ARSENALISM©

Götterdämmerung Awaits  The beautiful game has bought us many mercurial players, many heroes and many all time greats. A lot depends on when you did your football watching, who you support and external matters more to do with the character of the players taken to heart. With Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and the like, they were generally without true competition for the title. Great players abounded around them, lets be clear about that, but the sort of player that stands at the summit finds himself in rarified atmosphere. That changed in our recent football watching lives as there have been two kings at the summit Messi and Ronaldo. Their achievements, statistics and moments of sheer magic are really quite remarkable. One is a one club man who has set new standards in ability, consistency and WTF moments, the other has proved himself in England, Spain and now Italy and has been machine like in his efficiency. put them together and you probably have a Frankenstein's Monster of the perfect...

  Burnley 1- 1 Arsenal, that's it, game over. Yes the pitch was a throwback to FA Cup pitches of the seventies. Yes we were denied a stone cold penalty and yes we threw away more points in this most irritating of Premier League campaigns; two this time. But, we were the architects of our own downfall. We shot ourselves in the foot, punched ourselves in the face and trod barefoot in our own urine. The Arsenal have dropped a massive 43 points in our 27 games so far and remain firmly anchored in the no man's land of 10th place. Unable to extricate ourselves  we are in the quagmire of mid table mediocrity. Drawing with Burnley is where we are as a club. Where we are placed in the table is an accurate reflection of Arsenal 2021. To all intents and purposes our league season is now condemned to a limping stumble towards the last game of the season; 11 games with little real chance of gaining the required points to finish in a position that gives meaningful European football. The lot...

In the 1975 Norman Jewison film Rollerball sports teams were run by companies. In the case of Houston, the featured team of the story, they were run by The Energy Company. A conglomerate that make decisions about the team based on expedience and the benefits of corporate-run society while expounding the importance of respecting executive decisions. This was a view of a 2018 sporting world and highlighted the role that sport would play in corporate perceptions and influence. Jewison predicted corporate influence but may have missed a trick in not foreseeing the role of nation states. Which brings us to Manchester City.  A club that currently sits on top of the domestic league with an impressive recent run of form that shows little sign of abating. This is a club with a squad of players that has been accumulated at great cost from the bottomless coffers of  the 78% majority ownership of the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), and the 12% ownership of the American firm Silver Lake and...