Arsenal Premier League title hopes in tatters after ‘stark reminder’ amid Arteta frustration

A curious day in Medialand today, for some reason.

Whether it’s pretending Luis Figo should be FIFA president or insisting that Arsenal’s title hopes have suffered any kind of material damage as a result of a pre-season friendly, there is widespread insistence on being very peculiar indeed.

And we’ve also got an update on those 15 Man United and Tottenham transfers that were set to be completed this week. SPOILER ALERT: Both clubs are going to have to get very, very busy over the next couple of days.

Dunn deal

Mediawatch assumes it can speak for everyone when saying we very much enjoyed Luis Figo popping up this week to eloquently and witheringly take down Gianni Infantino.

It was wonderfully well done and, while nothing he said was particularly out of step with how most people now view the disgraced Friend of Trump, Figo is without doubt the highest-profile PFM to speak out so candidly and publicly.

One of the reasons it was so good is that Figo is precisely the sort of top-tier football figure that Infantino, a cringingly desperate star-f*cker even in the good times, has always been so keen to court. Of all the criticism that has rained down upon him, you know that is one that will have really stung.

But we’re still not really sure any of that is reason enough to say Luis Figo should be president of FIFA himself. And we like Luis Figo.

Now you’re likely reading this and thinking ‘Well of course that doesn’t mean he should be president, why would you bring that up?’

And the answer is because Andy Dunn has argued for precisely that in the Mirror. And the argument really doesn’t extend much further than 1. He thinks Infantino is a wrong ‘un (an admirable, righteous but hardly unique viewpoint) and 2. He briefly dabbled with running against Sepp Blatter back in 2015 before sacking it off and deciding he didn’t really fancy it anyway long before a race he would have lost was actually run.

Now one could argue that point two is actually a negative rather than positive. Especially as Figo has pursued no significant role in football administration since. Indeed, his most high-profile job within the sport in recent years has been to manage a Baller League team, leaving him just as qualified for the FIFA presidency as Mark Goldbridge, KSI, and Idris Elba. And John Terry, who likely considers the FIFA job his birthright and would only accept it if it was handed to him as it should be rather than after the indignity of an election process, which is clearly beneath him.

But Dunn says tits to all that. Vote Figo.

Figo is right, of course. Infantino has to go. But what Figo – a close confidante of UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin – does not suggest, it seems, is that someone such as himself should now step forward.

Perhaps because ‘someone such as himself’ did do that 11 years ago and hated it so much he pulled out before the race? As Dunn goes on to say…

For a couple of months in early 2015, Figo did just that. Backed by figures such as David Beckham and Jose Mourinho no less, Figo launched his candidacy for the FIFA presidency at Wembley in February 2015.

I remember his manifesto brochure. Expanding the World Cup to 48 teams was one of his key policies, by the way. Figo was standing against Sepp Blatter – who would go on to win a fifth term – but pulled out shortly before the May election.

Which was a shame. Figo might have made a good president. And what is to stop him running against Infantino? Or more likely, what is to stop him running in a contest to succeed Infantino, who will surely not run for re-election?

The answer to that question really does appear to be… all the stuff you just said. And all the stuff we’ve just said. ‘He might have made a good president’ is just such a p*ss-weak argument it isn’t worth countering. So might Goldbridge, or Elba, or KSI or Te… well, okay, fair enough, not Terry. But you get the idea.

The main theme of the backlash to the Infantino proposal that will now go down as one of the most infamous in the game’s history has been that football belongs to the people, belongs to the fans. Well, what sort of character would the fans want as the figurehead of the world’s governing body?

They would not have wanted a Swiss lawyer in the first place, that is for sure.

Here we go. The fans would want a PFM. But that’s not really the job is it? What the fans actually want, we would suggest, is to not have to care who the FIFA president is at all. That the position be held by someone quietly competent and reliable and incorruptible. Who knows the game but isn’t necessarily of the game.

Ironically, they might have wanted someone like Arsene Wenger.

Which should tell you everything. There is no better recent example of someone Who Knows The Game going into FIFA with a reputation as a great and significant thinker in the sport only to utterly shred said reputation once inside.

But Dunn thinks this is actually a good idea as well, which is revealing in itself.

But perhaps he should stand against Infantino or stand to succeed him. Wenger has always claimed to have the good of the game at heart.

At least he does acknowledge that Wenger has had ‘the odd madcap idea recently’, which is one way of glossing over suggesting the World Cup should be every two years and coming up with an offside plan whose obvious, myriad flaws he is so stubbornly unable to see even though they will literally break the sport completely if ever widely adopted.

That is unlikely to happen but the more options we have from those who know about the game rather than the politics of the game, the better. And it would be good if those options included Figo.

The key failing here is to pretend it’s an either/or situation. You need people who have both. And ideally who aren’t bent. There are just clearly better-qualified candidates out there, no matter how brutally enjoyable Figo’s takedown of the desperately flailing incumbent.

Gunner blow it

Meanwhile, over at The Sun, a very weird and panicky over-the-top reaction to Premier League champions Arsenal losing one (1) pre-season match.

ARSENAL 1 REAL BETIS 3 Arteta fumes as Arsenal lacklustre show threatens title defence

We’re going to have to go with: no, it doesn’t, you dafties, stop being so silly. Arsenal’s 26/27 title challenge is no more threatened by losing to Real Betis than last season’s was derailed by pre-season defeats to Villarreal and Actual F*cking Spurs. And it really is mad to pretend otherwise in such preposterously panicked fashion.

MIKEL ARTETA’S touchline frustrations in Dublin showed that he knows Arsenal cannot cruise to another title with his current squad.

Okay, fair enough, the famously calm, technical-area-respecting Arteta being animated on the touchline is an entirely new and worrying development.

Cameos for players like Reiss Nelson and Fabio Viera, were reminders that the Gunners boss might have to bang down the door to bring in more talent this summer.

Or, alternatively, reminders that Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka and David Raya and others are still on post-World Cup leave and that this, we cannot stress enough, was a pre-season friendly where fringe players getting minutes is entirely standard and normal?

But if this match was anything to go by, Arteta will be desperate to raise the bar with some more additions.

They are literally about to confirm the signing of one of the best midfielders in the Premier League. And again: no, this match is not anything to go by because it is pre-season and not a proper match. This is very, very basic stuff.

Kepa Arrizabalaga, another example of a player who falls below the required level, was at fault for Real Betis’ first goal.

Which is yet another point at which you really should stop and question whether this panic is really necessary. Kepa Arrizabalaga falls below the required level for a title-challenging team’s first-choice keeper, sure, but that’s why he isn’t a title-challenging team’s first-choice keeper.

Pre-season teams are rarely first-choice ones. The very fact that Kepa is starting should send you scurrying for the team sheet to see who else was – or more accurately wasn’t – in a starting XI that, if we’re being generous, contains maybe four people who might expect to be in a first-choice Arsenal XI in actual football matches this season.

Mass changes in the second half disrupted the tempo of the game as Arsenal hobbled their way to a 3-1 defeat.

Again, if you’re writing the sentence ‘Mass changes in the second half disrupted the tempo of the game’ you really should be stopping to consider whether the result of said game really justifies this level of distress.

But it was a stark reminder that if Arteta wants to hit a ‘different dimension’ this season, as he has suggested, then superstar recruitment is a necessity.

Sure, we guess. But also that once the season starts Arteta can and will pick the superstars already in his squad and won’t be swapping out the entire starting XI in the second half of any games that actually matter.

Mediawatch really shouldn’t have to be out here telling anyone that pre-season results don’t actually count, that they are not real and cannot hurt you. We swear everyone used to just know this.

Fifteen, love

For those of you who remember all the way back to Monday, you’ll no doubt still be as excited as Mediawatch is about the 15 transfers Spurs and Man United were going to complete between them this week.

Well, it’s now Thursday so seems a prudent time for a quick update. Currently none of those 15 transfers have been completed. Still time. No need to panic yet.