THE ARSENAL WAY™

by .

Manchester United demonstrated once again why having no vision for a football club can be so damaging. There’s no identity on the pitch, no clear idea of what the hell is going on with their talent, and they bounce between managers with different styles.

Ralf R is not a bad manager, he’s simply been mismatched with players that think they are better than what he is asking of them. United don’t press, they won’t press, they are officially back in a transition moment.

Then you have Wolves. Do I detest how they operate? Yes. But they know how to run a club up there. They know the types of players that work for them, they understand how you transition to a new manager, there’s pretty much nothing that will break them… they have a sustainable model.

Arsenal did a cheaper version of United for a few years. We went from Wenger the artist, to Unai Emery the football terrorist. He couldn’t work with the squad he had. He didn’t have a footballing vision that would work for the fans. It was a near-fatal mismatch when you combined that with Dirty Don Raul.

Now what do we have? A sustainable model that should be future proof if we have the discipline to keep it going regardless of the knocks, or as Aaron said in a recent pod, ‘as long as we don’t do anything stupid.’

The strategy at Arsenal is clear because we’re now honest about the problem.

Arsenal can’t do a Chelsea. When all the twitter arsonists were calling out the signing of young players this summer, what they missed is that Arsenal can’t compete for top tier 26-year-olds. We can only pretend to. Why? Because we don’t have the money to go BIG like the mega clubs. If you can’t sign players at their peak, what else can you do? Grow your young players and take educated gambles on players on the rise.

This approach is painful though. Fans think they know what moves the needle and they cannot wait for anything grow. It’s a now, now, now culture… mostly fueled by desperate clubs that behave irrationally. When you sign young players, you have to accept success does not happen overnight, that there are bumps in the road, but if you can hold your nerve, you will have £70m players in your squad that cost a fraction.

Aaron Ramsdale: Verging on World Class. £60m

Tomiyasu: £40m now.

KT: Gotta be a £50m left back

Bukayo: £100m

ESR: £65m

We’re finally creating value out of smarts. The horror you have to deal with is that one day, we will have to sell to fund a next stage.

Back to it…

We also took a chance on a young manager that had Manchester City IP. When I wrote about that years ago, people scoffed. Not so much now though, right? Mikel Arteta has 18 months left on his deal, this time last December, he looked on his way out of the club (and I looked a bum), a year later, we’re now looking at a situation where he will start to look appealing to clubs with more favourable offerings if he delivers on our objectives.

Both of the above two points take you back to a very simple idea: Young talent, if it’s judged correctly, will get better.

Outside the talent, we now have a clear idea of who we are and what we want to do. The entire club is geared around the same idea. Every coach has to adopt Arteta principles. Every player is coached the same way.

Arsenal have an idea, we have structure, we have the right talent… this should be Arsenal for the next 20 years.

Elite leadership preserves the model. There is no other way. What we have no should be The Arsenal Way.

The best clubs don’t reboot every 3 years. When Arteta leaves, we need to find the next Arteta. When his coaching staff leave, we need to have the batch of coaches ready. When Edu leaves, we need to find someone that 100% gets where we’re going over the next 20 years.

United don’t have that.

Manchester City and Liverpool do.

A sustainable approach to football gives you consistency, it makes things cheaper, and it should reduce the chances of being overly reliant on a King like manager… ala, Arsene Wenger.

The most challenging part about the way we operate is there really isn’t a mountain of cash sitting there. The money we blew in the summer was a roll of the dice to stop the rot. But don’t expect Josh K to keep on doing that, he’s rich, but he’s not Qatari rich. Arsenal will operate in the loan or short term deal space this January, then go big on one maybe 2 positions this summer. Then we’re back to reality looking to sell to buy.

Chelsea don’t have to worry about that. They can make an £80m mistake on a keeper and bench him. It’ll be the same for Newcastle as well, they can throw money at the problem forever. We can’t.

That means this season is very, very important for the mission of the club. CL gives us the chance to sustainably fund the next push our squad needs. I still think it’s a huge ask to make the top 4, but look, it’s hard not to look at the table and purrrrrrrr.

Arsenal vs Spurs isn’t the be-all and end-all… but it is a huge one for belief. Beat them and we are right in the mixer. Spurs have had a very, very lucky time under Conte from decisions, from home games, to a mini-preseason no one else landed. They just aren’t that good and anyone that is looking at them knows it. But like Napoleon, I like my managers lucky, and he is lucky. They still have a lot of HUGE away games to deal with. City, United, Liverpool, and Chelsea are tough away games… but so is Wolves, Leeds away, and their Brighton game. They are also dealing with a League Cup mega semi.

The next two weeks are pivotal. How will Arsenal cope with that City loss? How will the bones of the squad hold up? What does lady luck have in store for us? Can Mikel Arteta make Unai Conte look… dated?

We’ll see.

Right, that’s me done for today. Our podcast hit #24 in the charts this week for British Sports. Thank you for listening, you are amazing. xxx

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The Bard

Tom this is a worrying area for me. Arsenal have form on making a mess over wages both ways. Auba and Willian one way and Ashley Cole and Suarez on the other. Saka’s agent wouldnt be doing his job if hasnt already had conversations with Saka and tested the market. The notion that he is happily jogging along on 30k because he loves the club is utter bollocks. Its a short career and he needs to maximise his earnings. If Arsenal dont pay him serious money someone else will. Arsenal need to get him on a long contract and pay… Read more »

englandsbest

I don’t see anything sinister in Liverpool wanting to postpone tomorrow’s semi-final. I’m pretty sure everyone on here would have applauded if Arsenal had been able to postpone the opening game against Brentford – especially in hindsight. And in foresight, we mind find ourselves in same position again – as Liverpool are now.

englandsbest

‘might’ not ‘mind’

GoonerDave

Big fat no to DCL. I don’t want a (stunning and brave) transvestite to play CF for the Arsenal.
Besides, he is nowhere near good enough.

Matt

EB

Postponement means more fixture pile up. Plus the chance that Salah and/or Mane are back for one of the legs. Also, as someone else mentioned, if the game is postponed, does this mean Gabriel would still be suspended for the Spurs game?

Dissenter

Matt
‘ Also, as someone else mentioned, if the game is postponed, does this mean Gabriel would still be suspended for the Spurs game?’

There’s the FA cup and at Nottingham Forest and the second leg of the carabao cup next week for Gabriel to serve out his suspension, those two games are before the spurs game.

Matt

Dissenter

Thanks for clarifying. We need him for the Spurs game.