Why do the media ask every player who is nearing retirement or has recently retired, if they are going to become a manager? Is it because they want another few years to have a pop at them and to make headlines from their failure? Or is it because they naively don’t undertstand what it takes to be a manager? In fact, if you look at the most successful managers in modern football, they are men who never had a prominent and lengthy playing career.

Brian Clough’s playing days ended at the young age of 29 through injury. The young Clough did finish with an excellent strike rate for both Hartlepool and Sunderland but didn’t set the footballing world alight. But Clough, who is to this day remembered as the greatest English manager never to have managed England, had an impeccable managerial record. Clough took a languishing Derby County up in to the top division in England and surprised the rest by leading his side to the Division One (now the Premier League) title. Clough went on to lead an unfashionable Nottingham Forest side to back to back European Cup successes.

The one manager still in a job today who can hold a candle to Clough, is Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson. Ferguson was a good striker in his day too, but for one reason or another ended up being a jorneyman player in the Scottish league. He appeared in major domestic finals, but ended up on the losing side. Contrast is playing days with his career in management. The Scot has won just about everything you can win in the game. Along with the Scottish First Division crown at St Mirren, he has won Scottish cup, Scottish Premier League, English cup and English Premier League titles. He also has six victories in Europe to his credit.

Arsene Wenger is another very successful manager who never had a glittering playing career. One thing these men also have in common though is time. they were all given the time they needed to learn their trade and to bring success to their clubs. One thing a player who decides to become a young manager today can be sure of, is that he won’t get much time. It takes a brave chairman to stand behind his choice with the pressure for success that comes from the board room and the terraces. Brian’s son Nigel Clough spent several years in the non-league as manager of Burton Albion learning his trade. The young Clough knew that if he went straight in to football league management he would have very little chance to succeed.

The reason a lot of players become managers is because they don’t know anything else. Starting on the back foot is no way to start a career with the big boys and will see many flounder. The only ones that do make it through need to find that rare breed that is a suportive and brave chairman. Roy Keane appears to be one of the lucky ones, with Marcus Evans backing him through good and bad. Or maybe the Ipswich supremo is is just too scared to sack him.

photo credit: Matt and Kim Rudge

After a desperately disappointing World Cup exit at the weekend, the question is where do England go now?
The whole tournament showed England to be an over hyped mediocre side set up in a way by Capello that below average sides were able to simply raise their game and get a result against them.
People have actually forgotten that before this tournament England actually failed to qualify for Euro 2008, with exactly the same squad as the current campaign. So it’s the same squad, just four years older, or as Capello whinged in his press conference, ‘four years more tired’.

There are serious issues that go deeper than just who is manager and these must be addressed if England are to have any success on the international stage.

Premier League vs Football Association

Firstly the Premier League must work closer with the FA. A winter break must be introduced to maximise tournament play. The premier league is more physical and faster than most of the European leagues and having a break would allow battered bodies time to recover fully and allow for a strong finish to a campaign.
Where are the international super stars?

This next issue is painful, but where are the next batch of world class international stars? Where is the next Alan Shearer. Where are the mesmorising Paul Gascoignes, the next fox in the box Michael Owen? Where is the next David Beckham or Paul Scholes? Opinions will vary and people will argue that Jack Rodwell, Jack Willshere, Adam Johnson, Ashley Young and a few others will fall in to that category, but seriously, are these players international quality?

This brings me on to the next issue. Whoever has the job after Fabio Capello needs to be English speaking and has the full backing of the media, the public and the club managers to play these youngsters alongside current players like Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney and John Terry, so when the time arrives to pass on what legacy is left of the three lions, they all have enough experience at this level to go on and compete against all opposition in major tournaments, like Germany did so amazingly against England on Sunday. Remember five of the starting eleven played in the victorious Under 21 German side against England last year. James Milner was the only member of our successful set up to play on Sunday.

The issues will not be resolved overnight and the whole problem needs all the right people in all the right places to be singing off of the same sheet (preferably God Save the Queen) in order to achieve the collective glory that everyone, well almost everybody craves.

Finally who springs to mind when speaking about choosing a manager?
Who commands instant respect from the players? Who is great with the media and has seen it all before in an international career spanning 14 years .That’s right Fabio Capello’s number 2…….. David Beckham?!

The Emirates Cup has quickly become one of the best pre-season touraments and the 2010 edition is shaping up to have some great games.

Emirates Cup 2010 will see Arsenal joined by Italian powerhouse AC Milan, Scottish giants Celtic and leading French club Lyon. The event – which will be hosted by Arsenal and sponsor company Emirates Airline – has been scheduled for over the weekend of Saturday 31st July and Sunday 1st August,

Arsenal Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis said:

“We’re delighted and proud to once again be welcoming three of Europe’s most high-profile teams to Emirates Stadium for an exciting weekend of football. The Emirates Cup has been hugely successful since we staged the inaugural tournament back in 2007 and we’re again looking forward to staging this weekend of football, which is now recognised as one of the world’s most prestigious pre-season tournaments. We have three big teams coming this year in AC Milan, Celtic and Lyon, who all have huge international followings and rich histories. I’m sure all supporters are looking forward to the weekend, which not only offers the opportunity to watch two top quality matches each day, but of course, also provides the teams with a high level of preparation ahead of the forthcoming season.”

Emirates Cup 2010 match schedule:
Saturday 31st July 2010
Celtic v Olympique Lyonnais (2pm Kick-off) – Buy Lyon v Celtic Tickets
Arsenal v AC Milan (4.20pm Kick-off) – Buy Arsenal v AC Milan Tickets

Sunday 1st August 2010
AC Milan v Olympique Lyonnais (2pm kick-off) – Buy AC Milan v Lyon Tickets
Arsenal v Celtic (4.20pm kick-off) – Buy Arsenal v Celtic Tickets

Sounds like a good weekend. With the World Cup finals ending only a couple of weeks before this, I wonder how many of the big names will be playing?

Arsene Wenger says his future at Arsenal is solely dependent on the club’s ”capacity to win trophies”.  What in the world does that mean?  Doesn’t he know–surely he does–that alot of that capacity is in his corner and he is responsible for making the players ready to win said trophies.

Personally, I hate the word trophy.  It makes these guys sound like they want something on their mantle to impress dinner guests.  It’s annoying.

Anyways, if Wenger wants to leave now because he thinks Arsenal can’t “win any trophies” then he’ll have only himself to blame.  He’s got Cesc Fabregas–and don’t you think he’ll be ready for next season after breaking his leg?  What more could you ask for than a great leader?

Beyond that I’m not sure what Wenger thinks he can do besides plan to win as many matches as possible.  I think the club put it better than me.  They know he needs to stay and he would be stupid to go.  In a statement they said:

“It’s nice to win trophies, of course it is, and I accept it has been a few years now without one, but Arsene Wenger is building something special with this team and I cannot see him wanting to drop it now. “

“The players he has brought forward and personally developed are still improving and he has enormous confidence in them. Arsene seems relaxed and happy with this club and I would expect to talk with him once the season is over.”

“While there are games left, Arsene wants to focus and concentrate on them – that has always been his approach, and it won’t change now.”

“I would imagine he will not be ready to talk to us until the end of the season at the earliest but Arsene knows our feelings. They haven’t changed. We want him to stay for as long as he wants to stay, and we hope that will be for some considerable time yet.”

Everything that was said by Arsenal’s chairman in that statement can be broken down into one sentence. 

“For us–Soccer is about honor”.

Be honorable and stay at Arsenal Arsene–and do your duty.

photo credit: Kieran Lynam

Just when you thought you had things figured out someone throws a curveball at you. I bet that is what Stan Kroenke is thinking today.

There “Silent Stan” is, sitting with 29.98% of Arsenal shares, only 10 shares away from launching a takeover bid for the club.

Then the news breaks that Arsenal’s fourth largest shareholder, Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, who owns 15.9% of Arsenal, has hired an Investment group to help her sell her shares. The estimated value of Lady Bracewell-Smith’s shares is around £80million.

For the last year or so the concensus was that Kroenke was going to takeover Arsenal. He is on the board and everything seemed to be pointing to a summer bid.

His main rival appeared to be Uzbeki tycoon Alisher Usmanov who holds 26.29% of Arsenal’s shares. The Arsenal board is not a fan of Usmanov, even though he is the second largest shareholder in the club.

The other potential candidate to buy Arsenal is Danny Fizsman, who is Arsenal’s third largest shareholder with a 16.1% stake in the club.

The news that Lady Bracewell-Smith’s shares are up for grabs means that if either Kroenke, Usmanov or Fizsman buy her shares, they have to immediately make a takeover offer for the club as they will pass the 30% threshold.

The nightmare scenario for Arsenal fans is that someone like the Glazers appear on the scene, buy Lady Bracewell-Smith’s shares and then partner with Usmanov to try and take over the club. The protracted takeover battle would hinder Wenger’s ability to buy in the summer transfer window and would cause him to rethink signing a contract extension.

photo credit: Kieran Lynam

A couple years ago Arsene Wenger witnessed a brutal tackle in which Martin Taylor broke Eduardo’s leg and dislocated his ankle.  Wenger even said about it:

“Have I bumped into him? No. Have my feelings changed towards him? No. Have they mellowed with time? No,” Wenger said when asked about Taylor, now at Watford. “It is best not to speak about that any more. The best way to help Eduardo is not to speak about what happened there. For him, he has a good opportunity to show that he has got over that.  This is a big day for all of us but it has nothing to do with what happened two years ago – that is all finished now.  Yes it was a very, very bad injury for Eduardo and a very difficult moment for Arsenal Football Club. And from that day everything changed for us – that’s true. We were top of the league and everything was going so well. But then…”

“But we are not the kind of people who dwell on two years ago and all that happened there. Eduardo is well again, he’s back playing again. So for us it’s all about right now and the future – not going back into the past. It is a big game for other reasons now – not for revenge but for something more important than that. It’s because we want to win the league, not settle old scores.”

Which is code for:

“I’m an angry old man who DOES keep grudges and if I were such a great Soccer coach I would understand how hard it would be to purposefully break someone’s leg on a tackle.  I should shut up now.”

I love how Wenger thinks the match is so important, yet he won’t shut up about 2 years ago.  He’s a hypocrite and a blow-hard.  I like Arsenal, but this is turning me off really fast.  Get some perspective Wenger–soon!

He needs to keep his talking on the field.

Andrey Arshavin knows that he contributes to Arsenal, but I guess he doesn’t think his contribution is enough.  He thinks that Arsenal needs more starpower to win trophies in England.  In fact, it goes something like this:

“I am still of the opinion that to win trophies Arsenal needs more players.  There is the simple fact that last summer we sold two players and bought only one. So there is an obvious deficit of at least one. Then we lost Van Persie, Gibbs and Ramsey for a long time. So for me it is natural we need new players.”

“Without the variety of players we have less diversity in attack. That allows our opponents to read our combinations more easily. Finally, it results in less ball possession for us and our defence comes under more pressure.

“The Premier League is very interesting, at least as long as we continue fighting to win it. But without new experienced players, real stars, it will be difficult to achieve success. Ideally we need three or four such experienced players and then among our youths there should be guys who are not only good at playing football but have real character.”

Ok, he can go on and on about how intense the Premier League is–and I agree–but then he can’t close with a comment about character as if he doesn’t already have that on his club.

You can’t buy guys with character.  You can’t buy championships with character.  Ask the Florida Marlins:

They bought both of their World Series titles in 1997 and 2003 and the next year their team got blown up because they LACKED character.  Why?  Because they bought the team–they didn’t build it.

Arsenal is building and shouldn’t stop because one player thinks they need more.  Perhaps they already have all they need.

photo credit: wonker

Arsenal moved to top of the Premier League, for 24 hours at least, by defeating West Ham United 2-0 despite the first-half dismissal of Thomas Vermaelen.

Denilson’s shot, after exchanging passes with Nicklas Bendtner on the edge of the area, gave the Gunners a fifth-minute lead. With seconds of the opening period remaining, Vermaelen was sent off for pulling down Guillermo Franco but Alessandro Diamanti’s ensuing penalty was brilliantly saved by Manuel Almunia. Cesc Fabregas then sealed the win for Arsenal six minutes from time when he scored from the penalty spot. The win was Arsenal’s sixth successive win.

Eidur Gudjohnsen’s first league goal since November 2008 gave Spurs a 2-1 victory at ten-man Stoke Cit. Niko Kranjcar scored the winner for Tottenham after a Matthew Etherington penalty had brought Stoke back to level terms.

Five points behind Tottenham in seventh, Aston Villa required an 82nd-minute strike from John Carew, his second of the match, to draw 2-2 with Wolves. The draw all but ends Villa’s hopes of gaining that fourth Champions League place.

Elsewhere, Everton continued their fine form by beating Bolton 2-0, while two goals from Darren Bent helped Sunderland upset Birmingham City 3-1.

In the two big games at the bottom of the table, a extra-time goal from Hugo Rodallega gave Wigan three huge points over Burnley, while Hull, and their news boss Iain Dowie, lost 3-2 at Portsmouth.

Arsenal will face holders Barcelona in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. The tie will be a repeat of the 2006 final in Paris, when the Gunners led until late in the game before Barca turned the game around to lift the trophy.

It will also mean a return to the Emirates Stadium for former Arsenal superstar Thierry Henry, now with the Catalan giants. And it means Gunners captain Cesc Fabregas, who has been strongly linked with a summer move to the Nou Camp, will be up against his former club.

The first leg will take place at the Emirates on March 30 or 31 with the return game in Catalonia on April 6 or 7.

If Arsenal get past the holders, they will face a semi-final meeting with either Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan, who beat Chelsea in the previous round, or CSKA Moscow. Inter produced a superb display at Stamford Bridge to complete a 3-1 aggregate success over Chelsea and will be favourites to meet the Gunners or Barca.

Some comments and reaction to Arsenal being drawn against Barcelona in the Champions League.

Arsene Wenger:

“I believe we will not be favourites but for me it will be a 50-50 game. That’s how we have to take it. Of course they are a good side, so are we. It will be an interesting, exciting game. We have to make sure we have the belief and focus right.”

Barcelona sporting director Txiki Beguiristain:

“It’s a great tie. We are two teams who don’t shut up shop and play long ball football, and this tie will be nice for the fans. It will be a good spectacle and we’ll see if we are a little stronger than them. In any case, the best news is knowing that we will be playing the return leg at home. We are strong at home and we’ve shown that.”

Barca defender Gerard Pique:

“Arsenal are a young team but they are not to be taken for granted. Cesc (Fabregas) is the best Arsenal player, who carries the weight of the team and pulls the wagon. It’s important to play the second leg at home, but it means nothing as last year we reached the final playing at home first, and we won the Champions League.”

Champions League Tickets

Arsenal v Barcelona – Buy Arsenal v Barcelona Tickets
Barcelona v Arsenal – Buy Barcelona v Arsenal Tickets

photo credit: Free-ers

This could be good for the boys in Blue…

Now that we have seen the draw for the Quarterfinals of the Champion’s League I think it’s high-time we actually discussed its impact on the Premier League.  You have United on top with 66 points, but Arsenal and Chelsea right behind them with 64 points.  However, Chelsea is out of the Champion’s League and they have little else to do but gameplan for their English opponents.

United has to deal with Bayern–as I said, the team nobody wants to play–and Arsenal gets Barca.  Yeah, they didn’t get the good end of that stick at all.

So, Chelsea gets to sit back and watch their two closest opponents on the Premier League table play more matches and get really worn out by some strong European competition.

Does this help Chelsea?  I think so.

I don’t know that it will hurt United all that much.  They could easily go into their matches with Bayern and just kill them.  This is a possibility even though I’m very high on Bayern.  United is a really tough and they may have it “together” enough to just make waste of them quickly.

Arsenal on the other hand gets Barca.  They get the best team in the world–IMO–and they have to continue fighting to stay at the top of the Premiership at the same time.

Arsenal is a good club, but they’ll be facing a “Blue Crew” that is led by–IMO–the best on-field leader in the world in Leo Messi.  I don’t think that’s going to be much fun for Arsenal.

Plus, if it gets bad after the first match and Arsenal has no chance of catching back up they’ll still have to play the second match and that just sucks for them.  They’ll be depleted AND playing a meaningless game.

This helps Chelsea…but only if they take care of their business too.