Last week I ran a competition to win not one but two Arsenal jerseys thanks to the kind folks at SoccerPro.
I asked readers to let me know who their favourite Arsenal player is and explain why they like them so much in less than 25 words and I’m happy to announce that the winners were Mike Urbanski and Ian Jennings.
Mike’s choice was Robin van Persie and reasoned “He bleeds Red & White. No one can question his effort – ever. He re-signed for The Badge when more money was waiting for him elsewhere.”
Meanwhile Ian picked another striker, Nicklas Bendtner and followed it up with “Gung ho and determined. Doesn’t moan even though played out of position. Head never drops and always a chance with him in the box.”
Congratulations to those two for winning (I’ll be in touch with you shortly) and thanks to everyone else who sent in entries (there were over 90!) as well as SoccerPro for giving me the shirts to give away.
Have your say on the Arsenal shirt competition by leaving a comment.
The Guns shirts they are so nice and lovely to see, i can’t wait to win mine.
Wooohooo! 🙂
Thanks, Andy!
No worries. Great answer.
Wenger (for all his faults) has turned Arsenal from a middle-of-the-road-with-rich-history-and-occasionally-sucessfull club into the No.1 rival to Man U’s domination, won 3 PL titles, Runners up more times than Chelsea managed even after spending billions, 4 FA Cups, EUFA Cup League Cup & Champions League finalists, now a club that has a stadium and crowds that rival MU’s and the world’s biggest and best, trainig and academy facilities that are the envy of world football, and a club that is much, much bigger, both in terms of International Recognition, pride and respect. Arsenal, now a club top talent wants to come to, a club that is always considered a challenger to glory, one of the top 10 clubs in the world, both in terms of footballing and financial status, now a global organisation worth around £1 Billion (or thereabouts) – that my friends is the achievments of one Mr Arsene Wenger. True he didn’t do it alone, but it’s doubtful whether it would have happened so easily without him. So salutes to Mr Wenger, Mr Car-crash manager of tiny club Spuds, you are just not worthy of even being mentioned alongside the great man.
@ashravin: the thing that makes me laugh about the “arsene out” brigade is that they can’t see what wenger is doing right now. it’s pretty clear to me.
has anyone ever noticed how arsene always goes on about ‘the long term stability of the club.”, or am i the only one?
let me explain what i think his plan is:
keep the team competitive (i.e top 4) with the occasional flirt with a real championship run (like the season that was ended at st.andrews. maybe even this season too). instead of buying £20 million+ range, buy youngsters who have resale value, in order to…..
…….pay off the debt QUICKER than we have to (25 year loan). i’m not sure how near we are to paying it off right now. however, my guess is we are WAY ahead of schedule, simply because arsene refuses to spend. maybe someone could tell me for sure.
this way, when the debt is finally clear, we will basically be the london equivalent of manchester united, if not bigger. we will be able to outbid pretty much any team in the world other than city. you can see that from all the ‘top 20 teams’ financial reports that are published year on year, we are nearly there already.
now tell me this……
how are spurs going to be able to do the same (stay competitive, rely on youth, aim for top 4, clear debt) when the man in charge who cannot help but spend, spend, spend all the time? in late december, he stated how he didn’t need any players. then he goes and gets gudjohnsen on loan, buys kaboul, then tried a last minute attempt to buy begovic. the latter two players happen to play for the club he’s virtually bankrupted by doing the same impulse spending. he’s like a prostitute with a stolen credit card.
in summary, arsene out brigade, be careful what you wish for.
and on a outside note SACHIN YOU ARE A CRICKETING LEGEND!
“keep the team competitive (i.e top 4) with the occasional flirt with a real championship run (like the season that was ended at st.andrews. maybe even this season too). instead of buying £20 million+ range, buy youngsters who have resale value, in order to…..”
He doesn’t only want to pay off the debt and occasionally flirt with success. He wants to build a team who will dominate England and Europe for a long, long time. If ( and I think we will) we win either the Champions League or the PL, we WILL dominate like no team has ever done before. Most of our players are 22ish, they’ll reach their peak after roughly 6 years. Add to that the fact that we have a never ending line of young players and the fact that we’ll soon be able to financially compete with the biggest clubs in the world; it’s looking rosy indeed.
@ amar – I don’t think Wenger is running the club this way to enable him to “outbid pretty much any team in the world other than city”. I don’t think he will ever spend huge amounts, stadium debt or not. But I do think getting out of debt sooner is a noble plan.
He’ll never spend big and we have to accept that. It’s not his style of management and he won’t change now. But that doesn’t mean he can’t bring success, does it? I mean we’re having a good season if you take the injuries into account. We’re still in the mix for the two main trophies and I’ll be waiting until the end of the season to make my judgement.
Great comment Dan ^^
” I mean we’re having a good season if you take the injuries into account.”
If you take in account the number of injuries we’ve had and the number of injuries Manu and Chelsea have had(especially Chelsea) and add the number of penalties we should have had, around 15 or so, we’re having a really good season.
Young Gunners should kick the ball not to the opponent players.Not to try dribbling the goalkeeper.They seem to be not eagerly want to score a goal.Goals are the sign of victory.
Good form to win the media fit arsenal.
Congraturations to the winners. I hope there will be another chance. My fovourite player is William Gallas. He showed Mr Abromavic that he really wanted to join our club by promising the own goals if they did not allow him to.
Rumour of the day:
Fabio Capello has been asked by John Terry if the England boys can fly back from South Africa for a day at Royal Ascot during the World Cup. Captain Fantastic assured his manager that the aim was to spend their bonuses before they had earned them, as this meant they would actually need to play well this time around. Jet lag would not be a problem as the squad member who won the most money would pay for the return corporate jet with full bedding and separate suites.
When asked whether the numbers on the plane would be greater than 23, Terry indicated that Ashley Cole might need cheering up, Michael Carrick might need waking up and Wayne Rooney might need a minder in case his former gambling creditors still remembered the number of creditor days which ensued before settlement was complete. No WAGS would be on board, but beyond that, the female contigent was still unclear……..although a sweepstake on which squad member would be the first to bed Cheryl Cole was now running.
The manager is not thought to take longer than 12 minutes to issue his decision…
no gallas,diaby or arshavin for the stoke game all………..INJURED!!!!!.
Eboue should start against Stoke. Play Campbell instead of Silvestre if we have to. For the first time ever we since I remember we can say this, Stoke will be a bit tired due to fatigue because of extra games being played. Yes. Stoke. Fatigue. Extra match. Arsenal 2 – 0 Stoke. Anyone + Rosicky.
Guys we dont need gallas or arshv to over run stoke.They played a tough game on wednesday though they won.Such a medium team cant handle 2 serious games consecutively.We just have no excuse, bendtner must aim for a hattrick in this one since they, are tired and we have rested. We shall need arshv on the 9th and hope that we thump Porto 3 quick goals before they can settle as i feel they will attack and have nothing to loose at Emirates.
The day Pompey go into administration, we post these figures. I love it to be honest. The empty trophy cabinet for the last few years will be worth it once we regain control of our destiny. United are absolutely screwed in the long term. Chelsea’s oil money won’t last forever, what happens then? City, the same. The future is Arsenal, both in terms of young footballers maturing and being financially secure. In fifteen years time, after several more Pompey style disasters, Arsenal will soldier on and continue to dominate. Congratulations to Mr. Hill-Wood, Mr. Wenger and all those involved in giving my club a long term future. The future is blinding.
This is how to run a football club. We didn’t buy a cup and go into administration like Pompey, we don’t run the club at a loss for their sugar-daddy, like Chelsea and City, and they haven’t had an American buyer come along and borrow heavily to buy the club and struggle to pay off the interest like Liverpool & Man U.
Never mind the next decade, Arsenal are set-up for as long as the Emirates will stand. This was £35m in SIX months while paying off debt.
The key figure here is debt reduction as Midlands Gunner rightly points out. If we are able to reduce our debt at the current rate over the next two years it will mean that we will effectively be debt free at the end of the 2011-12 season. So, assuming that we continue to hold onto our young promising squad and they continue to progress and we continue to add one quality player a year plus some raw unproven talent then period of Arsenal domination that we all dream about will start in the 2012 – 13 season at which point we will be the strongest team in England both on the pitch and on the business side of things and on our way to dominating Europe for the following decade. OK – we all want success now, not in 3 years time but if in 3 years time we are clearly on our way to being the top club in Europe and are then able to sustain that for the following decade then surely the painful wait will have been worth it?
Gunners forever, been a Gooner for almost two decades and i think i can wait for a couple of years to dominate England and Europe.
Arsenal have announced that profits have risen to £35.3M and debts hav drastically reduced.Pre-tax profits for the six months to the end of november 2009 increased by more than 10m for the same period during 2008.
debts at Arsenal Holdings,the gunners’ parent company,were slashed from £332.8m to £203.6m.
Arsenals non-executive chairman Peter Hill-Wood said part of the ‘surplus’ cash would be used on the squad.
taking from BBC sports news text
great news.the debt is steadily being repaid and we will be very strong in the future if this continues….kinda makes a laugh of all the fellas on here defending AWs lack of spending due to financial constraints tho…..where do you get your facts fellas???fact is if we dont win anything this season he will hav to hold his hands up because we now know there was plenty of cash available in the summer and january to get wot we needed…..there can be no defending him now
Good competition, Andrew, and well done to the winners – but do you mind if I just say – I hate this shirt. It’s one of the worst designs I can remember. I mean look at it, it’s NOT an Arsenal shirt is it? It’s Charlton Athletic. I want the white sleeves back so badly. The club seriously needs new designers because the latest mob are crap. How come other teams in the Prem have really cool shirt designs and we’ve got this…thing? It’s dopey. We’re a London club. We should be sporting something at the cutting edge of fashion – I mean as much as you can with a football shirt. I also hate that bloody fly Emirates on the front but obviously there’s nothing we can do about that now and I suppose it was a price worth paying. Be nice if they could just use the Emirates logo instead though, which is reasonably cool, instead of having to walk around looking like a ‘sandwich board’ person. Might as well have the latest air fare offers on it as well…199 return to Dubai!
Come on Arsenal – get your designing sh*t together. Don’t be fobbed off with third rate design and most importantly get the Arsenal white sleeves back on.
It’ll make us play better! 😉
Yeah white sleeves back, maybe add skull and bones instead of the emirates logo.
damn i wanted that