Лондонский "Фулхэм" опроверг информацию о том, что голкипер команды Марк Шварцер попросил Марка Хьюза отпустить его в "Арсенал".

Как известно, сегодня утром появилась инфомрмация о том, что Марк Шварцер попросит главного тренера отпустить его в "Арсенал", за которого "канониры" предлагают 2 миллиона фунтов.

Сам Хьюз, как только пришел на пост главного тренера, заявил, что не собирается расставаться с ключевыми игроками своей команды этим летом, к ним относится Шварцер.

Пресс-секретарь "Фулхэма" заявил: "Клуб не получал никакую просьбу от Марка Шварцера".

"У Шварцера контракт с нами до лета 2011 года и тренер подчеркул, что не собирается расставаться с ним".

Главный тренер "канониров" Арсен Венгер перевёл 5 игроков резервной команды в первый состав на предстоящий сезон.

Эммануэль Фримпонг присоединяется к Джею Эммануэлю-Томасу, Генри Лэнсбери и Хаварду Нордтвейту, которые провели прошлую кампанию в аренде, а также к Крэйгу Истмонду, который теперь официально включен в заявку - хотя он пребывал в первой команде в финальной части прошедшего сезона. Новости также примечательны и в трансферных планах Арсена Венгера, так как ранее этим летом Нордтвейту говорили, что он останется в клубе лишь в том случае, если "Арсеналу" не удастся приобрести ещё одного центрального защитника после трансфера Лорана Косьелни.

5 футболистов наверняка, в большинстве своём, будут принимать участие в матчах Кубка Лиги. Однако, Фримпонг является кандидатом на то, чтобы совершить дебют в высшем дивизионе на "Энфилде" в воскресенье. Пока неясно, какую роль сыграют новоиспеченные игроки первой команды в недавно принятом правиле о 25 футболистах, так как они все младше 21 года и имеют право находиться в составе вне зависимости от лимита.

Фримпонг, Эммануэль-Томас, Лэнсбери, Нордтвейт и Истмонд получат свои новые номера позже в течение этой недели.

Нападающий "Шахтера" Эдуардо да Силва не хочет играть против "Арсенала" в Лиге Чемпионов.

Бразилец, нежно известный как "Дуду", в течение всего времени, проведенного с "Арсеналом", покинул клуб приблизительно за €7 миллионов.
Он счастлив играть в регулярный футбол снова, так как он щас почти в преждней форме и рвется к победам.

Эдуардо сказал: "Я думаю, что мой переход мне на пользу, я должен набирать прежднюю форму. Я хочу играть в Лиге Чемпионов, но только не против Арсенала! Я люблю этот клуб".

"Я был игроком этого клуба на протяжении трёх лет.
Все в клубе любили меня, у нас не было ссор. У меня осталось много друзей, именно поэтому я не хочу играть против Арсенала", - сказал Эдуардо в своем интервью

Главный тренер лондонского "Тоттенхэма" Харри Рэндапп всерьез задумывается  о подписании бывшего защитника лондонского "Арсенала" Вильяма Галласа, контракт которого с "канонирами" закончился этим летом.



Галлас провел с "канонирами" четыре года, перейдя в 2006 году из лондонского "Челси", Галлас не стал продлевать контракт с "Арсеналом" из-за разногласий в контракте.



На следующей недели "Тоттенхэм" провелет свой матч в Лиги Чемпионов с швейцарским "Янг Бойз", у ''Шпор'' достаточные проблемы с центральными защитниками, поэтому все может свершиться уже в ближайшее время.



Другие клубы не захотели подписывать контракт с центральным защитником из-за того, что Галлас просил зарплату в размере 90.000 тыс. фунтов и 2-х летний контракт.
 

Arsenal are reportedly ready to release the current first-choice goalkeeper Manuel Almunia after Aston Villa are set to make a move for the Arsenal goalkeeper to replace Fulham’s Brad Friedel.

Schwarzer’s move to Arsenal would leave Villa with no keeper, but the club are interested in Almunia despite the number of critical errors he made this past season.

The Spaniard has not seen much playing time from Arsene Wenger in the pre-season, with the Frenchman preferring to give Lukasz Fabianski a chance to seize the top goalkeeping spot.

Despite the fact that Martin O’Neill quit the club just days before the season started, Villa would look to quickly replace Friedel, and hope that giving Almunia a new start will bring out his quality.

Arsenal midfielder Samir Nasri believes Newcastle midfielder Joey Barton helped him settle down in the intimating arena of the English Premiership.

Speaking to France Football, the 23-year old explained how the midfielder tried to intimidate him but it only helped him to become a better player with Arsenal. Nasri, who featured for France in yesterday’s 2-1 defeat away against Norway, also said how the English league demands a lot of effort and how there is no room for cheating.

The youngster also spoke of last season, saying how the Gunners should be satisfied of what they achieved, qualifying for this season’s Champions League despite missing six key players for a long period of time.

However, the Frenchman concluded by saying that it is now time for Arsenal to deliver, to win trophies, so as not to be branded as “kids” anymore.

Nasri said:

Quote:

During one of my first matches in England, we played Newcastle and Barton tried to intimidate me. It definitely made me a better player. The Premier League demands a lot of effort because there is so much intensity and you can’t cheat. Since that day, I have improved a lot. Thank you Mr Barton! [On last season] I don’t know a lot of teams who are capable of spending several months without six key players. We managed without Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, William Gallas and Andrey Arshavin for periods last season, but if we produce the goods this season then perhaps people will stop calling us kids!

New Barcelona striker David Villa believes Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas should focus on doing well with the Gunners, before joining Barcelona.

Speaking to Spanish daily Sport, “El Guaje” believes the midfielder should not be upset for not moving back to Spain as he will have another opportunity to seal a move to Barcelona next summer. According to the striker, the Arsenal captain should give everything for his team and play as good as he can.

Fabregas started for Spain in their 1-1 draw away against Mexico in yesterday’s friendly match with Villa believing it would have been nice to see him return home with the rest of the Barcelona players.

Just like other Barcelona players, Villa concluded by saying how much Fabregas deserves to play for the “Blaugrana”, adding how sooner or later, his dream to join the Spanish giants will be fulfilled.

He said:

Quote:

What I’d say to him is to do what I did: concentrate on your club and give everything for your team. Football does not stop here and, after all, sooner or later he’ll end up playing for Barça. What he should do is keep showing the great form he has been doing for the next season. He will have this opportunity again next year. But while he is with Arsenal, just play as well as he can. It is annoying because we wanted to have him here because he is a friend and a great player. But mostly it’s annoying because he’s a great kid. I’m sure he’ll have another chance and end up wearing the Barça shirt.

With the new Financial Fair Play rules all over the papers along with a sackful of misconceptions of how they’ll actually work I thought it’d be worthwhile to have a look at them and see what’s what. Without further ado….

The new Financial Fair Play (FFP) criteria assess the financial situation of a club according to the profit and loss account. That simply means that the amount of debt itself doesn’t matter, what is important is the impact of the costs of the debt (interest) on the bottom line, along with all the other costs common to football clubs.

The FFP however doesn’t just simply go by the losses that the club makes, it has a system of relevant income and expenses. This means that a substantial loss on the club accounts doesn’t necessarily rule the club out of European competition, what matters is whether the costs are considered relevant (and of course, the income streams too).

Relevant income is fairly self-explanatory, it includes matchday, TV, commercial and other operating incomes (the latter is simply a blanket term for all the small operations a club may run that doesn’t fit under the first three criteria). Relevant expenses are also as you’d expect and they include amortisation of player registrations (more on that later), finance costs and dividend payments.

What it doesn’t include is depreciation of assets that a club hold (not usually too substantial), but most interestingly the costs of youth development and community schemes are exempt (whether Barcelona’s other sporting ventures are included under community schemes I’m not sure, but if they were excluded as an expense it would improve their bottom line by over £20m). Naturally the exemption for money spent on youth development is attempting to instil an attitude of “train your own youngsters” as opposed to throwing cash around every summer, a move I fully back.

The rules themselves are staggered in their implementation, with a EUR45m loss the maximum allowed in 13-14 and 14-15, which drops to EUR30m for the three seasons following that. At that point, a new lower amount will be implemented, to be decided by the UEFA executive committee at some point in the future.

Once the proposals are fully in place, a maximum break-even deficit of  EUR5m deviation is allowed, which makes sense for clubs at the mercy of exchange rates. However would it be too much to expect clubs to make sure they are sufficiently inside the criteria so they don’t get undone by the ebbs and flows of exchange rates and/or revenues? Budget conservatively, and plan for worst-case scenarios etc? Maybe I’m just a traditionalist…

The FFP criteria don’t solely base the break-even verdict on the previous season’s profit/loss result, it is actually calculated as the sum  of the three years’ results. If the FFP criteria were in play for upcoming 10-11 season, the considered period would be 09-10, 08-09 and 07-08 accounts. The idea of using the sum profit/loss over the last three years makes sense: if a club have turned substantial profits for the previous few years, spending a substantial amount on a player in a single year could be argued to be sustainable, despite tipping a single year’s result into the red. If for those periods, a clubs relevant expenses were greater than their relevant incomes by more than EUR45m, the club would be referred to the “Organs for the Administration of Justice” for action according to UEFA’s disciplinary rulebook. I’d hope that failing to meet the criteria would gets clubs summarily expelled for European competition, but that remains to be seen.

A point to note is that actual transfer spending itself doesn’t come into the break-even calculation, it’s the cost as a result of the loss of value of the players’ registration (amortisation) that is considered instead. This has a big impact. Remembering that amortisation is calculated as the transfer fee paid for the player divided by the length of the contract , then any significant transfer spending is actually spread out over a number of years. If a club spent £100million on players all of which were on 4 year contracts, the club would be charged £25m per year, meaning that if a club were to be breaking even, they could afford significant one-off transfer spends, as the cost is spread over the lengths of the players’ contracts. Another point to note is that you only pay amortisation for players you sign: players that come through the academy have no value on the books and so have none of the associated costs.

While that does leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, it does throw up an amusing situation: despite what most pundits and sportswriters seem to think, City can’t just spend big before the regulations come into play. All City are doing is storing up massive amortisation charges which, as they are charged over the length of the players’ contracts, takes a good while to shift.

The break-even result is converted into Euros, so exchange rates will have a role to play for Premier League clubs considering the impact of the proposals. There’s also a good idea in there that the Financial Control Panel can request more information from the club if the yearly account show debts as being more than 100% of turnover or wages account for more than 70% of turnover (I’d have gone for 60%, personally but there you go).   

A club can also fall foul of the criteria if their auditors believe there is a danger of the business not being able to continue as a going concern (hello Liverpool) while you’d be hauled in for disciplinary proceedings if you had overdue tax or transfer payments.

So far so good. Now we know how the FFP will work, let’s have a look at some of the weaknesses. Despite the break-even calculation being calculated as the sum of the previous three years, there is a caveat whereby if they fail to meet the criteria during that period, they will consider the financial results of a further two years ago in the aggregate. To me, that’s a bit shoddy. Sure, you can argue that if they made the profits four years ago then they can service the current deficits, but the way that a further two years are considered only if you fail to meet the criteria smacks of watering down the proposals to me. If they want to recognise profits in the more distant past, why aren’t they also recognising the  losses?

It’s just a shame too that it isn’t spelled out in black and white that failure to meet the break-even criteria, having any overdue payables or having any doubts over your ability to continue as a going concern results in a denial of entry into European competition. Otherwise there is always the concern that the rules have an element of flexibility that will be extended to the big names but not the smaller sides.

My other concern with the break-even condition is the fact that it is an arbitrary number of EUR45m. Whether any level of losses is dangerous to a business is dependent on the size of the loss compared to the club’s turnover. If Arsenal, Barcelona or Manchester United turned a EUR45m loss, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as worrying as a smaller side such as Villa or Everton turning a similar sized loss. EUR45m is a number set to stop the big sides turning losses of any more than that, but this is European competition: is it not much, much more serious if a Polish team can enter Europe despite turning a loss of let’s say EUR10m, perhaps equivalent to it’s entire turnover?

If it was up to me, there would be an upper limit, a figure beyond which losses cannot go as well as a condition whereby the break-even criteria is a deficit of no more than let’s say 10% of relevant turnover, with a maximum loss allowed up to EUR45m limit, regardless of turnover. So smaller sides couldn’t get away with smaller losses unless their turnover was sufficient to support it, while the traditional European powerhouses would most likely still be bound by the upper limit. This would help deal with debt in the smaller European leagues, as well as the smaller sides within the big European Leagues, but would it risk creating a closed shop? Smaller sides have to make losses in order to reach the promised land and then break even from the additional revenues, but by this model, they wouldn’t be granted the revenues, and so the top four would sit comfortably at the top of the table. I’m certainly in two minds.

Anyway, that’s enough on the FFP proposals. I don’t profess to have touched on everything, but I hope that’s given you a solid idea of what they’re about and what the issues are with them. The big one is to remember that transfer fees aren’t considered in the criteria, it’s the cost resulting from the player acquisition, the amortisation. I’m sick to death of UEFA’s pdf’s, but at some point in the near future I’ll do the sums for a variety of Premier League sides and see who’ll meet the criteria and who won’t.

Полузащитник лондонского "Арсенала" Самир Насри заявил, что доволен возвращением в национальную сборную вчера вечером.

Напомним, что сборная Франции встречалась с Норвегией, но уступила 2:1, состав был полностью обновлен после фиаско на Чемпионате Мира в ЮАР.

"С точки зрения игры и желания всё выглядит весьма обнадеживающим, мы хорошо двигались по полю, владели мячем, это очень хорошо для будущих результатов команды", - заявил Насри.

"Нам скорее всего не повезло в физическом аспекте, поэтому мы и проиграли. Но лично я доволен".

Арсен Венгер продлил свой контракт с клубом почти на самой последней минуте.

Венгер не имеет никакого намерения покинуть клуб, и рад тому, что остался с "Арсеналом".

Арсен сказал: "Сейчас я нахожусь на такой стадии, когда все продлевают свои контракты. Теперь я знаю точно, что свою карьеру я закончу в Арсенале. У меня есть ещё один год".

Phil Jagielka insists he is staying with Everton after being linked with a move to Premier League rivals Arsenal.

Although Arsene Wenger has brought in Frenchman Laurent Koscielny this summer, he remains on the lookout for another defender.

England international Jagielka's name has now been mentioned, although the 27-year-old remains a firm favourite under David Moyes.

The Everton boss has told Jagielka he is not leaving and the ex-Sheffield United stopper has no qualms about doing as he is told.

"There's nothing I can do about the speculation, but the gaffer has pulled me aside and told me I'm not going anywhere," explained Jagielka.

"I'm happy with that. I'm an Everton player, I love playing for the club, and I'm just going to get on with my job there."
New era

Jagielka won just his third cap in Wednesday's 2-1 friendly success over Hungary and he felt as though it was the beginning of a new era following their disappointing World Cup finals in South Africa.

"It did feel like a new era definitely," he continued.

"If you looked at the team that finished the match then there won't have been many caps between us which is nice to see.

"We have a lot of good English talent coming up and I'm sure that the manager will put young and old together and hopefully we can kick on for the European Championships."

When the Premier League gets underway this weekend, Arsene Wenger will face a selection dilemma. Whichever way he goes, it may have a major effect on the Gunner’s fortunes this season. Last season Arsenal played a 4-3-3 formation for the vast majority of the campaign, with either Robin van Persie or Nicklas Bendtner playing in the lone striker role. This summer a new striker has been brought in, Marouane Chamakh, and there is only one position where this man is going to be effective, and that is as a centre forward. Robin van Persie however, is also at his most potent in this position and Wenger will either have to change his formation, leave one of them out, or play one of them out of position. Of course it is great for Arsenal that they have these attacking options, but it will mean Wenger will have to make some difficult decisions this season regarding formation and personnel.

Option one is to stick with the 4-3-3. This is probably what Wenger will do at Anfield this Sunday, after he already hinted that Robin van Persie and Cesc Fabregas may not be ready for the game. Marouane Chamakh will probably start as the lone front man. If Arsenal get a good result with this formation against Liverpool, it is unlikely Wenger will immediately change it, but as the season gets into full swing he will need to decide upon a certain formation that the club will stick with for the campaign. When Van Persie is ready, it will likely be a straight fight between him and Chamakh if Wenger sticks with a 4-3-3 formation.

The alternative is to revert back to the 4-4-2 Wenger employed for years. With Chamakh and Van Persie playing in tandem up front. Wenger is sure to try this at some point, and there is a chance it could provide those few more goals Arsenal need to emerge victorious in the title challenge. With Premier League teams often now playing three central midfielders however, Wenger may be wary of having his midfield overrun if it is only occupied by two central midfielders. If Wenger did field this formation the two midfielders in the centre would most often be Alex Song and Cesc Fabregas, with only one of these a defensive minded player, Wenger may want to play Abou Diaby or Denilson in order to balance and strengthen the midfield.

The other option is to play one of these strikers out of position in a 4-3-3 formation; this though, is the least preferable of the possible options. From what has been seen, Chamakh would be ineffective on the wing, he is far more suited to a central role. Van Persie is perhaps more suited to a position on the wing, but again he has shown his best form as a central striker. Besides, Arsenal already have Tomas Rosicky, Samir Nasri, Theo Walcott and Andrei Arshavin who are players far better suited to positions on the wing. Barring injuries, playing either Chamakh or Van Persie in these positions is not a good option.

As the season progresses, Arsene Wenger is going to have to make difficult decisions regarding the team he picks and the formation he fields. If Marouane Chamakh and Robin van Persie are both performing well, he his going to face a selection headache of who he drops or whether he changes formation; throw Nicklas Bendtner and Carlos Vela into the mix, and it becomes even more difficult. This though, is certainly not something that Wenger will see as a negative, he will be delighted to have options. If he finds an effective formation, Arsenal may finally have assembled the squad that can bring the title to the Emirates Stadium for the first time.

I will have to turn your eyes to one our rivals in London as Ajax will loan their Serbian striker Miralem Sulejmani out for one season and give him to West Ham United. A fairly modest headline in the transfer period. The fact that West Hame is taking him on loan is yet another indication that there is not much money around by most of the EPL teams.  There is not much movement in the transfer market and apart from City who doesn’t need to care about money the other teams are not buying like mad. No real big super stars coming in for the moment.

But this loan-transfer is somewhat important and could teach us a lesson.

Ajax is certainly for those who followed football since the seventies a name that rings a bell. It was a team that with Johan Cruyff had not only one of the best players in the world in those days but also a team that was built on an new and fresh style with attacking football and based on skill. And most importantly it was built on their own youth. For years Ajax showed the world how you have to educate young players in a certain style and play the same tactics from the youth teams up to the first team.

They had great players and they formed the foundations on which Holland played and lost unfortunately, two world cup finals against both the host teams Germany and Argentina.

Ever since that period Ajax has developed great players and some of the best in the world. Our own Dennis Bergkamp was one of them. Van Basten another all time great. Rijkaard, De Boer, just to name a few but there are many, many more starting from the seventies. But the most important thing was that whenever one of the big names left another youthful player was standing ready to fill the gap. 

Don’t worry I will link this with Arsenal in a moment. Back to Sulejmani. He is a Serbian striker and international  and he was a player for whom Ajax paid 16,5M euro in 2008 to buy him from Heerenveen. He was the most expensive player ever bought by Ajax in their entire history. He was very untypical Ajax that still is relying on their youth program for most of their players. But somehow in 2008 Ajax felt the need to act like the big boys and pay lots of money for a player.

16,5M euro in the Dutch league is an enormous amount of money. I think you could compare this with the double in the EPL. But Ajax did it and the result was that in the two years he played for Ajax he never lived up to this amount of money that was paid for him.  In total he played 68 games for Ajax and he only scored 10 goals.  You could say that each goal cost Ajax more than 1,5M euro.

But now Ajax decided to let him go on loan. In a way it is like admitting failure. It is saying: Well, after all he wasn’t worth the money. We made a mistake.” To make things worse Ajax have had some bad financial results over the past years. They are losing a lot of money (some 30M euro last season) and they are having trouble to keep their head above water. And that for a team that was known all over the world for the good education they give their youth, just look at Vermaelen.

Maybe Ajax will return to the way they have operated in the last 40 years or so and will  be looking more to bring in their own youthful players and give them the chance to become good and not the highly paid for player who doesn’t deliver.  And by doing this they could be hoping to have better financial results in the future.

So what is the link with Arsenal the impatient reader will be asking himself. We could learn a few things from this. The first thing  we can learn from this is:  demanding the manager and the board to break transfer records is not a certain guarantee for success. They did not win the league with buying Sulejmani.

Another thing is that you can never be sure that a player is a success or not. In this case Sulejmanin had played two years before in the Dutch league so he was familiar with the league, everybody knew him, he didn’t have to adapt to the league and still he failed.

Another thing is that Ajax is suffering one of its biggest, if not the biggest, financial crisis in their existence.  How long they can survive is in doubt. If they don’t qualify for the champions league they could be in very big trouble in the near future. Is it a coincidence that they suffer this crisis shortly after paying the biggest amount of money ever for a player?

Am I saying that we shouldn’t buy any players? NO. I’m not against us buying players. But what I’m not doing is to start crying and order Arsenal to buy players and to splash the money around. No I am asking to be very careful with spending the money. There is an old idiom in Dutch which is saying that you can only spend your money once. Once you have spend it, it is gone.

So once again I underline that I am not against us buying players.  But those thinking that if we spend 50 million in one transfer window and all our troubles would be gone are believing in fairy tales. It could go terribly wrong. And what then?

So I just trust the people who are working on the transfers at Arsenal.  They look at players for more than 1 minute on a you tube compilation, on which even I could look great. No forget this, I wouldn’t look great not even in a 7 second you tube clip. Oyr scouts will see if a player not only has the required technical skills but also the right mentality to play for us and to blend in the team. The management has to see if he is affordable and worth taking the risk.

So let us not pretend to know who to buy and at what price a player is available. The numbers mentioned in the papers is just what it is, paper talk to fill up the “Cesc is going to Barceloanus” gap.

And let us take a look at Ajax to finish this article and remember that their biggest success was in the periods when they almost completely trusted their own youth system. And then look at our own youth system and look at the fact that 3 players who had a big part of their education at Arsenal have just become internationals for England. Two of them almost learned everything at Arsenal.  Why don’t we give them the chance to become better. A chance that could be lost when we buy player X, player Y or player Z for a record breaking amount of money. And with those 2 or 3  at the start of their Arsenal career AND an international career how can anyone dare saying that our project youth has failed.

Like we have said over here on a few occasions before: it is only just starting!

Russia playmaker Andrey Arshavin has declared himself fit to face Liverpool this weekend, as the 28-year old searches for his sixth goal in 3 games against the Reds.

The Arsenal midfielder has a habit of scoring against Sunday’s opponents and boss Arsene Wenger was made to sweat on his fitness after Arshavin sustained a muscle injury last week.

“Yes. I’m ready, but it’s for Arsene Wenger to decide,” Arshavin told his official website.

Meanwhile, Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie are also expected to be involved at Anfield in some capacity, with the former arriving back in England from international duty later this evening.