‘Process complete, Era begins’
An Arsenal blog from a coach’s perspective
Where do you even start?
I have wrestled for a few days as to how to describe what I saw and what we are seeing at Arsenal Football Club. It seems like a seminal moment in our 140 year history.
Life doesn’t always go the way that you foresee it but if I was a betting man, I’d say by the time we celebrate our 150th year that Arsenal could be the dominant force in world football.
Some days I am really frustrated at the negative noise around a club on the rise. It feels so unjustified, but then it hit me. Other clubs have moments. They are in the headlines every once in a while. Some of them, hardly ever. Arsenal Football Club are everywhere. All the time. Whether we are crap, mediocre, very good or dominant, Arsenal are everywhere all the time. And that has become a huge annoyance to those that don’t support Arsenal.
It’s not even our doing. For whatever reason you want to pick, Arsenal Football Club is the most talked about of any club in world football because we were chosen as the club to ridicule. Chosen as the club that would generate the most money for those talking and trying to earn it. The club that no matter where you go in the world, you’ll find fans, and lots of them.
For those regular readers, you will know that I am a British chap living in East Tennessee. Most people outside of Tennessee don’t know much about it beyond Dolly Parton, Elvis, country music, and Jack Daniels. If I told you exactly where I live, you wouldn’t have heard of it. You might not have even heard of the closest city, Knoxville. I’d never heard of it before I came to the USA. But here’s the thing though. About once a month Max, EllieAnn and I go to Union Place in Knoxville. It is a bar/pub that the Knox Gooners have taken over. In a town that I admit is largely irrelevant to many, look at how many people are in this picture.
It was taken on Saturday.
If I spun in a circle and touched a globe, as long as it wasn’t the ocean, I’d find some random place on God‘s earth and I could go there and you’d probably find a crowd of similar size to the Knox Gooners.
Arsenal are a moneymaking machine for those who need to make money through engagement. Arsenal sit in the absolute perfect place in the modern world, where you can engage on many platforms with strangers from anywhere on the globe, as the club that people want to talk about.
It used to be Manchester United. It was Liverpool when I was growing up. It’s neither of them anymore. Not to the level that Arsenal occupy. The impromptu gatherings, as well as the actual parade are undeniable evidence of this.
As a comparison and once again, using the very random place that I live in, the Merchants of Beer in Knoxville has just been demolished. It was the Manchester United pub. It simply wasn’t popular enough.
I think Arsenal have completed the process that Mikel Arteta started. He would never say it publicly because ‘constant growth’ is his mantra, and God bless him for that. The process was as simple as needing a sleeping giant to do a complete 180 turn. To change from being a laughing stock to being a consistent competitor at the very top of the world‘s game. It is arrogant to think that you can dominate European football unless you have Lionel Messi in his prime years, but it isn’t unrealistic to be a club like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Barcelona, who always compete and cannot be ignored.
I think Arsenal have moved from their process to an era of potential domestic dominance, and what will finally be the cherry of the Champions League of which we were a penalty kick away from.
In order to back up my somewhat biased opinion, you just have to look at all of the facets of a Football Club that need to be aligned in order for the claim of a ‘dominant era’ to become reality.
Real Madrid are a completely unstable club. Inevitably their collection of egos has turned poisonous and the club is now divided into factions and chaos. Perhaps Jose Mourinho can change this as he does have the personality to do so, but he will have to win very quickly.
Barcelona will always be around because of their hugely impressive Academy that produces not just players for the first team, but players that are considered the best in the world in their position.
Their issue is financial. Even though their revenue and global reach is massive, they aren’t wise with their spending as their fans demand the same as Real Madrid fans, instant success. And I mean instant. They have a superstar on their right wing who lives on the edge of a large, vertical sharp pointed cliff. He could take them to another decade of glory or his ego could have them topple over the other side.
PSG are in a good place, but after watching the refereeing of their semifinal against Bayern Munich and Saturday’s final, it does make you wonder if they will be hit with revelations that might well destroy their club overnight much like what should have happened to Manchester City if only the Premier League had been more honorable in announcing their charges many years ago.
Manchester City themselves are where PSG might end up and by the time you read this post, there is a chance that Humpty Dumpty will have fallen off the wall and finds himself rolling down the hill faster than a Mustang.
Manchester United have thought for over a decade that ‘this is the guy’ to bring us back’ but it hasn’t been so we can continue to design memes and sit in the corner, giggling.
Liverpool might bounce back next season, but will be due a major rebuild that they may never recover from when VVD and Allison move on.
Chelsea should be contenders and much like Liverpool, next season should be significantly better because they have no European distractions and have somehow acquired an elite coach. Their issues are long-term because almost all of their players have contracts that expire in their 70’s and so will continue to make huge losses on players that aren’t playing and are threatening to wait until their 72nd birthday when their contract runs out. The knock on effect will likely hinder Alonso from fulfilling his coaching potential as for some bizarre reason he has chosen a club that will never have even close to the same team spirit and energy that Arsenal have because their employees have been financially spoilt.
The Italian teams are hardly worth a mention when you see that Inter Milan were awarded significantly less prize money for winning Serie A, than Wolves were for being relegated.
Bayern Munich will be Arsenal‘s long-term biggest threat. They are in the middle of one of the longest periods of dominance in world football, and as long as they can continue to make such intelligent use of their transfer budget, they will always win the league and be able to rest players and be a consistent European force.
Then you look at the red side of North London.
You look at the pieces needed to claim that you are about to start on an era of dominance.
You need owners that love the club and are for the club and have a desire to win. We can’t pretend that it has always been this way with the Kroenke family, but unless Josh has been to acting school recently, you can’t ask for an owner more engaged than him whether it be on top of the parade bus or proven by the financial support he has given over the last few years.
You need a coach that elite players want to play for. Arsenal will not only have agents of the best players in the world calling them all summer, but they will have agents of the very few top players that we currently have begging for an extension. We are very close to having all of our players on extended contracts and we often forget that when we go shopping for a shiny new toy, that we used to live in a department store that had a revolving door. When you came out with three shiny new toys, there were three equally shiny ones rotating out.
This image speaks so loudly to me.
I hope to get it printed and blown up and preferably put on the front door of our new home. Lori is quickly becoming a more passionate Arsenal fan and I will persuade her to take the curtains down because we can block the neighbors from seeing into our house just as easily by putting this poster up on the front door.
I love this image because it absolutely screams of unity. A group of elite players that could have massive egos and focus on their personal disappointment, but have total buy-in.
I watched Ricky Califiori at the parade. You think that he would be somewhat pissed off. He didn’t deserve to have zero minutes at the Champions League final. Mikel Merino has been a huge contributor also. They were both singing, dancing and starting songs. You just wouldn’t see that kind of positive energy at any other club.
The most underestimated part of a Football Club is the fanbase. Perhaps the number one reason why players stay, and even after they leave, become fans of Arsenal Football Club is because they felt so valued by the fanbase at Arsenal. They had a personal song or maybe two. That is the hook for them. I would imagine that if Gabriel Martinelli leaves this summer, he will be inconsolable. He has not only experienced seven years of love from the Arsenal faithful and been part of the 180 turn around, but he stood on that open top bus and saw 1.5 million people on a two hour bus ride cheering for him and his club.
That’s not easy to forget.
If they would ever stop talking about politics on the news, then the last week or so of life at Arsenal Football Club would have been the headline story on every media outlet in the country. People spontaneously running out of their houses to go to the stadium because they wanted to be close to their first love. The sheer number of people creating such a massive organic scene of celebration. Not once or twice but three times. Due to the internet and social media everybody with a phone, all across the globe, will have seen the unparalleled images of what is happening in North London. No other club in the world is experiencing this level of joy and energy. Compare the scenes in Paris, where it seemed more important to cause violence then celebrate. Imagine if a club like Real Madrid would’ve one La Liga, but lost the Champions League final the day before their parade. Their fans would’ve come out on the streets to wave their white handkerchiefs, stick their middle finger up at the players and go home.
To have an era of dominance, you need to have built your house with a proper foundation. Arteta built from the back and even though he doesn’t get applause he most certainly does from those involved in the professional game rather than those behind a microphone. Looking at Arsenal‘s bench on Saturday, I put out this tweet.
Apart from a World XI charity game, I can’t remember in my lifetime ever seeing a bench this strong. So, Arsenal can point to the fact that they have already conquered what most clubs lack. They have a squad of players who are almost equally as good as each other. I looked at PSG‘s bench and maybe I’m ignorant, but I didn’t recognize half of their names. Arsenal just now need to create an attack as frightening as their defensive structure is. We have the money to do it and we will take our second swing at it this summer. The first swing and introduction of Viktor and Noni was good not great, but if the club make the right selections, then the second swing could replicate finding oil in your back garden.
In order to dominate you need to live in the moment that Arsenal sit in. There was another tweet that I sent out in regards to commercial deals.
I would imagine that the people in our commercial department can probably go on holiday for a few years and just have their cell phone next to their cabana. They won’t have to make any calls. They’ll just have to have their phone on vibrate and respond to the many huge businesses that now want to be affiliated with Arsenal and are calling the commercial department more often than I’m getting voicemails from personal loan companies.
Alongside this, Arsenal now have the opportunity to confidently expand their stadium. For any club trying to do this there is always a massive risk involved. What if the people that say that they want tickets don’t come? What if the engagement online is just online engagement. Not people that want to come to the stadium.
The waiting list for tickets at Arsenal was huge before Arsenal probably just made another 10 million fans worldwide. The players of this generation talk about the Invincibles. The players of this generation will spark the same fire. There will be so many people of the younger generation that now choose Arsenal as their club because Arsenal is clearly on fire.
Stability is an underrated value.
Arsenal’s stability lies in the hands of Mikel Arteta more than any other person. He has been given the keys and rightly so.
Every club has this situation. They have to look to the long-term, even though society wants success in the short term.
Arsenal’s era of dominance it’s largely thanks to Arteta and will largely revolve around him. The love that he must feel and the motivation that he must have is likely beyond huge. As with every part of this project, he has a direct comparison. He was at the most successful British club of the modern era where everything was going right at the time.
As well as everything went for Manchester City they didn’t have the full package like Arsenal now have. They don’t have the fanbase and they don’t have the global reach.
They absolutely most certainly didn’t give him the experience that he had on Sunday afternoon.
He will have the direct contrast in his mind of how many people showed up to the Manchester City parade each year, and what he saw on the streets of North London. The comparison isn’t really a comparison at all. One screams energy and the other one screams apathy in comparison.
Arsenal are like a flower in full bloom. The most beautiful flower. Whatever your preference is.
We go into hibernation for a couple of months and I believe we will bloom into an even more beautiful flower next season.
I’m also reminded of the reality of emotion. Not wanting to go over the top as that is easy right now, but an encouragement to all of us to revel in this period. The celebrations next year and in the future will be glorious, but we might look back at the end of this era and realize that the very best of it was the relief, organic ecstasy, and all the other tens of adjectives you could use to describe perhaps the most beautiful month in the history of Arsenal Football Club.
There is never a guarantee that you or your children will see what we have just seen. There is even less of a chance that fans of any other club will experience what we are currently going through.
I have so much gratitude for my first love.
Former Highbury regular. Moved to TN, USA in ’99. Married with 3 kids. Coached in UK and US for 27 years.
Mike McDonald Soccer Academy in Morristown TN, Olympic Development coach, Regional Premier League Champion.
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