There is absolutely no doubt about it, Arsenal stand at a forked road, to the left is the abyss (Think Blackwall Tunnel at rush hour). A rocky, pothole-filled side road where we limply try and compete with the big boys, peeling away aging substandard players with faded reputations, or young player lost in their careers because of previous application issues. Down here, we invest in haggard ideas, journeyman staff, and bland football.

To the right is the footballing equivalent of the yellow brick, where we settle on an exciting vision for the future and skip down to Emerald City, where I believe a Champions League medal awaits. Down here we take chances, invest in bold ideas, empower our staff to innovate toward excellence and run their departments independently, structure the club around transparent decision making, and make the football stand for something. This path is not easy, but it sets us up for a brighter future. The road may not be paved with gold, but it could be further down the line. This road is honest about who we are and realistic about how we achieve success.

That’s why the hire for our first technical director is so incredibly important. We need an idea. We need something to rally around. We need to reshape 3 very confused transfer windows. We need to avoid careening off the road into a ditch of insignificance.

Last week I profiled Andrea Berta. As a refresher, he’s delivered two Champions League final appearances on a net spend of 13m euros a season. His total net spend over 6 seasons is £6m more than we spend last summer.

It is not acceptable to say that Arsenal cannot compete within our financial constraints. We just need to have a better plan than the current one.

Today, I am covering one of the great minds of the game, both on the playing front, and on the operational side of the business.

Profile: Ralph Rangnick, Red Bull

A legend in managerial and coaching circles, Rangnick has been the top guy at 13 clubs, he has many achievements to talk of, from taking Schalke to runners up in the league, to his stellar work moving tiny Hoffenheim up two divisions and cementing them mainstays of the Bundesliga, but for most, no achievement can eclipse the incredible work he’s been doing at the Red Bull football franchise which now encompasses 4 clubs in Austria, Germany, Brazil, and America.

He joined as the Sporting Director of Salzburg and Leipzig in 2012. The German club moved up the divisions rapidly, hitting the Bundesliga 2 with two straight promotions. He spent a couple of seasons there, even dropping into management himself after failing to hook Thomas Tuchel as his appointment in the summer of 2015. He won promotion that season, resigning at the end to focus on his Sporting Director duties, he then appointed Ralph Hassenhutl to takeover. The team went undefeated in their first 13 games, a record for a promoted team, and made Europe in their first season, qualifying for the Champions League.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that the much-derided Leipzig franchise has seen gate attendances go from 2,000 to 39,000 a game under Ralph. He knows how to build clubs successfully, and he knows how to attract the fans with a brand of football that is high intensity, aggressive and fun to watch.

He’s fondly known as the professor, like Arsene Wenger, though he has a more rigorous philosophy when it comes to football and business than the Frenchman . He works to the three Ks (wouldn’t call it that in New York)… Kapital, Konzept and Kompetenz (Money, concept, and competence).

“If those three things come together, then you can be successful. If you only have one or two of them, it’s more difficult,”

“Our club is always reduced to the financial muscle of its owner. There are lots of clubs in the Bundesliga like that. Put it this way, the Bundesliga table doesn’t correlate with clubs’ budgets. If it did, the table would look very different.”

Red Bull sure have money, no doubt about that. But there’s also a smart philosophy in how they spend that cash, something Arsenal sorely lack these days. Here he is speaking to The Blizzard.

‘The difference between us and other clubs is that when we sign or scout new players, we are fishing in a very small pond. We only interested in players aged between 17 and 23, as from our experience, when you are 23 you are no longer a talent. If you look at other clubs and their development, you can see that players start their careers earlier than 10 years ago and finish earlier too. So we are only scouting those players. The maximum age is 23. The second difference is that in both clubs, we try to implement and play the same style of football and of course between the two clubs, we make use of synergies that can be developed out of those two factors.’

‘When Mr Mateschitz called me, the average age of the two squads was 29. In fact, it was almost 30 at Salzburg and 29 in Leipzig. The players they were signing were signing their last contracts. When he asked what I would change I said, “The commercial slogan says, ‘Red Bull gives you wings’. The target market [for Red Bull] is 16-25, and young people don’t identify themselves with 30 year olds, so you need players the same age or slightly older.” So we have changed the average age in Salzburg to 24 and in Leipzig it’s similar. We have reduced the average age of the whole squad by four years in the last two seasons.’

He also set the vision across all his clubs on how the club should play.

‘Here are the principles: one, add maximum possibility to the team and act, don’t react. So you need to dictate the game with and without the ball, not through individuals. Two, use numerical superiority and let the ball run directly whenever possible, with no unnecessary individual action and with no fouls. Three, use transitions, switch quickly. Try to win back the ball within five seconds with aggressive pressing. After winning the ball back, play quickly straight away, play direct and vertically towards the opponent’s goal, surprise the disorganised opponent to get into the penalty area and shoot within ten seconds of winning the ball back.’

‘At Hoffenheim, we did research and showed that the likelihood of scoring is within eight seconds of winning back the ball. In training we have a countdown clock and the target is to score within 10 seconds. Jürgen Klopp has said that the best playmaker is ‘perfect counter-pressing’. So four, the more a team sprints (i.e. the more the players sprint) faster to win back the ball then there is a greater likelihood they will score a goal once they have won it back quickly.’

This is what focus looks like. This is why you can’t be satisfied with loose ideas like ‘contacts’ based transfer strategies. This is why having a belief system when it comes to how you play is so important.

The second layer of interest in how the Red Bull operation operates is how they are not only a factory for players, they are also a hothouse for the best young coaches in football. Rangnick is one of the best mentors in football. He helped oversee the education of Julian Nagelsmann who is making the trip back to the loving arms of his mentor next summer in Leipzig. Ralph Hassenhutl went from a very adept organiser of defences, to combining it with the powerful attacking energy of the Rangnick pressing philosophy. Roger Schmidt passed through Salzburg. PSG made a world record purchase for an assistant when they landed Zsolt Low last summer.

I would also guess that the F1 analytics team partner with the football guys to build advanced analytics models to assess performance in novel ways. Just a guess though…

Things get very interesting when it comes to Red Bull and money. On the face of it, the German club is a mini-Chelsea. They have made a huge outlay over the past 8 years dropping a whopping 160m euros in expenditure. The money has been well spent because they’re competing for CL, but it’s hard to say they’ve had many constraints on what they’ve been doing.

However, when you look at the Austrian club at the same time, you start to see the smarts behind the Red Bull machine. Salzburg, who have been incredibly successful themselves have spent 63m euros in that time, but recouped a whopping 201m euros.

When you even that out, the total net spend between clubs is 22.3m euros. Not bad with two clubs making the Champions League qualifications 2017.

It’s also interesting to see that Leipzig like to raid Salzburg. The German team sent 89m euros their way, which would actually mean that the Red Bull franchise made 66m euros building all that success.

Additionally, look at some of the names that have passed through the club.

Saido Mane, Naby Keita, Emile Forsberg, Timo Werner, Joshua Kimmich… these are not poor players.

Now, I know that the Bundesliga is weaker than the Premier League, but Arsenal spent 83m euros in one summer. Are you still going to tell me that it is an impossibility for us to come up with a sharper plan than the one we’re currently adopting?

The Red Bull owner isn’t into football according to Rangnick, ‘Mr Mateschitz said to me when we first met in 2012 that he’s not a football man but he has a vision and this is what I like most about him.’

Sadly, we don’t have an owner with a vision or any real ambition for Arsenal. However, I truly believe if we made the right hire for the Technical Director role, success would follow. If you hire in folk with a vision and the drive to deliver it, you don’t need an owner to be checking in and micro-managing (see the LA Rams where I’ve read that Stan isn’t heavily involved).

So in conclusion, a man like Rangnick shows how you can implement a vision across 4 clubs and succeed. He’s created a school of excellence for managers, he’s mapped a vision of how the football should be played, he’s worked out a business model that allows him to farm talent between his clubs and make big profits in the process, he’s also delivered unbelievable results in a short space of time.

Arsenal do not need 5 years to unfuck the dying days of Arsene Wenger. We do not need MBS to inject £100b into our team to move the club forward (would be nice, but be real, I’d not last long). We need someone with an exciting plan to move us forward. Who that will be, I have no idea, but there are plenty of exciting names I will continue to explore while we wait.

P.S. Listen to the podcast and follow my guest on Twitter who is @TopicalStorm (Grover)

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