It is always interesting to me to canvass the views of regular readers of this blog. As time goes by I find myself less and less interested in vox pops from AFTV or the tabloid media or the comments section on other websites. Toxic might be too strong a word to apply to a lot of the content that gets posted about Arsenal but much is neither helpful nor constructive and represents a fairly warped view of where the club stands now. Perhaps it might seem too cosy a practice to elicit comments from regular readers but the reality is that what we have just seen in the last posting was proportionate and balanced but was nevertheless critical in some respects .
When Dave Faber set up the Goonerholic website that mindset is exactly what he was aiming to provide for an intelligent but overwhelmingly constructive readership of Arsenal fans . The areas we covered in the last mini survey were intended to provide a temperature check around the most contentious challenges facing the club at the moment.
Let us examine some of them and try to find some sort of consensus on what our situation looks like at the end of March.
Firstly , what sort of season are we having? In reality the only English team who wouldn’t swap places with us is Liverpool. While there are signs that the wheels might be coming off the Anfield jalopy they have had a dream League campaign so far and as befits a team from the city that houses the Grand National they only have to stand up to win.
We must be careful not to lose perspective. Three years go we were hugely excited by a tilt at top four that was ended by our deadly rivals, the Spuds. Two years ago we were playing in Europe’s secondary competition on Thursday evenings and casting envious glances at the glamorous ties on offer in the Champions League and the financial bonanza that represents. Progress was made three seasons ago and it has been handsomely backed up in the following two seasons to the extent that at at the start of this campaign many entrants for the GHF Predictathon would, I suspect, have put Arsenal down as prospective title winners and not just out of loyalty. There was a very strong case to believe that we would prevail this season in the title race. We still could but it would require a mega-collapse from Liverpool for that to happen. But lest we forget we are second and we finished third in the inaugural Champions League table losing only once and then in extremely unlucky circumstances to Inter Milan. We are now in the last 8 of the Champions League for the second successive year having won the away leg of our last 16 tie 7-1 ! We are welcoming Real Madrid in a tie which shows we are close to the summit of European football. How close, we will learn in mid-April. So we are not in too shabby a position as we move towards the climax of the season. We have also overseen the emergence of two of the most exciting young players that anyone can remember at Arsenal. However, it is not the trajectory that we envisaged back in August when the season began and that revised trajectory is creating the angst that appears to be the natural reaction of many modern football fans.
So where did it all go so terribly wrong as the hotel porter said to George Best lounging on a four poster with Miss World surrounded by champagne and bundles of cash?
The answer is that it looks like another season without the league title. Media expectations are a poor way to judge achievement and brook no leeway for an incredible injury toll on key players. They also take little note of a rash of bizarre red cards. The old joke says that just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you and as our interviewees showed there is a huge sense of injustice and a widespread feeling that Arsenal really do get discriminatory treatment from PGMOL. Depressed Gooner’s description of ‘only us’ red cards is a very apt way of describing a litany of marginal decisions that have all gone against Arsenal and cost us a host of points.
That is not to say that Arteta has had a perfect season. Recruitment wasn’t extensive or good enough in the summer and that much anticipated striker never arrived and the wide forward who did arrive has been woefully inadequate. I think our play has been undertaken with the handbrake on for a large part of the season. A personal bugbear is that we take enormous passing risks in our own area but will transfer a cleared corner back to Raya eighty yards away if we can’t find a straightforward crossing angle.
And I think our reaction to red cards has been too supine other than at Manchester City where we were magnificent. I well remember the early years of Arsene Wenger when he was regularly criticised for the Arsenal’s disciplinary record. What was notable about that spate of games when we went down to ten men was that we rarely if ever lost, very often won and always tried to play on the front foot however unlikely the circumstances. Remember Christmas 2001 at Anfield when we won 2-1 after being reduced to ten men at 0-0? Or the 1996 game at Newcastle when Shearer dived to get his England team-mate, Tony Adams, sent off but Wrighty still helped us come away with all three points? Contrast that with this season when the only time we have been reduced to ten men and won was at Wolves where we clinched the game after they were reduced to ten men too. Our football has lacked something of the flow and panache which has characterised the last two seasons. However, our injury crisis has been deep and brutal and it has restricted our options enormously.
Arteta is a generational coach and in my view it would be absolute folly to consider jettisoning him as manager and I’m convinced that is what the owners and senior management at Arsenal think too. In the boardroom it is not even an issue. I hope that this season is extremely instructive to Arteta because it clearly hasn’t worked out completely as he has planned. But the idea that in the words of the phone-in participants, “he has taken the club as far as he can!” is ridiculous when last season he had us two points behind a Manchester City team completing a title hat-trick.
I would also like to reflect on two points raised in our latest piece and touched on by Ned in the drinks and to pose a serious question about what level of personnel sacrifice we would be prepared to accept to go into next season with our best possible chance of success. Inevitably any keen fan will toy with the fantasy options available to our new Sporting Director who everyone seems to accept will be Andrea Berta who spent many years in a similar role at Atletico Madrid. Rather than try to construct a wish-list of signings I’d like to pose a question that was raised on Le Grove recently as well. Would we countenance the sale of, say, Gabriel to Saudi Arabia if it meant we could afford to buy Isak from Newcastle? We will have a high turnover of players next summer and may see the departure of Kiwior, Tierney, Zinchenko, Jorginho, Partey, Tavares, Sambi Lokonga , Vieira and Nelson. These would all be expected but none are likely to raise huge sums and will leave us needing some replacements as Sterling will leave as well, Neto will go back to Bournemouth and Gabriel Jesús will not be fit until well into next season. Max Dowman may join the first team squad but will still be only fifteen!
Who else could we countenance parting company with? Would Trossard or Martinelli be transferable if the terms were right? Going back to Gabriel, would a huge (circa £100m) bid for him or, perish the thought, a huge bid from Real Madrid for Saliba persuade us to sell either in order to strengthen other parts of the team? My own view is that if we get outstanding bids for Trossard or Martinelli (in his case circa £60m) we should certainly consider selling. But to break up the Gabriel/Saliba partnership would be folly as it is very much key to the impregnability of the Arsenal defence and Gabriel is the best goalscoring centre back in the league and terrifies so many of our opponents at corner kicks. That partnership has at least one more season to run and in many senses represents the backbone of the club.
I’d like to see a much better second keeper than we currently have although whether Garcia of Espanyol wants to move to England to understudy one of the very few Spanish keepers better than he is I personally doubt. Perhaps Karl Hein is ready to take a bigger role in goalkeeping affairs at the Arsenal. Let us debate over the summer for whom we should spend the considerable sum that should be available although ‘ITK’ journalists are already strongly suggesting that we will see Zubimendi, Williams, Sesko and Nypan wearing red and white next season.
In our recent interviews with Holics, BtM made a very cogent plea for us to develop a feeder club and several Holics backed him. I back that idea too. It would enable us to test players in a realistic first team environment and might have helped us to hold on to promising players like Cozier Duberry, Norton-Cuffy, Heaven, Sagoe Jr and Biereth while we monitor their progress. It may even have persuaded Chido Obi to stay if that represented part of a clear pathway to eventual first team football at the Arsenal. It was a point of apparent contention when Edu left. It appears that he was in favour of building a relationship with a club in South America but ‘the Arsenal’ did not want to take that step at that time. I think they should reconsider without getting into the unwieldy mess that Chelsea seem to have created with their huge roster of players. It is likely to be another item in Berta’s in-tray when (if) he arrives.
The other subject which threatens to occupy a lot of our thinking going forward is the stadium. In 1997 I received a phone call from Ken Friar at the Arsenal. We had booked a corporate box at Highbury and there had been an administrative cock-up on the Arsenal’s part. He phoned to apologise and as our conversation developed he shared his concern about taking the huge step of committing to a much bigger stadium. “Can we regularly pull crowds of 60,000?’ he asked. Wenger was beginning to weave his magic and create a following for the club that has generated untold wealth. We bit the Ashburton Grove bullet and moved to our new stadium almost a decade later.
It seems inconceivable that we could be thinking about substantially modifying the stadium only twenty years after opening it. Ned made a suggestion in the Drinks that we would actually be moving to a new stadium in the next ten years. That would be a huge decision and a massive commitment. Certainly expansion of the current stadium would require a huge improvement in the transport infrastructure if we hope to house another 20,000 spectators but moving Arsenal away from our heartland in Islington to find a site capable of housing such huge crowds, with the necessary infrastructure of transport, eateries and other businesses would be both controversial and very hard to achieve. Certainly a prolonged spell playing at Wembley or the London Stadium while a new ground is built would not be welcomed by many Gooners — and the unthinkable option of playing at the Toilet Bowl for two years would be even less popular. However, the Government’s apparent desire to help Manchester United build a new stadium at Salford might be matched by similar support for a new London super stadium if a suitable site can be found. Yet it is hard to sing ‘North London Forever‘ with any sincerity if you are playing in Shepherds Bush, Romford or Tooting!
Let us hope rereading this article in a few weeks time we will be able to have a wry smile as we celebrate a glorious title/ Champions league double at the end of the most glorious season in Arsenal’s history. It seems unlikely now that a season that has been benighted by injuries and refereeing discrimination could end so gloriously. Let us not lose sight of the bigger picture – a picture that is overwhelmingly positive and one that almost every team in Europe would love to mirror. A more spectacular trajectory would have made it even better but as this season has shown not only us, but a host of other teams, in football you cannot always have what you wish for.
Let’s hope that we can!
Some rich food for thought there, TTG. Bravo.
I would not break up the Saliba-Gabriel partnership at any price. Add to your reason for not doing so that Gabriel is a leader, and we will likely lose two or three of those from the dressing room this summer.
Trossard is 30 and will be in the final year of his contract next season. That puts him in the sellable column, provided we can get a halfway decent price. Martinelli’s departure would tug at the heartstrings of many fans and, as things stand, would leave us short of wingers, especially if Trossard goes. Arteta’s reluctance to give even a few minutes to Kabia Butler-Oyedeji, Edwards or Sagoe Jr suggests he doesn’t think they are ready for prime time yet. Even if Williams or another winger good enough to start is bought, it seems a high risk to sell Martinelli unless we were being offered ridiculous money, and that is not the general direction of travel for transfer fees now.
I put my hand up for a feeder club before and will do so again. I’d prefer one in Europe to one in South America if it is to be used for player development rather than player recruitment. I will also repeat my suggestion that we could be doing more with the Kroenkes’ other football team. No, not the Rams, the Colorado Rapids. MLS football is a decent standard these days.
Everything you say about the difficulties and commitment to building a new stadium is true. Nor would I want to move from N5. Both Real Madrid and Barcelona have built fantastic new stadiums on the site of their old ones. We would need to find a way to do the same. On the upside, stadium construction has become much faster and more modular than when the Ems was built. The reason that I suggested in the previous drinks that, even though we are coming up on our 20th year at the Ems, we wouldn’t celebrate a 30th anniversary is that Europe’s elite clubs are getting stadiums that will throw off cash from multiuse that the Ems will never be able to match. If we are to keep pace financially with the elite clubs, a new stadium becomes unavoidable.
Excellent, lengthy article. I always supported the option to build our stadium at Kings Cross purely because of the multitude of transport links. I don’t know how much free land there is in that area now, but it could still be a viable option if we were considering a move sometime in the future.
Thanks for your comments Jax
I come into the Kings X/ St P area regularly including for matches ( I was there yesterday ) and there are cranes and new developments all around . Transport wise it would be a great hub but for those like c100 who drive it may present challenges . Ned’s point re revenue generation and stadium construction are well made and this might be a way of staying close to home and not losing our roots entirely
Fingers crossed for our ladies as they take on Real Madrid tonight…. On a proper pitch
Thanks TTG. That’s an excellent synthesis of the thoughts of your correspondents and a very rational analysis of where we currently stand.
I do think there have possibly been deliberate focused press briefings to soften us up on the possibility that we may have to accept the departure of one of our much loved, high value players for the squad building to take its next step up. Everyone accepts that this summer will see a high turnover within the squad and accepts that Tierney, Partey and JG will go for free and the loanees plus Trossard will be sold. However none of the accepted departures will generate the kind of money we need to help us buy Williams, Zubimendi, a decent goalkeeping back-up plus Isak as well. Frankly I think Isak is a pipe dream but it’s worth a pop! I expect Sesko or Gyokeres or someone of whom I haven’t heard to be our new ‘centre forward’.
I am fully behind the idea of a European feeder club to help bring our young players up to first team speed. I seem to recall Arsene proposing such a thing with a less fashionable French club but it cam to nought. I hope Stan can be persuaded. I’ll contribute a tenner.
I also believe that expansion of the stadium is a necessity in this globalised era. The move to the Emirates was conceived as a game changer for the economics of the club but that was “90’s think’ – they say generals always make plans to fight the last war again! The simultaneous globalisation of the PL and the financial doping by Abramovich and the Sheiks of Abby Dabby completely neutralised those hoped for benefits and we were left with all the down sides – debt and no transfer kitty leading to the barren years and loss of top players only to be replaced by B-listers or worse. Every time I visit the ground the languages of the world and Merkin accents abound, hence the difficulty getting tickets in a global marketplace. Although Arsene did say the ground as built cannot be expanded, I believe engineering developments and ingenuity can overcome that stricture and the club needs to take advantage of the demand for tickets, the 70,000 on the season ticket waiting list and its global popularity. There are financial risks in expansion but good businessmen thrive on such challenges. The club has to seize the opportunity to stay in the elite.
I saw somewhere that Saka and Calafiori were training with the first team squad yesterday. Hope it’s so.
Many thanks TTG for that excellent and thought provoking piece. Here’s to the hoped for great end of season and summer squad building to follow. I will leave the stadium development discussion to the in the know crowd of usual suspects such as those above in the drinks. Cheers to Jax who I assume is Jackster(?)
Cheers TTG!
bt8 @5, I think it might be. Welcome back Jackster if it is indeed thee and welcome anew if it is another Jax entirely. You are both very welcome.
Bath@4: I hope you are right that engineering ingenuity can solve the stadium issue.
The key objective is to increase non-match-day revenue more than match-day revenue. It is not only a matter of adding seats.
Thanks TTG, a variety of issues covered and covered well.
Like others I would keep the CB partnership and as we
can’t expect any real money for Leo I would let Gabi M go
too if needs must.
Personally I dislike the idea of feeder clubs but then I don’t
much like fighting with one hard tied behind our backs either.
Basically, I have never seen the Kroenkes show any appetite for
the idea and it would be a surprise if we did go ahead,
Sorry Gooners, I’m not Jackster, whoever he may be. I regularly read Goonerholics Forever, but don’t think I’ve commented previously.
No need to apologise Jax. You are most welcome and I hope to see you in here often. A virtual glass of your favourite poison is one the virtual bar for you, sir.
Much to think about there, TTG.
That’s a huge list of players who will either want to leave or must leave if we are to improve the overall quality of the squad. In no circumstances should we be looking to sell Gabriel or Saliba for any amount of money. They are a brilliant partnership and what would it cost to replace either of them – only to end up with someone not as good.
The Martinelli situation is the same. We might get £60 million only to weaken the squad and then what would a replacement cost – either for first team or squad backup ? I still think there is potential in Martinelli – he just needs a bit of Henry style coaching to make him calmer in front of goal.
As for the stadium upgrade, I’ve no idea. Expansion seems the obvious choice as it’s hard to imagine a plot large enough for another new build without moving well out of the area.
There might be a plot just round the corner in N5 though where I believe a top quality pitch is still in place …?
And welcome, Jax ! Don’t be a stranger – well, no stranger than TTG anyway 😉
Fabulous performance by the women’s team to see off Real Madrid and advance to the CL semi-finals. Sets the bar for their male counterparts.
Welcome, Jax. As others have said, don’t be a stranger. Always good to add another voice to the mix.
Yeah, what Ned said @14. Fantastic effort
Hello Jax 👋
Tonight’s win for the ladies was very exciting . Kelly and Russo combined brilliantly.
Renee Slegers must have given a hell of a half-time talk!
Academy players between the sticks for England U-19s (Setford), U-18s (Ranson) and U-17s (Porter) in the past few days. Raya cover might be a short-term need. Young goalkeepers need to play to learn their trade. If only we had a feeder club…
Adam Clery, the favourite football video analyst of many here, has left Four Four Two and gone independent.
Here’s his first video in his new incarnation, which talks a lot about MLS’s role for Tuchel’s England.
By going independent, I mean Clery has his own YouTube channel, ACFC, backed by The Independent.
Thanks Ned for the link.
@18 well, we do have a loan system 😉 but your point about playing time is certainly correct.
It’s risky to have young keepers as cover but if they have prior first team experience then that takes some of that risk out of the equation. Though the way Raya is playing it might be several seasons before we need a first choice
Ned
You make a very good point . We have goalkeepers coming out of our ears. Nobody took much notice that Graczyck ? was poached by Manchester United a few months ago and has sat in their bench and of course we have Hein playing first-team football in Spain . Goalkeepers need to play and I’m told the gem is Porter who made his first team debut against Bolton . I thought he played extremely well in the Youth Cup . I would think there is great benefit in the young goalkeepers training with Raya especially as his style is so integral to the team
Before the Chelsea game I watched a drill which involved the keepers making double saves and then getting up to dribble the ball clear. It was very physically demanding . It’s a dilemma because signing a really good understudy who could play a whole season is expensive and ultimately limiting for a top keeper . Hein might be able to step up but he won’t come back to be third choice .
Thought provoking TTG! Excellent. Roof could be raised and extended I’m sure.
To Ned in 1; yes, the MLS (actually F!) has improved, but the Arsenal ladies, based on last night’s performance, would easily handle most of the MLF teams. I’m from Vancouver now, and even though they are improved this year, the ladies would take them.
Now let’s do the same for the men’s team in April!
Greetings Boff! Vancouver is a very nice place to be based .
David Raya clearly thinks N5 is a great place to be based too
‘ ‘It’s a great, great place to be. It’s a great club and the team is incredible,’
‘I think we are going in the right direction to achieve things together. It’s just a matter of time on when it will happen.
‘Everybody wants to win the Champions League and everybody knows how hard it is, but we are very, very excited.
‘Now we have a big challenge ahead, playing against Real Madrid but this is the type of game that are the ones you really wanted to play when you were young, this is the type of game that everybody wants to play, so very, very excited to see where that goes.’
What a positive sentiment from a very fine player
To add to our collection of glove butlers, 19-year-old Brian Okonkwo is on loan at Hitchin Town in the Southern League. He is the younger brother of Arthur, sold — well given away on a free — to Wrexham last summer, where he is now the first choice.
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