Arsenal Announce Record Profits As New Stadium Really Pays Off

It's Friday afternoon and I'm sitting at my laptop with a Marks & Spencer pizza and a glass of coke in front of me hoping to find some inspiration for today's blog. With the prospect of my football tonight being cancelled due to lack of numbers my phone has being hopping all day as I try to recruit a few extra bodies and it's very hard to concentrate on the job in hand.

I suppose I should start with the announcement that the club announced record profits of £61 million after tax as well as reducing the overall club debt by £129.6 million by repaying bank loans. We now have an overall debt of £135.6 million and with the property end of the business completely debt free the money from future sales will all go to repay that bank debt I would imagine. If things continue as they are now we will be debt free by this time next year and have a large amount of cash available for whatever purpose the manager sees fit.

It's quite amazing when you think of it but it would seem that the move to the Emirates stadium has put us in a situation where we will be debt free and generating a large annual profit very soon. The club has to be applauded for achieving these results and all of us fans now hope that our remarkable position allows us to profit in a footballing sense and win a few trophies.

I think this season is the first one in a long time where we have actually spent more on new players than we have received in transfer fees and it's clear that the reason the boss didn't buy any more players in the summer was certainly not a lack of funds. He couldn't find any more players that he wanted at a price he was prepared to pay and the players he did sign all look highly promising as I spoke about yesterday. The day when we dominate world football is getting closer and closer(I hope).

Fitness Worries:

On to footballing matters and it appears that there is a chance that Diaby will be fit to face West Brom tomorrow as he faces a test on his injury before the game. Both Eboue and Rosicky are also due for fitness tests as well after picking up knocks in Tuesday's demolition of our pauper like neighbours from down the road. 

However it would seem that the soonest we might see Cesc and Vermaelen playing for us again will be in the league encounter with Chelsea next week and it means that the squad that we have for tomorrow's game will also be the one that travels to Serbia to play Partizan Belgrade on Tuesday night. We have to hope that all the players come through that game tomorrow with a clean bill of health as anything less than that will leave us threadbare to say the least.

Video Evidence?

The boss has again called for the use of video evidence to punish players guilty of bad challenges that the referee has seen and misjudged at the time. Surely the referee against Bolton must realise that his judgement of the challenge by Robinson was wrong and he should be man enough to stand up and admit it. It's a crazy situation when no further action can be taken because the referee saw what happened at the time even when he got his call completely wrong. It all comes back to football authorities being unwilling to discuss the performance of referees and it has always and will always be that way as far as I can see.

Personal Experience:

The only time I was ever sent off in a match it was due to some of the worst refereeing you could ever imagine and when I appeared before the disciplinary panel I tried to question his performance but I was told that they weren't there to discuss the referee but punish me. We had previously made a complaint about that referee being drunk on the pitch and requested that we never had him again and I suffered the consequences of that complaint. I'm not saying I didn't punch the guy in question but I made sure the referee didn't see it and he sent me off based on the word of our opposition's manager. The rest of the story of that match is for another day as it would take far too long to tell here.

As time is of the essence I'll leave it there for now but I will be back later with my predictions for this weekend's Premier league games.

See You Tomorrow.