Of Bright Orange Boxers, Curly headed UEFA Presidents and L'Arsenal

Good day, good readers of the webzine known as Your Story – which is, coincidentally, also good!

Yes, well, here we are again a few days down the road. Life has been rather uneventful for the good people of Calcutta if you discount the rain, sunshine, rain, rain, rain, thunder, lightening, rain, sunshine, rain, rain in that order. Oh, and if that was uninteresting, you might want to add a few dozen power cuts to the mix. In fact, the Unstoppable Onslaught of the Mancha Blog has been...er... interrupted about 3 times now thanks to the dedicated blokes at the CESC. Useless people.

Well, here I am again battling the elements to bring you another fresh, steaming blog from 11, Downing Street in Mancha's Brain. Yes, that is right – 11, Downing Street. Can you imagine what it is like living next to the PM? They would know all those horrible details some of us could rather do without. For example, the PM is secretly a Dutch supporter as he wears bright orange boxers, or the secret to that incredible head of hair – the latest touptoupee from Harrods. And every now and then, the good photographers of The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Telegraph will want to visit your bathroom. No, your loo is not a pit stop for the paparazzi but a vantage point. An arsenal of cameras, tripods and lenses are assembled and pointed in the right direction to answer that question of national importance – Is he gay? As you can see, reporting from 11 Downing Street must be more eventful than sharing a water bed with a chimpanzee doused in itching powder.

Well, now that you have loaded up your usual dose of Mancha waffle, let us move on to the central plot of today's blog – football. We Indians are still living in the Dark Ages when it comes to our sporting quotient outside the game of cricket. However, I'm hoping some of you have heard of the English Premier League? Yes, if you said the league containing Manchester United and Chelsea you were absolutely right! 1000000pts to you! Those of you who said Real Madrid and Barcelona need a little reorientation. Those clubs come from a different league all together – a league of play acting, leisurely prancing around, fake injuries, racist chanting and for the elder statesmen of football in the twilight of the careers – in other words, the Spanish League. Okay, so why are we talking about football on today's blog? Well, because football is a business whether you would like to believe it or not. *No its not!* Oh, yes it is! *Prove it!* Fine. A team like the LA Galaxy in the United States chose to sign a certain Mr.David Beckham (despite him being on the wrong end of 30) not because he is God's gift to the game, but because there are millions of tiny-brained-wipers-of-people's-bottoms aka crazed obsessed football fans across the world who'd kill (and probably do) to own a Beckham jersey. Now a certain small, incy, wincy, teeny, weeny, yellow, polka dot bikini wearing minority of Indians will know that there is a team called Arsenal in this league. And an even tinier section will know that that their team comprises of little, thumb-sucking, prattle swinging, young men led by the Professor – Arsene Wenger. No one takes them seriously because...well it's not too hard to steal candy from a baby, is it? Unless, of course, you're messing with Godzuki, the son of Godzilla or that kid from Baby's Day Out o or the Seed of Chucky! But strangely, these kids somehow manage to play great football which is what makes them so difficult to beat. Moreover, it gets harder when the referee hasn't been flown in from the Thai Kickboxing Federation.

Right, so I will now like to direct your attention to a man with a bad haircut – Michel Platini (who is also currently UEFA President). Recently, Mr.Platini has come up with a whole bunch of baseless comments criticizing Monsieur Wenger. In fact, these comments were so far off the reality of things that the bemused Wenger received backing from all corners of the football fraternity – including the League Managers Association, former players and even Platini Sr. himself. Curly head Platini was whining about financial instability of the Premier League with clubs like Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and now even Manchester City buying their way out of trouble while failing to balance the books. So as big money signings walked through the revolving doors of Anfield, Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford and the City of Manchester Stadium, at the other end, nothing much came to Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. In fact, there was a large exodus of well-established first team players which was the most talked about topic in the newspapers last summer.

Wenger has been at the helm at Arsenal for about 12 years now. In that period, Wenger has used his famous scouting network to unearth the stars of tomorrow before grubby, two-bit, youtube surfing journalists can lay their hands on the kid. Moreover, the policy at the club is to hand the youngsters a chance instead of going out and splurging millions on big names. Lastly, according to the yearly financial statistics Arsenal are one of the few clubs to be actually operating at a profit in the league. Again, we look at Wenger's vision of the 60,000 seat Emirates Stadium replacing the old 38,000 seat stadium Highbury.

The manager also brought in new training routines, schedules and diets to the players. This was a huge change as players were used to eating a whole load of chocolate before each game! Most of all, there is now a certain football philosophy in place at the club, modelled closely on the 'Total Football' system developed by the PM's favourite team – the Dutch!

I'd calll Arsene Wenger an entrepreneur in his own right. He always manages to find a creative solution to the various challenges presented in the world of club football. He has consistently delivered success both on and off the pitch for the club. It's quite remarkable but I'm not sure you ManU(re) fans will agree! Anyway, I shall try again. Until then... Pip! Pip!-- S