Arsenal victims of yet another tapping-up scandal – but keeping quiet about it

April 13, 2012

Amidst all the excitement of our recent fine form, those Gooners who enjoy indulging in a bit of moral outrage have seriously taken their eyes off the ball. While our attention has been grabbed by on pitch matters we’ve yet again found ourselves the victim of some serious rule breaking in the form of the ‘tapping up’ of one of our star strikers and for some reason nobody’s had a word to say about it.

I mean, yeah, it could be because that player is Marouane Chamakh and no one gives an actual toss about him either way anymore. But still. If we wish to be taken seriously in our many instances of furious indignation throughout a season we should at least be consistent. So here goes.

Bordeaux president Jean Louis Triaud has been speaking publically about his desire to sign our under contract pipe smoker of the year, Marouane Chamakh. He said:

I have spoken with Marouane and told him that he is welcome at Bordeaux and that we still have room for him.

Unbelievable!! Not only is he talking about one of our players in public but he’s actually admitting that he’s spoken to him directly! Somebody call UEFA right now.

Still, if you’ve already spoken to him and his head has been turned I suppose there’s nothing we can do. Dammit. Well, you can have him I suppose but we’re not happy about it. We’ll want some sort of compensation. That won’t be a problem will it?

The main problem will be financial because he has tasted the salaries in England and Arsenal will ask for a fee.

Ah. Yeah. That. The old ‘Arsenal pay such high salaries that they can’t offload any unwanted players’ problem. We’ve speculated before that with four, maybe five strikers alone to get rid of this summer the wages thing might cause some problems. This is the first actual evidence that that may well be the case.

There are two options here really. Either Arsenal are prepared to waive the fee so the cash can be passed on to Chamakh to make up the salary that he’d miss by moving back to France, or we hold firm and hope that Chamakh’s desire to play football will outweigh his desire to earn pots of cash while dividing his time between the Arsenal bench and the Shisha lounges of North London.

I was having this discussion with a friend last night who couldn’t believe that anyone would choose to waste their career as a footballer just to earn a bit more money. His point was Chamakh’s hardly going to be living off Super Noodles and having to stay in watching telly six nights of the week if he goes to Bordeaux. He’ll still be on 40 or 50 grand a week and that money will go further in Bordeaux than it would in London. I see his point but there’s plenty of evidence of players who do just that.

Money’s a weird thing. It seems no one really thinks they’ve ever got enough. Who’s the wealthiest business person you can think of? I guarantee they’re still busting their backsides getting up early every morning, stressing themselves out in a desperate bid to make even more money. Footballers are no different. You only need to look at Manchester City’s extended squad to understand that. Gifted footballers with the kind of ability that most of us could only dream of, happy to collect their massive pay cheques while living in the shadows.

Still, it’s encouraging that Chamakh at least has some suitors. If there’s the will from at least two of the three parties to do a deal then maybe something can be sorted out.

It promises to be a long and interesting summer. But hopefully a more successful one than last year. And if the tapping up is confined to just Marouane Chamakh then maybe I can contain my outrage for the time being.

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