The Truth Behind David Ornstein's Appearance on The Arsecast Part 3: Wenger, Gazidis, and the Board

If you've read part 1 and part 2 of my behind-the-scenes look at the "behind-the-scenes look" at what went wrong during the latter stages of the transfer window, then you've already got a good idea about the extent to which we as fans have been kept in the dark. However, I can assure you, things are about to get much more interesting.

Those of you who are active on the various online Arsenal communities and gossip pages are probably already familiar with the now well-documented Persil non-bio saga, and if that's the case then you're probably dying for me to spill some more behind-the-scenes beans on the subject - which I'm going to do. But first, I'd like to step back from that for a moment and try and try to explain the bigger picture regarding our coaching staff and the board. To put it bluntly: things are a mess. For months now Gazidis and Wenger have barely been speaking, Kroenke is nowhere to be seen and the coaching staff are in absolutely disarray. We find ourselves in quite the pickle.

Anyway: Wenger, Gazidis, and the Persil non-bio debacle. For years Wenger had been growing his own weed (he now buys it from the darknet) which he didn't really sell per sé, but he did share it around quite a bit with the lads which is technically the same thing. You might be surprised at the idea of a man of his stature dealing drugs but actually it doesn't surprise me at all. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

In hindsight it's clear to see that this tweet by Liverpool chairman was essentially a taunt directed at Wenger: come for our player, and I'll tell the police where your boys are getting their Lemon Haze from. I'm told that this is the real reason we ended up not following through on Suarez, despite the activation of his clause being legally binding. This is one of many things that made Gazidis and other members of the board feel things were going too far with Wenger's smoking.

The weed culture in general at the club is rumoured to be pretty bad, with numerous sources confirming that more than half the lads smoke, and most of the first team smoke every day at training. Wenger takes a kind of "if I didn't see it then it didn't happen" attitude to it but his official stance is that players should only smoke on weekends or at night to help them sleep. However on one occasion Wenger actually pulled a whitey in front of the lads during one of Steve Bould's defensive awareness talks, which went some way towards undermining his stance on smoking at training.

Some might argue that there's no reason why a man his age can't kick back and enjoy a puff once in a while, but it does appear to have been quite a bad influence on the squad and on some of the other staff. Gazidis had always been afraid to smoke weed, and he had actually managed to avoid it for quite a while until more or less everyone he knew was doing it. After a few weeks of trying it out he began to enjoy it a bit more (although sometimes smoking it made him worry about the North Korea situation) and would go to Wenger's house once or twice a week to smoke a zoot, and usually watch some clips from Wenger's funny/sad/inspiring/sexy vids playlist, which he tends to insist on doing when friends come over.

Anyway, a few months ago Wenger declared that he and Gazidis should each have their own joints instead of sharing. Gazidis rightly wondered why Wenger couldn't just make his spliffs a bit bigger or "put less baccy in", but the boss was adamant. At first Ivan found the new arrangement a bit weird but mostly okay, and had assumed it to be part of Wenger's new cool-guy attitude that he had adopted ever since he'd started having weekend sessions with some of the younger lads (note: it's alleged that at one point Wenger had rather worringly turned up to one of these weekend sessions with a concealed knife, to which the boys all reacted with horror and hastily explained to Wenger that they weren't into that sort of stuff. This is yet to be confirmed but it wouldn't be the first time he's taken things too far to impress some of the younger, more "urban" lads in the group.)

After a while however, Gazidis began noticing he was coughing a lot more than usual, and sometimes he felt quite strange after spliffs (a feeling he described as 'fuzzy'). Wenger was adamant that it was because Gazidis wasn't used to the new stronger stuff, and that he needed to stop acting like a pussy or he couldn't come round anymore.

Gazidis eventually found out that Arsene and the younger lads had actually been preparing joke spliffs for him at the weekend, filling them with things like black pepper and crushed up paracetamols. He was livid when he found out, with Wenger having confessed to him during one particularly heavy session that he was smoking Persil non-bio. This was the last straw for Ivan, who had already become fed up with being the butt of jokes (the boss would often film himself performing pranks on Ivan, who tended to fall asleep a lot when he smoked - pranks that ranged from silly ones like drawing a fake moustache on him to strangely aggressive ones, for example slapping him extremely hard across the face on one occasion.) Ivan told Wenger to grow up, and said that he wasn't going to hang out with him outside of work anymore.

Since then things have been quite frosty between the two of them at the club, although Wenger tries to act like nothing happened, and became very threatening when Gazidis mentioned it in front of some of the more senior board members on one occasion. Inevitably this has had an enormous effect on transfer dealings, contract negotiations, and has played a large part in the general madness going on behind the scenes. Whether or not Wenger loves his green lifestyle too much to sort this out is yet to be seen, but I'm currently doing all I can to get more info on the situation.

The Truth Behind David Ornstein's Appearance on the Arsecast Part 2: The Dairylea Incident

So if you've read the first part of my breakdown of Ornstein's appearance on the podcast, you're probably wondering about something I mentioned involving Shkodran Mustafi: The Dairylea Incident.

Mustafi joined the club last summer as our record defensive signing for a whopping fee reported to be upwards of £35 million. Fans were excited about the German centre-back, who boasted an impressive track record in La Liga and had some Premier League experience to boot. Which, following a slightly disappointing debut campaign and a proposed loan-with-an-agreement-to-buy deal that was cancelled at the last minute, has left some fans wondering what went wrong.

Things started brightly on the field for the 25-year-old, who impressed with a series of solid performances at the back, and appeared to be exactly what fans had been crying out for all summer. However, off the field, things weren't so great. Shkodran did eventually make a friend in fellow Muslim and German compatriot Mesut Ozil, but for the most part he struggled to fit in with the notoriously macho Arsenal squad.

One of the main difficulties came in the form of a popular brand of soft cheese. Being a German of Albanian descent, Mustafi had never tried Dairylea upon his arrival at Everton in 2009, but being a 17 year old living abroad for the first time he had told himself that an open mind would be absolutely essential if he was to have a succesful social life in England. It's an open secret that if you want to play for Everton: you have to love Dairylea. This isn't a rule enforced by the management, but rather part of a culture of confectionary-based conformity enforced by the squad in an increasingly player-power oriented landscape.

To begin with he found the foil packaging on cheese triangles irritating and fiddly, and he felt like he always ended up getting some of the cheese on his nose or round his mouth when he ate them, because of the annoying way the packets open. For this reason he decided one day to start buying tubs of Dairylea cheese spread and making his own little triangles out of it, which he could eat with a spoon at his own leisure. He saw no problem with this, but Tony Hibbert quickly informed him that what he was doing was "gay", and "stupid", and that he'd "soon have trouble with some of the senior lads" if he didn't start sharing regular cheese triangles with the rest of the group.

Over time, the, fit, young, defensive prospect adapted to the soft-cheese culture at the club, and actually began to really enjoy sharing cheese triangles with other members of the group, including future England great Jack Rodwell and dunkers-obsessed left-back Leighton Baines. He even began to enjoy other Dairylea products, such as the fantastically convenient, individually wrapped cheese singles, or the rather suggestively named Strip Cheese. He did, still, however, maintain an immense dislike for Lunchables, which he felt were rubbery and flavourless. He's quoted as having said "I don't mind the pepperoni ones, but the ham ones are just so bad, and I can't understand why they're so popular. Also on the packet it shows them stacked really high up, but surely if you stacked them that high up you wouldn't be able to fit them in your mouth?" Shkodran was wise to keep these feelings secret from the ever-watchful Tony Hibbert, who would have been furious if he'd found out.

Flash-forward a few years, and Mustafi (at this point a Valencia player) is pushing for a last minute move to Arsenal, brimming with excitement at the thought of returning to what he had assumed was a Premier League-wide culture of eating Dairylea with the lads. Little did he know what would await him upon his return to our shores.

On his first day at training he made sure to be really well prepared, packing his cooler-bag full of various different Dairylea products which he excitedly revealed to the lads in the changing room as soon as they got in.

"What the 'ell is that? Why 'ave you brought so many cheeses with you mate?" a half-naked Hector Bellerin asked. Mustafi's excited, Honey Monster-esque smile began to sink into an expression of anxious bemusement.

"We don't have food in the changing rooms mate, why have you brought all this stuff in here?", Theo Walcott said, in a very stern and grown-up voice, emphasised by his tattoos and stylish haircut.

Mustafi responded immediately: "Haha, this is some kind of joke, yah? I'm bringing in the cheeses so we can have a munch on them together while we get changed!", still half-expecting somebody to crack a smile and then pat him on the back, revealing that they were only joking. Behind him a couple of the lads sniggered but not in the way he had been hoping for. Not in a nice way.

"Get rid of those now or I'll get really tough with you.", Walcott continued, rolling up his sleeves menacingly.

Mustafi definitely didn't want to get on the wrong side of the burly winger and so he picked up the bag and headed for the door, barely managing to get the words "sorry lads I've made a big mistake" out, as his eyes started to well up and his hands began to shake. He got to the door in a frantic state, dropping a number of the popular processed cheese products on the floor as he made his exit.

He ran around London Colney for what felt like hours, barely able to see through tears and struggling to catch his breath in between bouts of sobbing. All sorts of things went through his head, like "How could I have been so foolish?" "Have I moved to the right club?", and "What's there to dislike about Dairylea?" Emotions raced through his mind as he ran around the empty training pitches in an increasingly manic state.

What happened after that is something of a mystery. Some say that upon being discovered hiding under a table in the cafeteria, he told Wenger what was wrong, prompting the boss to fiercely discipline the squad and make it clear that if he heard of any bullying like that again there'd be big personnel changes at the club, but Mustafi himself emphatically denies that he told anybody and maintains that he wasn't crying but he just felt like doing some sprints to make sure he was extra well prepared for his debut against Southampton.

You may ask yourself: if this happened during his first training session why did Mustafi start well, only to falter later on in the season? This is what's known as Delayed Stress Syndrome, a condition in which, after a traumatic incident, somebody may seem completely fine for weeks, only to later develop symptoms of full-blown PTSD. Senior medical team members believe this is what happened to Mustafi.

After his injury, he had some time off to get baked and chill out for a bit. This is thought to be when the problems really set in. We all know that sometimes weed can put you on a bit of a weird one, and if you've already got a lot on your mind you probably shouldn't be smoking it. The thing is, Mustafi's parents seem to completely blame weed for what happened to him during the latter part of the season, but in my opinion (and that of the Arsenal medical team), it's much more complicated than that. And anyway, how can something that grows in the ground be bad for you?

It's not clear at the moment what the future holds for Mustafi. Some at the club say he's going to be fine. Others say his mood swings, short temper, and difficulty focusing may be a permanent result of what happened to him that day. A loan move to Italy was thought to be something that could maybe take his mind off things, but Arsenal were unable to acquire a replacement in the form of Jonny Evans, and so Mustafi has been doomed to another potentially traumatic year with the Gunners.

The Truth Behind David Ornstein's Appearance on the Arsecast Part 1: The Lemar Fiasco

Following David Ornstein's recent appearance on The Arsecast, I wanted to shed a bit more light on the transfer situation, and on Ornstein's relationship with the club. I feel like things are sometimes presented to fans in a deliberate and dishonest way, and in my opinion the fans deserve the raw, uncut truth.

The thing is: Ornstein's good, but he's not that good. We all know he's a mouthpiece for the club, and so the information you get from him is selective at best, and of mixed veracity at worst. He told us, for example, about Shkodran Mustafi's off-the-field problems but neglected to tell us about the dairylea incident (I'll get to that later). He also talked a little about Wenger and Gazidis' personal relationship, but neglected to mention anything about the now well documented saga with the persil non-bio spliff. These aren't small omissions. They aren't things you'd just forget to mention, or that a man with the access David Ornstein has could simply be unaware of. Nor are they outright lies. No, these are in fact just two small examples, of many, of David Ornstein and the club conspiring to hide the truth from the fans, and to be in control of all the facts. I'm going to try and give the power of knowledge back to the people who deserve it the most.

First things first: Thomas Lemar. Ornstein explained how Thomas Lemar had expressed willingness to join us earlier in the window, only for Monaco to refuse our offer, with us later coming in with an acceptable offer, only for the player to change his mind. Again, the spine of truth is there but the meat is simply not on those bones. To really understand what went wrong with the Thomas Lemar deal, you have to really understand Thomas Lemar.

At the age of 7, Thomas Lemar told his parents for the first time that he wanted to be a footballer. This was also when he told them for the first time about something else that had been on his mind for a while: goblin sharks. Ever since being shown a picture of one by his older brother a month or so prior, the once outgoing and confident Thomas had become trapped inside himself, simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the rare species of deep-sea shark, also know as the "living fossil" of the ocean.

Let's face it, he was right. Goblin sharks are both horrifying and fascinating. Like most creatures living below the thermocline, the goblin shark makes little use of it's vision, instead relying on electroreceptors (also known as ampullae of Lorenzini) to pick up on the electric fields of other deep-sea animals. However, unlike most other deep-sea sharks, the goblin shark's pupils can change size, suggesting it does make some use of it's vision. This poses a lot of interesting questions such as: how does this pink-skinned chondricthyte calibrate these different senses and make effective survival decisions in such a harsh environment, and how do the other fish have electric fields without getting shocked? After all, water conducts electricity.

It has to make you wonder: what else is out there?

Anyway, Lemar's parents were apprehensive about the football thing but ultimately quite supportive, and somewhat relieved that the "big announcement" hadn't been to do with any confusion about his sexuality. However, when it came to the sharks, they were less understanding, and were in fact quite dismissive. When Thomas began to break down in tears during his confession, his father is alleged to have scoffed, and asked "What's wrong with you? If you can't deal with imaginary sharks how can you ever satisfy a woman?" This kind of approach with children is not only unhelpful (and totally inappropriate), but it also actually compounds the problem and makes it worse. As a parent to a child with numerous phobias and neuroses, I can't begin to explain to you how wrong Thomas' father was in how he handled the situation.

The problems didn't stop there however. Minutes before Thomas stepped onto the field for his debut for Monaco, his father reportedly sent him a text that read: "how can u be scared of somthing thts so far down under the ocean? Just dont go their if your that scared" Thomas had been expecting some encouragement or support before his big night, maybe a "good luck son!", or "score one goal for me tonight my boy!" but instead all he got was more torment. It's not hard to understand how this could have badly effected his confidence, and at such a crucial time too.

As a result, a huge factor in Thomas Lemar's plans for the future were centred around careful management of his phobia/obsession, and he wanted to make sure he was at the sort of club where he could look at pictures of goblin sharks if he wanted to, but where he wouldn't have to look at any if he didn't want to. For this reason he felt comfortable with the idea of joining Arsenal, as he had spoken privately with Wenger about his issues, and Wenger had both reassured Thomas, and also opened up about his own obsessive phobia of cuckold pornography, which he felt somewhat trapped by himself. The idea of some goblin shark-related contract clauses were also floated by Thomas, which Wenger said to put a pin in and discuss at a later date. This was good enough for Thomas.

So, Lemar informally agreed to the move, and the rest is history. Monaco refused Arsenal's highest offer, and wanted the type of money that we simply weren't willing to pay at that time. Much to Arsene's chagrin, the club felt Lemar was not enough of a necessity to warrant the type of fee being suggested, and so the decision was made to go about our business elsewhere.

However, the Liverpool defeat, whilst not a huge shock to many of us fans, came as something of a wake-up call for the board, who realised they needed to do whatever necessary to acquire the right targets to make sure we returned to the top 4 this year. A fee was agreed with Monaco, and it was now time to dot the i's and cross the t's.

However, Wenger, reeling from a humiliating defeat against a rival, was not in the best mood when the versatile French winger phoned him up the next day to follow up about the goblin shark-related clauses in his contract.

"Shutup about your fucking sharks!", Wenger barked.  

"They're not *my* sharks! How could I even own a goblin shark? The equipment and expertise required to pull something like that off is simply not widely available, if at all!", Thomas shouted back, before slamming the phone down.

Wenger tried calling back,and left numerous, increasingly desperate voicemails, even sending Lemar an extremely long 11-message text explaining how his insensitivity about the sharks was not an accurate reflection of his feelings towards Thomas' phobia, but more of an insight into the way he felt about himself and his own, at times flawed, psyche. But that was the end of the Lemar saga. He never called back, and the deal was scrapped

So you see how by leaving out small, but crucial bits of information, such as the ill-fated phone call between Wenger and Lemar, the club have been able to sculpt the narrative into something about transfer fees and club performance, when really it came down to a failure in communication between the manager and the player. More next time.