Kevin Whitcher
Ah yes, summer. Warm days, wet days, and… not much football to write about. So what the hell, throughout July, I am going to go into Arseblog mode and just write stream of consciousness stuff with the occasional nod to Arsenal, and assorted pot pourri.
Contributions welcomed
First though, a point of order. The Gooner is an open church and welcomes contributions on the subject of all matters Arsenal and football related. So, sure, I could write some kind of blog style offering every day along the lines of other websites, but our raison d’etre is to provide a voice for the spectrum of Arsenal opinion, not just mine. So if you want to submit anything for use here, email me at [email protected] - articles should be minimum 400 words.
The Arsenal Online Box Office Crashes Yet Again
So some other thoughts. Yesterday, I was caught out by not realising the Community Shield tickets were going on sale. I received a message about 15 minutes after the on sale asking which block I was buying in, and got online. The Arsenal online box office – administered by Ticketmaster – had a bad morning. Effectively, the thing had crashed. 90 minutes later, I was finally able to buy tickets, in spite of my first getting past the circle of death after half an hour of waiting. However, what I struggle with is that the Arsenal online box office frequently crashes when there is any hint of demand. It’s been a regular occurrence for at least a couple of seasons. What's the story? Who at Arsenal deals with Ticketmaster over this, and why is the obvious problem not being addressed? Ticketmaster can seem to handle mass demand for pop concerts whereby a million people are trying to buy say 60,000 tickets at the same time. So why do they struggle with a few thousand Arsenal fans trying to buy match tickets? I will write to the club on this to get some kind of explanation. It's the kind of thing I expect to see AISA report back on as they have specific ticketing issue meetings with the club, and I would be amazed if they didn’t have members who ask them to find out what is going on, but in communications in the past couple of years, I’ve seen nothing from them. I’ll drop the CEO a line and report back if I hear anything.
Woe, Santi Cazorla
Santi Cazorla is out for the bulk of next season. I always thought the club should throw sentiment aside and not take up the option of extending his deal for another year, although granted the decision was taken in December last season. But it was a bad call by the fitness / medical department. I am sure his wages are modest in comparison to the demands of Mesut Ozil, but if he were on, say £80,000 a week, that’s a cool £4 million down the drain for what’s likely to be a five minute farewell substitute appearance in the final Premier League fixture of the season. Mind you, the club have form for this kind of thing. Tomas Rosicky, anyone? Could the money spent on Santi’s wages have been better deployed elsewhere? Or maybe the club are insured for this kind of loss, although I’d love to see the kind of premium they pay given their record over the years (Wilshere, Diaby, Welbeck etc. etc.)
Lacazette
So Alexandre Lacazette has been confirmed as Arsenal’s second signing of the summer, although he won’t join up with the squad in time to fly out for the pre-season tour to Australia. Albin Mouton, a French based Gooner, believes Lacazette is a good buy who will deliver based on three good seasons with Lyon, and to these eyes, given Alexis’ playing a more central role and weighing in with more goals last season, it would seem to be a case of getting a striker in before cashing in on the Chilean. I’d welcome the club allowing Sanchez to run down his contract, because they do not need the money for him. They paid £35 million to buy him and his wages will cost somewhere around the £20-£25 million mark over four seasons. So good business which means the club have got value without needing to obsess over cashing in and making £50 million. It will be interesting to see if they relent. If I were a gambling man, I’d be surprised if he isn’t in a Manchester City shirt by the beginning of September, but I do hope I am wrong.
BFG T-shirt sale
So, down to some real business and an attempt at cleaning out my closet here at Gooner Towers. Which means that when we have the time, we’re going to be offering stuff for sale at knockdown prices just to create a bit of space. To get the ball rolling, some BFG t-shirts. We have small, medium, large and XL and when they’re gone they are gone. To clear these, we are charging £3.99 with no postage (UK only). If you are interested, then drop us an email at [email protected] with your requested size, name and address and we’ll give you details of how to pay – which will be via PayPal or online bank transfer. We’ll be plugging this on the Gooner Twitter account too. Who needs eBay?
