shares in 2007. He’s just like that cancer that is Kroenke, in that respect, but I guess he’s seen an opportunity to sound like a white knight riding in from the distance and he wants to take it. He wants to get Arsenal fans backing his takeover – even suggesting he’d be happy to form a collaboration with consortiums if needs be –  so he can oust Kroenke, but we’ll never really know his true intentions until Kroenke sheds his shares which, let’s be honest, isn’t going to happen because we’re the closest thing to a successful ‘franchise’ he has. He’s also seen how much money is swilling around the Premier League and wants to gourge himself at that trough. 

Usmanov isn’t really the owner that we’d all want given his shady path, but he could do no worse than Kroenke, even if he turned up to a few more meetings and shared a bit more information other than saying “winning trophies is not why I’m in this game”. Usmanov wouldn’t have to put in his millions and billions because Arsenal have proven that it can be self-sustaining, but what he could do – or any owner could – is engage a bit more and be a little less flaky about the true intentions they have. 

We live in an age of information and with that those that come out the best are those that are transparent in what they are doing. Stan is as murky as anything and that’s why we need change. We need to see what somebody else can do. Sadly Usmanov seems the only viable option at the moment. A true ‘lesser of two evils’.

Catch you tomorrow