SIX YEARS IS NOT THAT LONG

Morning all
 The disappointment of our loss at Wembley may take some time to wear off, and our next game is fast approaching, one competition down and the next is on top of us in an eye blink, will we progress to the final or will our season nosedive, a good question, i predict nosedive. Many of you will condemn me for making that statement but, i'm sorry this team and this manager are not a winning combination. The tactics we use may be pleasing on the eye but is proving to be a losing strategy. We have good business people in charge, people that can earn the club money and year after year produce profit, unlike the football team and the footballing squad that have won absolutely nothing bar The Emirates cup, which we put on for ourselves. These business people make their profits by strangling the managers options to buy quality players, they give him enough to buy players from God knows where that will do a job but not good enough to win trophies. we will have to wait a very long time to even think about challenging the United's of this world and why, because football is a business every home game earns us in the region of 3 million pounds, our sponsors give us money because they know that sixty thousand people will see their logos week in and week out, success is not really a problem, the Emirates stadium will be filled every time we have a home game, i would call that taking money by false pretences, fans turn up hoping that we will go on to be successful, but our businessmen, know that were successful without winning major prises by our profits.

Teams like Chelsea went forty years without silverware, until a money man came in and invested, we all bemoaned this ploy as buying success but it worked and within a very short time they had the silverware Abramovich wanted, Manchester City's investors have also seen how it can be done and are following the same route, i predict many trophies over the next few years for these teams, while their investors keep spending success will keep coming for them. These teams are doing no different to the great Manchester Utd, they built their stadium many many years ago and have over the years added to it to the highest capacity club stadium in the country, they have probably the most supporters in the world so their stadium has earned them money for years and that money and the money of various benefactors have enabled them to buy the best players around and keep them at the top level for years, but now that multi billionaires are not afraid to throw million after million and can afford to lose that money, has started to slow Utd progress and will stifle them as well.

Arsene Wenger, i still believe him to be a manager before his time, and had the billionaires invested their money in our club instead of the ones they did, with Wengers ideas and his philosophies he could have been the the most successful manager of all time and our club up there at the top. Wenger whether you love him or loathe him has done extremely well with the resources he has had, forget the crap that directors have said about money being there if he feels he needs it, that statement made me laugh out loud, how many managers do you remember have said i don't need money, right, none. so in my book Wenger has done fantastic to even have us challenging for the top honors let alone winning them. Now if you are honest with yourselves ,have we got a fantastic squad that should win major trophies, go through the team and look at every individual in that team and tell me how many of them would you put into a team to beat the world, an honest answer now, none of them, so Wenger has actually over achieved sounds daft but he has, and he has done all that on a shoe string, he has enabled players to demand high wages do they deserve it, in my eyes no, for the simple reason all of the players that have moved on have not bettered themselves because they were only good at Arsenal and that has to be put down to the manager.

So my prediction back up the page, i stand by i honestly hope i am wrong but i don't believe i am, we'll carry on playing and being the nearly men, and we may just win the odd thing but our profits will always be good and the stadium will always be full and the supporters will still carry belief, but we may at this stage think six years is a long time to go without a trophy, but i believe it could go on for considerably longer, i wonder whether i will ever see one again that's how long i'm talking, but what do i know i could be wrong. I hope and pray i am.

Written by Steve Palmer

RUBBISH RULES FOR A GREAT GAME

Morning all, Can you believe some of the refereeing decisions that we see week in and week out, i for one cannot. I was led to believe that football is run on a set of rules, where offside is offside, handball is handball and so on. But those rules have been tampered with, so that a simple rule, has now put two different meanings to them, and that the officials have now got the power to interpret them any way they wish. Take for instance the offside rule, a simple rule, which stated that any player standing in an offside position when the ball is kicked is deemed to be offside and a free kick to the defending team, would be awarded from where the player stood. Now that is so simple that everybody can understand it. But the football federations have seen fit to change that simple rule. Now the offside rule is. You are offside, if when receiving the ball you are in an offside position,but anybody else is not deemed offside unless interfering with play. Now that has caused many controversial arguments, and has put the deciding decision in the hands of the officials. So from changing a simple rule to a complicated rule has thrown everything up in the air. My view on this is, match fixing, yes match fixing, any rule that can be interpreted two ways is open to abuse, and i have absolutely no doubt in my mind, that the rule was changed to fix the result of the game. The handball rule is another controversial subject, when is handball handball, the rule states from the shoulder down is deemed handball, unless its accidental, who determines if it was intentional or not, yes the officials, another way for the officials to fix results, another rule that can be interpreted two ways. how can we have a rule that is not clear cut, if a ball hits the arm from shoulder down it must be classed as handball whether accidental or not, it should never be left up to the officials,if it is the same for all, it must be fair. When looking at the offside rule, we need to be aware that the defending back line is trying to keep the line straight, and playing encroaching players into an offside position, they are doing this deliberately, so you can understand that when encroaching players who are in an offside position are deemed not offside is totally against what defenders are trying to achieve, this rule has to be changed back to the simple explanation, so that it takes it out of the hands of officials. The Professional foul, When a player is through to a scoring position, (which we all know is between the goalkeeper and the striker), and is taken out of the game before he has a chance to shoot, is in my eyes a professional foul, and punishment for that offence is a red card. but the rule interpreted by officials is, the last defender takes a player out of the game where classed by the official as a scoring opportunity, and the defender should take a red card. The trouble with that interpretation is this may happen on the halfway line, this is not a scoring chance so a red card should not be given. this rule needs to be defined so everybody knows at a glance what the ruling should be Today the game of football is orchestrated by the officials, they determine who wins by the decisions they make, the football federations are in charge of the officials they appoint them to whatever games they want. . Officials should be rotated so they are not in charge of more games than any other officials. We have in the Premier league to often, the same officials for the same clashes which i find unacceptable. At the end of the day we only want the best team to come out on top, fairness has to be the main aim with no bias, rules need to be simplified, so even the new supporter can understand the rules of the game. It is in everyone's interest to make the game of football interesting and fair. With technology we can make the game even fairer by eliminating mistakes, the onus is not on officials. As in Tennis Cricket and Rugby where seeing is believing, this makes for better relations between fans and players alike, but above all the right result at the end of the game. Many rules are changed for other reasons, either to give the supporter more excitement with more goals, or as a way of speeding up the game. Some of these changes may have achieved this but at what expense. has the pass back to a goalkeeper actually speeded up the game, maybe for making the keeper kick it straight back out, but when he receives the ball from the opponent, he can run all round his area with the ball and then drop the ball at his feet and dribble it before he kicks it out. put these two together and i don't believe that overall this has speeded up the game much at all. The rules of football was introduced when the game became competitive, and those rules survived for many years without the interference from anybody, since the changes we have had controversy from every corner and also many strange decisions, you may think the game has changed so the rules have to be updated but i believe if we make changes they should be for the better of the game, but with the emphasis on fair play and not for orchestrated games dictated by the governing bodies I personally' like the old ways of play, but what's your views, and can we improve a very old game. Written by Steve Palmer an ex player that played the old way.