Bolton Living in the Past as Bonus and Bogey Fades
Big Bogey Gone
By Boris Mellor
September 20 2008
This has been a week of momentous events for football, and none of it was on the pitch, unless you count Liverpool beating Manchester United. It started with West Ham wearing patches on their shirts to cover up the demise of their sponsor, and then heated up with Meltdown Monday the biggest financial crash since 1929.
By the end of the week only two out of the original top five US investment banks survived, and I am not so sure about the remaining two. Manchester United's shirt sponsor is now the Federal Reserve, and Northern Rock and HBOS are laying off thousands of workers.
The cause of all this? Quite simply greed and the belief that profits can go up and up forever with massive bonuses for the wealthy few. Meanwhile the ordinary worker has had their wages held down, and in some cases shown the door. Unemployment and Inflation are both rising. What are not rising are property sales.
And that is where Arsenal come in, for the bonus is about to take a knock. The basis of the boom has been the loans made on property acquisition. Loans made to people who could ill afford them, the so called "toxic debt". Now the loans have stopped, and the money is not there to pay them back. So now banks and property values are tumbling.
All those shareholders waiting for that bonus on the old stadium, all those Arsenal fantasy football fans counting the imaginary vast sums that will become available will have to take a deep breath. There might not be any bonus. Cancel that new car, cancel that fantasy football purchase.
Why would anyone pay more for a flat than the market value? Because it is Arsenal? Arsenal will not put bread on their plate. Very wisely the Gunners board are keeping quiet about what is happening with sales at Highbury Square. However it would be a miracle if there haven't been cancellations and attempts to renegotiate the asking price.
However if you dig deep into the financial report the situation is explained thus
"The Group expects to derive income from the sale of certain property development sites over the next two years - the main element of this being the sale of some 680 private residential apartments at Highbury Square. The achievement of these sales may be affected by the current downturn in the UK property market and the difficult conditions in the mortgage lending sector. The Group is monitoring the position closely. The final profits and cash to be released to the Club on completion of these property developments has not been budgeted by the Club and will be treated as a "bonus" when received - accordingly, there is no commitment to use any such profits and cash at any specific time for any specific purpose."
In other words the bonus is not looking so strong, meanwhile as sales proceed they will have to fund the builders and the bank debt. It could end up a zero sum game. Only three things are certain in life, taxes, death and crises of capitalism.
So if the bonus is not off the pitch will it happen on it? Wenger is hoping that Arsenal's long marathon will end in victory at the Reebok, and that Chelsea and Man U draw, giving Arsenal top spot.
Bolton Living in Past?
Meanwhile old pointy elbows, and back into centre backs specialist, has been crowing in an attempt to fill the vacumn left by the departure of the greatest manager England never had:
"They have struggled in this neck of the woods. Since I've been here we've definitely had some success, both here and down there."
Well "had" is the operative here Mr pointy elbows, and if the referees stopped the fouling and cheating it would have been even less. However Arsenal have won the last four games against this team, three in the league and one in the cup. They did the double over them last season, some bogey! I suppose going two goals down, and playing with 10 men before winning 3-2 is struggling, but it hardly induces terror does it?
Bolton have a slight advantage, the Gunners have been involved in a marathon of away games and long distance journeys, meanwhile the Trotters have had their feet up. Due to injuries Arsene has limited options for rotation, but this is a poor Bolton team, not the one that Davies is dreaming about. This is not the days when they had Campo and Anelka. This is a team that struggled for most of last season, and is continuing to just that this time round.
If Arsenal can beat tired bodies they will comfortably beat Bolton, but just watch out for the dirty tricks. Of course Davies will say they play fair, but he would wouldn't he?
Final point Arsenal fans will be interested to see how Muamba is developing with his new team. I wish him luck but not against us.
Possible Squad: Almunia, Clichy, Toure, Gallas, Sagna, Eboue, Fabregas, Denilson, Walcott, Adebayor, van Persie, Fabianski, Song, Djourou, Vela, Bendtner, Randall.
Warning: Supporting Arsenal is not for the faint at heart... It requires hard balls...
a win is in the cards.no matter how tired we are, we can beat bolton.we must be ruthless.
Gallas o.g.
