John Evans
Interesting times lie ahead for our club over the next couple of months or so and I don’t just mean in terms of whether or not we manage to hold our nerve and win enough games to get over the line and win the Premier League trophy for the first time in seven years. We as a club seem to be at a crossroads. Some of us fans seem to be more than happy with the way the club seems to be moving forward, battling against the super rich powers of the modern game in Chelsea and Manchester City, not to mention Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham. Whilst other fans seem to be getting more and more frustrated at the apparent lack of forward momentum as we have failed to lift any trophies in virtually six long hard frustrating seasons. We pay top money to support our club week in week out so why not as a club splash just a little bit more cash on a few extra players a season and become winners again?
It really is a fascinating debate and one that other clubs simply do not have. We have grown a mentality of our own as a club in recent seasons and this new mentality has supporters and pundits alike both pulling their hair out in frustration and licking their lips in anticipation. Which side of the fence do you stand on? And more to the point which side of the fence should we all be stood on?
The answer to this question is a complex one and one that may well for me sum up the state of the modern day game. For me the answer that you give to the above question may well tell me the answer to another question and that is one of where in the ground do you sit? I took a poll to the streets before the recent Sunderland game and asked 100 supporters the above question and the answers were interesting. Out of the 100 people I asked 64 said that in general they were happy with the way the club was being run out of these 64 happy go lucky people 23 were people that sat in club level. 36 out of the 100 asked answered they were not happy and out of that total of 36 none sat in club level.
The last five or six seasons have seen a new breed of football fan arrive at our club and it is these ‘fans’ that hold the key as to why the above debate even exists. Whilst these ‘fans’ are happy to pay out a minimum of £3000 a season which is the cost of a basic club level season ticket not including extras like meals etc then the club we support will be more than happy to continue along the same old lines of ‘top four will do’ season after season.
The regular admission tickets are important to the club, they are its bread and butter if you like but what really matters these days is not the average Joe who sits in row seven of the lower tier and pays a relatively minor £900 or so a season for doing so. It is the big time Charlie who pays around £40,000 a season to be a full blooded annual member of the Diamond Club that the club we all support really cares about keeping happy.
For a large number of people that pay out this sort of money per season the end result on the field of play is far from what is on their minds when filling in the credit card details on the renewal slip every season. They have businesses and clients to entertain, ‘come down to the game this Saturday and we’ll have a five course a la Carte meal beforehand with some bubbly to celebrate the deal we have just done’. The result for these ‘fans’ is of such secondary importance that unless the opposition fits the bill in terms of making the game itself something of an event they regularly don’t bother attending and the seats go unused. The kudos gained in inviting clients to attend a regulation home league game with Wolves isn’t quite the same as getting the same clients to attend the Champions League game with Barcelona, hence the lack of atmosphere and rows and rows of empty seats at our stadium in recent times. You can hear them now after this season’s 3-2 home defeat to Spurs - ‘we lost the game today did we? Someone told me it was a local derby, oh well pass me the chardonnay would you old bean, terribly parched’.
If you are a working class person one that has supported this club through thick and thin the chances are you struggle to pay for your season ticket/matchday experience. You may even prioritise the season ticket above other shall we say more needed items, you may even have to put up with less marital bliss because of this. ‘No money for going out for a meal this weekend, well if you didn’t have that bloody season ticket maybe we could go out instead of eating a frozen pizza from ASDA all over again!’ Let us face facts, as modern day football fans that still manage to attend the stadium on a regular basis we get ripped off. I pay on average £45 for a ticket at our stadium these days, I was first taken to Highbury as a six year old in 1987 by my dad and he paid £3 for me to get in and around £6 for himself. Sure everything costs more these days but not by that much. A can of coke was around 25p in 1987 so that has roughly trebled in the same period of time whereas the cost of getting into a home Arsenal game has risen by around 750% in the same time period.
Who out of these two sets of supporters is more likely to make a fuss of the team failing to win any trophies? Who out of these supporters though is more important for the club to keep happy? The working class lower tier folk may well be keen enough to sulk for the rest of the weekend when we fail to win a game but at the end of the day if they are not managing to fork out a bare minimum of £3000 per season plus meals then Arsenal as a club can turn a blind eye to them as long as the six rows around the middle of the stadium are bought and paid for season in season out.
Try contacting the club for a general enquiry as a regular fan and see how quickly anyone responds to your needs, the same day register an interest in joining the ‘Diamond Club’ and I have the distinct feeling you wouldn’t have to wait long for your phone to be ringing. You may even get the added bonus of seeing Perry Groves before the game if you did join.
The only thing that will change in this process is if the general supporters voted with their feet and stopped renewing their season tickets en masse, but judging the situation by the size of our current waiting list, it would have to be one almighty walk out as 4,000 or so wouldn’t cut the ice. We are talking more like 20,000 general admission season tickets renewals being rejected by the fans for the club to even start to feel the pinch.
Will this happen anytime soon? I think not. The editor of this very site has aired a similar view in recent times. He seems frustrated and has gone on record in a recent article as saying until people stop renewing their season tickets nothing will change. He himself is a season ticket holder, will he be binning the renewal form when it hits the door mat? I doubt it. Do we ever hear even the slightest level of discontent aimed at the men in charge of the club at Arsenal matches? The answer is no. I can’t ever remember any chants of sack the board or Wenger out. So whilst this is the case and the season ticket renewals keep coming back to the club with credit card details on them how can anyone expect change to happen? Why would it?
Season ticket sales at Club Level have sold out for three seasons in a row now. The restaurants are full game after game. The club charge a fortune for very average food yet they can and will as it is branded as Arsenal and people lap it up. The staff in club level are all on minimum wage, most of them do not understand what top class service is all about and can also be seen plying their trade at the local Mcdonalds after 7pm on matchdays yet people still come back for more week after week after week. Every season the club opens up new fancy restaurants safe in the knowledge that people will be queueing up to pay up to £40,000 a season to use the new facilities. Do the people that pay these fees care if we win the league? The clear answer is no as everywhere around the ground is sold out time and time again.
Guess how much a general admission ticket situated in the upper tier costs for the United game in May, by the time you throw in a three course pre game buffet with complimentary drinks and a ‘free’ programme for good measure? The answer is £550. To most of us this seems ridiculous, but to some that are interested enough and have money to burn this seems to be a bargain and they will regularly purchase 10 packages just like this one every game. This is the level of supporter that our club wants and in fairness has managed to attract. This is the kind of supporter that the club would listen to and change tact for if they stayed away for longer than a season. The reason for this fact is simple economics.
If I have a burger to sell in the street and someone comes along and offers me £3 for it whereas someone else comes along before I hand it over the guy offering me £3 and asks me to add a slice of bacon to it and offers me £6 for it, the guy offering the £3 can f*** off, he isn’t getting the burger. The Arsenal experience is worth whatever people are prepared to pay for it and at the moment they are prepared to pay absolute top dollar regardless of the fact whether we win anything or not.
So the next time we fail to win a game and you get a mental image of AW in your head and feel nothing but frustration log on to the club website and click on the hospitality icon down the left hand side of the screen and the real reasons as to why he will never be removed from the club we love will become crystal clear to you. Then think again as to how important your £35 seat in the lower tier really is to the club you support.
In Wenger we trust? Well no not exactly but in Wenger we stick with and get rich? Yes that will do nicely. This ‘top four’ mentality that has taken over the club in recent seasons has clearly filtered down to our playing staff as well. For me certain players at our club seem more than happy plying their trade in mid-season against inferior opposition but when push comes to shove and results really start to matter these same players go missing on a regular basis.
Samir Nasri has been highly praised in recent times and was even classed as ‘one of the best players in the world’ by none other than our ex-stalwart Gilles Grimandi. This might have something to do with the fact that he was the man responsible for putting Samir forward as a possible transfer target to our man in charge. It goes without saying that Samir has indeed had a good season, he has improved from what he showed in his first two seasons at the club and his goal ratio looks impressive, especially when Cesc isn’t in the first XI. But if you take a closer look at the past month or so and also look at his record in the ‘big games’ his stats start to fall short. If you look back to the run-in last season where Cesc was injured and Samir played mainly in his preferred central role in midfield as the creative force driving us forward he, in my eyes, flopped miserably throughout that period and this pattern seems to be repeating itself this season just at a time when we need him most.
Could it be that the whole ethos of the club that has risen up in recent seasons due to the corporate side of the game going through the roof? It doesn’t appear to be in anyway reliant on trophies being accumulated and has grown so big and powerful that even the players themselves feel that a top four finish is all that they need to deliver for their vast wage packets to be vindicated season after season? I do get the distinct impression that this is the case. A sad state of affairs, but one that shows no sign of changing anytime soon. This is of course unless we as the ‘regular’ fans the ‘bread and butter’ gather together in demonstration to show our combined anger and frustration at the direction ‘our club’ has taken in recent seasons.
If you take a look at the impact that social media has had in recent months and how easy it is now for people en masse to organise large scale demonstrations, surely it is within the realms of reality for us through platforms like this one to organise some kind of rally or demonstration to at the very least let the club we have supported so loyally over the years know just how disheartened some of us seem to have become. As from judging by the remarks that some of us have left on this very website in recent times there must be a large number of fans that would want the opportunity to put across their message, possibly even their frustration at simply not being listened to. We really have got to the stage where we are being taken for granted in some people’s eyes.
Let us see how unhappy we really are then. We are football fans after all is said and done, we are not theatre goers who would be too embarrassed to say boo to a goose. If we really are that unhappy with the current regime we should do something about it soon or we should simply shut up and not bother going to the games in the future.
