- Why it is really important for Arsenal to stay well away from the Club World Cup
- Transfers stalled, prices rising: it’s summer
By Tony Attwood
While you wouldn’t know it looking at the media, football clubs do look at Arsenal’s rebuild after the disaster of Emery’s reign, and wonder if they couldn’t do the same. After all, although some fans complain about the second placed finishes, there are 18 other clubs in each of the last three seasons who would love to have taken the league table position Arsenal gained.
What’s more, there appears to be quite a lot of talk about how Arsenal achieved the 88 and 91 goals in the two seasons before last. Of course, this is taken as history by Arsenal, but really it should be dwelt on a little more not least when one considers that in 2023 when Arsenal came second, scoring 88 goals, Manchester United came third scoring 30 goals fewer, and have subsequently been paying the price. They stayed at that level in 2024 but last season managed a woeful 44.
The fact is that at the end of the 2021 season, Manchester United were the second-highest scoring team in the league. Last season, they sank to 16th in the league in terms of goal scoring, getting a mere eight more goals than Ipswich.
This sort of trend matters – spot it early enough and it is possible to do something about it, leave it because it “all evens out in the end” and it doesn’t even out, but the numbers instead spiral down.
The fact is that things can and do go wrong in all walks of life, and it is always easy to assume that because something worked once, it will keep on working. One might imagine such thoughts eventually reaching the mind of Carlo Ancelotti, who has just been fined €386,000 and given one-year prison sentence over tax fraud. He did get away with it for quite a while and quite possibly thought he could go on doing so, unaware that others were watching.
Indeed, it is interesting to note that the website UHY reported recently His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has ongoing investigations open into 20 clubs, 83 players and 21 agents at the time of writing. Which is quite a lot really.
In fact, in recent years Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano have been convicted of tax fraud, and again, 129 footballers have been investigated by the UK tax office in relation to alleged film finance schemes. Of course, some may be innocent, but it is likely that some will be found guilty, perhaps influenced by the occasional agent who said, “Work with me and the first thing we can do is stop you paying all that tax.”
Thus while some complain that all Arsenal have done is bought two Chelsea cast offs a player from Brentford and Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad, (while Chelsea themselves have spent around £200m) there often seems to be a lot in football that goes on out of sight of the football media, which remains fixated on transfers alone.
But there are also different patterns of behaviour. Chelsea appear to be buying players because inidivudally they look good, only to find that a) they have more than 25 players on their lists, b) players don’t like endlessly going on loan, but want to be somewhere permanently, and c) not every player can fit in with the rest of the squad – you need the right player for the right team.
Indeed, such is the turmoil in football that it is not really surprising that there is admiration for Arsenal’s approach, not least by rising from consecutive 8th place finishes to three consecutive second place finishes.
But there are other things in the background that Arsenal have done long before others. For example, it wasn’t until 2024 that Aston Villa managed even to start trying to find a company to put its name on their stadium. In terms of naming rights deals, these days people speak of the Emirates Stadium, the Etihad Stadium, Spotify Camp Nou etc, while other stadia remain packed with competing advertisements, but no highly lucrative corporate name.
And yes, I do not like the fact that Arsenal has the naming sponsor it does, because of that country’s record on restricting freedoms of expression, assembly, and association – things which as (among other things) a blogger, I treat quite seriously.
But the fact is that many clubs are now trailing along in Arsenal’s wake. Aston Villa, a club with top six pretensions, have ended its links with their kit maker, Castore and moved to Adidas, for example. In April 2024, they also ended their relationship with front-of-shirt sponsor BK8 two years early. It looks like they have realised where the big boys are making their money.
But what really does the club well is staying with a sponsor for a long time – it means that when the time does come to change sponsor, those interested in bidding know they are likely to get a good deal. Arsenal had 14 years with Nike and then moved to Adidas, now in their sixth year with the club.
As for Villa with no stadium naming rights, they were forced into massive rises in ticket prices at the start of the 2024/25 season, and apparently have another rise coming for 20245/6. Everton on the other hand, are launching their new stadium with a naming-rights deal already in place with Hill Dickinson .
Of course, supporters like tradition, but they don’t like price rises, and I suspect it is the price rises that annoy people more than the loss of a tradition through a change of name. For in the end everyone forgets tradition. Only suporters of other clubs trying to be funny call Arsenal “Woolwich Arsenal” and I doubt that anyone other than historians remembers the name “Royal Arsenal”. Of all the club’s old names the only one still heard is “The Arsenal”, and I rather like that.
Aston Villa, meanwhile, are still worrying about the potential backlash that could occur if they changed Villa Park to something else – and that worry means that potential sponsors are just as worried. Indeed, there are some who argue that publicising the negative impact of things like changing the name of a ground can have, can put potential sponsors off – which of course is all to the benefit of rivals.
Given that worry, what Aston Villa did last season to get themselves out of financial trouble was to copy Chelsea by selling their women’s team to V Sports. It’s a nifty ploy, but it comes with one problem. You can only do it once. But it is probably better than the £92 per ticket for a home match with Brighton or even more for non-season ticket holders going to a Champions League match, which is what did happen at Villa Park
