Peter Le Beau
It might be my imagination, but I don’t think it is. There seems to be rejoicing in the kingdom that United have finally got their man. It got a bit dodgy with mean old Arsenal holding out for a king’s ransom, but all is well now.
Last week after the Olympics, the papers were full of how greedy and avaricious footballers are. This week they are so happy that RvP has got the move of his dreams. It’s profoundly depressing yet again to lose our star player, especially to hated rivals, and for Arsenal fans it takes the gloss of what looked like being a much more promising season. We could still lose Walcott and Song, too. Perhaps Ivan and Arsène are planning the most painful way and time to break that to us?
I love Arsenal Football Club. They are one of the major joys of my life, but they can leave me feeling so frustrated. I have been trying to rationalise this, and I think I have reached a conclusion that is fair but very disturbing - Arsenal never tell you the real truth.
I work in business consultancy, and we have a term there which is a big buzz-word in current usage. It is “transparency” - ie no secrets, no smoke and mirrors, and an acceptance that the supporters who are, as has been acknowledged this week, the most loyal and important people involved in a football club, should have a real understanding of the way their club is run.
I’m not a shareholder, so have never attended the annual presentation to shareholders in person, but I have been to the Gazidis meeting where he comes clean on what is really going on at the club. Except I don’t believe Arsenal have any intention of coming clean about what is really going on behind the doors in Highbury House or wherever the Board meet. They always hold as much as they can back, but pour out copious details of things like their work in the community. It’s very laudable, but it’s not why people sacrifice holidays or new cars to buy season-tickets.
The closest I have ever been to any sort of dialogue with the powers that be at the club was just after the bond-issue, where I had a couple of meetings with David Dein and George Graham. I announced myself to Dein as a Gooner-contributor and his comment was that at least I wasn’t Tony Willis, the then bête-noir of the board who edited another Arsenal fanzine!
I fully accept and always have that no club can open up all its business dealings to the supporters or the media. Competitors will get to see things they shouldn’t - that’s true for all businesses, but at Arsenal there is something fundamental we never really understand.
The club portray their position as a decent, honest organisation, trying to trade sustainably in a very skewed environment with rivals who would never be able to behave in the way they do if they didn’t have billionaire owners chucking around money willy-nilly. I accept that. I detest the fact that the man who effectively controls the club deigns to visit us twice a year, for a couple of days at a time. Let’s just say his financial investment might be large but his emotional investment is miniscule compared to the average supporter. Nevertheless if (and it’s the biggest ‘if’ in football) Financial Fair Play does take effect - and it seems to be scaring Citeh and leaving Chelsea totally unfazed - we do need to run our club sensibly. But everybody knows by now that we have a very manageable debt-ratio, that we make serious profits every year, and that we have an almost zero net transfer spend - every season!
Everyone understood that moving to a new stadium was a stretch, and it has been managed well, but we should be moving into a new era now. That good housekeeping should be paying dividends, but the RvP sale (followed by the Song sale) will bring in an amount just north of what we have paid out on three good-quality signings so far. Throw in (hopefully) the sale of Vela, Bartley, Arshavin and the world’s finest striker, Bendtner, and lo and behold - we will show a small profit!! Yet again, the club are investing virtually nothing in improving the squad while expecting the fans to pay the highest prices in world football in the meantime.
I’ve yet to mention Wenger. I loved Ferguson’s description of him as a man “who could run a poker school in Govan”. He is as terminally tight as they come. In some ways, he (usually) sells high, albeit reluctantly, and yet, when he buys a player, something stops him paying more than £15 million. He just can’t do it. He’d probably go to £17 million for Messi or Ronaldo but not a penny more.
Is this because he’s just parsimonious, or is he under orders from a Board that won’t tell the fans what the real situation is? The ridiculous thing is that nobody knows. PHW, the loveable old duffer and friend of the Daily Star, keeps telling us that Wenger has a mandate from the Board to pay £30 million on a player, but Wenger tends to suggest in his press conferences that this is not an option for a club like Arsenal. Is Wenger such a noble man that he is prepared to draw the flak that should rightly be directed at the Board?
Note those four words I used—“a club like Arsenal”. The way Arsenal is positioned, it should be thinking a lot bigger than it does. Arsenal, Wenger, Gazidis et al, and ultimately we the fans, are victims of the Board’s unwillingness to project ambitiously enough into the future. Top players and agents see this, and view Arsenal as a stepping-stone to the top, a rung on the ladder to Old Trafford or the Nou Camp. Would it hurt us to take the sort of gamble once in a while that Fergie has just done on van Payslip, sorry - Persie? I’d love to see Wenger spluttering, apoplectically, at the press conference next to a bona fide world superstar, but it’s just not going to happen. The problem is that we don’t know whether that’s because Wenger is too mean, the Board are too limited in their vision, or Silent Stan (what an addition to the ranks of the non-communicators at the club!) is sitting in Denver (or wherever he plots his dastardly schemes) balancing the value of a new holding-midfielder for Arsenal against a wide receiver for the Los Angeles Rams.
We press and stress and demand answers and we get none from official quarters – at least none that really get to the heart of the problem. Arsenal affect to communicate in an open way but tell us nothing - no fees paid, no agent’s commissions rendered and no detailed breakdown of player contracts. Excellent forensic analysis from the likes of Swiss Rambler tells us a story that the fans who are the people who have bankrolled this club for 125 years could never learn and which suggests that Arsenal have a cash mountain that the Glazers would die to have. Yet United and Barcelona and the upstarts from Moss Side, Citeh, rape us every year.
The club tell us that Financial Fair Play will change the dynamics of football and we will have the last laugh. I’m not one of those who believes FFP will be a mirage, but I also can’t see UEFA taking on and winning an argument with the richest clubs in the world. If FFP does bite, I can’t see this Board having the balls to grasp the nettle and make our new financial clout count. If it doesn’t, it gives them an excuse to whinge pathetically that the world is just not fair.
This will continue until this club either decides to take the financial handbrake off or Kroenke (who has never sold a share yet in his life) decides to take a profit and stop being abused by these noisy limeys. In the meantime, a good start would be some true transparency about where the club really stands and, in so doing, letting the fans know who really lacks the courage to take the next step. But with this lot in charge, I won’t hold my breath!
