Smiley Culture

There’s a few things that are certain in life; death, taxes and Jeremy Clarkson and Alan Sugar tweeting about how crap they were at school and how they’re loaded now.

I’m sure Arsenal could pay these staff if they really wanted to but it makes no business sense paying retail employees to not work in a shop that doesn’t exist anymore. Instead of £2m in wages to a load of staff who aren’t deemed needed any more and £2m to Willian’s agent.

Looking at the Arsenal redundancy from a complete neutral point of view, I don’t really get the whole outrage at Arsenal and I will say why. Arsenal had a shop outside Finsbury Park station. Apparently it’s been there years. Recently, they chose to close that store completely. Whether that was down to the pandemic (possible), that sales figures were down over a significantly longer or something like rent being increased if they didn’t own the building, I’m not sure but I would hazard a guess that some of the 55 are made up of these retail employees from that store. They’ll already have staff at their Emirates shop so you can’t just throw them in there at a time when revenue will be completely down due to a lack of home games and probably having to close their online store for a period, like a few clubs I saw and you probably can’t have too many people working in a shop at any given time these days either. What are Arsenal expected to do? Pay these people to not work in a shop that doesn’t exist anymore? It’s not a great situation but it’s the environment we’re in and while it may be questionable morally, it’s the way businesses, some far bigger than Arsenal, operate.

Does that actually tell you anything though? Brentford will have a strong team because they (and presumably Frank) believe in what they’re doing and the model they’re implementing and whatever happens, they’re confident in their recruitment strategy and believe they’ll have a strong team, whether that’s Benhrama being sold for £20m and signing some unknown Danish striker for £2.1m as a replacement or Benhrama staying.

http://www.thefa.com/news/2020/aug/03/emirates-fa-cup-2020-21-season-details-entries-round-dates-prize-fund-030820 The qualifying round dates for the FA Cup have been released.

Bury AFC have been admitted to the tenth tier of English Football today. Good news for them.

What step does the October stuff go down to?

The FA and government have given non-league football the green light to return in September, with pre-season games allowed from August. Not sure if this includes fans, if it does, I will get to a few games.

Yep.

England have announced they’ll play Wales in October at Wembley.

The cycle continues.

Is that enough? This scenario has happened countless times over the last few years and nothing changes. It’s a continuation of the same problem. The box ticking exercise by the Premier League is pointless now they’re not actually willing to take action.

Where did I say it would. I didn’t. The whole “solidarity” bollocks the Premier League has shown since the restart is exactly that, it’s bollocks. “Black Lives Matter but not too much, now go and run around Wilf”

Aye, but bollocks to the victim, go out there and run around for our entertainment.

Going to be unpopular but the game shouldn’t have gone ahead today, I think. It just makes the whole thing a bit of a box ticking exercise for the Premier League that they’re not quite serious enough about. The Black Lives Matter patches on shirt sleeves, the t-shirts teams have worn in their warmups and the kneel prior to kick-odd just doesn’t seem quite so serious anymore after Zaha’s suffered unbelievable abuse over night/this morning and he’s gone on and played. How much he’s been effected and how much Palace were effected is not measurable for us mere fans but I can’t imagine he’s batted it off lightly and not should he. Postponement seems quite serious, I know, and I know the abuse didn’t happen inside a football stadium but it’s a stand I feel the Premier League should have made today. The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t purely aligned to Football, let alone Premier League Football and not sport at all, it’s far bigger than that and I don’t think it looks great that today’s game went ahead.

Manchester United -1.25 (Asian Handicap) vs Bournemouth @ 1.45.

All the mob who were putting “Stay home, Save lives” all over their social media are the same social media, bandwagon knuckle draggers boomeranging their pint of Fosters in a crappy pub.

Chelsea to score 2+ goals (vs West Ham) - 8/13. Chelsea have scored two goals in 9/14 away games and West Ham have conceded two goals in 9/14 at home. Chelsea are also only behind Leicester and City in terms of shots on target away from home, too.

Also, on the subject of pubs, are they going to have plastics instead of glass?

Anyone actually arsed that pubs are re-opening? How they’re going to operate sounds like hell.

Went large on Over 1.5 Offsides (8/13) for Newcastle and O3.5 Offsides (4/6) in the who match vs Sheff Utd. 2nd v 3rd in terms of highest offsides in the league. Buying money.

Read up on Asian Handicaps the last couple of weeks, so I’ve got a few very small bets on.

Barrow promoted to the Football League, Kings Lynn Town and Wealdstone promoted to the National League.

Anyone been on furlough and gone back? I had eight weeks off and went back to working from home yesterday but getting back into a routine is hard.

Good book if you’re into stats and numbers. Only coming up to halfway through, as it’s not just a book you can pick up casually, you need to pay attention to it.