Brave New World

Once upon a time I was invited by Jose Antonio Reyes, no less, to attend a meeting at Highbury (including a champagne reception if I remember rightly) to discuss my interest in buying a holiday home in Spain. Despite the number of times I have been identified as the key person, for a 10% fee, to handle funds sequestered by General Abacha, and also how many times I have won the international lottery (despite not knowing I had been entered into it), the invitation still came as something of a surprise. Any excuse to visit Highbury was not to be sniffed at. I have been known to break a perfectly decent train journey at Finsbury Park for no other reason than just to walk past it. I was doubly flattered as I didn’t know Jose Antonio personally, but I was an admirer of his mazy running (if not quite so much an admirer of his mazy falling over). Something held me back though. That something was a mild distaste that a footballer of his obvious talents spent some of his spare time as a patsy for estate agents. A little later on, when Reyes was sold, a small part of me wondered if he had failed to shift enough units and been given his cards. Maybe he now works in a Lisbon telesales office; part-time cold-calling Benfica fans about selling their shack outside Portomao? Even later on, when David Dein showed his true colours (mahogany and chestnut), I couldn’t help wondering if he was the estate agent spiv behind the whole thing. I never thought, though, that it was a taste of things to come.

Now that the flats conversion, that was once the home of football, is nearing completion, I am starting to feel actual pain replacing nostalgia. That once great edifice to the permanence of class is now a housing development flirting with credit crunch failure. The novelty of living there will be pretty comprehensively outweighed by chagrin if negative equity is involved (for the 35% of us that can still get a mortgage approved). Before the housing market slumped, only footballers could afford to live there. Now even they aren’t prepared to extinguish their smouldering pockets and jettison a few quid just to be nearer work. The only person who can lose that kind of money and not worry about it, these days, is Roman Abramovich.

In Huxley’s Brave New World the masses were content for three reasons; the absence of conflict over resources, a sense of certainty over your role in life, and masses of guilt free promiscuous sex. For the modern footballer read a great salary, a first team place and masses of guilt free promiscuous sex [Actually there was a fourth reason - everyone was stoned on mild hallucinogens, but never mind]. Across the railway tracks from our old home - out of the frosted bathroom window of one of those luxury pads in fact - can be viewed a gigantic symbol of the economics - and ergonomics - of modern football; a stadium purpose built to extract cash from supporters and convert it into ever more insulated cocoons for the players who grace its stage. Like the ring around a bath, there are the Alphas and Betas in the middle tier of corporate seats. Watching Arsenal is fast gaining on a round of golf and a few sherbets in the 19^th hole as a very good way to do business. Below them are the Gamma seats where the atmosphere is supposed to come from; in the very top Epsilon tier you need opera glasses to read the back of the players shirts, let alone yell something that anyone but the bloke in front can sing along to. Stodgy microwave pizza and bland plastic glasses of lager in the very model of a multi-storey car park only add to the half-time ennui. The one consolation, so far, has been that (apart from bloody West Ham) you won’t see Arsenal lose. You will have been richly entertained at TNHOF and you will not have felt very often that the display you were witnessing wasn’t worth every penny, no matter how huge the viewing distance.

It must remain so. Start losing games with the abject poverty of endeavour or intelligence, as we did against Fulham last weekend, and all the other things that rile you about Arsenal bubble to the surface. People will start to notice the emperor is stark Ballack naked only when the 11 men in Charlton Replica shirts no longer provide such elegant distraction. The true Arsenal fan lacks peripheral vision most of the time; the team and only the team is the focus of their undivided attention. Any unexpected failure, however, will cause us to speculate whether the problems are transitory or profound, and to try and hunt down a culprit. Before we start looking around us (and wondering if Arsenal is still the club we fell in love with, or a whether in fact she’s bought some new clobber, had a boob job and stopped caring that we don’t call to say we’ll be late), we should therefore look at the team for the source of the malaise.

Now Ade is staying, RVP is playing, Eduardo is praying and Vela is sashaying through defences, I’m thinking we’re a match for anyone up front. We have the two best full backs in the league too and a goalkeeper who many unfairly underrate and two decent understudies. Central defence is bit of a worry. Gallas is a much better defender when he concentrates on defending. Those silly captain’s gee-up talks are not getting him anywhere. But he, Toure, Djourou (and Silvestre, I suppose you have to say) are all very decent players, and Big Phil should come back a better player too.

Even as the role of attacking midfielder and striker becomes more blurred in the modern game, no one has yet posited the 4-0-6 formation. But Arsenal without Cesc resemble a polo mint, and not so much because they are a breath of fresh air. Where we are now seriously weak (apart from Cesc) in midfield, our three main rivals are strong. United can keep Scholes joints oiled for another campaign and let Giggsy have a run out when Ronaldo’s hair is looking tired, because they can count on England internationals Carrick and Hargreaves to make significant contributions. Park Ji-Sung has never let them down, Nani can cover both Ronaldo and Giggs (the showboating tw#t), and they can still bank on Anderson (who is Gilberto and Flamini rolled into one if you ask me, and Roy Keane niggly with it) playing a fair few games. In a long season, that kind of strength in depth counts majorly, and they hardly needed a genuine centre forward to win them the league and European Cup double last term as it is. Yet United know who the best two strikers available are - Rocky Santa Cruz and Dimitar Berbatov - and are determined to get one of them, despite having Wayne Rooney, Louis Saha and Carlos Tevez in their forward line. Their intention is to retain, in its entirety, their burgeoning central player roster and address their only genuine weakness in a profound and decisive way with serious cash. That’s strategic strengthening that you can appreciate far more readily than Chelsea’s boy-in-a-sweetshop incontinence or the revolving doors of Anfield.

Liverpool, the weakest of the three in this regard, can’t find a place for Xabi Alonso because they’ve seen Bareth Garry dovetail with Steven (he’s not bad is he?) Gerrard for England and want some of it (although it looks like rafa will have to wait for his bride). Never mind that their 41 strong first team squad also features Javier Mascherano, retains the services of the Flamini like under-20 Brazil captain Lucas and a goal-scoring version of Alex Hleb in Yoss “the Boss” Benayoun… they still want Gareth to be the Flamini to Gerrards Cesc. Gerrards injury last night might put paid to any move away for Alonso.

And Chelsea is a roll call of top class midfielders to the point where they’d consider selling Joe Cole and SWP. I think we should honestly think about rescuing one or other of them (Cole preferably). If we can extend the hand of friendship to an injured Mickael Silvestre, then why not give a first team berth to a less odious and not injured former rival player in an area of the pitch where we could really use the help? The reason Chelsea can afford to tout those two is because Ballack is now on song (and he is very good, however much you might dislike him), Lampard is fat but can score goals with balls that Hleb would have passed, and Essien is just plain class. With Mikel yet to fulfil his enormous potential, Malouda pounding down the wings and Deco the new darling of the Bridge, it does not matter that they can imminently call on near infinite resources to buy one or other of the best attacking midfielders in world football from two top drawer European opponents, they’d already be too strong for us in the middle.

I can’t remember a time when the motto “In Arsene We Trust” (adapted ironically from that on a one dollar bill) was more sorely tested than now. His stubbornness is virtuous, of course. But our cri de coeur is genuine as well. It’s not just the usual grumblings “about £30m players every time we lose” this time. Most fans appreciate that we don’t have those vast sums and that we’re not going to go to the crossroads and do a deal with the fat man to get them. If he has heard that view expressed at all, anywhere, it was down to David Dein and Usmanov lobby, not us. They want our club and they are using the disgusting profligacy of our rivals as an example, rather than a salutary warning. As my mum used to say "...And if he jumped off a cliff, would you do it as well? Stupid boy!"

Arsenal supporters are not an ignorant or unreasonable lot either. We know how few games Arsenal have lost in the last few years, playing attractive passing football. And we know a £30m prima donna wouldn’t necessarily have won us those games. But we also know about the precisely zilch, trophy-wise, that generally not losing has obtained for us. We don’t all cry over a £30m signing when we lose. We’d be happy enough with another of the £500k gems the boss so often unearths, so long as he is capable of immediately and fully replacing Flamini’s work ethic, Hleb’s trickery, and Gilberto’s nous and dedication.

Arsene Wenger, to quote Aldous Huxley, “would rather be himself, sad, than another person, happy”. His fiscal management may have earned the admiration of the more sober journalists, in comparison with the profligacy all around the Premier League and in keeping with these straitened times. But we need Arsenal to provide relief from our daily lives, not to chasten us further. When Deco sparkles for Chelsea we do notice. We’ll not be unconscious when Robinho arrives at Heathrow and begins his piffling £70,000 a week contract (I expect Rio Ferdinand to laugh in his face). We won’t be so absorbed in gas price deals on USwitch that we are not cogniscent of the day when Ronaldo gets fit and starts Michael Flatleying his way around defenders. Throw us a frickin' bone here, Arsene.

We're told to take solace in the potential we have, rather than the actual. Ramsey has great awareness. Denilson has captained Brazil at under 19 level. Wilshere looks special. Diaby, once he controls his limbs and stops playing like he’s in a practice match, could be the next Viera. Walcott est tres rapide. Nasri is the real deal (the next Pires even?). And Cesc is a phenomenon; already world class at such a tender age. In physics potential energy is stored energy. A body can sit with enormous amounts of stored potential energy indefinitely (for example at the top of a steep hill). But it needs outside impetus to convert that potential energy into kinetic energy.

I’m not maligning the players we do have. They did their youthful best last season. If they keep it up, then - in two or three years time, if events of the last few years are anything to go by - they will all be household names plying their trade in Spain or Italy. But what do we do right now? Right this minute we need to show a snarling set of bared fangs to the opposition, not a row of wobbly milk teeth. We need our main three rivals to know that they won’t have it all their own way and to tell the rest of the premiership not to even think about trying to break into the big kids club. Just one genuinely class centre midfield signing would send that message. It would also provide the leadership and organisation that those young players need. There is no specialist midfield coach or senior pro to guide any of our progeny right now, off or on the field (get well soon, Liam Brady). It would also mean that Cesc is rather less heavily tasked when he is available. He can get on with running the game rather than running after the ball. And if the Twente game showed that he makes all the difference; the Fulham game showed why we need options when he’s not around.

I only see my younger male cousins every few years and each time I’m amazed by the men that have replaced the boys I knew; a head taller than me, skirt chasers, beer drinkers, holders of responsible jobs with decent money, owners of their own flats and cars. One recently informed me that he supports Chelsea! They haven’t sat still. They’ve grown. I viewed Fulham until recently in the same light; tousle-headed youngsters who we could always best. Hodgson made a few good signings like Gera and Hangeland, makes Danny Scouse the captain, and all of a sudden they’re showing us clean pair of heels. You see, other teams aren’t trying to keep their hair straight when the zeitgeist blows by. They can’t learn anything from us anymore as we're no longer teaching them anythig new. Now we’ve gone off at a tangent that's hard to replicate. But you bet they were all paying attention when Chelsea got their windfall, and that club has proved a more seductive role model than Arsenal. We used to give guided tours to league managers with a commentary and pamphlets on the Arsenal way to do things, a complimentary towel and a packet of creatine chewy sweets. Now those league clubs have grown up, moved on, and we can’t take beating them every season for granted. And we must also expect twice as many of them are able to match us in the transfer market as could the last time we won the league.

Arsene Wenger was the unwitting midwife of the modern football world and so bears a little of the responsibility for how it has changed, really. His recent conservatism is understandable and noble, when the amount of money swilling about is inversely proportionate to the amount of common sense. It is as if he is Dr Frankenstein, shrinking in horror from his own creation though. It is misplaced conservatism not to strengthen the team at this moment. Selling the club to Dein and Usmanov, that would be a betrayal; getting hold of a decent experienced central midfielder before the close of the transfer window is just a necessity. He would not be dipping a toe into dystopia by doing so. But any more of this malarkey, and we’ll all be reaching for the soma.