The pre-season work continues this week in China with two games. First up Bayern Munich on Wednesday, then Chelsea on Saturday.
I have to admit I’m not that excited to see us play the Germans again after what happened in the Champions League last season, and given that we’ve got the Community Shield on August 6th and then a league game against Chelsea pretty early in the season I’m not keen to overindulge on Chelsea either. I mean, there’s a very obvious limit as to how much Chelsea any right-thinking person should subject themselves to, and this feels like too much.
You can understand why we’re playing them, of course. If we like to think of pre-season as a way to get players fit and conditioned for the new season, clubs now view it as a way to add to their already bursting coffers. A couple of million here, a couple of million there, and it also goes some way to promote the most exciting league in the world, the richest league in the world, the most expensive league in the world when it comes to overseas television rights, the good old Premier League.
What an advert it is for the next 9 months when you get the Champions against the FA Cup winners in China. People will lap that stuff up. Pre-season is now as much about marketing, increasing the visibility of the brand, opening up new avenues for sponsorships and partnerships, and all the rest than it is about actual training.
In fact, you’d have to say it’s more about that than the actual football at this point. I think the trip to Australia was absolutely fantastic for fans there to see the team they support from such a long way away, and for the players to understand the passion that fans overseas have for the club, but I suspect if you were to sit down and create the perfect training plan to get the lads in the best physical shape they can be, ’24 hours of flying’ is not at the top of the page.
I think we all understand the commercial benefits of it, and what it means to supporters, but it can’t be ideal. We’re not putting ourselves at any kind of disadvantage though, as almost everyone else is doing it. Chelsea are in China and Singapore; Sp*rs are in the US; Man Utd are also the other side of the Atlantic but also travel to Norway and Dublin (booo!); Liverpool are in Hong Kong, Germany and Dublin (booo!); while even Everton have been in Tanzania before a couple of games in Holland.
It’s a far cry from what pre-season used to be not so long ago. Arsene Wenger would take his men to the foot of the Alps, a sedate training camp in Austria where they’d do all the physical preparation, play some friendlies, and get themselves in shape. There were almost no cameras, there might have been coverage of one of the games – depending on the opposition – and perhaps one or two reporters covering the goings-on. Perhaps.
Of course, we have to admit the world was quite different then. There wasn’t the same relentless demand for ‘content’, to know what was happening at all times. Not simply on the pitch but behind the scenes too. The players themselves didn’t contribute to that with their social media accounts because, well, those things didn’t exist. Even so, it’s hard to imagine Martin Keown doing a Snapchat story where he takes a video of Edu sleeping on the plane before flipping the camera around and adding the filter that turns himself into a dog.
Now, the chaps have their Instagram stories and all the rest, and eagle-eyed fans like to read into these things to see if they can glean any insight into what else might be happening.
‘Ooooh, Olivier Giroud posted a picture which shows him in front of a castle with a really large fan called Chris. Chris. Chris is tall. A castle is like a palace. Chris. Tall. Palace. HE’S OFF TO CRYSTAL PALACE OMFG!!!!’.
Whether we like it or not, this is the world we live in now. This is what it is, and what it has to be. There’s a great argument to be made that for the genuine benefit of the players we should eschew all of it, go off-grid and just work on what we need to work on, but the reality of football, football clubs as a business, and the need to keep up with the Joneses, means that we have little choice.
So, we’ll spend in a week in China, play the two games; it’s back to home soil after that for the Emirates Cup the following weekend, then the new season is upon us with that Wembley showdown with Chelsea. Before you even know it we’ll be back into the swing of it all again, time flies eh?
Right, that’s that for this morning. James and I will have an Arsecast Extra for you later on. As ever if you have any questions or topics for discussion, please send them to us on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra.
Until then.
Also, wheeeee, a whole blog without mention Alexis Sanch– … DOH!
