Hill-Wood says "We do not want Usmanov here"

Well, I think that pretty much sums it up. Read the Guardian article here.

More on Usmanov

The murk deepens on Mr Usmanov - the Russian/Uzbeki who is trying to get his hands on Arsenal football club.

Craig Murray, Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan, has accused Mr Usmanov of various crimes (in a most un-ambassadorial way) and of having acquired his fortune in dubious circumstances. Details can be found by typing "Craig Murray censored" to bring up numerous sites that have mirrored the original blog by Craig Murray.

In response Mr Usmanov had his lawyers lean on Fasthosts, the UK company hosting the servers running Craig Murray's website, and they promptly shut down the servers. This caused collateral damage to a number of other entirely unrelated websites including that of Boris Johnson MP and would-be London major. The story has become a cause celebre in the blogosphere and is now beginning to feed into the mainstream media:

The Times

The Guardian

Channel 4 News

Daily Telegraph Online here and another here

Let's hope that this scares Usmanov away. David Dein must be wondering what on earth he has done (one would hope!).

Arsenal - Financial results

Arsenal Holdings Plc, the owners of Arsenal Football Club released their results today. A detailed press release can be found here.

Highlights are:

• Turnover increased to £200.8m - the highest of any English football club.
• Operating profits (before player trading and depreciation) was £51.2m - up from £13.7m.
• Arsenal generating over £3m revenue per game at the Emirates - double that of Highbury.
  
• Arsenal sitting on £73.9m in cash.

The following passage in the release addresses the recent stakes acquired by Kronke and Usmanov and I wholeheartedly support the board's view and their leadership of the club over the last few years:

"Such is the appeal of the Arsenal brand that we now have two new major shareholders.
Their arrival has, unfortunately, brought some degree of speculation about the future of the
Club.

I think it worthwhile, therefore, to once again lay out our philosophy as a Board as to the
guiding principles which underpin our management of the Club. Firstly, I would like to
emphasise our dual role both as fans and custodians of the Club, but to note that we never
allow our support of the Club as fans to put at risk the long term health of Arsenal Football
Club. We believe in being bold in the development of the Club and in taking managed risks;
this is best evidenced by the development of Emirates Stadium. At the same time we
remain committed to the principle of developing the long-term stability of the Club through
maintaining a business that pays its own way. This financial prudence has been a hallmark
of the way in which the Club has been run over many years and has sown the seeds of the
success we enjoy today. We believe it is important to continue this philosophy so that future
generations of Arsenal shareholders and supporters can continue to enjoy the success of
the Club long into the future.

The year saw the departure of vice chairman, David Dein and, once again, I would like to
express our thanks to him for his many years of service."

Usmanov and Abramovitch

In a week when the most successful manager in Chelsea's history is shown the door by his Russian boss, against the wishes of fans and players, Arsenal find themselves facing the spectre of Russian ownership too. I think I hardly need bother spelling out the dangers that being a billionaire's plaything entails as it has plainly been spelt out this week, so let's all hope that the current Arsenal board keep their nerve and can stop Usmanov gaining a blocking vote at the club. It is very frustrating to see the efforts and sacrifices of the last three years being threatened by David Dein and his latest chum.

Dein seems to have really lost the plot in the last few months - we have won the league regularly under Wenger without spending stupid money and are currently top of the league playing great football with a young, improving and exciting squad. Apparently that's not good enough and we need to go down the Abramovitch route and bring in the star names. As Chelsea have found, that isn't necessarily the route to success or good football or large crowds. Have Shevchenko, Ballack and Cashley gone to Chelsea to play great football and to bring success to the club or to feather their nests and build up their pension plans? Who would you rather have in your side Ballack or Fabregas?

Arsenal are absolutely on the right track at the moment and the next set of financial results are supposed to be very good. The current board deserves a great deal of credit for their foresight and for being prepared to sacrifice short term success for long term success. As an Arsenal fan who can remember the relatively barren period through the seventies and eighties until George Graham arrived, I appreciate the need need to build for long term success rather than being one or two season wonders. Our new stadium and the fans filling it every game mean that there is now the strong financial base necessary to keep the club in the frame for the foreseeable future. We don't need a sugar daddy to be successful and unsettle the fundamentals of the club. Or to interfere with a manager who is very successfully managing the team.

Would you want this man running your club?

Middlesex v Leicester -Southgate CC

Following on from the late evening finish at Lord's on the evening of Monday 10th September, we had an early start for the 4 day game against Leicestershire on the Tuesday morning. Middlesex won the toss and chose to bat - fairly abysmally as it turned out. Apart from an excellent 74 from Ed Joyce and a decent 35 from the wicketkeeper Ben Scott it was pretty woeful and Middlesex were knocked over for 176 before tea on the first day! Critically, that meant no batting points and even if we won the game, Nottinghamshire would only require a single point from their game against Somerset to take the second, and last, promotion place (which they duly achieved).

I won't gripe too much as it was a lovely sunny, warm late English summer's day - the sort of day that has been in very short supply this year - and the Walker ground in Southgate was lovely. All in all, two days away from work that were well worthwhile. Here's hoping that Middlesex do better next year and that I get a chance to see more games. Roll on April!

Can you get a much more English view than this?

First Day Night match at Lord's Cricket Ground

I finally got to see some cricket this summer, parenting duties and lousy weather had pretty much scuppered all opportunities until the Derbyshire 40 over aside game on September 10th which was the first game played under floodlights at Lords.

In the afternoon sun, Derbyshire got off to a flying start with over 100 on the board in the first 20 overs for the loss of one wicket. As the light began to drop to the horizon, they lost wickets and the run rate faded and they only managed to post 196-9.

Under the floodlights, Ed Joyce played an aggressive and entertaining innings of 68 and with help from Andrew Strauss (43) Middlesex strolled home to win and set themselves up for 3 place in Division 2 and a knock out match against Northamptonshire for promotion to Division 1.

These pictures were taken on my new mobile and I hadn't read the instructions at that point, so they aren't that good! The view is from the MCCC stand next to the pavilion.

Au Revoir Thierry Henry...

Well the news that most Arsenal fans have been expecting has come - Thierry Henry has signed for Barcelona. He leaves the Premiership as a genuine legend of English football with an unsurpassed legacy of great goals. His pace, flair and partnerships with the likes of Bergkamp and Pires took Arsenal to heights that we may never see at the club again. But the time had come and £16m doesn't look too bad a deal for a striker about to reach 30, though I was hoping we'd get Eto'o in a swap. The only real silver lining seems to be that the deal was not supposed to be announced until next week as Arsenal arrange the signing of a replacement. But I'm never too hopeful in these matters as it seems to have been a while since we really bought well and have failed to replace the likes of Vierra and Pires in the last couple of seasons. Pires to my mind was the critical loss and the lack of goals from midfield has really hurt us. It's all very well pointing to the kids coming through but as someone once said - You don't win anything with kids.

The rationale behind Henry's departure is apparently David Dein's leaving. And the current stalemate on the board threatens the departure of Arsene Wenger and that really would be a disaster for the club. An exodus of our talented young foreigners would then be likely just as they start to approach their prime. Kroenke's intervention in the club has bought nothing but trouble and threatens to undermine the club just as comes through its period of financial difficulties caused by the move to the Emirates. I heartily wish he would piss off and leave our club alone. Unfortunately these greedy, bloated egos don't give a stuff about the fans - we're just the cash cows to be milked!

Fancy owning a football club?

Check out this site - My Football Club - which is seeking to buy an English football club and run it as an Industrial and Providential Society.

They are seeking 50,000 'owners' paying £35 each. On successfully buying the club, the owners will get an online vote on:

• team selection and formation
• tactics/style of play
• substitutions
• buying players
• allocating club funds

This could be a real test of the theory of 'The Wisdom of Crowds'.

I want to buy Barnet but I'm not sure if they are for sale.

Football takeovers - who pays?

There was an excellent article in The Daily Telegraph sports section at the weekend by Jim White. He questions the growing belief that since Manchester United have won the title this year that the takeover of the club has not lived up to horror show predicted by the anti-Glazer brigade.

On the plus side he notes:
- Winning the title
- Signing Owen Hargreaves, Nani and Anderson this summer
- New contract for Ronaldo

But on the downside he points out that the renewal letters for Man U season tickets have just started hitting the doormats and they include:
- a 14% increase in the upfront cost of the ticket
- a requirement to buy tickets for every cup home game (potentially costing a lot of money)

And he then asks, where is all this money going? It is going to pay down the debt mountain he concludes and so use the fans money to buy the club for them.

As an Arsenal fan, I think that Jim's final point that this same threat hangs over the head of all the clubs facing takeover from foreigners is most apt and that the only investment they will make is the initial one - from then on it'll be the fans.

An American takeover of football?

What has been going on in the Arsenal boardroom?

There seems to be much talk that a takeover is now inevitable but i would think that if the board remain opposed to Kronke taking over the club then it will be next to impossible for him to succeed. I'm not sure what the rules are on the Exchange which Arsenal Holdings trade on but usually the board is quite within its powers to reject takeover attempts. Given that the board members own 45% of the company they aren't going to be easily bullied into submission.

I'd like to know what's happened between Kronke and the board for all this to come about. Did he think he could just turn up and they'd gratefully hand the club over to him as seems to have happened at Liverpool?

On the wider issue, I think it is a concern that so many Americans, who have no history in football, are buying up Premier League clubs. I also wonder if they are even aware that we run a relegation system and that their valuable assets could become next to worthless after one bad season. I can see a time when they decide that they haven't spent the best part of a billion dollars on a football team to see it relegated and try to get the system scrapped. These people haven't come into football to blow their fortunes like Abramovich. I'm also very suspicious that the people circling our football clubs are all part of the closed shop that is American sporting franchises and I don't think they are doing it for our benefit or the good of the game.

I'd also like to say that I don't think having people like Abramovich blowing their fortunes on football is good for the game either. It completely distorts it, raises players wages at the expense of fans across the country - and increasingly across the globe - and reduces the competitiveness of the league. The Arsenal/Man U duopoly for a decade had become stale, although they both played great football, and Chelsea were initially a breath of fresh air. Now, it has got somewhat stale with their dull, forceful game a complete turn off and their hundreds of millions used to block other clubs making key purchases by forcing up player prices.

For the long term good of the game, clubs need to be run on a sound financial footing and this has always been one of Arsenal's great strengths. Moving to the Emirates stadium was supposed to take us to the next level enabling us to compete with the likes of Man U, Real Madrid and Barcelona on a sound footing. This, to my mind, is the basis for long term success. There will always be periods when we are slightly off the pace, like much of the 80's, but it only takes a good manager to get us to the point of winning things again. The same is true of Man U and Liverpool. The danger of the drive for short term success is that you mortgage your future and if it goes wrong, as happened at Leeds Utd, you face extinction. If Abramovich left Chelsea, what would happen? I doubt the club's finances can support the wage structure, so there would be a fire sale of players and a paying off of contracts that might well bankrupt the club. I don't want that at Arsenal. I want a sound financial footing which will see us being successful throughout the 21st Century. Keep the Sugerdaddies out.

The End of the Road & Start of the Season

Pathetic! Our national sporting teams seem to be in a low spot at the moment and I think the cricketers must be looking forward to getting home after a very long winter away. Even six weeks in the Caribbean must be wearing thin for them now. Back to County cricket and home life.

I have to admit, I love county cricket and that probably makes me a member of a very small and select group. I lived in St johns Wood and was able to drop in to Lords in the evening on the way home from work and also enjoyed a few long, summer afternoons there over the last couple of summers. And it has to be said, it is a lovely way to spend a sunny day. The pace of life slows and all is well with the world. Even last summer's dreadful performances by Middlesex, who play their home games at Lord's (for the uninitiated), couldn't dampen my joy at spending time in the ground. Occasionally, I venture into the Pavillion and it is a fantastic place to watch sport from. It gives a surprisingly intimate feeling of being very close to the play. Unlike the media center end which feels quite removed. And people who watch cricket are by and large, friendly, polite and interesting to talk to.

So, my Middlesex membership has been renewed, despite the baby, moving house and tube lines, and the likelihood that I won't see much cricket, because it will encourage me to take every opportunity to get out in the sun and watch some live sport. I can't wait.

Football

What can I say? Pants? That England have only managed 9 goals between them and Healy has managed that on his own for Northern Ireland probably says it all. NI were crackingly good value last night against Sweden and are making the most of their small talent pool. England meanwhile seem to be squandering their much more significant resources. McClaren never was 'The Man' and clearly isn't growing into the job. I'd like to see him go but that's just not going to happen unfortunately.

It strikes me there are two main problems - Gerrard/Lampard and our lack of a goalscoring striker. Clearly the answer to the first is to drop one of them. My preference would be to play Gerrard (and make him Captain) as I think he's the slightly better player and he's younger. I think we've seen the best of Lampard and his game will now begin to slowly deteriorate as he gets older.

The striker problem is a biggie. I don't think that Owen is going to turn out to be our saviour. Too many injuries will take their toll now. Anyone who's had knee surgery knows that it upsets the bodies balance - biomechanics I think it's called. I've had years of back trouble since my knee op, something I'd never had before. None of Crouch, Defoe, Johnson or increasingly Rooney look up to the job. My preference is probably for Johnson but I'd like to see a 20 goal a season man up front and currently they are all foreign.