Gunnerblog

AGM: Angst, Grumbles and Moaning

1,158 comments October 26th, 2012

Before you read this piece, I highly recommend the excellent write-up of the AGM by Hayley Wright for Arseblog News.  It gives you all the relevant detail on the piece, and makes sense of everything that follows this.

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We’ll never know now, but if Arsenal had gone in to this AGM on the back of two victories rather than two defeats, I suspect it would have been a rather different affair.  Not in terms of content: many of the points raised by the shareholders yesterday would remain valid.  I can’t help but feel, however, that the tone would have been rather different.  Reports of yesterday’s meeting sound more like a stroppy teenager questioning a belligerent parent than any kind of constructive debate.

In the rather catty dialogue, both parties are at fault.  The heckling and jeering from the supporters who were present simply does not help.  Nor does the patronising and dismissive tone employed by chairman Peter Hill-Wood.  By the end of yesterday’s events things seem to have taken on a pantomimic tone, and the result is a plethora of headlines about “revolt” and “restless natives”.

I think it is possible to ask probe and even pressurise, to drive at the heart of the matter, and ask the questions that sorely need to be asked without resorting to the bitter register adopted yesterday.  I think that a man standing up and asking how he is supposed to explain to his ten-year old son that Robin van Persie has left is adopting emotive language that adds little to the debate.  His ten year old son will cope.  There are plenty of men entering their forties now who survived Liam Brady’s departure for Juventus, and most of them seem to have escaped any lasting damage.

Whilst I don’t doubt that some of the fans present at the AGM are experts in football finance, I do feel that the majority of our fanbase seem very quick to forge opinions on the economic policy of our club without the necessary expertise to undertake such a role.  I would refer such fans to the Q&A with Tom Fox and Mark Gonella, our Head of Marketing and Head of Communications respectively.  From my unashamedly ill-informed perspective, this new team do seem to know what they’re doing.  Granted, their appointments could have come sooner, but it’s better late than never, and news of a forthcoming £25m kit deal with Adidas is evidence of the work they’re undertaking.

I have to say that as a rule I’m far more interested in events on the field of play.  It’s when economic matters impact upon our performance on the pitch that my interest is piqued.

In general, I’m a fan of the “self-sufficient model”.  It is not just admirable – if FFP does come in to play, it will swiftly become necessary.  However, I do understand some fans’ concerns that our penny-pinching is leading to stagnation.  The question has to be asked: Self-sufficiency is all very well, but what exactly are we sustaining?  A competitive team?  Not really.  The status of the club?  Barely.  We’re sustaining a very functional, very well run business.  We won’t be going under any time soon; everyone gets paid on time; debt is minimal.  But all the while we tick over, trophyless in fourth spot, our stock falls just a little.  Talismanic players continue to leave, and we’re perceived as a feeder club to Europe’s giants.

Arsene, of course, would argue that we’re not truly ‘trophyless’.  In an intriguing speech, he said:

“For me, there are five trophies – the first is to win the Premier League, the second is to win the Champions League, the third is to qualify for the Champions League, the fourth is to win the FA Cup and the fifth is to win the League Cup.

I say that because if you want to attract the best players, they do not ask: ‘did you win the League Cup?’, they ask you: ‘do you play in the Champions League?

I say that as well, because recently we had a meeting in Geneva about when a manager is in some situations, what does he do? For example, a guy came out with a problem. He said ‘I played the semi-final of the Europa League at home and three days later, I played the decisive game in the championship to qualify for the Champions League.

And I was thinking ‘what do I do?’ Do I go for the semi-final of the Europa League? Or do I go for the qualifier in the Champions League?’ And the whole meeting was about that decision.

What came out as a 90 per cent conclusion, is that all the managers said ‘if you take care of you, you go for the semi-final of the Europa League. If you take care of the club, you go for the Champions League position.’ And that’s what we do, always.”

It’s an interesting debate – one that’s almost too big to open within this blog.  In Arsene’s defence, I’ll say this: every so often, such as in the light of Wednesday’s defeat to Schalke, I’ll hear fans saying: “Maybe it’d be better if we didn’t qualify for the Champions League one year.  That’s shake things up at last; show the board.”

Let me tell you now: no good would come of such a thing.  Would you rather win the League Cup and miss out on the top four?  Really?  I’ll give you one last chance to rethink that before I hit you with this: that’s what Liverpool did last year.  It got Kenny Dalglish sacked.  It meant the players they bought in the summer were from clubs like Swansea and Heerenveen.  They missed out on a player from Fulham – to Spurs, of all people.  They currently sit 12th in the table.  It is not a recipe for success.

Top players want to play in the Champions League.  And we need to top players in order to win a trophy.  The problem we currently have is that there are three sides in Britain who are comfortably better than us.  No Arsenal player in his right mind would move to another club other than that Chelsea, United and City.  From this position, we need to move up once more in to those echelons, not down to join the Liverpools of this world.  I think we’re one disastrous season away from that happening, and it doesn’t bear thinking about.

To move up, of course, requires investment.  I still believe we have the right manager.  I still, just about, believe we have the right board.  But whichever of those two entities truly holds the purse strings (and my firm belief remains that the reluctance to spend comes primarily from Arsene) needs to loosen up a bit.  Cazorla and Podolski show you don’t have to spend crazy money to get quality players.

If the AGM had been a month or so ago, it might have been a very self-satisfied affair.  The new signings looked inspired, we were defensively solid, and being talked about as genuine contenders.  That AGM would have been misleading: it would have overlooked some of the crucial issues that it was essential to raise yesterday.  But by the same token, a couple of bad results shouldn’t cast an ugly light across the entire club.  Arsenal don’t need saving: they just need to get a bit better.  Starting tomorrow.

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Pssssst.  I found a few (a very few) of these in a cupboard.  Half a dozen, to be precise.  If you missed out on them last time, grab yours quickly.  But don’t talk too loudly about it.  We wouldn’t want to jinx anything.