I can be pretty negative about things, I know. I’m probably just a sad old fart who likes to moan. Take this as a warning, fellow Earthicans, try not to get too rigid as you get old.
That said, I love me some pre-season football! It’s just football. There’s no pressure to win. There’s almost never a referee controversy. Rarely are the managers going to have a go at each other. Players aren’t out to hurt each other. The club plays the kids. And the kids just play football the way that makes them happy – open and full of self-expression.
Arsenal beat Colorado Rapids last night 3-0 and it was everything I love about pre-season football. Ok, so it was a little sloppy. Kolasinac looks unfit (he never looks fully fit). But the players were laughing and joking on the sideline and the game was pretty free-flowing and fun.
Bukayo Saka opened the scoring with a nice little chip but it was the pass from Nketiah which set up the goal which was the real treat. I felt sorry for Nketiah, he wanted to score so bad, but if I could say anything to him I would just tell him that pass made the goal – he saw Saka make a run and filtered the pass between the defense.
Olayinka scored the second, a wonderful little shot from outside the box, curled into the corner, unstoppable. I know I’m often critical of long distance shots but that’s because they are typically low percentage chances. I think, however, if you have 10 yards of space, no one closing you down, and the keeper rooted, you take that shot EVERY TIME. Especially in pre-season!
And then Martinelli scored off his chest! I mean, does it get any better than that?
I’m not going to be too negative because it’s a pre-season game. I like the physical presence of Medley, Chambers was ok at center back, Laca-Ozil-Auba came on and almost got a 4th, and Mustafi didn’t really make any mistakes.
All in all, it was fun.
And I wake up this morning to the news that Arsenal have matched Tottenham’s bid for Saliba. That Arsenal are going to go back in for Tierney (I admit this isn’t a huge priority for me but man we need a win). And that Josh Kroenke has responded to the #WeCareDoYou with a statement.
He doesn’t really address any of the issues we raised and instead deflects with a thing about Arsenal signing players. The #WeCareDoYou statement wasn’t just “spend some money” we want to see more passion from the owners, we would like to see what the club say about the Super League, we want to see the club work harder to make more tickets available to people on match day and take up the issue of safe standing. Signings will be nice and I expect that we will see some soon but the statement wasn’t just grousing about transfer dithering.
There was one part of his reply that I am slightly concerned with it’s this:
“If anyone is ever going to question anything about our ownership – which I view as a custodianship, the supporters trust us to be a custodian of the values – that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to win whilst also respecting the values and traditions of the club.”
I’m super curious to hear what he thinks “the values and traditions of the club” are. People often say “the values of the club” but then never talk about what those values are. Let’s have that discussion.
I dislike preseason football. The game is meaningless unless someone gets hurt. Since those are the only stakes, I don’t have any fun watching.
Saka on the left wing? Thought he was a bellerin replacement. So desperately wish emery had the courage to blood some more youth during the desperate times at the end of last season. Chicken and egg problem.
Agree. We should have taken a few chances with Nketiah, Saka, etc at the end. It could hardly have gone worse than it did, and maybe we would have gotten the 1-2 points that would have made the difference.
I not impressed with the quality of Josh Kroenke’s answer. I don’t think he’d be able to impress me with anything he’d say unless it was “we’ve managed to convince Messi to play his final years at Arsenal and pair him with MBappe”. I would be genuinely impressed.
I am pleased however, the KSE bothered to respond at all, even if it was to regurgitate the same old platitudes. I think it’s a positive sign that it was deemed necessary to reply and quickly.
If KSE can manage a proper management transition to this most tribal of all sport (football outside of North America) then…them we have a chance of success.
I still find it difficult to convey to Canadians ana Americans the degree of passion and interest among vast millions of fans supporters all around the world.
It’s not that NA fans aren’t passionate but we all know there really is no equivalent to Arsenal/S&#rs or say, Roma/Lazio. If you could somehow quantify passion on a scale of 1 (meh) to 10 (bloody bonkers/bats#@t crazy), the amount of the global Gooners on the high end would much higher than the LA Rams.
If KSE can manage to that audience expectation there will surely be light at then end of this particular tunnel.
Up the Arsenal
Yankees/Red Sox is about that level of involvement. And has been going on for nearly as long.
athletico have spent £176 million and recouped £279 million selling griezmann hernandez etc.https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/atletico-madrid/transfers/verein/13
Rodri is going to be an incredible signing for Man City.
Dude, I’ll see your Arsenal/Spuds and Roma/Lazio with (Oakland) Raiders/(San Diego) Chargers, Longhorns/Aggies, Longhorns/Sooners, Michigan/Ohio State, and Gators/Seminoles.
Let’s not be condescending in our discussions about passion…
Lonestar-historically, all those rivalries are excellent examples of tribalism in American sports, though I daresay the hatred of the other side may not extend into daily life as much as it does in football.
BUT, due to conference realignment caused by tv deals (sound familiar?) the Longhorns/Aggies rivalry is no longer as captivating. Neither is the UF/FSU. Sure, some old fans still get worked up, but it’s not the same. Not with Nick Saban’s Man City running things. It’s all about taking Bama down.
It’s more like if Arsenal and Roma left their respective domestic leagues to join the UEFA Super League and still played Spuds/Lazio once in a while. It’s not lost on me that given the current state of the club, it could just as easily be Spuds that would invited to the Supaleague but Spurs are hilarious and would find a way to bungle it.. and these trying times call for laughter, not tears.
Fair play…but, as a Longhorn, if you give a “gig ’em” or “horns down” sign in the wrong place and wrong time (even today), you’re likely to catch a beating.
I wholeheartedly agree, however, it’s all about beating Bama (jeebus, I heat the SEC)…
You’re not wrong about it still mattering for those who care. As an LSU fan, we share a hatred of A&M, especially after last season’s multi-overtime farce. I also hate their pseudo-military academy style and the arrogance with which they claim to be the “12th man.” My love of LSU pairs well with my love of Arsenal-good teams, can never quite make the jump to greatness, at least while I’ve watched them., also suffering from the rise of a nearby competitor-which I attribute completely to their good fortune in getting Saban, not unlike Chelski and City’s success being caused by their benefactor’s millions.
For me, the biggest think that the letter should have addressed is about accountability. Showed that this ownership or rather custodianship, will took the hard road if people that they trust to run the club doesn’t perform to the standard of the club. Instead, what I’ve seen is about patient for these people. The good news is they seems to react more from the fans, although we’re supposed to just suppprt the club, and it will be up to us to pressurise the ownership if the people that they trust, doesn’t do their job up to our standard aka value of the club.
“We’re trying to win whilst also respecting the values and traditions of the club.”
Now, apologies for defecating on your otherwise positive post (I generally don’t really notice pre-season too much. I consciously switch off unless something concrete happens, transfer-wise; I like when we play young players – but don’t get too optimistic about their chances during a season due to years of under-use, and generally try to remain stress-free as a result. I’m a tinderbox of anxiety, so it’s the best way of getting through an Arsenal summer. Having said that, your post made me re-think that a little!)
That quote makes me laugh – bitterly, unfortunately. Years of politics where “British values” are espoused yet rarely defined concretely beyond pat generalisations that indicate our so-called values could have come from any mature democracy (and many others) on earth have made me cynical of such jargonistic anti-language. British politicians have become expert at shoehorning “British values” into speeches and interviews as a means of stirring cheap, needling patriotism in voters, and I strongly suspect that’s the intent with Kroenke’s intervention.
I think the letter co-signed by many Arsenal writers summed things up very nicely indeed. I’m prepared to see the positive in getting Kroenke to sneak anything at all from under that monster moustache of his, but I am a long way from believing he will alter the course of his ownership that much beyond the current drift.
I think “values” as a term for expressing why one entity differs from another is, particularly because of political (and corporate) overuse, a concept that’s been much abused. As a result, it’s almost meaningless to me. I don’t know if I could tell you what makes the “values” of Arsenal FC any different from those of any other FC (I bet even Tottenham – owned by someone living in the tax haven of Bahamas – or Chelsea…well, you all know about Abramovich, I’m sure – would say almost the same thing word for word). And maybe it’s because it’s not the values I like or dislike – if I was that bothered about values I’d have long given up on football, and Arsenal, for many reasons (not least of which being that Arsenal were in the vanguard of tax avoiding football clubs – well, at least in court-case terms!)
If Arsenal is “relatively” decent (and then another definition-argument begins!) I can close my eyes, count to ten, and move on. My own “values” are in fact mutable to a degree, when I come up against something that appears to be in my blood. There are many, many things I’ve been prepared to alter, behaviours changed, because I thought the values I held were too important not to, but football, and Arsenal, seem to be – at least for now – immune from that process. Arsenal, for me, isn’t about values, but about simple loyalty to the club I grew up with as a kid. I suspect, therefore – especially due to the global nature of this blog – that “values” might mean different things to different people.
From the Arsenal site:
What we stand for
Arsenal Football Club exists to make our fans proud wherever they are in the world and however they choose to follow us.
That pride is driven by success on the pitch. This means winning trophies. It also comes through our style of play, our focus on developing youth talent, our magnificent stadium, our broader contribution in the community and our self-financing approach.
How we work
Everyone who works for Arsenal Football Club understands that we will fulfil our goal of making fans proud by being together, always moving forward and doing things the Arsenal way. This final element is a key ingredient of who we are. It’s about thinking about others, getting the detail right and going above and beyond expectations.
I thought the letter could have been better (not include stuff about shares bought by Kroenke or put stadium atmosphere entirely on the club) but I get that there were multiple parties involved in drafting it. I also don’t agree with or understand the part about the Super League.
But I was in support because it avoided being outraged, and as you say encouraged more involvement/engagement from the owner. We care.. Do you? Challenging, but not inflammatory.
Unfortunately, the people involved made it into a protest. I don’t think this helps. Far more could be achieved using this as a starting point for discussions and communication (which I thought was the aim) A protest assumes bad faith from the owners. No one is going to be too forthcoming after that. Not when they have the power.
Also, some of the signatories are not what you would call inspiring. Maybe if you’d held a fan outreach and asked for some concerns/suggestions to be listed in the letter there’d be larger support.
Apparently the “Arsenal values” doesn’t cover paying all staff at least the real living wages which is set at whopping £1per hour higher than the government defined living wage.
According to the Living Wage Foundation only three PL clubs do so currently and Arsenal are not one of them.
Ironically , Roman’s Chelsea are.
Values my a$$ , lol
It’s been a couple of years or more since this issue came up. At the time Arsenal said they’ll pay all their employees the living wage, and in the future would have contractors pay it as well, but will not try to renegotiate existing contracts.
Not sure how true it was then and how it turned out.
Josh Kroenke didn’t say anything in that statement.
What’s needed is a bullet-point mission statement, so we can all interpret from the outside what the club is attempting to do. eg;
AFC will run on a financially sustainable model in keeping with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) principles;
AFC will prioritize youth development and the promotion of homegrown, academy talent over roster building through the transfer market;
AFC will emphasize the recruitment of players and staff that fit with the club’s ambition to play a high tempo, possession-based style of football
…
and so on. That’s all we want I think. Then we KNOW why things are being done the way they’re being done. But the open letter was right – it’s all haphazard at the moment, swings and misses.
“The values and traditions of the club?”
It’s code for the continuation of conservative spending.
I just hope the kids can do it on a cold wet wednesday up in manchester.
when I first supported arsenal in 1970 it never occured to me that I should worry that the bus driver or tea lady gets paid £8.75 an hour.
Agreed! Not something I was thinking about when feeling miserable after the ’78 final either! But I’m glad it’s now comfortably on my radar. Not just for Arsenal, but it’s definitely more personal knowing about Arsenal’s policy.
I really liked Zach Medley game last night. Strong physical presence and enough pace to deal with the counter attacks when required. Hope he gets a run out during some cup /Europa games.
his passing was bad though.
Thanks for the post Tim. Nice description of a decent preseason runout.
AJ @ 10:19 AM
Hindsight is always 20/20. There is no way a manager who still has a chance to get his club into 4th place can use those critical end of the season games to blood youth. Blooding youth should never be a higher priority then getting results and getting back to the CL. Emery would rightfully have been crucified and hopefully sacked immediately if it had gone down that route.
I think part of the reason the Kronke’s have been so passive for the last decade was inertia that developed when they bought into Arsene Wenger’s reputation for club building and management. Arsene wanted to run the entire football side of the club by himself and the Kronke’s let him run do that without much interference. Since the club had no other football people on the board it was always easier to just maintain the status quo and hope rather then face the daunting task of rebuilding the front office from scratch. They have certainly been more aggressive in the last couple of years and its going to take time to rebuild a club that can compete and there will be some missteps along the way.
I blame Sir Chips! 🙄
I agree with a statement Tim made the other day and we have been stagnant for about 10 years. In terms of the number of points we have collected we have been closer to the 5th team then to 1st in every since since 07/08. We have not won a CL round of 16 game in this decade. Stagnation can only last so long and eventually the fall out of the top 4 was inevitable. . I think the Kronke’s were willing to maintain the status quo as long as we found a way to finish in the top 4 every season and they did not decide it was time for a change until we dropped into the Europa League. Hindsight is 20/20 but they should have been much more aggressive a lot sooner.