A guest post from Andrew Luck (aka ArsenalAndrew) this morning…
Football, we are often told, is a results business. But what does this actually mean?
Depending upon who you are, ‘results’ can mean dramatically different things – if you are Chelsea, for instance, it apparently means winning the European Champions League and ideally the English Premiership, pretty much as a minimum. It doesn’t appear to include losing a Champions League final or coming a close second in the Premiership.
If you are a team like Sunderland, the definition of acceptable ‘results’ in the last decade or so have veered from simple league survival to maybe a slot just outside the top four. To lose the status of ‘yo-yo’ club has possibly been their greatest achievement – their only real ‘result’. For newly promoted clubs, simple survival is viewed as a ‘result’. Actual cups are hardly an agenda item and playing with any kind of ‘style’ is very much an optional extra – so much so that on the rare occasions that it happens, it can make headline news. For a club like Arsenal, the very definition of the word ‘results’ and the meaning of an ‘acceptable result’ is causing pretty greater controversy over almost anything else. Meanwhile Arsène Wenger’s contract renewal date inches ever closer.
The consensus view amongst Arsenal fans appears to be making the footballing equivalent of a seismic shift.
Although seemingly very different clubs, Arsenal and Manchester United have one feature in common that few would have predicted even a decade or so ago. To be a follower of either clubs would now appear to require a degree in Economics, ideally augmented with a Masters in Finance. Today, a ‘meaningful’ conversation about either great institution is hardly complete without an appraisal of the latest bandied around figures. Indeed, time and energy to discuss the last match played, let alone the next one coming, is sometimes the optional extra for fans of both clubs.
One assessment of MUFC’s financial prospects so enraged elements of the United support a few years ago that they went off and set up their own club in what was surely the ultimate ‘we are taking our ball back’ moment in football. Neutrals to this day are unsure whether to mock or admire.
Today, all around the Gunners’ world, the phrase “We want our Arsenal back!” is starting to become more widely repeated. Once again, neutrals are unsure whether to mock or admire. For those of us with the fondest memories of Highbury stretching back whole lifetimes, the very phrase is almost cruelly evocative of a stadium now gone and an era lost forever.
For the more recently acquired supporters, this phrase resonates of a recent time in which the club not only competed at the highest levels but also actually won ‘things’ whilst there. And not only winning those ‘things’ but doing so in the most majestic, imperious – and literally, at times, unbeatable – fashions imaginable. For these supporters, they too would like back ‘their’ Arsenal – a club that has seemingly been mislaid, rather than actually lost. And for a third set of supporters, the ‘We want our Arsenal back’ phrase resonates in the hallways of the seemingly disenfranchised, the former holders of season tickets long since priced out of the club but still in possession of the stub marked ‘Lifelong Supporter’.
The financial machinations of great clubs often seem the most complex of puzzles. Actually, for some of them – the Chelsea’s and the City’s – the outlook is relatively straightforward. For as long as their owners continue to back them with the requisite funding, not even a sideways glance at the numbers is actually required. Fans can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Indeed, if the empty seats evident at City’s most recent excursion to the Champions League are anything to go by, not even THAT is required.
Most professional sports men and women are driven by a desire to win. Sir Alex Ferguson could arguably be described as the ultimate embodiment of this concept in a career in Manchester hallmarked with trophy-laden success. The achievements of most other managers can legitimately be benchmarked against the success of this one man.
But this is where the waters get muddied as the one manager who can’t quite be compared in the same way is Arsène Wenger. Today, the hallmarks of his Arsenal reign can be seen through two very different prisms, helpfully date stamped, for ease of reference. A look through the older device displays on-pitch glory that has far exceeded the success of free-spending Manchester City despite recent investment heading north of £1 billion. The view through the second prism is dominated by the imposing image of one of the world’s most impressively smart, state of the art stadiums.
Footballing endeavour for Wenger has resulted in outstanding success on the pitch and an outstanding home for that success in the shape of a stadium created out of nothing on the site of an old waste incinerator. Uniquely in football, his ‘results’ don’t merely sit in a trophy cabinet; it is the cabinet itself, the room within which the cabinet sits, the office suite surrounding, the pitch it all overlooks and an entire stadium providing both a home and a symbol for a club built on the proudest and soundest of traditions.
Football is a results based business yet the construction of the Emirates stadium resulted in the loss of the old Highbury and, in recent years, the trophies that went with it. Football is a results based business yet the results by which Ferguson is judged, have not applied to the arsenal manager thanks to the now aging Trophy and the ageless Stadium Prisms through which we have until now, peered in order to judge him.
Wenger is a man motivated to compete and win. So much so that he built a stadium to ensure his adopted club could do just that. As the years have fallen away, his ability to compete and win have been compromised – by his competitors and by the unregulated sums of money flowing into the game. All this at a time when the very thing he built to enable him and the club to compete and win required us all to scrimp and save. His expenditure was drastically curtailed; our expectations painfully capped, cut and compromised.
Losing to his competitors on the field is one thing but losing the support of those who support the club is the one result of the move to the Emirates Wenger will ultimately be unable to absorb. As supporters plead for the return of ‘their Arsenal’ and the stadium attendances begin to resemble the Etihad on a Tuesday night, any cash reserves the club may have gathered will be rendered somewhat redundant if the cash flows required to keep the Emirates afloat begin to subside.
What happens next to Wenger in the post-Arsène years is anyone’s guess; the footballing world will likely prove to be his oyster. He may lose a club but his reputation remains a big winner and he will doubtless go on to compete again. For many who ‘want their Arsenal back’, this would no doubt represent a French Champagne moment, a victory in a league of its own and many open arms will doubtless await his successor. And the ones after that.
The loss to the club of one of the finest footballing brains the world has ever known – one that delivered results both on and off the pitch in the most spectacular and glorious fashions will prove inestimable. Constrained by paucity of funds, undone by the arrival of the new and minted kids on the block and finally abandoned by enough of the fans to make a difference, his final departure would represent the greatest loss imaginable, both for him and for the club.
And in a results based business, that’s probably no good thing.
@Zinc
“If the right player is found I’m more than happy to spend £30 million and give them the best wages we can sensibly offer”
See therein lies your problem. Its no “you” in arsenal. “you” dont spend 30M. “you” dont pay wages. “you” merly buy a couple of shirts every year, maybe a seasonal card.
Its not “your” buisness on the line, not your ass that gets fried if we waste 30m plus 15m in wages. Its Kroenks. You can forgive him for not wanting to waste 45M as that is shit loads of money.
What you probably mean is that “”If Kroenk finds the right player I would be thrilled IF KROEN spend £30 million of HIS money and gave the player the best wages HE can sensibly offer”.
One always has to remember that this is a buisness project. Just like City, United, Chelsea and Liverpool.
The owners are in the game to make MONEY. Nobody gives a rats ass about how the team plays, if the players are nice or bad or if the playstyle is good or bad. All that matters is that money is made. Or that your brand can generate money for your luxyry airline or vacation paradise. Aslong as people pay then the investors are happy.
Mind you ones we stop pay they will change though, so we ones again pay.
Its like a hollywood movie and OX, Walcott et al are the Brad Pitts and Pamela Andersons of Arsenal.
You dont make blockbusters because you have a great story to tell, you make blockbusters to make money. And if it happends to be a good story then great, but ultimatley you just want people to see your film. Take Men in Black, crap story, fun film, blockbuster.
Now im sure that if they thought we would generate more money as PL winners then they would invest more. Maybe analyzes show we generate most money as outsiders? the “neutral” favourite that everybody has as their second team? the team that people like but nobody loves? Jack of all trades, master of none. the forever no4 alawys up there but not a rival. yet still likable for everyone ouside top 4.
Why change that if it sells?? its buisness after all..
PG, Tim must have been reading:
“Testing Causality between Team Performance and Payroll”, a case study on Major League Baseball compared to English Soccer. The data was from 1980 to 2000.
Whooooooosh …!
Poodle
If this is all about Stan making money then nothing is going to change in 2014 or anytime as long as he is owner and we really have something to worry about. Most owners want to make money but they are willing to take a some risk and they genuinely want the teams to win things. Most owners don’t have one of the worlds largest reserve funds and do not run the club with the level of risk aversion that we have.
If Stan was that risk averse wtf would he put his money in a football club ?
An undervalued brand?
Excuse me, YW, but in the absence of a Home post, this final paragraph from Goonerholic.
“Get behind the team with everything you have at the weekend. Do your bit and you will then earn the right to criticise should that not evoke the correct response on the pitch. The days for expressing concerns over a bigger picture are in the future. This weekend is all about our fathers and grandfathers getting the bragging rights over the Marshmen in another place.
We are THE Arsenal, and we ARE the best.”
The problem I have with Bill is that he drones on incessantly with the same thesis; Arsenal should spend more, if it wants to win trophies like Chelsea, City and United. The bottomline is the club doesn’t have the same money to spend no matter which way you cut it. But to avoid coming to terms with that reality he implies it is a matter of choice; the money exists it is simply not spent properly. As 7AM Kickoff puts it very eloquently, Bill’s position leads inevitably to the conclusion that the problem must be with our billionaire (Kroenke) because he doesn’t want to be our benefactor and spend his way to a trophy so gooners like Bill can crow. Even more troubling and dangerous is the thinking that the game needs billionaires, not to be rid of them, for professional football to be played on more competitive terms.
As I wrote many moons ago, Bill’s approach has already failed in the BPL with his fellow-Americasn millionasire, Randy Lerner at Aston Villa. After taking over ownership he implemented Bill’s blueprint, incrementally boosting his spending annually in the hope of returning Villa back to European glory. For all the money he spent and the many close battles they got no closer than 6th. By 2009 Lerner had enough. There was no way he could afford to outspend the billionaires or out-coach Arsene Wenger. By that time his best players (Milner and Barry) had been poached by City with United to grab Young in 2010.Up Now Villa is flirting with relegation and can at best aim for mid-table mediocrity. Of course Bill will belittle the Villa experience because it doesn’t fit his “cookbook.”
Poodle – actually, the £30 million I’m referencing is a portion of the £70 million (ish) transfer kitty that is available to spend on players from the cash reserves the club has of well over £150 million – these cash reserves have been built up by the club mostly from player and property sales as that’s where the majority of our profits have been derived over recent years. We can regard this as club generated revenue which rules dictate must be spent on club interests. Stan has paid no dividends to himself and we have a protected body of cash reserves as a contingency – he has backed and bought into the clubs self sustaining ethos which is entirely based around spending only what we earn – the money we’re talking about is the money that we have earnt as a club, it is not Stan’s money that he has brought to the club at all.
So what I mean is exactly what I said. We have spent over £80 million over the last two summers, I’m not sure why anyone would question our ability to actually spend significant amounts of money when all the evidence suggests we can.
You’re entirely wrong on the business, we’d make more money if we won competitions as long as the balance of spending was kept sensible – you develop a stronger brand, the team and players gain iconic status as many of our old ‘winning’ players did, leverage is earned for sponsorship deals and the commercial revenue grows – it’s not entirely that simple but if you want some evidence of that please feel free to look at the COMMERCIAL revenues of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, which all entirely dwarf our deals – our brand power cannot compete with United, part of that is down to history, but much of it is down to Uniteds success on pitch. Without player sales Arsenal is a loss making club, but with a strong commercial arm that wouldn’t be true, it’s something that needs fixing and winning would only help that. At the other end you have the continuation of relying upon player sales to generate profit but over the past two seasons we’ve started to see the limitations of this policy: the potential loss of Champions League football and all the money that generates not to mention the strength it gives to the brand. We would survive such a loss but few would argue it would help the club make more money.
I’m not complaining about anything, nor have I suggested we go and spend loads of money, if you read my post on the previous page I say I’m not worried and that Wenger doesn’t need to go tits because he found good value in the market in the summer.
shotta
November 13, 2012 at 10:37 pm
The problem I have with Bill is…
—————————————-
The cash reserves I’m talking about are entirely made up of money generated by the club and have nothing to do with Kroenke’s wealth, just to be clear.
Zinc the money you talk of ,whatever figure it really is,I a one of reserve .As we operate at a trading loss ,once spent it is gone.
Have you ever heard the term “contingency fund”?
Contingencies like losing your best players and captains several years in a row, slipping into a perpetual 3/4th position double digits in points behind the league winners, and no domestic trophies or other trophies for seven years? Just wondering, George!
In any case, today’s discussion proves that we don’t even need a new post to have the same old, tired arguments!
Losing players because they want to go. I wish that would stop being something used to beat the team with. The same players who were not healthy or committed enough when needed? The same players who ran to City to double their wages?
Please.
Please what, Paul? Who is beating the club with anything? I am just wondering what are the contingencies we should be keeping such large cash reserves for? You more than anyone have declared that we mostly just needed the team to stay together. Well, for whatever reasons, that hasn’t been possible. So what should the club do in that circumstance?
Is Yoga away? No post for two days
Yoga?!? YOGA?!?!? I’ve been called many things…
Anyway, today’s post: http://www.aclfarsenal.co.uk/?p=9970