I’ve got to tell you, I’m enjoying reading some of the hair-brained ideas being supposedly cooked up by the Premier League, broadcasters, etc, to try to mitigate what will eventually be a flawed product when the English football season starts up again. Genuinely, it really is rather quite amusing, especially at this time in which human seems to have taken a back foot because of the stuff that’s happening in the world with the global pandemic. Every night on the news its a depressing story after another depressing story, so to get something that even makes me chuckle in a cynical fashion, is welcome from this Gooners perspective.
The scheme of course that has me laughing this morning has come to me from Arseblog News via the Reuters website, as apparently the Premier League are looking at the possibility of CGI fans and crowd noise pumped into the stadium. Isn’t it just deliciously hilarious? Can you imagine watching a bunch of imaginary fans all jumping up exactly the same, or if a ball flies out for a throw in it just disappearing through some of them and then the players having to run through the fans to collect a ball because it’s gone up to the 19th row?
And what about the sound? Are they going to have somebodies finger on the ‘Goal’ button, the ‘chant’ buzzer, or the ‘referees a w*nker’ insult to add realism?
Why don’t they just go the whole hog and CGI the players too? Then we can all get back to watching what would essentially be a paid for game of FIFA20.
Speaking of which, I’m getting myself deep into the career mode and the other day as Paraguay manager, Almiron scored and ran into the net, emerging out of it with his legs levitating at a 90 degree angle as he ran back to the centre spot. It really was something to behold. Perhaps the Premier League can fix it so that some fans have weird quirks about it? Like a row of really tall people – like 9ft tall – sitting on row one that a bunch of CGI fans behind them at the Emirates get to shout “sit down!” like in the stadium itself. Actually, it doesn’t have to be 9 ft tall people, just regular sized CGI fans at the Emirates; they’d be shouted at to sit down any time anything vaguely interesting happens anyway.
In actual football news doing the rounds, Jeremie Aliadiere has been quoted as saying that we simply have to sell Aubameyang this season now. I think we all share the sentiment matey, but the reality is that it isn’t as simple as “when you get to two years, you sign or are sold”. For example last summer did Barcelona or Real Madrid want him? We all know there’s been interest but all I heard were things like ‘monitoring the situation’ which says to me that neither were on the verge of actually talking to player or the club. Then you’ve got the players intentions. Imagine if he’s been telling the club that he’s happy to sign, then it gets to the shoddy start to the season we had and ends up with him doing a U-turn?
It’s not so easy that you can just make black or white decisions on things like this and I kind of appreciate the difficult situation Arsenal found themselves in. Had we been comfortably in line for a top four spot this season I think that contract would have been inked. But as it is we find ourselves in this transfer headache. But I think it’s also not as easy to just ‘sell’ this summer either, because nobody has any money. Barca and Real aren’t dropping £50million for a guy with just a year left on his contract and if you believe the rumours, Barca are hotter on a return for Neymar anyway, so I can’t see that being a destination. Not unless there’s a swap deal to be done. And if that’s the case, who would we swap in return? Someone like Dembele? Perhaps, but he’s had so many injury worries that’d look like one hell of a gamble, especially given that Auba is basically never injured. On paper if he could avoid injuries it would make sense as he’s a wide right or left forward and perhaps it means Saka and Demebele would vie for position with Lacazette and Martinelli being the options up top, but it’d be putting a lot of faith in a guy who I think has missed practically a whole season of football over the three years he’s been at Barca.
It’s a tough one to call and the club are going to have to think very carefully about their options this summer. If there’s no chance on getting in cash for our players because teams don’t have the money to stump up £20million for Ainsley Maitland-Niles, for example, then creative swap deals will probably be the flavour of the month. But we’re getting into heavily hypothetic situations here, so I think I’ll put a pin in that thinking for now.
Have a good one and I’ll catch you sexy folk tomorrow.
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