Nasri, Rooney, and Walrus, like groundhog day all over again again again

There is precious little actually going on this morning: Wenger spoke to the French press, Wayne Rooney spoke to the English press, and West Ham appointed a walrus. Just like any time anything happens that’s remotely like anything that has happened in the past I guess it’s like groundhog day all over again*.

The big Arsenal news is that Arsene has admitted contract negotiations have stalled with Samir Nasri over, of all things, money:

We have a financial disagreement which hasn’t yet been settled. We are still in discussions but we haven’t agreed a deal. One thing’s for sure, we’re not selling him to United.

Newspapers are reporting that Arsenal have offered Nasri five years and £90k a week and the player wants £110k a week. Or something like that, depends on who you read. Same old penny-pinching Arsenal, right? It’s groundhog day all over again, right? Just like when they lost Ca$hley to Che£sea, right?

Just to give you some perspective on what that supposed £20k per week difference actually amounts to, in a year, that’s £1,040,000. Over the length of his contract it’s £5,200,000. That’s not a small difference, folks. It’s also worth noting that if the numbers are right then he feels like he should be paid the same as Cesc Fabregas.

Now, I like Nasri. I think Nasri offers something of that Messi-esque quality that possession based teams like Arsenal need to break down a stalwart opponent. I also think that the fans like him because he’s provided some dazzling moments down the years, the goal against Porto my favorite  example because I was there.

The problem is that this is a player who prior to this season played 77 games for Arsenal and only managed 11 goals and 9 assists. Which, to compare to his teammate on the other side of the pitch, means that in 77 games he managed one more goal and 9 fewer assists than Arshavin created in this season alone. Cue the people who compulsively feel the need to tell me to stop looking at the stats.

But there’s a nagging feeling that something is just off about this player and this deal. Telling everyone that he was angry about the World Cup snub Nasri had a gangbusters start of the season and was pipped by RioFerdy5 as potentially player of the year. But as good as he was in the first part of the season his form dropped off precipitously since the win over Barcelona. That’s the game where Nasri got his last assist of the season, only adding a goal against Tottenham in that 3-3 draw.

Nasri played in 14 matches after the win over Barcelona and 10 of them were draws or losses. If he had continued his form from the first half of the season then I wonder how the season would have turned out. And had the season turned out positively, with Nasri having a hand in that, I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering if £110,000 a week isn’t too much to pay for the potential of  player who has yet to show the consistency that such a salary should command.

I mean, isn’t one of the problems with this club that we pay for potential rather than performance? And if so, how is this not groundhog day all over again?

Meanwhile, Wayne Rooney was off to Talksport radio to have a chat with Mr’s Keys and Grey about why Man U is the greatest team ever and why Lionel Messi is shit without Iniesta and Xavi. The picture above should tell you all you need to know about English football and the state of sports punditry in the UK. Just how Keys and Grey retained full employment after it was revealed that they are aren’t football pundits but rather scholars on the sexual politics of sports is still a mystery.

But it’s Rooney’s insane assertion that Messi couldn’t make it in the Premier League because he’d have to play against Stoke City that really got me. I’ve hear this argument before and it usuall… oh wait, what’s that? It’s something that Andy Gray said back in December? Oh, I guess it’s like groundhog day all over again, isn’t it?

And finally, we have Sam Allardyce’s appointment to West Ham or as Martin Lipton calls him “Supersam the Saviour.” Prior to reading this article I had thought that the three most puke inducing words in the English language were “Baby on Board.” But I have since changed my mind.

Lipton paints possibly the rosiest picture of what is surely going to be the ugliest of roses as Allardyce takes his philosophy, thorns and all, to the Boleyn ground where the supporters demand actual football and not just kicking lumps and getting restarts. Lipton’s only point of argument that Sam Allardyce is not just a kick and rush merchant is this:

There is nobody, not even Arsene Wenger, who more readily adopted scientific analysis, who took a futuristic approach, showed an openness to new thinking.

What’s truly amazing then, is how much this fresh, open thinking, futurist’s teams all play the same brand of 1950′s kick and rush football. In fact, every time he takes over a new team Allardyce makes a lot of noise about how the approach is going to be different and then by about the third or fourth week his teams have devolved into basic football as they search for a positive result.

Supersam the Saviour is aware of the fan tension already and has said that the team will have two approaches, one away and one home. Possibly meaning that away they will kick lumps and get restarts and at home they will get restarts and kick lumps. I can’t wait to see the famous clash of the talent titans as West Ham try to pass the ball around against Millwall.

Considering Supersam’s new found love of the beautiful game and last season’s epic battle of the passmasters, it will surely be like groundhog day all over again.

*Dear reader, I hate this cliche. I hate this cliche with the fire of a thousand suns. A blind man could see that using cliches is full of fail so why is it that everyone and their mother is using this cliche over and over again like a broken record? My goal in this blog is to use the cliche “like groundhog day all over again” so many times that it loses its meaning, like groundhog day all over again.

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