Nasri move to the Dark Side leaves Arsenal in crisis. Crisis? What crisis?

How many times have you heard the following statements this summer? Arsenal are in crisis. They must buy players. Arsene Wenger must go. He has lost the plot. How many times have you heard them over the past six years?

These sentiments amongst pundits, journalists and fans will no doubt intensify in the wake of today's sale of yet another prized asset - midfielder Samir Nasri - to their big-spending rivals Manchester City.

But has Wenger lost the plot, or is he the one keeping his head whilst everyone around him is losing theirs? What is Arsenal's plot? What is Manchester City's?

In Wenger's case you can draw a straight line, slap a couple of post-its on it and write on them 'invest in youth development' and 'run a self-funding, competitive club' and leave it there. That is the story at Arsenal, beginning, middle and hopefully end. At City you might need more post-it notes, some gold stars and a couple of tubes of glitter. You might end up with a shinier picture, maybe even including a sickly-sparkley trophy or two, but you might also create an awful mess.

The Wenger mantra, which now infuriates even his own fans, has kept his team in the top four. It has kept them competitive in Europe and the domestic cups. In short, it has done everything it set out to, and it has done it within its own very strict principles.

Nasri has jumped ship 'to win things' and pick up sack loads of cash in the process. He may achieve the first of those objectives. No doubt with his signing on fee banked he has already achieved the latter. He may also join Emmanuel Adebayor in, at least teporarily, derailing a promising career by leaving Arsenal for the lustier pursuits of Manchester's new money.

He might not even get a game. How does Roberto Mancini fit him in with all of the other galacticos at his disposal? Surely his 'buy attacking talent' post-it was already fully encrusted with shiny gold stars. Isn't it time to add another post-it to City's latest spider-diagram and to write 'make these players I have bought in to a TEAM' on it?

Mancini's City might out-perform Wenger's Arsenal on the pitch this season. They certainly should, based on comparative spends and squads. There is, however, a tiny glimmer of hope that they might not. Either way, it is Wenger's philosophy which shows football its greater moral core.

A trophy for Arsenal this season would be vindication for this, and a great example to other aspirational clubs. Trophies for City would be further nails in the coffin of the soul of the game.

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Media seek flaw in Cook's near perfect innings

BBC Sport - Alastair Cook rejects criticism of his batting style

294 runs. 545 balls. Over 13 hours. These are figures which could perhaps belong to a slightly under par innings from a test match team. They do not. They belong to Alastair Cook, who batted throughout a team effort which saw England rack up 710-7 against the number one ranked team in test cricket. Cook's personal total beat that number one ranked team's by itself. It virtually guarantees the England will beat India, and take that number one crown from them. So what's the problem then?

Cook batted slowly. "Turgid," the article called it, citing Geoffrey Boycott of Test Match Special as the antagonist behind the remark. Of course. We are perhaps the only nation who can find such fault with such victory.

If our football team won the World Cup, winning each game either 1-0 or on penalties, after a turgid 0-0, you can imagine our own fans, hopefully tongue-on-cheek, chanting: 'Boring boring England.'

In cricket we revere the Kevin Pietersens and the Freddie Flintoffs. Alastair Cook is well on his way, at only 26, to being, without hyperbole, the greatest English batsman of all time. His stats are already up there. But he should play with more panache. Perhaps he should emulate the Kevin Pietersens rather than the (ironically) Geoff Boycotts of this world.

Or, perhaps we should get off his back and praise him for doing what we should have been crying out for someone to step up and do years ago: to play the way we have had to endure others playing against us. Mohammed Youssuf of Pakistan. Rahul Dravid of India. Now Alastair Cook of England. Batsmen with the mindset to bat and bat and bat. To make big hundreds. To make double hundreds. To make bowling attacks despair. To concentrate, for hours or days, on not getting out. Taking the runs as they are offered, never searching for them. Never offering your wicket for them.

This is, after all, test match cricket. And, yes, we do enjoy watching KP, but we do need a lynch-pin too. In Cook we have that, and long may it continue.

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UK cities were powder kegs, fueled with decades of anger

You're young, and you're unemployed. Maybe you should still be at school, but your school was a no-go zone. You don't know your dad and your mum is too disaffected or just too damn busy, perhaps with your little half-siblings, to give you her time. There is no schooling and no parenting in your life. Where do you turn for direction?

That's the sort of problem that many of the youths involved in this week's riots face. The gang culture supporting the riots is part and parcel of their solution. It follows logical process that these aimless kids would seek solidarity with others like them, and leadership from those a bit older and further down the same path.

This neither excuses nor fully explains the events of these past few nights, but it does set them in context. This is not violence as a reaction to Coalition cuts, it is a reaction to a generation of negligent social policy from a series of UK governments. These angry youths did not suddenly morph out of decent law-abiding folk this weekend, nor when the last Budget was announced. The anger has been accumulating for a generation. The social underclass of the unemployed, uneducated and unruly is not newborn, it is maturing in to adulthood.

Perhaps Labour's more generous benefits helped subdue the feelings of resentment for socio-economic plans which have left Britain without major independent industries, without jobs for its populus and without any sense of genuine national pride. Now, however, the children of that generation, raised with that resentment in their blood, are finding their voice.

You were a teenager when Margaret Thatcher was privatising our industries. You have lived your life without purpose or direction, unemployed, useless, with no self worth. Now you're forty, your boy is twenty, and as parents do you've passed on your disaffection like a family heirloom. In fact, you did it in the most effective manner possible, by fucking off and leaving him to grow up rudderless, amid a sea of malcontent.

That's how our underclass has been spawned. Maybe my focus on absent fathers is unfair. Perhaps the mothers are equally to blame. Perhaps none of them are entirely to blame for where they are (and what they are) - IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN ON SUCH A MASS SCALE IF IT WASN'T A SOCIETAL PROBLEM, SO LET'S STOP VILLIFYING INDIVIDUALS.

To dismiss these people as 'morons' or to say they are 'just out for what they can get' is to miss the point entirely. To say 'they should all be shot' is a wonderful contradiction for a nation which ostensibly abhors such 'iron fist' tactics on foreign soil. And yet these are the most common reactions from our better classes. Perhaps they should be asking why there are people like this on our doorstep.

Civil unrest does not grow without deep-lying roots. Whether a gang member (or non-gang member) was unjustly (or justly) killed by police is neither here nor there. This was a mere spark which ignited a gun-powder spill which has been pouring since the 80s, since the Tories' last spell in charge. It's no big surprise is it? The poorest getting angriest when the government represent the rich? Labour didn't fix it either though. If they had have, then this would not have set light so quickly after their rein. The fact is that, whichever way we turn, British politics has given us at least three decades now of catastrophic mismanagement. These riots are the ugly manifestation of that.

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Fly me to the moon... Boro's brave new adventure

"If I had to pick one man to fly to the moon with, I'd pick Tony Mowbray."

So, legend has it, said Bruce Rioch, then Middlesbrough manager, of his centre-half and talismanic '86 era captain. Now, Mowbray is the manager embarking on his first full season in charge of his boyhood club, and the task he faces is one of lunar proportions.

The club has already crashed. Two years on from relegation and parachute-paymentless, Mowbray inherited a flaming wreckage. His most urgent task has been to douse the flames: the squad was over-burdened with high-earners, imbalanced and largely devoid of creativity and pace.

Addressing the squad's deficiencies has had to wait while the wage bill is trimmed. This summer has seen minimal incoming players and some inevitable losses.

The result of this disaster management was, after the sale of Leroy Lita, a return to what Mowbray calls "Ground Zero." The club once again has a stable platform from which to launch.

This launch will be fueled by genuine Boro spirit. The spirit of '86, which Mowbray embodies, if you like. The word 'our' has seeped in to club's communication strategy, from the website's tagline "It's in our blood," to the idea of "one of our own," which fits Mowbray and the core of young talent he commands.

There are still players from the Strachan era which Mowbray may have preferred to move out ahead of the likes of Lita and Andrew Taylor, but demand has dictated which players have gone. There is a challenge ahead in making use of the experienced, predominantly Scottish contingent of the squad and blending that with the young, homegrown talent. The signings of Marouane Zemmama, last season, and Marvin Emnes, on a longer contract, have at least equipped the team with some pace and flair. The retention of Matthew Bates and Rhys Williams is key.

The preparations have been made. Today we launch. The moon may seem a long way off, but at least the right man is at the helm.

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