Who the fucking hell are you?

Fans of the Beautiful Game will be familiar with the above enquiry; an ironic, feigned ignorance of the opposition. My team Arsenal have started the season well, and are sitting pretty at the top of the table, but their opponents aren't limited to the football field. A hideously ugly oligarch from torture capital and “War on Terror” ally Uzbekistan has now bought 21% of Arsenal's shares.

The heart of Arsenal's strength has always been their way of 'keeping things in the family', which means that problems are dealt with behind closed doors and everyone sticks together. Therefore, it is disgusting to see the role played by former vice-chairman David Dein, who has flounced off from the club and come back carrying the pennant of the ham-handed Usmanov. But we'd better not say too much about Ugly, as his lawyers Schillings have been firing off threats to all those who have spoken out against the man and his plans. Of course, the lapdog media know their place these days, so these jackals in suits have been trawling the blogosphere looking for people to duff up, and if the bloggers themselves have enough backbone to tell 'em to fuck off, their gutless service providers can be got to. Hence the disappearance of Craig Murray's and Tim Ireland's blogs (although they can still be read via google cache).

The British libel laws, like the Law in general, are designed to serve the party with the most money and screw the commoners, so that even a completely spurious claim of defamation can set many a-quaking, in the fear that by the time they are vindicated in the courtroom, they have been utterly destroyed by the costs. These vampiric attacks have produced an outcry amongst fellow-bloggers, we realise that we'll all hang separately if we don't hang together.

Perhaps if the neck-biters happen upon this lowly backwater of the blogging world, they could convey this message to their pay master: Mr Usmanov, we don't need your filthy lucre. If you really care about football, why don't you use your money in your own country, to build stadiums and facilities, and help the kids there?