Morning all. There’s nothing stirring in the transfer world, but last night saw the Q&A with supporters groups at which Ivan Gazidis gave a speech and spoke to fans. He took questions from the floor – not pre-approved ones either – and you can read a very detailed report from Tim Stillman over on Arseblog News.
He spoke about last season, transfers, the manager, the majority shareholder Stan Kroenke, but there were also some notable exceptions. We’ll do some highlights here though, starting with:
Transfers
IG: We’ve already signed one of the players of the season from the Bundesliga team of the season last year, we’re very actively in discussions on a variety of different players at the moment. On the squad side, we’re not looking to add more squad depth now, we’re looking at players who can come in and compete for a starting position.
We want to raise the quality of the starting XI with top quality players, we feel we have good squad depth.
Arseblog: Sounds nice, but we’re still waiting for the pudding. We’ve heard Gazidis and Arsene Wenger talk a good game when it comes to transfers, but until those players are standing there holding up the shirt people will remain sceptical. Not so much of our desire to do the deals, as our ability to do them.
Right now it feels like we undervalue the players we’re after and bid accordingly, and do the same with the players that we want to let go, often selling them in cut price deals. We all know the names we’ve been linked with so there’s no need to go over them again.
I suppose what stood out for me was the lack of any mention of players like Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil whose situations are still up in the air. I appreciate negotiations might be ongoing or delicate, but to not mention them at all seemed strange to me. As did completely ignoring the players who have to be sold this summer.
The manager’s new contract
IG: The first thing to say is that it wasn’t a sentimental decision, the decision was mutual. The decision was made against the ambition to win the Premier League.
We understand there is disagreement in that amongst the fanbase, but the board has to make decisions focused on what it the right decision and not what’s the popular decision. We will all be judged on what the club is able to deliver and we are very conscious of that.
Arseblog: There was a lot of waffle inbetween about finding someone who embodies the values of the club, the playing style and all that. It’s a decision that seems not to have been as mutual as he makes out – if you read the full report – but it is what it is now. Arsene Wenger is here for another two years and that’s the reality.
As is the fact that they made a decision – based on their stated ambition to win the Premier League – to stick with a manager who hasn’t won the Premier League since 2004 and who has not put together a sustained challenge in any of those seasons bar one.
Let’s see how that works out then.
Stan Kroenke
IG: I have to say, I don’t really understand the argument that Stan Kroenke is only in it for money. All Mr. Kroenke has done is support us to make us the best football club we can be.
He hasn’t put any debt on the football club, he wanted us to go out and spend the money we generated from new commercial deals on the squad which we did. We finished second in the league and we spent £110m.
Arseblog: There was a fairly cack-handed explanation of the £3m consultancy fee which Kroenke generously waived after taking it twice before he realised people took exception to it. I thought the part about money generated from new commercial deals was interesting though, and this is where Gazidis himself comes into the spotlight.
It’s an area of Arsenal ‘the business’ that has stagnated in recent times and that falls fully under the remit of the Chief Executive. Again, like the managerial situation, the ownership one is what it is. It’s unlikely to change, even if Usmanov offers more and more Kroenke won’t sell, and it would not surprise me if behind the scenes the Uzbek was increasingly keen to hook up with his old pal Farhad Moshiri at Everton.
That would require him to find a buyer for his shares though. Will someone be prepared to come in and play lame duck to Kroenke? Or could there be a chance that said buyer is someone the American feels more inclined to work with, adding them to the board as their shareholding should dictate? We’ll see.
The Catalyst for Change
IG: There have been other appointments behind the scenes and there will be more as the summer plays out, which you’ll see if you pay very close attention.
Some of it is personnel. We’ve added a new contract negotiator, we’ve added a top class performance coach to go with that. These are some of the changes we’ve seen already, you’ll see some others in the weeks ahead. It’s not all personnel, some of it is just the way we do things, can we do things better?
Arseblog: So far this has amounted to a fitness coach, and a contract lawyer. Nicely timed reports appeared yesterday saying that we’ve hired a goalkeeping coach – for the Under 23s rather than the first team mind you – and that’s about that for now.
The Academy still hasn’t brought in anyone to replace Andries Jonker, the first team coaching set-up remains exactly the same, and I do wonder why we’d have to pay ‘very close attention’ to whatever else is planned for this summer. Are these appointments going to be back-office ones, or ones that can have a real impact on our football team?
He says there’ll be more appointments as the summer progresses, but then he’s often said a lot of stuff that hasn’t come to pass so I’ll judge on actions not words this time around.
A lack of unity and bad atmosphere
IG: I don’t think you’re alone in that feeling and it doesn’t make me proud or happy to acknowledge that, but I have to. We have a lack of unity and some dissatisfaction. We have done a lot of things over the last 4 or 5 years to push the club forward.
I want the atmosphere in this stadium to be united, to be together and I want for us to get behind the team. That we haven’t had that togetherness is a real regret for me.
We all want the same thing, we may have differences about the decisions we take, but we all want the same thing and we’ll be stronger together than we will shouting at each other and being in conflict going into a new season where we could have hope and unity. But going into the new season, I beg you, please, get behind this team and this manager and give them the support they need.
Arseblog: While it’s to his credit he attended this event and took questions without vetting from the floor, there’s something verging on pathetic that the chief executive of this football club – who was nowhere to be seen for months on end last season when the shit wasn’t so much hitting the fan as curb-stomping the fan relentlessly – has to beg for unity.
It dismisses the role his silence, and that of the board, played in allowing the disharmony to fester the way it did. We all know the reasons why things got ugly last season, yet when we required leadership, decisiveness, and someone to help calm the choppy waters, they were absent. Invisible. Only to crop up again looking pleased as punch with themselves after we won the FA Cup (an event at which there was real unity between fans who had gone through the gamut all season long).
Fans want to be united, but they also know when they’re being taken for fools. There are very obvious lessons to learn from what happened last season, and hopefully the club have paid attention and will do just that. If they have, and if they and the manager can act on them, they’ll find that fans will be understanding even when things aren’t going as well as we might like.
Don’t beg though. Act.
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A bit of a long one this morning, and as I said at the top the full report is worth a read. Ultimately, as we’ve said many times before, we’ve heard these words before, and it’s now down to them to turn them into actions.
I do get the sense there’s a bit going on behind the scenes this summer, but until such time as we see more tangible evidence, it’s hard not to feel like this is wash, rinse, repeat.
Till tomorrow.
