Anelka, FA Both Still Stupid

By: Martin | April 24th, 2009

Shocking, I know.

The FA came out and formally charged Cesc with improper conduct following Phil Brown’s made-up spitting accusations. Look, not to go all Rafa on you, here, but here goes…

FACT: In the same interview where he accused Cesc of spitting, Phil Brown said: “He [Arsene Wenger] wouldn’t shake my hand when we beat them fairly 2-1 at the Emirates. He wouldn’t shake my hand when they beat us, fairly, 3-1 at the KC Stadium.” BUT photo evidence shows that he did after the 2-1 game at the Emirates. And video evidence shows that he did after the 3-1 game at the KC Stadium.

So we already knows he’s perfectly willing to lie to deflect criticism from the real issue, which was that his team lost a winnable game and is about to get relegated after being everyone’s darlings the first half of the season.

FACT: Phil Brown changed his story. Initially he claimed that it took place out on the field after the match. Then, when he realized that there were loads of still and video cameras trained on the action during that time, none of which showed any evidence of Cesc spitting at all, Phil Brown claimed that it took place in the tunnel after the match. He also initially claimed his assistant manager told him Cesc spat at him–later, Brown claimed that he saw it himself. I wonder if this is one of those “recovered memory” things, where you go pay thousands of dollars to a therapist so you can remember bad things that happened to you when you were 3.

Look, I suppose it’s a bit unfair to the FA to blame them for this. I’m an attorney, so I understand the importance of process, and a complaint was made so they have to investigate. I still would be stunned if anything came of this. But the fact is that it still serves as a distraction, and Wenger, Cesc, and other Arsenal personnel have to take time away from practice and preparation to deal with this nonsense. I wish there was a way they could just say, “well, objectively, Phil Brown is an untrustworthy liar, and there’s absolutely no evidence to back up these claims, so we’re getting rid of this.” And you’d think Phil Brown would have more important things to worry about, too–like, oh, I don’t know, making sure his little podunk club didn’t get relegated back to the Championship next season. I guess not.

In other stupid news, Nicolas Anelka himself has come out and said that Arsenal only aim for third or fourth place, and that they are not as big of a club as Chelsea. There’s nothing quite like being lectured on winning and ambition by a clubhouse cancer who only cares about money and can’t stay at any single club for more than a year or two before everyone gets sick of him and sells him on to the next unfortunate club. It’s also great that he’s been at Chelsea almost a full season and talks about it like he’s one of the reasons they’re doing so well. There’s nothing like coming in for way too much money, scoring a few goals at the beginning of the season against crap teams, and then acting like you’ve had something to do with the success.

The notion that Chelsea are a bigger club is also pretty laughable. You know why they’re “bigger” at the moment? Because they’re owned by an evil billionaire willing to treat the club as his plaything! Do Chelsea fans/players honestly think this is going to last forever and is a sustainable model for success? What’s going to happen when Abramovich goes broke or gets bored and finds something else to spend his money on? As I understand it, all the money he’s spent on Chelsea is technically in the form of loans to the club. In other words, the second he pulls out, the club technically will owe him hundreds of millions of pounds. Think about it–one person could essentially make Chelsea insolvent with a snap of his fingers. When that day comes (and make no mistake, it will come), that club is going to be in real trouble. Then come talk to me about what a big club Chelsea is. Especially in this day and age, when we’ve seen irresponsible borrowing and accounting practices bring down the entire economy, you’d think people would realize that Arsenal refusing to pay over the moon for players and making sure the club brings in more money than it spends isn’t “cheap” or “stingy”–it’s just being responsible. Tom Hicks is going broke and having to sell his share of Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea are both heavily in debt and spending money like Charles Barkley in Las Vegas–anyone who doesn’t think the way these clubs operate isn’t going to come back and haunt them is living in a fantasy world.

Also, I’ve said it before and will say it again, but I’m glad he’s such a d-bag. He was a rising star at Arsenal but wore out his welcome, and so was sold for £22.3 to Real Madrid. Wenger then turned around and spent £10.5 million to buy Thierry Henry from Juventus to replace him. Think about it–Thierry Henry cost less than half as much as we got for Nicolas Anelka. Can you imagine a better piece of business than that?

Middlesbrough preview tomorrow.