Arsenal is hiring a corporate culture consultancy to help them with the mess at Arsenal HQ. I’ve been hearing rumblings for about 6 months about some of the things that have been going on, it’s not great, a lot of demotivated people, and some grim people fired and replaced already.
Man like Matt Kandela, a business owner and a corporate operator thinks this is a good thing. I can see the upside, there’s a messy corporate environment, and Arsenal is facing up to it and taking action.
However… the leak is there to damage Vinai. The reaction online today is probably what that person wanted. No one tells David Ornstein things are so messy on the corporate side we need a consultancy if they think that’s a positive story. It means there’s a lack of leadership and worse: the tools to repair it aren’t readily available internally. Ivan Gazidis has been gone since 2018, Don Raul has been gone since 2020, and only now are we getting to the business culture? Not great.
Anyway, better late than never.
The club is calling the program ‘The Arsenal Way’ which sounds like a pretty decent name for something that has certainly been lacking since Wenger went.
Before we get into it, I’m going to defend the company looking after the project. It does not matter if they don’t have football experience. It doesn’t matter if a strategist on their team supports Chelsea. All that matters is they know how to extract the right information that will help our leaders get to the best possible outcome.
As Arrigo Saachi once said, ‘to be a jockey, you need not to have been a horse.’
Some things to nail down before we get into this.
Culture is a set of principles and behaviors that guides the employees of a business. To be effective, they are usually closely linked to the mission of the club.
The Army builds its culture around discipline. Why? Because if you don’t listen to orders, someone might die. 30 seconds late to a meeting and you put your whole team at risk. If you are not prepared at all times, it’s life-threatening. The army in the old days would go out of its way to beat the individuality out of you so you followed orders without complaint. Everyone had the same haircut, everyone wore the same clothes, the same rations went to everyone, the same discipline was meted out if you broke the code. Thinking outside the box was not the job to be done, following orders was.
Facebook started out as ‘move fast, break shit’ because global domination could only be achieved if they grew at an exponential rate.
Netflix has a ‘no rules rules’ culture. They believed that to dominate entertainment and the tech that underpinned it, they need to hire the best people in the world, pay them more, and give them total accountability for decision making. They chopped back all the rules, reduced bureaucracy, and held great people to high standards. If you don’t hit the mark at Netflix, you get a nice severance and big ‘see ya.’
Apple worked off a Think Different mindset. When Microsoft was selling its software to go on other systems, Apple revoked all the licenses so they could control the whole experience. When companies were inventing MP3 players, internet machines, and dumb mobile phones… Apple put them all in one place on an iPhone. Everything they do is underpinned by elite design. I’ve pitched to them and if you have a single error on a deck, it will derail a whole meeting because they are obsessives when it comes to the details… because that is ingrained in their culture.
When you know what you stand for, you build a culture around that idea. You hire people that want to be part of that culture, that understand the rules, and want to live in that world. It’s a sorting mechanism internally, if you don’t agree, go somewhere else, because the reason for being is in a culture deck you live by.
I once wrote a culture deck and someone on my team said it felt like I’d written the rules for a cult, my response, ‘kind of.’
I’ve written extensively about the lack of honesty Arsenal have had for who they are and where they are in this modern world. We have gone through a very public identity crisis over the past 20 years. Ideals that kept us at the top for a long time changed because the world changed. Stability was a point of pride, but it eventually became the reason for stagnation. Class was used to differentiate us, but it eventually ended up as an excuse for not competing. When we slipped out of the top 2 clubs for wealth, we didn’t accept that drop in class, so sat in denial for many years.
To get to culture, we first need to know what the mission of the club is: GETTING BACK TO THE TOP OF FOOTBALL BY WINNING BIG TROPHIES
Nothing else matters. The number 1 priority should always be about what happens on the pitch. Football clubs exist to win trophies. A club as steeped in history as Arsenal needs trophies to progress and grow. If we’re not striving to do that, commercial revenue will dry up, new fans will stop feeding into the system, efforts in the community will be limited, our influence will wane, and we will eventually fade into the background of elite-level football.
We need to be honest about who we are:
- We are not the richest club in the world
- We will have to create a sustainable model of football. i.e. self-funded
- It will take time
What do we have going for us:
- 60,000 seater stadium
- A club name that still cashes cheques
- The best online fanbase on the planet
- A loyal IRL fanbase that will still buy tickets and support a project they understand
- We are based in London
- We have a prestigious history
- Players and managers still want to come here
- Elite London corporate folk would take pay cuts to work at the club
There are also softer elements that might play a big role in establishing some of our cultural pillars. The consultancy we’re using should meet with fans and ask what makes Arsenal special.
We are class. Arsenal do things the right way.
We are diverse. Our fanbase has always been reflective of London.
We are great in the community. Arsenal PR pays attention, we invest in locals, and we try and do the right thing.
These sorts of ideas might stop the club creating a WIN AT ALL COSTS culture deck. That’s not us and it’s not who we want Arsenal to be.
Some more truth:
To get back to the top, we’re going to have to innovate, we’re going to have to be smarter than our opposition, we’re going to have to make money work harder, and we are going to have to be fucking relentless in the pursuit of our objectives.
Football-wise, we’ve already moved to the honesty phase:
We signed a hot shit young coach with the hope of him growing with us vs signing Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti.
We signed young players with 2 years of experience under their belts with the hope of them reaching their peak with us in 3 seasons’ time.
We leaned into our brand to attract them, promising them a platform to succeed they wouldn’t get at other Premier League clubs.
If that is our football objective, what does it mean for our corporate culture? What does it mean for The Arsenal Way?
If you can’t be the richest, you have to be the smartest.
That means you have to hire innovators.
That means you need to create an environment where innovators thrive.
That might mean you don’t hire sportspeople who say ‘well, that’s just the way we do it’
That might mean the ‘Bank of England’ baggage of the past needs to be shaken from the board of directors because banks are not innovators, they are supposed to represent stability. Well, our stability has gone, so being likened to a bank has to die. Who are the best sports execs in world sport? Who is doing hot shit in football that is putting a small club on a higher level? Who is the best technology person in the game that can upgrade our app?
That will mean a different marketing story, that will mean a different pitch deck from the sponsorship team who have been selling the same boring story that hasn’t moved our commercial revenues in the right direction for a long time
If The Arsenal Way is about innovating our way to success, it shifts the entire vision of the corporate structure. It sets the tone for who you hire, how they operate, how they are rewarded, how they are judged, and the behaviors they need to elicit to win at Arsenal.
When you establish a clear vision, it also tells you who needs to leave a business. At a very famous hedge fund that has a book about culture, they have a process of ‘sorting’, they go through the literal scores of staff and clear out anyone not cutting the mustard. That might not be The Arsenal Way, but when you reestablish a culture, you need to be ruthless about who works in it. Because, like sport, a couple of bad eggs can bring down the performance of everyone else.
Arsenal are not risk-takers, we haven’t been demanding of ourselves, we haven’t been good at holding ourselves accountable to a higher standard, we haven’t done a good job with our fans, the most interesting thing we’ve done in 15 years was last summer on the sporting side. Stan Kroenke has treated Arsenal like a piece of property he has accrued, as long as it gains 5% every year, he doesn’t need to worry about what’s going on. Well, other clubs in the market are gaining 15-20% a year and we have been left in the mud.
Fixing the culture at Arsenal is about so much more than people feeling good. It’s about making people understand the direction of Arsenal and giving them the tools to succeed at delivering the vision.
… and I know there are a lot of people saying you don’t need a culture deck to succeed, which is true, but without doubt, the very best organizations in the world have the very best cultures. Customer service can be automated or it can be John Lewis. Payments systems can be something boring, or it can be Dan Price of Gravity payments who gets on the Good Morning America show because he believes paying all his staff $70k makes for better business.
Culture isn’t necessarily about feeling good, it’s about knowing what the job to be done is and what behaviors will be rewarded. All the best managers in the world of football will tell you that culture drives performance. Even the managers that aren’t good will tell you the same. If you think it’s just tactics and a smack on the arse that has Pep Guardiola’s team dropping 100 points per game you are very wrong.
So in short, it’s good that someone at the club has recognized the culture is bad, and it’s good they are moving forward with fixing it. I’m just not sure it shines the brightest light on our inexperienced leadership.
Bankz is here for the tr4phy again
Let’s do this!
grooveydaddy
Come outside
(((BOOOOOM))))
4th?
Pedro,
Do you mind sharing what you’ve been hearing from the inside of the club? This is news to me. It feels like we’ve been fed relentless propaganda from the club over the past year or so about how the culture has been transformed. So what’s really been going on??
Driving when the post came out….
All yours today, Bankz
Lucas Pérez scored the winner against Barca, remember him!?
LS, corporate culture vs football culture. I don’t want to put anything down here, but I’ve had lots of people tell me it’s been unpleasant at HQ for a while now. This things has been going on for a bit, so it’s not new, but it’s designed to reorient a rudderless ship.
There’s no experience at the top at Arsenal. People have fallen up the stairs. Our trifecta of leadership is all 40ish. Not sure this will solve for much.
You’ve been living in the yuppy circles of America too long with all this culture bollocks, we just need a decent manager that knows what he’s doing
Pedro,
Got it. Maybe I’m being conspiratorial but it comes across as a hatchet job on Vinai. Which, to be frank, I wouldn’t mind. He’s hardly Marina G, is he? But if that’s what’s going on, there are less public ways to get rid of the guy.
Bigper,
Someone needs to pay the decent manager’s salary as well. Like it or not, a football club is big business. Remember how we for years used to get paid 30-50% less for shirt sponsorship than our competitors?
Excellent post.
It signals a hands-on approach from Stan and Josh. They are singing from the same hymn book we are. A successful team culture is, in essence, a balance between cooperation and competition.
LS, it is, without doubt, a hatchet job on Vinai.
Vera, last warning. You need to tone down the shrieking or head somewhere else.
Biggest culture shake up or whatever would be winning games and winning trophies.
We seem as a club to engage in more PR these days.
Pedro,
I’m just wondering if that might backfire on us. A lot of people already think we’re a banter club and running a corporate-style culture review just to get an excuse to get rid of the CEO might feed into it. But either way, if it results in Vinai leaving, I won’t complain. We need strong leadership.
The culture in bad at the top? No they all need firing at the top and we need to clear the becks and hire not just innovators but people who are qualified and experienced in their positions. Can’t be one of the other. That’s the only way we get back to the top and we stop making silly mistakes every passing season.
at* decks*
Arsenal ought to be a football club, above everything else.
Everything should be to advance the football club.
They are going after the wrong fix.
Hiring a corporate consultant is an indication the trifecta of Arteta, Edu and Vinai Don;t know what they are doing. Leadership flows from the top, not from consultants.
Vieira,
I’m only catching up on the posts there now. I’m really sorry that you went through that. I was out for a drink with a lad last week and he told me he lost a very young son a few years back,I hadn’t a clue how to respond. It’s a bloody nightmare that every parent fears. I’m not getting into the argument you were having, but it’s obviously brought back some terrible memories and my heart goes out to you. I hope you have strong people supporting you. Mind yourself.
While your post is excellent, just remember it is a consultancy firm, which means the owners will most likely have asked for their advise, whether they take it or even act on it is a total different matter. From the Kroenke’s track record, they may or may not have known that this culture problem predated the Wenger departure which in itself is a damaging indictment. But certainly after Wenger and then Gazidis left and a power struggle started to materialize it was then that responsible owners would have engaged such an agency and would have cleaned house. We are still… Read more »
Interesting. Take it this “hatchet job “ comes from close to the very top? If it was from the top, he would be gone, or is that too simplistic?
LS, you wonder whether these sorts of stories are laying the groundwork…
I would always run a culture work internally. Maybe that’s not the done thing at a Premier League football club. Bigger thing for me is that to be a successful CEO in business, you should get culture. I mean, running a department, you should get culture and how to make people feel valued and motivated.
Haaland on £500k a week when he signs for City. Mad.
Killroy, I worked in advertising for the last decade… big corporations will buy your services and think they know best.
Not in consultancy. They pay the big dollars. They take the advice. No way they’d put this research in the bin
The whole situation is very complicated and the way out of it is even more complicated. First off the car is stuck in the mud and you need now to focus on how to get it out. It doesn’t help to get on the case of the driver who got it stuck, the focus now needs to be on the driver who gets us out of it. The Kroenke’s own the car, they hired the wrong driver, they now need a way out that makes them look good deflects any criticism and finger pointing to them and keeps the sponsors… Read more »
The key question is: is Vinai the instigator of the hire of The Culture Guys or is it the Kroenkes?
If it’s the Kroenkes, then they’re looking to do/reorganise something which may not be “culturally palatable” to Vinai and the guys at the top.
Which more than likely means they will have to go.
For me as a humble fan, the key cultural change that needs to be made is for Arsenal to find a way to score more bloody goals.
Pedro, I agree they are paying for the research and I am hoping that with Stan & Josh’s inexperience in how to run a football club that they will fully implement their suggested options. Still they might either cherry pick or just plain don’t like all the options, they respect the research and findings because it is uncharted territory for Stan & Josh, but if it hits too close to home and their liking they might not implement all the suggested changes. What comes to mind is their handling of the LA Rams situation being willing to sue the NFL… Read more »
WOAB, no way that Vinai instigated this, too high profile, too much of a risk to damage sponsor relationship plus Stan would want to know what this mega million expenditure was for. As I said I HOPE that this is a move to correct what should have happened 5 years ago.
Alumina, thanks for the kind words…Cheers
Pedro, what “shrieking” are you referring to? my since removed response to this article was far from over-the-top….I just don’t know what I’ve done that was so wrong except falling on the wrong side of the Arteta debate from you…sorry if I got a bit wound up due to a flood of bad memories regarding the loss of my infant child, but that’s a sensitive subject matter…still not sure why I was singled out as the problem in that particular equation, then had another post that was totally unrelated binned
Pedro,
Same here, I’ve always done it internally together with the people who are expected to be culture bearers and implement the changes. I’ve only experienced a consultant-led culture reset once, early in my career. And that was basically a cover for a wholesale reorg with heads rolling left, right and center.
‘We signed a hot shit young coach with the hope of him growing with us’
The jury is still out on whether we’ll need to keep or remove the word ‘hot’ from that sentence.
Just to have to share this from the PSG game as it is a bit of karma for Neymar: “Neymar had to be restrained by Payet and Varratti to prevent him from loosing his rag even more as he screamed at Guen who was still rolling on the floor despite nothing being wrong with him as he took a dive and Neymar was carded”. We need a player like that who can get under the skin of those who are hot headed and try to get them send off. It is part of today’s game as our own Xhaka is… Read more »
WOAB,
No way Vinai instigated it. Generally speaking, a CEO is assumed to be accountable for culture at any corporation because culture represents how things get done and decision makers usually try to emulate the top dog. The fact that an external party is being brought in implies that fixing the issues is beyond the current regime. Any CEO that does is basically admitting that he deserves the sack.
This is not the first time the club has brought in consultants
They also brought in consultants ti help them recruit scouts
We were operating like a proper banter joke of club that has lost his way.
Instilling a corporate culture is the work of the chief executive, if the culture is bad, then fire the CEO and reset.
Same way, a director of football that doesn’t have a Rolodex of candidate to interview for scouts isn’t worthy of DoF position
We can’t talk about the drab football or the free fall collapse, so we talk about these consultancy nonsense.
Lol, the Arsenal Way. I work for an organization that a few years ago used exactly the same terminology. Swap out Arsenal and insert name of my organization. If it follows the same pattern a lot of people are going to lose their jobs and when you get reminded of this slogan, you feel the full force of management utter b/s
And nice job by Guen on Neymar
https://www.justarsenal.com/308172-2/308172
Interesting article the compares wenger’s final year vs Mikel in detail. Quite striking how one-sided almost all the stats were in wengers favour. He came out way on top on almost every metric
Wengers final years* not just the final season
Over the last 25 years the arsenal footballing culture was represented by attacking, incisive, attractive football and midfields which could dominate the opposition through passing triangles
So right now we’re worrying about changing the offfield culture but is anyone fixing the on field culture which has become boring, only sporadically effective, slow donut football?
Serious question. Why is the off field culture apparently important but on field isn’t?
I’ve found in my experiences that these types of consultant gigs are generally pursued for one of 3 reasons: (1) they’ve been mandated as a means to redress a possible litigious matter, which has occurred within the organization, with the hopes of avoiding a potentially embarrassing public relations nightmare, then NDA’s are handed out in an Oprah-like fashion (2) the powers that be want to project a more transparent front so they hire on an outside agency to either actually validate the existing culture, almost like the world’s most expensive back-patting, expedition, or simply for show, so that they can… Read more »
Honestly speaking I’m not sure what’s even all that wrong with the clubs culture these days off the pitch
Most of the so called trouble makers already got shipped out. In the last few years we replaced how the squad and those who remained tend to be the good, nice boys.
What exactly is the club’s cultural problem at the moment? The only problems I see are poor man management and tactics if I’m being honest.
We got rid of Raul. We shipped out any players who weren’t towing the line. The players have largely tried their best outside of a few bad games. Is this Vinais way of hiring in outside help to reign in arteta because he doesn’t dare do it himself? If the consultancy is worth a damn they will conclude the club should be promoting free flowing attacking football with expansive approach to football. It will conclude that everyone in the club needs to be made to feel important and welcome and that the club should be demanding excellence in everything we… Read more »
Dissenter,
I think recruitment consultants are a necessary part of the game/biz world. Better than jobs for the boys recruiting, especially after having someone like Raul nearly ruin the club.
China, I don’t know if you are intentionally not understanding the story… but the consultancy is not for the football side, it’s for corporate.
China, I would contend that our internal corporate structures and practices became rather antiquated during Wenger’s latter tenure and the transient nature of our administrative branch in the years that followed simply exacerbated the situation….that said, I do agree with your comments regarding our man management and tactical failures
Bacary, really liked what you did there with the whole jury’s still out gig
The Radio Shack Way
Great write up btw
Georgia, true… not the most original. But certainly something fans talk about with regards to style of play.
‘What is the arsenal way?’
2 tactical changes that I think will help us considerably: 1. Have Saka and Martinelli get to the byline/behind the byline for low fizzed crosses. Our predictable cutbacks leaves us having to go through/in front of the defense every time. This may mean having them switch wings. 2. Instruct Gabby and White to pass quickly to the. midfield. Midfielders need to turn and look for forward runs immediately. Currently, the CB’s are ignoring the midfield and trying to play directly to the forward line. This is a riskier pass and they take more time to find the angle. This slows… Read more »
*behind the defense for crosses
Pedro
I am skeptical with regards to consultants.
I think their only role is to break an impasse at a company.
Or to absolve oneself of responsibility. “According to the recommendations of consultants at …..”
If a business insiders need help of external consultants to teach them how to run a business. These projects typically sound good and are very presentable but many times tank at the ground level.
My experience is that consultancies are hired as the company has identified a problem. (You don’t spend a ton of money unless there is one right!) Also, my experience says that if the company listens to its employees you can almost certainly get to the root cause quickly but it’s the consultancy that validates the findings. All in all, there is clearly a problem on the corporate side and ask anybody who works in the back office and they could tell you what it is. Shame i dont know anyone who works there
Dark Hei, not my cup of tea either. I think big firms listen to them though. Accenture and Deloitte aren’t raking in all that profit and growth because they are being ignored.
Wasn’t the lawyer who came in meant to have done somewhat of a ‘culture change’ for the corporate side??
What happened there then?
And they will probably state the obvious:
Don’t have the manager and the sporting director on the same management level.
Haaland on £500k a week when he signs for City. Mad.
Awe englandsbest will be gutted.
Perhaps they are also looking into the player in and out management here is just one nugget: Saliba once again reiterated his desire to stay at Marseille for another season which would keep him there until 2023. He told Le Parisien: “There is always a chance. I do not hide that I am very happy in Marseille. I have developed, I have passed a milestone. If I make it into France’s squad it’s thanks to Marseille, because there is a lot of visibility. They are a very big club with a lot of pressure, but when you’re good there are… Read more »
Pedro so in other words this is likely a complete waste of time then. We are a football club. The core of the club is playing football and managing how we do that. That is where the culture of the club should be focused. As well it’s a pretty convenient excuse if you think an arsenal corporate culture shift which is titled ‘the arsenal way’ should not involve discouraging all company employees from isolating each other, making people feel excluded and under valued etc. it just so happens that the first team coach is the chief culprit of that. Or… Read more »
China, so in other words… not a waste of time. Unless you think culture is a waste of time and unproductive.
Talking of company culture isn’t our fucking motto ‘victory through harmony’?
This should be our guiding principle as it’s very simple and easy to follow. Everything the club should do should be based on demanding excellence to achieve victory and behaving well to ensure harmony.
We don’t need a consultant to tell us this. We just need to start demanding key staff coach and players are held to account if they do not deliver and likewise to ensure that catty behavior, favoritism etc from the coach and players gets stamped out so we can return to harmony
Pedro it’s very simple
The club higher ups just need to work according to Victoria Concordia crescit. If everything they do is with this in mind, every decision will be made for the right reasons.
We don’t need a consultant to tell us this, the North Star is already there. The only thing missing is for the owners and CEO to enforce it. And yes sorry that would mean your boy arteta getting put in line
Also do kroenkes have shares in this company? 😂
China,
How do I act in a business with ‘victory through harmony’
What does it say about the vision?
Who do I hire?
What do we reward as a business?
What is our approach to risk?
Victory Through Harmony doesn’t move us forward in 2022. If it were that easy, we’d be doing it.
Also lol that you think football matters should not be in scope of a cultural revamp of a FOOTBALL club
But yeah I mean I guess we have to make sure Mark in accounts is following our North Star even if the football team is not…
China, I’m sure there will be elements they pull from the culture Arteta has set in football, but you can’t use everything. Corporate culture is different to sport… and sporting culture is not going to be set by a bunch of corporate consultants. To think that is as bad as the reporter that asked Larry David if Mckinsey could help him write better jokes.
it is quite apparent that you’ve not spent much time thinking about culture.
If we were cruising into 4th and went deeper into cups and had a balanced squad do you think this culture change would have been instigated?
“I’ve written extensively about the lack of honesty Arsenal have had for who they are and where they are in this modern world. We have gone through a very public identity crisis over the past 20 years. Ideals that kept us at the top for a long time changed because the world changed. Stability was a point of pride, but it eventually became the reason for stagnation. Class was used to differentiate us, but it eventually ended up as an excuse for not competing. When we slipped out of the top 2 clubs for wealth, we didn’t accept that drop… Read more »
Goober, it has been going for a while. It’s not something that cooked up on Sunday.
Real V, you’ve contradicted your own post.
You can’t forgive Arteta for his initial strategy, even though he’s changed it and the new one is working. Which is a really boring attitude to have in life. It means you are petty and you hold grudges even when people change.
… But then you finish by saying he’ll fail because he can’t change and his past behavior indicated what he’ll do in the future.
This argument of yours seems flawed. You’re so keen to just whine on about Arteta, you can’t form a coherent whinge about him..
Arteta’s decision making in the past three games have been very poor. Albert, one of Tom Canton’s guests, on his channel asked a very good question regarding this… When does Arteta’s poor decision making start being held to account for being poor decisions during matches rather than being just being shushed under the label of the fact that he is inexperienced and young? Pedro’s narrative continues to say Arteta is a good coach; he should be THRIVING right now with all these players. Arteta has the players he wants. Arteta has the time to train with the players he wants… Read more »
Leeds, it’s a weird question to ask. What does holding Arteta accountable for bad decisions mean? Conte lost to Brighton at the weekend, he’s a £20m a year manager, with Harry Kane in his side… are Spurs fans asking if he’s being held accountable of barely registering a shot on target? What about Thomas Tuchel for not competing for the league and losing 4-1 to Brighton with a CL winning squad? When you ask what could have gone wrong… 4 first team players out… youngest squad in the league… the reality that it is really hard in the Premier League…… Read more »
even you must see the difference between someone showing the required fortitude and single-mindedness when it comes to one’s overriding mandate, which was to embark on an organizational reinvention with a more youthful slant so that he could learn and grow with a largely handpicked squad and lean into what was supposed to be his strong suit, coaching up players, and the flexibility required when it comes to the day-to-day operations of a footballing manager…hardly contradictory or flawed…thankfully I had a large grain of salt handy
As I said yesterday, Bad luck and injuries is a such a lazy lazy cop out.
Had we got three out three over Palace, Brighton and Southampton no one would be saying we were lucky. Arteta would be being hailed as a genius.
Why are injuries and luck only wheeled out when things go wrong?
Arteta needs to turn this momentum around, and do it quickly.
Hopefully I am not wrong here in my assumption, but usually the involvement of this consultant agency looks to me like a shakeup in the power corridors that determine how Arsenal is being run. ATM the profit the club makes seems to be dismal. The players we want to sell most will depart with a loss on our books and the players that would bring a profit we need to keep. Selling the ones on loan will not bring in enough money that is required for an elite striker and midfielder. The value of those on loan is not encouraging… Read more »
Pedro I work for Standard Chartered Bank and our company culture and North Star is no more meaningful than Victory through Harmony and we are doing ok ‘Never settle. Do the right thing. Better together’ This is our company North Star and everything else must fall in line with this. The company puts these values left right and center in our work. They reward based on criteria like ‘better together award for the tech team with the best demonstration of team work’ etc etc. it works pretty well. We are all pretty clear on what is expected of us and… Read more »
As for why Victory Through Harmony hasn’t worked for us lately Well it used to. Arsenal had a very clear vision from top to bottom in the early to mid wenger years. Victory through harmony stopped working because the board of directors and CEO couldn’t be arsed to enforce the victory part when wenger lost his interest in trophies and only wanted to discuss harmony. As of now we don’t have victory through harmony because the expectations have been consistently lowered and harmony in the dressing room has been allowed to have issues due to a combination of some difficult… Read more »
” Also, my experience says that if the company listens to its employees you can almost certainly get to the root cause quickly but it’s the consultancy that validates the findings.”
Steg is right about this.
China, nice post there! Especially the Wenger part haha so true
Just watched Sakiba against PSG
I really hope we bring him back next season.
Anyone know if Holding can play LCB?
We should have White vs Saliva, and Gabriel vs Holding.
Sell Mari and Mavropanos.
Sakiba and Sakiba
Hahaha, autocorrect making a fool of itself
Sakiba and Saliva
Hahaha, autocorrect making a fool of itself
Mavro is gone if Stuttgart stay up in the Bundesliga for £3m which is the exit clause. Saliba will not play for us since he wants a guaranteed starting spot because of the upcoming World Cup and he has been called up to the senior squad. I am afraid that the Saliba ship has sailed and hopefully we will recoup some of the £27m we spent on him. Pepe also most likely will leave in the summer and the talk is AFC will let him go for £25m way to go with selling him for a £47m loss.
Killroy I think Torreira and bellerin will fetch closer to 8-10m each
There were articles on Arsenal’s website dating as far as August 2029 claiming Arteta’s already changed the culture. Since then we’ve been reminded on a weekly basis just how much culture Arteta had changed since he’s been here. Now this. We’re fckng joke, top to bottom. I’ll give that billionaire moron who just happens to be in charge of Arsenal a free advice. If you want to “reconnect” with club’s past, stop doing moronic things such as giving a manager’s job to someone who’s never managed. That would be a good start. Actually just imagine if that moron Josh had… Read more »
August 2020 🙂
The frustrating thing about bellerin is firstly that he didn’t live up to his potential shown as a teenager but even more so that after about 2 years his form went off a cliff but no one in world football seemed to notice. I recall even 18 months – 2 years after he turned crap Barca were sniffing around with 40-50m offers being mooted and in those days they were still willing to bankrupt themselves on poorly scouted players
We should’ve cashed in before they realized he was spent. That 40m could’ve bought us a quality CM!
Josh Kroenke’s interview in Mirror, Nov 2021:
“Speaking about the manager’s vision for Arsenal, Kroenke said: “When I sat down with Mikel, all he talked about was culture”
Now I get MA’s genius, not only football coach but culture secretary as well.
We are simply ridiculous football club atm, run by PR backed bunch of clueless morons.
Morning fine gentlemen,
A friendly reminder that the season isn’t over yet and lets take heart in the fact that top 4 is still very much in our hands. The boys have hit a slump after an excellent season so far, the least we can do is back them, they have brought their part
If all Mikel talks about is the culture of the club he has to ask himself why the culture consists of players frequently being alienated.
Or does he consider himself exempt?
In other Kroenke related news, Denver Nuggets are utter shite.
I blame the movie “A few good men” and its “You can’t handle the truth” scene for the repeated military trope: “You follows orders or people die”. Efficient armies are not based just on a top to bottom approach, but on top to bottom and bottom to top. Competence is expected at every level. Top brass in his bunker or miles away may not know the situation on the ground. The backbone of any good army is the NCO. Yes, they relay the orders, but they also can adapt. They can tell the officers to request backup, air support, evacuation.… Read more »
Good post China @0544
Arteta’s declarations on non negotiables sound pretty hollow if the standards he supposedly believes in doesn’t apply to him.
The jury is still very much out on Arteta. He is not football’s answer to Shaun McVay… and at the moment, the tales of Arteta’s skill and competence seem premature…
If he wants to prove to the Arsenal fan base he is the real deal let him prove by winning games now when the pressure matters.
I work in a large corporate which is multi national headed by a French and headquartered in India. Being in such a large corporate, we do have such culture things from some consulting companies. I find these interesting and its an exercise in which the consultant through activities distills the feedback from internal employees and present in impressive PowerPoints and videos back to the top leaders of the company. So instead of these leaders staying connected with the grassroots and listening to the feet’s on ground, will spend enormous amounts of money to these consultants for fancy PowerPoints and feedback… Read more »
In all likelihood, it is a hatchet job on Vinay, but that could also backfire on Arteta. The bottom line is that the commercial success of Arsenal is dependent on Arsenal being successful on the pitch or at the very least entertaining. You can’t sell tickets to people to see dreary football AND loss. The other thing about culture and accountability is that it is clear that Vinay has no say whatsoever on the main aspect of the club. Arteta directly deals with the Kroenkes, so you have an impotent CEO which also happen to not be very good or… Read more »
Arsenal is a professional sports organisation. We can have the best sounding culture in the world but if it continues to produce nothing on the field, it means absolutely nothing.
Culture that tolerates mediocrity whilst preaching excellence is nothing but hypocrisy.