A fantastic article on the last 8 years
Quote:
The Woolwich Suite at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium almost doubles as a museum of football as well as a lucrative area for corporate hospitality. Quotes from great players of the past, all the way from Alex James and Cliff Bastin to Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira, adorn the walls alongside various club mottos. ‘Victory through harmony’ and ‘Forward’ are among the most visible. Yet it is backwards in time that you really must step to fully understand why Monday's gathering in the Woolwich Suite was such a significant moment.A full decade has now passed not just since the legendary ‘Invincibles’ team of 2003-4 but also a series of boardroom decisions which might ultimately prove even more significant in Arsenal’s history. At the same time as overseeing an unbeaten Premier League season, Arsene Wenger was instrumental in the final planning for a period more than 10 years into the future when Arsenal would aim to reposition themselves for a generation of success. It was always accepted that the club must wait until 2014 for the full realisation of this strategy and this was brought into sharp focus on Monday by the confirmation of the most lucrative kit deal in British football and a new contract that will take Wenger past 20 years at the club.
Back in 2000, when the club bought an industrial and waste disposal estate in Ashburton Grove, the logic was simple. Arsenal’s Highbury home might have oozed history and character but it simply did not generate the incomes that would sustain the club in the same elite league as Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Barcelona.
A new stadium was conceived and, although there would be the immediate benefit of additional matchday revenue upon opening the Emirates in 2006, loans of £260 million had to be paid back. A serious restriction on the club’s commercial income has also been absorbed. This is because Arsenal had accepted a series of unusually long-term deals for their main commercial revenue streams from kit manufacturer Nike and shirt sponsor Emirates. These deals might have seemed enticing in the early 2000s – and were necessary to secure the funding for a stadium that eventually cost £390 million – but have subsequently fallen well behind their main competitors.
It is why 2014 has long been regarded as some sort of Promised Land in the corridors of the Emirates. The old commercial deals will elapse this summer, Arsenal have been free to negotiate a series of new partnerships and their three main revenue streams – matchday, broadcast and commercial - can all now be fully maximised going forward.
In short, this summer was always going to be the moment when the years of relative ration and harvest would finally be rewarded. Back around 2000, when this vision was being formed, the wider landscape in 2014 could only be guessed at. But if you had told Wenger then that Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham would still be nowhere near sorting their own stadium issues, he would have been entitled to suppose that Arsenal and Manchester United’s dominance would be assured.
Manchester City and Chelsea, with close to £1 billion of benefactor investment apiece, have fundamentally altered the picture but Arsenal still now find themselves in an envious position compared to most of their competitors.
On its own, the £150 million five-year Puma deal provides between £22 million and £26 million of extra money each and every year. The new Emirates shirt sponsorship deal does roughly the same. Together with other smaller commercial partnerships, the difference in the club’s commercial income next year compared with last year will be around £70 million. And the important point to remember is that this is not some sort of one-off payment but a yearly change that will be fully available for transfer fees and wages each and every year. It means that, from 2014-15, Arsenal will become one of the select few clubs in Europe to generate more than £300 million a year.
There is considerable internal pride at this achievement and it was not hard to read between the lines when Ivan Gazidis, the chief executive, addressed the media. "I think it is a validation of the things we are doing right,” he said. “Our club has walked an independent path, standing on our own two feet, and thinking long term about that progression.” He went on to specifically add that Arsenal had got to where they are “without state funding or the help of a benefactor” but through the work of people who “love” the club. “When we do achieve success it will be incredibly meaningful to everyone on this journey,” said Gazidis.
There are still some thorns in this emerging garden of roses. In theory, Arsenal should be ideally placed to benefit from Uefa’s new Financial Fair-Play regulations and the ‘break even’ principle that clubs should not spend more than they naturally earn. In practice, Deloitte’s new league table of the biggest earners in football very clearly signalled how Manchester City and Paris St Germain will seek to underpin their vast spending with sponsorship deals that would appear to have a close connection to their respective owners. City have gone from generating £18 million in commercial income in 2008-9 to £166.9 million in 2012-13. This is already well ahead of more historically famous and successful clubs, such as Arsenal and Liverpool, and only marginally behind Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona. PSG have gone even further and now outstrip every club in world football for sponsorship revenue. These deals will be evaluated for ‘fair value’ by Uefa and, during lunch this week with Michel Platini, it can be safely assumed that Gazidis was clearly outlining his “healthy sceptics” view of FFP.
Yet even if that battle is lost, the wider narrative is clear. Arsenal’s patience and long-term planning – qualities not readily associated with modern football - are now beginning to reap their reward. Most significant of all was the confirmation that Wenger will sign a new contract that is likely to run until the end of the 2016-17 season. This was not so certain even five months ago when Arsenal were losing on the opening day of the season to Aston Villa and Wenger was being disrespectfully told by some fans that “you don’t know what you’re doing”.
Having been the principal architect of Arsenal’s vision – and also the human shield for all the frustration over the club’s lack of trophies amid regular top four finishes since 2005 – he has earned the chance to lead the club into this new phase. And what happens next, now that Wenger has the opportunity to regularly supplement the development of young players with expensive proven talent like Mesut Ozil, will decide his final standing in the pantheon of British football’s most influential managers.
This is from the telegraph today by Jermey Wilson. its a superb read. it doesn't excuse mistakes that have happened, for instance the CC final in 2011 etc, but it explains the vision set out 10 years ago and now with the Puma deal the conclusion of it. We can already this season a vast difference, Ozil signing, top of the league and challenging and AW with his mojo back. Reading this article makes me fiecly proud of Arsenal and Arsene, both have made their fair share of mistakes, but to keep us in the top four and competing until this point when we can finally go for it having financed the whole thing ourselves should make all of us proud. We did it our way, the Arsenal way.
