Tag Archives: AST

Ganso, Jovetic and surveys

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Morning..

How do? Somewhat of a collaborative effort from Ben and Chris for today’s blog. As a man who watches far more overseas football than Chris, Benjamin here will be running the rule over a couple of reported signings, whilst Chris will stick his oar in on the AST and his opinion of some of the survey results that came out yesterday. So without further ado…

Ben
Watching my Twitter Time line instead of working on Monday morning…. to be fair a usual occurrence. And this appeared…

Corriera Dello Sport Stadio are saying that Stevan Jovetic’s agent Fali Ramadani has been in London talking to Arsenal about a move.

Then…

Arsenal have offered £25 million for Ganso

How exciting I thought..hmm…*rubs hands*… let the debate begin. However, no sooner had I began planning on what to say in the blog on these potential new recruits, it quickly dawned on me that I’m not sure everybody knew who they are…

Steven Jovetic
The 22-year-old Montenegrin striker plys his trade in Serie A for the Viola, Fiorentina. ‘Jo-Jo’ (that can be changed ;) is a six ft, lean and technically very gifted front man. He has been compared to Roberto Baggio by the Italian media *Hides*… I know, quite the comparison, but there are definitely some similarities. I can confirm that it is not that his socks do not quite pull over his shin pads and he has the dodgy hair cut to draw the comparison. It’s is ability to turn on a six pence, his close-knit control and his impressive dribbling ability. He can be deployed as a ‘false 9′ or play any attacking position. His versatility could be his biggest selling point. If Arsene is looking for someone to drop deep and join in with the build play, ‘Robin Van Persie esque’ if you will (is that not a dirty word now? -Chris), Stevan is his man. Jovetic has managed 22 goals in 84 appearances for the Viola. Not a great return, so improvement is needed if he wants to be that lone striker. Arsenal have been following him for a while now. Fiorentina signed him up until 2016 last summer after our interest was made clear. Stevan has the same agent as Marko Marin, Chelsea’s newest recruit, so Fali Ramadani could have been going to Stamford Bridge this morning?…. Sorry…

Could I see this happening? No.

1) I think he is out of our price range – €25million

2) I think Seria A would be very silly to let him go. Juventus are in the market for a striker, A slightly cheaper option for the Old Lady instead of Robin Van Persie. ‘IF’ Juve were to sign RVP, then maybe, but I think they are favourites and probably in the driving seat for his signature.

Paulo Henrique Chagas De Lima – Ganso
To you and me. Ganso translated is Goose, I sense a theme with these Brazilian boys (or surely some awesome Top Gun references? – Chris). Pato – Duck. I think they need to get out more.

*rubs face* sorry….

Ganso is also 22. He plays for Santos in Brazilian (The same team Pele once played for). He is an attacking midfielder. He can play off the striker, linking the play and also very comfortable running at defences, putting them on the back foot. He has been likened to Kaka, Personally I think, because of there similar physics. But saying that, a huge burden on the young mans shoulders. He can play deeper in midfield. Having more time and space, so he can quietly help the team tick over before springing them into attack. In my opinion his key attributes are his vision and his ability to strike a ball. Predominately left footed, He has the ability to pass through the eye of a needle and the imagination to boot! His downfall is his consistency which makes you think is he ready for a move to a ‘big’ league? He has a great partnership with Neymar on the field, but recently has become his Poison Challis…

“Ganso has become very annoyed with Santos. They came up for a project for Neymar but forgot about him”

His agent Delcir Sonda has said a move to Internacional is on the cards, so watch this space. Diego Forlan has also just made the switch from Inter Milan so a move to North London? I very much doubt it but you never know…

Ganso has been included in a very strong Brazilian national team for the olympics, take a look if you haven’t managed to see him play. Great talent.

Chris
I just wanted to take a little bit of time this morning to hae a look at some of the AST findings that came out yesterday. First and foremost however, I thought I’d touch on the fact that there were a few people yesterday (admittedly on the keyboard warriors playground – Twitter) who were a little bit critical of the survey as a voice of what Arsenal fans want. The reason for this criticism seemed to be based on the fact that circa 630 odd AST members have completed the survey and some people I saw felt that this should not be seen as THE voice of Arsenal supporters. I have to say that I agree. But I think if you asked the AST they would also agree to that as well. The whole purpose of the AST survey is to help them build their policies and lines to take when speaking on behalf of their members only to the club and the media. There are plenty of supporters clubs out there for gooners to join if they so choose, so if you don’t feel that the AST represent your views then quite simply, don’t join. I’m not an AST member, but I have considered it in the past because it is a chance for fans to form a collective to open up a dialogue with the press and the wider world. Democracy man, it’s great.

Anyway, some of the key findings that came out included support for Wenger but also admission from fans that dialogue needs to be opened up with Red & White Holdings (Usmanov) and the club. I don’t think there are many fans that, given the finish to the season, would be arguing that Wenger should be booted out of the door this summer (apart from the staunch anti-Wenger brigade) but the second point I’ve listed is an interesting one. I think it is interesting particularly given the media stories that have been seeping out of R&W and the way in which they pounced on the RvP story. But I think this sentiment goes further than that given the continued silence of Stan and his seemingly reluctant attitude towards investment. I’m going to go out on a limb here and set my stall out: I am firmly of the opinion that the reason Kroenke bought his shares in Arsenal is with a view to making a tidy profit. He has seen a club that is making money, is increasing its commercial revenues and will be worth a lot more in three to four years time. I suspect he would be more than happy to keep the club ticking over for the next few years and then sell on his shares to the highest bidder when all of the current commercial deals have been renegotiated so he can make a tidy share price profit. Why else would a man with no interest in soccer up until five years ago suddenly want to invest in a team thousands of miles away?

All of this sounds like I’m leaning towards Red and White as a viable option. Believe me I’m not. I’m 29 years old and I’m hoping to be alive for at least another 50 years and by the time I’m 50 I want to be supporting a team that hasn’t been crippled by being a billionaires plaything. So I am naturally cautious on what Usmanov’s motives are. But I do think the club should at least be talking to him – he is a major shareholder after all and all these boardroom struggles benefit absolutely nobody.

So in essence I would say that I agree with most of the findings of the AST. But do you?

Cheers for reading

Be Happy

Ben & Chris

Arsenal: flawed policies

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Yesterday the clubs top man – in job title anyway – was put in front of the Arsenal Supporters Trust and other supporter groups to answer questions from fans from everything from wage structure, Robin’s contract, right through to commercial arrangements and plans the club have to drive revenue forward for the future. Of course, CEO Ivan Gazidis could not talk through specifics on any arrangements, signings, etc, etc, but there was hope there would be some interesting answers to the questions that were posed.

I’ll not go into the granular detail of what was discussed because a) I wasn’t there and was getting my information from people who were that I follow on Twitter, and b) there will probably be a host of Arsenal bloggers that will report on the questions infinitely better than I can. What I do want to do however, is to pick up on a couple of the subjects that were discussed at the Q&A and lend my thoughts to what was said. Before I do though, I have to give credit to Ivan Gazidis for doing the session, as there are many examples in the Premier League where the fans do not have such a direct link to the upper echelons. What we heard may sometimes sound like spin of the highest possible political nature but at least there is dialogue between the club and fans. Just look at the McCleish era at Aston Villa to see how a club can ignore fan anger at their peril – swathes of empty seats.

Steering back towards the Q&A, and yesterday a handful of supporters were treated to an audience with the CEO. Like every good politician Ivan was well briefed and had all of his answers prepared well in advance of the session. His pre-Q&A interview on Arsenal Player did its job by heading off some of the questions at the pass, however, some fans managed to get a few questions in at the end by the sound of it.

My favourite quote of the night (from Twitter) came from an attending Gooner who said that Ivan talked for a whole hour and gave no answers. A consummate professional politician then.

One aspect that was talked about was Arsenal’s wage structure and policy on wages. As was expected, Ivan explained that the model that the club worked to was a flatter structure with emphasis on equal proportion of wages amongst the squad. In addition, the club looked to put more emphasis on paying younger players more. Ivan recognised that this doesn’t always work but the club have got it right on many occasions.

Here’s my gripe though: if you place a ‘flat’ wage structure and emphasise on youth, when those young players ‘come of age’ and reach the pinnacle of their games, the larger clubs that pay greatly inflated wages will always come in and offer more. To me it therefore becomes clear: as long as the club have their existing policy on wages we will always lose out on our better players. Sure, we MIGHT get lucky by finding one or two footballers who are loyal, but most people recognise that this is the minority rather than the norm. And if your best players are leaving every season how can you expect to build a team capable of challenging when there are changes to the squad composition all the time?

There was a chink of light, where Gazidis conceded that we would have to adapt the clubs wage policy for the top stars, but he said this would happen over a period of three to four years.

The Invincibles were born in the pre-Abramovich era and hence we were able to build an amazing team on a set budget. But the arrival of the first billionaire at an English football club put the kibosh on any team trying to retain all of its players without sending it’s wage structure through the roof. Even Man Utd had a problem with Rooney; easily solved with a few more shillings shoved in front of the strikers representatives.

For me this is the saddest thing about the RvP situation. As fans, I think deep down we all know that this is going to happen every year, and that with the clubs current policies we are bound to see it time and time again.