Kevin Whitcher
Tim Stillman tweeted at the start of the season that the official programme was “a souvenir for many out of habit - particularly older supporters. Because they don't sell as well nowadays, what's in them is actually really good - the quality has had to go up to try and chase sales.” I’d earlier stated, “contents-wise, I find there is a lot of chaff”, although in fairness, Tim’s very occasional offerings are amongst the more readable content. Anyway, I thought I’d purchase the first programme of the season for the game against Man City and see if there had actually been an improvement.
The general problem with the vast majority of matchday programmes issued by any club is that they tend to be formulaic, and the content bland rather than genuinely imaginative or thought provoking. There are exceptions. I recall Aberdeen’s programme often carried good articles, often about football subjects that had no direct relation to the club, but would have been of interest to their football-loving readership. West Brom generally produce an excellent read, although they break a lot of the rules, with long articles, often on the subject of past times, and relatively little by the way of the uninteresting staple features generally found elsewhere.
Anyway, onto this season’s Arsenal programme. As other clubs have done in the past, each front cover this season will be in the style of a cover design from a past era, and we started with one in the style of the 1974-75 front cover (the one with the Arsenal wall breaking to try and block a free-kick). There is a two page feature on this inside, with writing about the design and the contents from that season, and it counts as a worthwhile short feature, so thumbs up for this one.
I’ll list the other stuff which did hold some interest for this reader, although none of it really leapt out greatly.
* The four page player interview isn’t too bad
Some of the historical section (under the banner ‘100 Consecutive Years In The Top Flight’), specifically…
* A brief recollection of a past game, with photographs
* Five of ‘100 Reasons to Love the Arsenal’
* Three pages recalling a particular past season
* In the section on the opposition, Michael Cox’s scouting report
* A four page Q&A feature with one of the current squad, titled ‘Life At The Top’, half of which is actually interesting
* ‘Chalkboard’ – in the stats section, a focus on a particular player in a recent game
As the pick of the content, my major criticism would be that, having something that is actually interesting to read about, why not expand the more suitable of these into a longer, in-depth read? So run ‘100 Reasons to Love Arsenal’ over five seasons, and go into some more detail about one in each programme – tell the story properly, be it the singing constable Alex Morgan or the story of the Clock End clock from the initial selection.
Anyway, what else is there? The manager’s notes carry the same sort of message Unai Emery has offered in his press conferences, although there is no captain’s column for this game because Laurent Koscielny was apparently still on his holidays. ‘Voice of Arsenal’ is a series of eight potpourri news pages you can quickly gloss over. The academy get eight pages. I find it hard to get stimulated by detailed coverage of the youths, although a roll call of the players released by the club during the summer kind of says it all.
There are some visual fillers alongside the better stuff in the ‘100 Consecutive Years In The Top Flight’ section, before the women’s team get a couple of pages, and there are six pages profiling the opposition. Two community pages are classic chaff, and there is coverage of the club’s pre-season friendlies, mainly visual. The inside back cover has a questionnaire with a fan – ‘My Arsenal’, which is doubtless a thrill for the supporter concerned, but nobody else.
Ultimately, it’s an opportunity missed. People who are going to habitually buy the programme (and it’s a dwindling number) will do so anyway, even if the club do actually break out and try and do something a bit less conservative. By doing that, its reputation may be enhanced and more might start buying it, me for one. Arsenal’s programme is well-designed, there’s no question about that, but there is a surfeit of bland informational writing with little in the way of life. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but not £3.50’s worth unfortunately.
