Arsenal Grab 3 Points from the Jaws of Defeat

Good result at Norwich. That said, we looked pretty toothless until the penalty, and the final result flattered us. Gervinho was back to his indifferent worst. And for 80 minutes we had no pace, no penetration and little creativity.

On the bright side, the “soft” penalty decision has brought all the Spurs hypocrites out into the open. Here is a Gary Lineker tweet: “Hugely controversial decision at The Emirates. Linesman gives a dubious penalty from afar following a corner that never was. Arteta 1-1.” Erm what was the controversy exactl? Sure the corner decision was wrong. But what was dubious about the penalty. (Here, by the way, is the incident in question.)

Kamara clearly has a handful of Giroud’s shirt in the penalty box. That is a foul, hence a clear penalty. Oh perhaps Lineker thinks it is controversial and dubious because the linesman did his job well, saw the shirt pull, and signaled to the referee it was a penalty. Or maybe Lineker thinks it controversial because the referee, having been informed by the linesman about a shirt-pull that he could not see, acted properly, and gave the penalty. Or maybe Lineker just thinks that any penalty given to Arsenal is controversial. So much for BBC impartiality. Unlike Lineker, who is either biased or stupid, or both, Proud Fan at the Spurs Unofficial Supporter’s site makes the correct judgement: “In my opinion it was a stupid foul, not like Giroud would have scored from there, no doubt Arsenal got lucky but pulling someone’s shirt from behind is a foul all day long. They got lucky because a stupid foul got them in the game when they looked like they had no hope not because they got a penalty, the penalty was a penalty imo. I agree it was never a corner though but then in the lead up to Norwich’s goal Kamara clearly fouls Ramsey and the Snodgrass trip was also not clear cut. But I think Norwich got what they deserved, they played with 3 DM’s. I have no sympathy for them.” Spot on. I couldn’t help in indulging a little Schadenfreude, when all of a sudden a team who were set up for a draw, or at best to nick a goal from a set piece, and who set about systematically wasting time as soon as they had scored, found themselves behind with too little time to equalize. It turned out that they had been wasting their own time (as well as ours, of course). Funny that. But then things can change quickly in football.

A top three spot is now within our grasp. However, we should not count our chickens. Everton away will be a hard game. If we win that and win a Fulham, I’ll be very happy, but a bit surprised. And even if we secure Champions League qualification again, that is no grounds for complacency. It is not a trophy. We are miles behind the top two teams. We are not even competing for the trophies at present. We are several top class players short of a competitive Premiership and Champion’s League team. As Wenger once said himself, and somtimes appears to have forgotten: “It is not about having lots of money in the Bank, but the best team on the pitch.” Or then again, for Gazidis Korenke, Hill-Wood, and everyone else with an equity stake in the Arsenal PLC, maybe it is.

SPT Support the Occupation

We, the undersigned faculty, researchers and students of the Centre for Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex, would like to express our support and admiration for the Occupy Sussex campaign, which has been evicted from Bramber House by the university management. The occupiers’ solidarity with the 235 staff members who are facing the prospect of reductions in pension entitlements and working conditions because of the decisions of management is an inspiration to us all. These changes were presented to staff as a fait accompli, with no exploration of possible in-house solutions, and Occupy Sussex rightly opposed management’s plans; in doing so, and in occupying the conference centre in Bramber House, they also enacted an alternative vision of the university, one guided by principles of democratic self-management, inclusiveness and community. We therefore stand by the protesters and the 235 affected workers as they continue to oppose management’s plans.We would further like to condemn the management’s actions in seeking and being granted a court injunction which bans all protest on campus, by any persons, until 25th September. It is lamentable that, whilst maintaining all its pretenses about open discussion and dialogue, the management should have simply stifled dissent in this manner. The management’s protestation that it will tolerate “peaceful” protest is an insult to the students and workers whose right to assemble and demonstrate as they see fit has just been suppressed. A right is not a right if it waits on the decision of another. This university is not the property of the management. Without students, lecturers and support staff there is no university. We therefore also hope that today is the beginning of a sustained campaign by students and workers to undermine and repeal this authoritarian measure.

Dr Gordon Finlayson (Director)

Dr Andrew Chitty
Dr Kenneth Veitch
Dr Alison Phipps

Dr Tarik Kochi

Tim Carter

Chris O’Kane

Elliot Rose

Dimitri Kladiskakis

Brad Tuck

Phillip Homburg

Alastair Gray

Alex Elliott

Alastair Kemp

David Martinez Rojas

Nima Barazandeh

Melis Menent

Richard Weir

Huw Rees

Edward Harvey
Osama Omar Muttawa

Former students and others:

Dr Simon Mussell
Dr Verena Erlenbusch
Dr Tom Bunyard
Dr Georgios Daremas

Arthur Willemse

Carla Ibled

Sangeetha Thanapal

Birgit Hofstaetter

Ian Sinclair

Katja Hus

Council for the Defence of British Universities

I note that a very august Council for the Defence of British Universities has been founded and held its inaugural meeting at the British Academy. It has had worldwide press coverage, which can only be good. It has also heavyweight support from outwith the academic community. This is the statement of its Values and Aims.

CDBU exists to advance university education for the public benefit. Its aims are:

To defend and enhance the character of British universities as places where students can develop their capacities to the full, where research and scholarship are pursued at the highest level, and where intellectual activity can be freely conducted without regard to its immediate economic benefit
To urge that university education, both undergraduate and graduate, be accessible to all students who can benefit from it
To maintain the principle that teaching and research are indispensable activities for a university and that one is not pursued at the expense of the other
To ensure that universities, while responding to the needs of students and of society in general, should retain ultimate control of the content of the courses taught and the methods of instruction employed. As well as often providing vocational training, university education should equip graduates with the mental skills and intellectual flexibility necessary to meet the demands of a rapidly changing economy. It should develop the powers of the mind, enlarge knowledge and understanding, and enable graduates to lead fuller and more rewarding lives
To emphasise that, as well as often having vital social and economic applications and being subject to accountability, academic research seeks to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the physical world, of human nature and of all forms of human activity
To ensure that methods employed to assess the quality of university research do not encourage premature or unnecessary publication or inhibit the production of major works of research that require a long period of gestation
To safeguard the freedom of academics to teach and to pursue research and inquiry in the directions appropriate to the needs of their subject
To maintain the principle of institutional autonomy, to encourage academic self-government and to ensure that the function of managerial and administrative staff is that of facilitating teaching and research
To ensure that British universities continue to transmit and reinterpret the world’s cultural and intellectual inheritance, to encourage international exchange and to engage in the independent thought and criticism necessary for the flourishing of any democratic society

I very much hope that it succeeds. To do so it will have to reach out to academics working in all disciplines, and in all kinds of Universities, not just Oxford, Cambridge and London. It will be interesting to see what kind of stance the Council will have towards the Research Councils and