Arsenal flood fans with GOOD and TERRIBLE news. Where should you look?

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Arsenal aren’t messing around. They are flooding fans with so much news, they don’t know where to look. It’s an avalanche that almost looks like a distraction.

First, we won the FA Cup… hooray!

Then it’s leaked that we’re going back in the Kia trough for Willian… hmmm?

Then we officially tell the world we’re laying off 55 Arsenal workers… say what?

buuuuut… Coutinho… maybe… PARTEY?

Back to lay-offs. A large chunk of that sits in the recruitment department… names like McDermott and Cagigao… SAY WHAT?

THEN the David Ornstein of Lille newspapers announced that Gabriel Magalhães will be joining Arsenal as our right-sided centre back. That’s a fucking coup. Tall, aggressive, great on the ball, and one of the hottest young defensive talents in France (video)… SEXY?

Where do you start?

First, let’s start on the redundancies aspect of things.

There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that billionaire owners have some responsibility to stand up and be counted when the world is hurting. This was Wenger back in the day.

‘What matters to me is when you have a club with 600 employees you have the money to pay them at the end of the month.’

Letting go of 55 people when society is sick is heartless. Stan K is rumoured to have personally gained over $400m during the pandemic. The Walton Family, of which he is married into, has amassed $25 billion during the pandemic. Josh K said he wanted fans to ‘be proud’, I’m not sure slashing 55 peoples livelihoods at this time levels up to those words.

The other way to look at this is pure play capitalism: Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Businesses around the world have been given the cover of a pandemic to cut the fat and get lean. It’s grim, but there’s always 10% of a workforce that could be improved, and in this moment, there’s not only substandard talent to be rid of, there are also people that have nothing to do, so why keep them?

For me, this looks like a blend of self-sustaining-business-model ‘necessity,’ opportunism… and a bit of a power grab.

The biggest sledgehammer apparently went to the scouting department. That’s where a lot of the cuts will be directed. Are we really surprised though? The 3 years of Don Raul, Sven, and Edu was not the moment the weird recruitment started. We’ve been pretty bad at bringing through the cream for a very long time, so it’s hardly a surprise leadership is looking to upgrade there.

The big question Arsenal fans will have is: What is the plan post-lay-off-shake-up looking like? At the moment, this has the feel of a dictator hollowing out government institutions to concentrate power.

Most fans are spitting feathers because we’re not hiring in expert talent, we seem to have outsourced decision-making to cronies of Raul and Edu. Jason Rosenfeld of StatDNA quit, Sven Mislintat was moved on because he despised the approach, a whole collection of youth scouts didn’t have their contracts renewed, Cagigao who was promoted post-Sven is out, and Brian McDermot has apparently been moved on. We can pay £24m for David Luiz for a year, but can’t afford scouts and some corporate admin, really?

5 or so weeks ago, Kia J, the Shadow Tech Director numero 1 said this when he was asked about David Luiz’s deal.

‘There are several issues within the whole structure that will be resolved.’

Kia isn’t just a fee printing machine and an average talent spotter, he’s also clued into Arsenal’s restructuring plans that involved people losing their jobs. That comment on Talksport Radio now looks even more disgraceful than it did at the time. How can that not be a breach of trust or some sort of corporate protocol? It’s basically him admitting that ‘problems’ at Arsenal will be resolved. What problems were they I wonder? One can only speculate. Either way, if I came out and said something like that about one of my clients in the media, I’d be kicked off the business and I’d be in big trouble.

The whole thing is very sloppy. The worst thing is that Arsenal aren’t out ahead of these very obvious PR problems. That press release doesn’t cut it with a fanbase that chases down the planes of players on transfer deadline day. Where is Raul to explain what the future holds?

I understand that staff are having conversations this week on the redundancies, so maybe they are waiting to make things official before they come forward with a plan. However, from my understanding, if you make someone redundant, you have to kill the role, or the redundant parties can file for constructive dismissal. If the scouts are being made redundant in that 55, we can’t legally replace them, so we’ll be running with a severely depleted department or relying on junior talent to pick up a lot of important slack.

We’ll have to wait and see where that lands because I’m sure Arsenal’s head of HR is well aware of the law and will have made sure Arsenal has the maximum flex to do what is best for the club.

Regardless, I’ll say it again, days like this remind you that Arsenal is not being run properly. The lack of leadership, true expertise and empathy is palpable.

Gutting data, scouts, and dissent is not a plan, if KSE thinks it is, we’re in trouble. If cronyism is the strategy, watch Arsenal burn, I’m sure QPR fans loved it initially when Kia was pulling the strings at their place, ask them how they feel about that now. Ask Barcelona how their ‘we don’t need scouts’ approach has gone for them… no, ask Lionel Messi. We’re gravitating towards football structures most clubs are trying to get away from.

Doing things the hard way is the only way, shortcuts always end in tears, especially when super-agents are close by. Our infrastructure should be built out with elite specialists in every department. Technology and data should support experienced people making tough decisions. Our staff should feel empowered to find marginal gains, innovate processes, and eke out advantages where others aren’t looking. Raul should have the whole club pulling in the same direction with a grand vision for the ages. There should be no doubt about where his priorities lie because he should bleed Arsenal like Arteta and the fans do.

Still, there’s time for a plan. We might see it this summer. We might make some elite backroom hires in the vacant positions. We might mix it up with the players. I might be totally wrong about our leadership. This summer could be the one. My worry is that all the things I’ve told you to watch out for haven’t just happened, they’ve gotten markedly worse in a very short space of time.

This summer feels scary, promising, weird, exciting, and a little bit sad.

Fingers crossed it works out. We can’t afford another disaster. Arsenal has to get it right.

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Terraloon

Marc

Got a feeling they wanted greater capacity but Hounslow Council said no

To be fir the stadium is crammed in to a very small site

Marc

Terraloon

You also have to take accessibility / transport options.

One of the things we’re very lucky with at Arsenal – the Spud’s have terribly transport connections.

CG

Pierre

“”””You do if he does the job he’s paid to do , protect the defence..””””

Who does that job at Liverpool or City?

We should not be shelling out £50 million on another mercenary** like this Partey chap.( aged 28?)

We should be buying Declan Rice for that money.

A proper all round player.
Team him up with AMN _ and that’s a center midfield combo.

** all players with buy out clauses avoid.
They are by definition mercenary.

Terraloon

My local non league team wanted to build a new stadium on its current site.. At most the attract 1k although once every so often maybe 2k.

The current stadium currently has a capacity of 6.2k . When it was built it was 9.9k

The new stadium was going to be around 4K. The planning process was a nightmare and the transport plan had to be changed several times before eventually getting the go ahead .

In reality how people got to the games, got away from games, parked their cars etc etc didn’t change.

Habesha Gooner

http://c.newsnow.co.uk/A/1042140329?-19387:844

Of course a cunt from Tottenham thinks we should lose our best player. First and foremost we are a football team. The rest comes later.

Kesses gunner

Before AMN goes misfits first sok,hold,xhaka,kolas sell and invest on hungry players not these Brazilians mercenaries.niles is a solid utility player must stay

izzo

I love how some of you have the patience to still engage the likes of CG and Valentine with their false facts. Hey ho at least it gives for funny reading. 😀

Marc

Habesha

Why do I suspect that when the Spud’s announce some layoffs (as they will) we won’t here a peep out of this guy?

Marc

Terraloon

That’s madness, change of location = OK, change of capacity = OK.

No change = then why the issue.

Valentin

Terraloon, The problem is that most of UK don’t have a global long term transport/infrastructure policy. So they ask private companies to pay for building transport infrastructure. Most clubs can’t afford those demands. It should be the other way around. Invest and Build proper infrastructure and then charge for it. Government distract people by spreading a little bit of big projects: crossrail, HS2, but there is no global vision. France is not as bad, but it also share that tunnel vision and lack of global understanding. For years everything was done for TGV and now they realise that most of… Read more »

SpanishDave

Funny how short memories are.
AMN was lambasted very time he played for being lazy, unfocused, poor play etc.
He plays suddenly a couple of good games and now he’s a budding superstar.
Maybe just maybe he bucked himself up to look good for a transfer to a club with lower standards.
Leopards don’t change spots.

Marc

Valentin

I’m not sure you’ll see such drastic actions taken by company’s like Barclays. There will be some layoff’s in this but once a vaccine is developed it’ll go a long way to calm fears.

The other issue with people working from home is they’ll see a drop off in productivity – not straight away but it will happen. Also a lot of people won’t like working from home long term – they’ll miss the interaction with other people.

Habesha Gooner

Marc
Probably not. I am sad people lost their jobs. And I didn’t agree we couldn’t take a 2 mil hit on football staff. But we can’t hire everyone while we damage what’s on the pitch. It is a football club after all. Those people had jobs in the first place because arsenal are a good team on the pitch.

Pierre

CG
“Who does that job at Liverpool or City?”

Fabinho and Fernandinho

You wony6find many goals or assists amongst those 2 ….a vital component in a well balanced midfield.

Dembele is a miss at Tottenham, they haven’t been the same team since he left.

Makelele, kante, Gilberto

CG

“”””Leopards don’t change spots.”””””

They dont I agree Spanish.

But this one has the all raw materials to be an absolutely phenomenal player.

Our best left back ,
Our best right back,
Our best athlete,
Our best center midfielder?

No progressive, sane thinking, modern soccer club sells these types.
(Homegrown too.)

Only clubs with chronic vested interests,that are very very sick, or competely aimless do that.

Pierre

What one had to take into consideration, is that Partey plays in a very defensive side under defensive manager.

Maybe there is more to Partey’s game under a more expansive manager .

Pierre

AMN wouldnt be the first player I’d sell, that’s for sure.

For Arteta to play AMN ahead of Saka in the cup final took most by surprise.

It would be interesting to know if Saka hadn’t already signed a new contract, would Arteta have started Saka in the final , use it as a sweetener .

We will never know the answer to that but my guess is that he would have started Saka.( could be wrong though.

Valentin

Marc, I am not talking about layoff, but working habit corporate change. Some of my former colleagues work now exclusively online and it works great while pre-covid their employer was dead against it. Barclays CEO has publicly stated that he is reviewing their working arrangement. A few months ago he said: ‘putting 7,000 people in a building may be thing of the past’. The lease of Barclays colonnade building in Canary Wharf is up for renewal in October. He is seriously considering not renewing it. Some people will then be moved into smaller building. However a large part will then… Read more »

Double

Locatelli/Merino as a cheaper option?

Graham62

What Arteta has achieved with AMN shows that if you deal with players in the correct manner , you get a response. AMN needed to look at himself in the mirror, which Arteta most likely told him to do, and be honest with himself. Arteta saw what we saw. A player with talent and abilities to go much further but also a player who wasn’t focused and willing to change his ways. Ok, so he may be leaving (I’m not so sure) but at least he has shown over these past few games that he is capable of taking that… Read more »

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