"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art." A Wenger

And in the end…. Scotland is being naive over match fixing; Fifa less naive over ticket touting » No club has the right to stay at the top By Tony Attwood Big teams come and go. Man U ventured into the second division in the 1970s, and Man City have often been there, Leeds seem currently to be run by a root vegetable, Chelsea and Man C are just a change of heart away from collapse. One could say that in football, stability is very unusual. Portsmouth moving from being FA Cup winners in 2008 to the fourth division in 2014 seems to be the norm. Up one moment down the next. And in many cases this is what singles Arsenal out – a club that has stayed within the top division since 1919. But before I get drawn into 1919, which I will deal with in a moment, I want to set out my very simple thesis which is that what Arsenal has done in the 21st century is nothing short of a miracle. Any club can sell out to a billionaire or a state and then take the money and buy success. But no one else has followed a model which results in the success Arsenal has had. I would cite two doubles, the unbeaten season, the second longest spell in the Champions League of any team in Europe, the building of a magnificent stadium, totally controlled debt, and of late a return to trophy success with the FA Cup – and all without a sugar daddy or vast levels of debts written off as shares. A significant part in this has been played by the money that is raised through staying in the Champions League throughout. Those who decry the achievement in the Champions League clearly don’t ever like to think about such a tedious subject as money – for it is the Champions League success that in a significant part funded the Emirates, and it is the Emirates and the success that now funds the growth of the club. As Tottenham attempt to follow suit in building a stadium, but without Champions League football, and with the confidence that no national newspaper journalist is going to ask the question, “where is the money coming from” we will see over time if they are able to copy what Arsenal has done. They might – but it will be tough. Now of course at this point we should return to the issue I touched upon near the start: 1919. Tottenham supporters do like to suggest that Arsenal somehow connived their way into the first division, upon its expansion in 1919. It’s a point of view, of course, but a point of view that ignores a whole variety of facts, such as the fact that all expansions during this era were arranged by election not promotion, that in order to make the Arsenal corruption story work they have to explain how Chelsea was given a place in the first division without a vote even being taken (while Tottenham and Arsenal were not), why Man U and Liverpool (who had been found guilty of flagrant match fixing) escaped without punishment, and how it was that a few years before Tottenham themselves, having finished seventh in the Southern League immediately managed to get themselves promoted to the second division of the Football League. All these points can be answered by an analysis of football in the era – and indeed there is an index to issues relating to Arsenal and Tottenham on the Arsenal History Society blog – just scroll down to the indexes, but you might want to see the most detailed analysis of the 1919 scenario written with numerous newspaper extracts. Watch Arsenal Live Streams With StreamFootball.tv But the point remains that Arsenal have been in the first division since 1919; 88 seasons played (the war years are excluded). Our nearest rivals are Everton on 60. Man U are on 39. Tottenham come further down on 36. So Arsenal is odd in keeping its head above water for so long, and it has always been sad for me to see the way in which some supporters of the club have suggested that Arsenal should not only be in the top league forever, but winning the league each season. Yes we could have expanded our squad before these last two years, but to do so would have put Arsenal at financial risk. And the club knows about risk. After all the club went bust in 1910 and were only saved by the very deep pockets and huge ambition of one man – Henry Norris. Teams that try and expand, or bring in the “wrong sort of person” can come unstuck very very easily. One such example is Rangers, once an eternal challenger for the top spot in Scotland, but now in the second division and with many of its supporters turning their back on buying season tickets for the coming campaign. Their fans pledged their season ticket money to the Ibrox 1972 fund – set up by former director Dave King, and former captain Richard Gough. They have been released from the arrangement now that the club’s directors have refused to sign over title to the stadium and Murray Park training base as the fund demanded. Rangers of course were relegated to the fourth division of the Scottish Football League over various misdemeanours and their plight is one we should all note, because it shows that no matter how large a club, or what its history, if you allow the crooks to take over and the greed to win, disaster can follow. Now Rangers is of interest to Arsenal since most Arsenal supporters who take note of the club’s history know that Rangers moved to help Arsenal in Arsenal’s darkest hour in 1910, by buying shares in the club. Recognising this Herbert Chapman started regular matches between Arsenal and Rangers, in the 1933/4 season. Much of the anger has been related to ex-finance director Brian Stockbridge who seemed to run up huge debts while taking bonuses. Now he’s gone, but the club itself has no financial solution. The manager Ally McCoist has taken a 50% pay cut, but the players have rejected a cut. Short term borrowing has been the order of the day, with money being borrowed at massive interest costs just to get through to the moment when season ticket sales start. But even here there is a problem, since the fans won’t buy season tickets – and anyway so tenuous is the position of the club the credit card companies won’t give them credit card facilities. Meanwhile it appears that Stockbridge recently received shares worth around £215,000 for a payment of £7,000. The UoF then accused David Somers (the chair of the club) of having misled shareholders at the AGM on the subject of the share options. From a distance, both geographically and historically, this can look like another club in trouble. But this is Rangers, the club that won the league in 2011 for the 54th time. The truth is that a total disaster can happen to any club that lets financial maniacs into the boardroom – if you want something closer to Arsenal territory go back and look again at what happened to Leeds. In the early 1970s the two big clubs of the day were Arsenal and Leeds. Compare and contrast. The fact is that Arsenal can spend money on top players like Ozil and Sanchez now because Arsenal has been careful in the past, and has planned well and yes that planning involved cutting back on buying big time players. But we’ve been through that and come out the other side. I can’t think of any other club who has managed this in such a way. Related