What is Mikel Arteta's Arsenal?

arsenal are in an odd position under manager michael arteta they are fa cup winners they're equipped with young promising players like bakayosaka gabriel martinelli and william saleeba they've also recently beaten liverpool manchester city and chelsea and arteta has got the better of pep guardiola and jurgen klopp in one-off games yet the club remains shackled to its past american billionaire stan kroenke who incidentally is married to one of the heirs of the walmart fortune is the club's sole owner with son josh now more involved in the day-to-day supporters have criticized the club as commercially stagnant as having an arcane structure and of just not doing enough and hearing lies a strange contrast supporters are generally enthusiastic about the progressive modern and ambitious arteta but largely dead against the perceived absent american ownership on top of this the hierarchy between coach and owner has also at times seemed problematic the legacy of now departed head of football rao sanji is the alienation of the club's scouting and analytics departments in favour of an agent-led approach to transfers so where does this leave the club well in today's episode we're joined by david ornstein amy lawrence james mcnicholas and matt slater to dig into arsenal's recruitment ownership academy tactics and finances but most importantly the manager who is mikel arteta what is his managerial dna why did pep guardiola choose him as an assistant answer this and we can better understand the arsenal of the future welcome to state of the [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] club nobody thought that michael arteta would ever become a footballer born in march 1982 in san sebastian as a baby he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition which required surgery and doctors would tell his parents that their son would never play any sport but he would come to love football and at age five those doctors agreed to merely monitor his condition and play he did most often on the beaches near his home in caimatia with a local boy who would grow up to win everything the sport had to offer chaby alonso was five months older than arteta but the two became inseparable honing their touch and technique on the beach at nine they would even play alongside one another for auntie guaca the feeder club for real sociedad but at 15 arteta had the chance to join the team he'd supported as a boy moving to barcelona may have seemed too good to be true for arteta but it was no surprise to those who'd watched him develop he was one of the smallest players remembers antiguaco teammate alvaro para but no doubt the smartest barcelona brought him first contact with pep guardiola his idol as a player and many decades later his coaching mentor arteta would make his debut appearance for bass's b team as a substitute for guardiola but first team chances were limited for teenagers and in 2001 with philip koku javi and fabio rochembach blocking out the light he joined paris saint-germain on loan at the time psg were under the guidance of luis fernandez a european championship winner with france in 1984 and one of the finer defensive midfielders of his generation the club was very different to the one standing in its place today but it was still one of europe's most cosmopolitan environments fernandez was managing a group which included maurizio pochettino and gabriel ansa the swaggering flair of jj accocha and ronaldinho and the combustible talent of nicolas anelka it was an intimidating dressing room particularly for a 19 year old but he survived and grew pogetino took arteta under his wing and the two retain a friendship which survives to this day but those early years as a player were semi-nomadic arteta's loan in paris would become a permanent move to rangers he would then swap glasgow for a return to san sebastian before leaving for england and everton first on loan and then for good so before arsenal and the emirates there were changes in style and culture to navigate with languages to learn and communication skills to develop it was a time of near constant change but the anecdotes are familiar and consistent and are indicative of the kind of personality that today nearly 20 years later is exerting itself at arsenal at ibrox ronald de boer was struck by the presence of a young player who should have been well outside his comfort zone i think he was just coming up for 20 at that time but he played with the maturity and tactical discipline of a 30 year old deborah recalled you can never be certain but i did get a feeling even back then when he was so young that he had a desire to get into coaching from one hothouse footballing city to another via san sebastian arteta would make his name in liverpool with everton and again show many of the characteristics present today alan stubbs the former centre-half remembers arteta as strong-minded and willing to speak up if he felt something needed to be said phil neville who spent time in the presence of some of the strongest characters english football has ever known also observed a rare gravitas in his teammate people listen to him and respect him he has that aura through arteta's own recollections he was an unusually driven player too in 2009 while in recovery from a cruciate ligament injury his wife lorena was pregnant with their first child labor was no reason to miss rehab though three or four hours after my wife gave birth he told arsenal's official website in 2014 i pulled up a treatment table next to her in the hospital and had my physio she wanted to kill me but he would play again returning with some of the best football of his career he arrived at arsenal in 2011 as part of arsene wenger's response to a dreadful 8-2 defeat to manchester united wenger would eventually make him his captain and like others beforehand placed great stock in his character and the example it said mikael has a huge influence even when he's not playing fenga commented at the time he is super conscientious and every morning two hours before training he prepares and that is absolutely right just through his behavior his focus is on getting everything right in the team like many of his peers arteta laid the groundwork for his coaching career while he was still playing as part of his qualifications he coached arsenal's under-13s at hale end during a lengthy injury layoff in 2015 and later in the year for his a-licence he would coach wales under-16s through the victory shield tournament by that time some semblance of philosophy had started to crystallize too he already seemed to know what kind of head coach he would be i will have everyone 120 committed that's the first thing he said in a 2014 interview if not you don't play for me it was said lightheartedly and with a smile but as matteo guendouzi might attest he meant every word and he also knew how his teams would play i want the football to be expressive entertaining i cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition we have to dictate the game we have to be the ones taking the initiative and we have to entertain the people coming to watch us the people aren't there yet and may not be for a while but the substance is appearing and arsenal have already begun to twine around their head coach mikhail arteta has now been at arsenal since december 2019. his first game was a fixture against bournemouth in that he used a 4-2-3-1 which he then used for the next 10 fixtures after that he switched to a 3-4-3 before reverting to a 4-2-3-1 for the final game against watford now in the first two games of this season he's used a 343 in both the community shield and also the fixture against fulham but what does this tell us about how arteta is trying to play and what can we infer from what arsenal will do this coming season [Music] [Applause] [Music] mikhail arteta has clearly been influenced by his time with pep guardiola he was assistant manager to guardiola at manchester city pep guardiola is famous for something called positional play and it's clear that arteta is trying to institute this at arsenal as well but what is positional play positional play is a fairly complicated series of ideas but it can be boiled down into a few key facets which are helpful for understanding what arteta is trying to do at arsenal so the first is the idea of generating superiorities behind opposition lines of defense now these up these superiorities can either be quantitative which is where you have more players in a particular part of the pitch than the opposition or they can be qualitative which is where you have a particularly good player isolating an opposition player and running at him or going in behind him there are a few other key important points to positional play as well so these superiorities that we're talking about are generated with a series of rehearsed movements patterns of play this is why pep guardiola for example trains his players using a rondo it's about quick rehearsed interchanges of passing there's a few other key points as well so for example one of the things that is important for positional play is the idea of the third man so what happens there is you you'll have a player moving into this position here and then one of these players will be the third man these two players here can pass the ball between each other but there's always a third man here who's spare this is why we talk a lot about the creation of passing triangles within these superiorities the other thing that's important is what we call the switch of play so if the team here in red is stacking up on the right hand side and trying to generate superiorities in this area naturally the team in yellow is going to come across so what we then find is that these players out here on the left hand side are in considerable space and number 11 here has gained what's possibly a qualitative superiority over number two you can then have a series of quick passes like that and then number 11 can attack number two one of the things that's really important about positional play and it's why we've got this grid drawn here on the screen is that when it's trained players are taught to occupy certain zones the idea is that no two players should occupy the same vertical line so that's okay because four and six are on the same vertical line but 10 is tucked inside but if 10 moves there that's too easy to shut off the passing lane like that also no more than three players should occupy the same vertical line so again that's fine but if seven were to drop in there you'd have too many players on that line and again that makes it easy to mark now these movements on these lines and players being aware of where they are in relation to those markings on a training pitch which is incidentally why players are always looking around themselves trying to work out where they are oriented towards the space towards the ball towards their teammates is what makes positional play work on the basis of rehearsed movements so teams will learn in these series of rehearse movements if the ball goes here this is where i need to move this is where my teammate's going to move and you see this very very slick series of interchange passes which is all based on this rehearsed idea now there are a couple of different types of positional play the pep guardiola style is is predicated on what we call verticality so that's moving the ball quickly up the pitch you might have a manager like louis van gaal for example who does it more horizontally that's more about moving the ball sort of backwards and forwards in a kind of pendulum way but the aim is the same it's to get superiorities behind the opposition lines and then be able to affect an attack uh pressing is part of this as well because pressing is is a way that teams then shore up what's happening behind the ball so how does this positional play influence what arteta is trying to do at arsenal artetas 4-2-3-1 was perhaps slightly reminiscent of what guardiola does with his 4-3-3 although it was less effective in execution again the principles are to try and generate these overloads so what would quite often happen is the 4231 would morph into a sort of two three five in possession so the fullbacks here would give as much width as possible the wide left player generally speaking aubameyang would be out there wide left the number seven again probably nicolas pape would stay wide on this side and then you'd have the number 10 drifting into the right half space one of these central midfielders usually someone like cebios would be pushing up this was flexible so occasionally for example aubameyang would occupy this left half space so that he could make a run in here and the width would come from the left back but the general principle was to have five players here up front a shield of three players providing defensive cover the ability to counter press and then two defenders that would sort of lurk in this area there's a couple of other things that are worth noting about the 4-2-3-1 so part of the build-up play for example would sometimes see the left-back pushing really really high and then granit xhaka would drop here into the left back spot and he'd be able to play these long passes forwards that was part of how arsenal would build up from the back but by and large there was a fairly straightforward approach it was it was about trying to get a lot of men forward with coming from the full backs long passes coming from deep and having enough superiority in the forward spaces to be able to try and affect goal opportunities so how is what arteta is now doing with a 343 different to that well actually in several respects it's not that different the first thing to say is that formations are kind of nominal sometimes so a 343 quite often won't look like a 343 during lots of facets of the game that's kind of the same with most formations when arsenal are in a low block you do see the wing backs dropping back the wide players also dropping back and you get this structure of a five-man back line for midfielders and then lacazette on his own moving around trying to press a little bit that's where it's closest to being a 343 but in lots of other respects arteta is actually doing some fairly similar things to what he was doing before he's just doing them more effectively because the personnel that he's able so far to squeeze into the 343 is performing better so on the left hand side the left wing back ainsley maitland-niles who's a really interesting utility player who can fulfill a number of different functions has tended to sit quite narrow inside what this means is that kieran tierney who has played obviously regularly as a left-back can push really really high and wide on the left-hand side so he's acting as a left-sided centre-back but he's also acting as a left-wing back maitland niles will largely occupy this space tiene will overlap up here but sometimes if tienie cuts inside maitlanars will go outside aubameyang is then able to come inside knowing that there's going to be at least probably one player outside him but also one player behind him we have the passing triangles that are so beloved of positional play there i actually managed to do it in that instance on the right hand side if we return these players to where they should roughly be willian acts much more like a 10 rather than a classic outside right-sided attacker so he drifts into this space here bayern will provide the width on the right-hand side getting forwards however bayern will also cut inside with willian staying outside what that means again is that you have again the creation of these overloads passing triangles so with bayern making runs inside or outside willian drifting inside or outside depending on where they are in us what that means is again you have the opportunity to to generate these overloads what this often looks like when arsenal are in attack is five players forwards three players in the middle and two at the back much like we saw with the 4-2-3-1 so maitland-niles will be in here you have these midfielders tierney's providing width on the left baron's providing width on the right aubameyang and willian are drifting inside again this is creating overloads creating numerical superiority behind the opposition line of defense but while they're doing that there is the midfield cover here the screen of the three players now what's interesting is that arsenal are trying to push those players a little bit higher up the pitch now that's partly facilitated by the fact that gabrielle is a really good one-on-one defender i think we'll probably see that more uh when william celiba comes into the team as well because that's the strength of his with his pace and his covering ability leno is obviously a good sweeper keeper so he can come and patrol this area if arsenal press high up the pitch and when i say press i don't mean engage in a press i just mean push up so that they're squeezing the opposition space that allows them to counter press around the edge of the box if the move breaks down with those flies five players up front you've still got three behind them to keep everything secure and also perhaps arguably lacking a really really high quality playmaker arsenal can use the counter press to generate additional opportunities to attack the opposition box now one of the interesting things about the use of the 343 last season is that it was generally felt that because arsenal maybe granit xhaka aside lacked a really high quality progresser of the ball from deep david luis was was the crucial guy he was in the center of that back three and he was able to make these long raking passes forwards or sometimes bring the ball actually out into the midfield area and then generate these vertical passes forwards but it was felt that luis was probably unable to defend properly in a full man backline he was kind of exposed by that luis is injured and hasn't been part of the squad so far this season but what we can see with arsenal is that they've turned the 343 into something that plays to their strengths and crucially plays to the way that arteta wants to play football rather than something that they build around one particular player to minimize their weaknesses in other areas of the game i think that's what's really interesting about arteta he came into the role having given an interview to the arsenal magazine in in 2016 where he talked about wanting to play expressive football wanting to play football that dictated to the opposition what was happening but also he emphasized flexibility he emphasized the idea that you know players in the squad have to be able to take risks they have to be technically capable and and if the players aren't able to do that or if you don't have those players then you have to adapt to that what we've seen before with arteta is this adaptation to to use what luis is good at but protect him and now we're seeing the same formation used but rather to emphasize arsenal's strengths so artetra is sticking true to his word he's adapting he's playing expressive football and i think it probably bodes really well for arsenal in this coming season i'm david ornstein football correspondent for the athletic [Music] when ivan gazidis was chief executive at the club he wanted to create a continental model and that would involve a number of heads of department um whether it be head of recruitment head of football head coach head of high performance and he implemented it a number of individuals came on board the likes of darren burgess on high performance raul sanllehi as head of football relations later head of football sven mislintat as head of recruitment huss farmi as head of contract the only thing remaining was the head coach role and arsene wenger was replaced with head coach unai emery that seemed to be the model that arsenal would go forward in however ivan gazidis left soon after sven mislintat was gone darren burgess left and now arsenal are in a position where raul sanllehi has gone too people have come in in the meantime edu as technical director and so that continued this sort of continental model but with the departure of raul sanllehi things are looking very different at arsenal at the top of the organization now is the man who he shared the leadership with vinai venkateshum he has gone from managing director to newly appointed chief executive raul sanllehi has not been replaced it was clearly a name of arsenal's owner stan kroenke his son josh who's a director at the club ksc cronkite sports and entertainment who are the overarching organization in charge of this to create a leaner more efficient arsenal um many of the redundancies that were made we were told that they needed to be made regardless of kovid and that this had kind of escalated the process arsenal want to become a more streamlined organization more fit for purpose in not only the covid but also the modern era that means the hierarchy of the club looks very different to how it looked not so long ago player recruitment at arsenal has undergone enormous change in recent times if we take the story back ivan gazidis was chief executive was very keen to embrace data statistics numbers analytics and arsenal acquired the american company stat dna and their boss jason rosenfeld that became a really important part of arsenal's decision-making process around potential signings it culminated in the arrival of sven mislintat as head of recruitment from borussia dortmund because he is a real disciple a believer in the numbers the data the analytics um but that sort of thing was always likely to create a bit of tension within any club because there will always be people of a more traditional old-school mentality and there was certainly tension between sven mislintat and rao sanlehi who after the departure of ivan gazidis were the two guys basically responsible for the recruitment sven mislintat left and raoul sanllehi was in position to take things forward now it was arsenal's aim to appoint a technical director who would be ultimately responsible for recruitment they considered a number of options including monchi he had recently left roma he's renowned throughout the game as one of the best operators but he decided to go back to sevilla arsenal turned their attentions to edu their former player and invincible he had experience at the brazilian fa but also corinthians just not in a european club or in the european transfer market [Music] so as he gradually integrated rao sanlehi was left to lead this forward in conjunction with arsenal's recruitment department and raul sanllehi favors a more contacts based approach relationships like a black book of connections that is said to be second to none and many people have looked skeptically at some of these relationships with certain agents but that's the way arsenal looked to be favouring then came the overhaul the restructure of the club and that saw the recruitment department in the words of some i've spoken to around the club decimated the likes of francis kajijao leaving the club brian mcdermott too and many more besides well the full details behind raul sanllehi's departure from arsenal still remain relatively vague arsenal released a statement pointing to the idea that it was part of their cost-cutting measures around the covid crisis that it was a role that they had decided wasn't necessarily essential and that it would be discontinued but the lack of detail and also crucially the timing because rao sanlehi was negotiating a number of potential transfers for arsenal and the pierre-emerick aubameyang contract so this was the middle of the transfer window led to suspicions that there could be other reasons now we've heard so much speculation around arsenal around raul sanllehi a lot of reporting about his relationships with certain high-profile agents and arsenal conducting a lot of deals with the same agents but we've got no reason to suspect there is any wrongdoing we only have what arsenal have announced and until we maybe hear from him or more from the club we won't know if there are any deeper reasons to it we only know what we know but it is a big moment for arsenal losing their head of football in the middle of the transfer window will not have been a decision taken lightly [Music] leaving by default you could say edu at the top of the tree as technical director in conjunction with michel arteta whose title has been changed from head coach to first team manager and he will certainly have more power than ever before around recruitment and then there are other individuals supporting as well the likes of ben nappa the loans manager then filtering down to the academy somebody like lee herron heading up recruitment there per mertesacker and other individuals and it's really fascinating to look at the way that the academy has started recruiting over the last few months picking up players who have perhaps fallen out of contract elsewhere will they start to look to go down the route that chelsea have operated on in recent years making it almost like a second business signing players loaning them out trying to develop the best ones keep them in house then sell for profit those that they bought in from cheap for cheap that's an area to watch but on the first team side it's almost like arsenal have winded back the clock going from this continental model with a huge number of bodies a huge number of cooks you could say to very few almost like less is more and they will hope that this is an intelligent way a more modern way to go forward and that it will lead them to success in the transfer market [Music] okay arsenal dropped to 11th in the deloitte money league in the latest results their lowest since 2001. yeah and here's an accompanying quote uh there is nothing standing out nothing driving things forward and income has flatlined for five years right so why did that happen probably the easiest answer to that question would be results that's matt slater he's the football investigations reporter for the athletic and he's about to explain how poor results impact income a noticeable appreciable drop in finishing positions in the premier league which means less bonus money less less prize money from the premier league but most importantly failure to qualify for the champions league and there's a huge drop off even if you go very deep in the competition as they have in the europa league even if you go very deep in that competition you know you you know you're looking at you know at least half um drop off so you know you could maybe earn 40 45 of what a good run in the champions league would bring you so i think it's those it does that's the main thing really they they have the results have dried up they're not as consistent as they were and that has had a big knock on the bottom line right so generally club revenue breaks down into three categories match day broadcasting and commercial the club's most recent results show that broadcasting income was down from 180 million to 170 million which is fairly insignificant largely based on performance or more specifically finishing positions within the league in europe however uh commercial revenue has actually grown by about 10 million pounds this year which is funny because we started this by saying that they fell out of the top eleven uh and uh that makes it sound bad sev well the club's growth isn't retracting it's just not accelerating like they might want it to with their commercial income for example they make a lot of money but they are behind many of their peers for example their kit manufacturers deal they make 60 million pounds per season and that puts them behind manchester city man united barcelona and real madrid and liverpool who've just signed an unusual deal with nike which we think all things considered will be worth around 100 million pounds per season which is almost double arsenal's also the market leading deals that they have are in the more minor areas so the 30 million pounds over three years deal with visit rwanda is the best sleeve sponsor deal in the world at the time that was signed but he's still only 10 million pounds a year right right and match day income is also very interesting largely because of their big shiny stadium and matt explains why one of the great sort of pillars of arsenal success as a club has been the emirates building that stadium big stadium in london having high ticket prices and having lots and lots of premium seats i mean that has been really arsenal's big usp you know when they built that stadium they were basically making about three million pounds a game a home game of which one million was coming from about a sixth seventh of the seats so those premium seats and that again is is is one of the advantages that london clubs have particularly if you are one of the best clubs in london you can really just tap into that kind of corporate market you know the banks uh all the other large businesses will do so much hospitality entertainment at big games um and it's often sort of discussed the the clubs elsewhere in the country you know don't have that advantage certainly couldn't sell eight nine thousand premium tickets every game which sounds great and makes it sound like they should be running away with it the building of the emirates was difficult why was it difficult building anything in london is difficult and it got quite hairy um that's i mean this is this is a this is a whole book in itself just how they how they manage that that that move how complicated it was how arsenal for a period got distracted and they became a property company for a bit um you know the the the decision makers at arsenal were were worrying about relocating people and selling flats and building waste incineration plants and dealing with local government who were making all kinds of demands on them a cardboard bailer was installed in october 2007 to bail all the cardboard from the catering facilities armory shop and program sellers and to prepare it for collection by recycling company sev okay but that is called the emirates is also very significant because a couple of years before the stadium opened club signed that long-term deal and it wasn't particularly favorable it was eight years of shirt sponsorship of 48 million pounds and 50 years of naming rights of 42 million pounds so a total of 90 million pounds matt explains why they had to do those deals they had to do them they had to front load them that was the key thing so they went to the market in a weak position they didn't go to the market in a position of strength we're one of the best two teams in the country we're about to move into an amazing stadium it was um we need the money right now and otherwise this stadium is going to become a millstone because we will have to borrow more money and the interest rates will go up it was the shirt sponsor deal that i i think became a real bonus contention because effectively what was this or six million a year at a time where you know united who they were going head-to-head with were getting 15-ish real madrid 14 bayern 13 14. it's actually worse than that shouka dortmund and even spurs were ahead of them 12 clubs in total were only more from their kit deals at the time but for a long time after the stadium was built there was a lot of frustration that that they'd undersold they'd undersold these key assets the front shirt and the name of the stadium so in 2010 in an ast survey revealed by goal.com um it was estimated that these long commercial deals were actually costing the clubs somewhere in the regions of somewhere in the region 20 million pounds per season but they're able to renegotiate in 2012 they went 150 million pounds for five years for shirt and stadium so that was 30 million pounds a year and as a result in june 2013 ivan gazidis at time their chief executive obviously um announced hebristically that the club's era of austerity was over and that they were then in a position to compete for almost any player in the world so ozil and sanchez etc right right but it didn't last if you're really good at football all the other bits become so much easier and i think that's something that liverpool under femwe learned you know get the football products right and then we can be really clever and smart with our commercial relationships and our kit manufacturing deal and everything else we want to do so i think that's it for arsenal that's the story they they they they lost their way on the pitch but throughout this whole period right lots of arsenal fans talked about the cash reserves the war chest in arsenal's bank accounts even if the results on the pitch weren't right why weren't they spending this money if they had it one of the conditions of the borrowing of a bond in particular is it's quite is quite regulated um there would have to have been sort of like a rainy day element to that so you know a provision of the bond would have been well you must at all times have an amount in your bank account just in case the world ends um so that we can always get our money back and that has meant that's often i remember you know loads of times arsenal have been talking about this war chest and we've got so much cash in the bank and fans getting really really frustrated well the point is that that money a lot of it had to be held back had to be retained just for the provisions of the terms of their bonds sorry and by borrowing now from their owner well they can now tap into more of their cash all of their cash if you like so so that's definitely a you know a cash positive for arsenal and so that's full circle isn't it arsenal's debt has actually increased but because it's mostly owed to stan cronkite himself it's on more favorable interest terms than the bond agreement and also as matt says it eradicates the need for arsenal to keep their rainy day fund which theoretically means they can spend all that lovely cash not that they will yeah that's great then this bit's over now i'm james mcnicholas and i'm an arsenal correspondent for the athletic [Music] james how did the perception of stan kroenke change over time well it's interesting i i think arsenal is an interesting club because they have an attitude to ownership i think that's maybe a little bit different some of their premier league contemporaries primarily rivals you know chelsea are a very close club to arsenal geographically and there are sort of interesting differences between those the way those two clubs approach this situation arsenal adopted the kind of stadium model they rebuilt the stadium took considerable loans in order to do that and gambled that the revenues from that would sustain them in the 21st century chelsea of course went down the abramovich route the money route and it consequently created a bit of a sort of cultural divide between those clubs so i think when arsenal started being bought out by any billionaire didn't matter who it was there was a bit of resistance there because arsenal fans had kind of constructed a bit of an identity based around the idea of pride and doing things the arsenal way a really strong sense of tradition the idea of an american coming in and owning the club felt alien and i think you know certainly in london certainly in england there was a little bit of resistance to that i think to be honest antipathy has grown really and that's because stan kroenke's ownership of arsenal has coincided with a period in which the club's premier league standing has largely declined you know he's not the kind of owner who puts his own cash into the club he's not the kind of owner who is going to sort of lavish money on expensive signings he's not a fan in any real sense um it's difficult to sense a degree of allegiance between ksc the cronkies and him and i think this came to a head in the summer of 2019 when arsenal fans launched the we care to you campaign which was basically a really public plea with stan kroenke and josh cronky and ksc to kind of show something that i think is almost impossible for them to do which is an emotional affectionate attack attitude towards the club and a connection towards the club you know that is not they are not arsenal fans they were not born as arsenal fans they were not raised as arsenal fans it's inevitable i think the supporters going to want that from an owner but i don't know if it's necessarily realistic and i think you know they care in so much as they want the business to succeed they want their investment to be proved worthwhile but you know they're never going to view it like a fan and i think that has always created a bit of distance between them and the supporters what is the current composition of the board so with sir chips and ken fry having stepped down the board now currently comprises of stan kroenke uh josh kroenke uh lord harris of peckham who's been there for some time now his background's primarily in retail and the recent appointment of tim lewis now tim lewis is a partner in clifford charts and he advised stan kroenke on his purchase of arsenal at various different stages he's a very very trusted lieutenant at the cronkies crucially he's in london because we live in a post-covered world now where travel is not as easy as it once was josh cronky was a very prominent figure at arsenal in the first part of last season obviously he can't be here he can't have eyes on the ground tim lewis provides that and he's also been conducting as far as we understand it effectively a bit of a financial audit of the club to make sure they're as efficient as possible uh in this very difficult economic landscape you've described quite a range of characters within the boardroom what um what are as a group what is its um how do its strengths and weaknesses relate to nikhil arteta and his his job performance on a day-to-day basis it's really interesting because technically nikolai's reporting into the executive side right so he's working with edu as a technical director previously he was working interested as head of football with rousseau having been removed the dynamic slightly shifts and everything does have to go through the board hasn't any business but how has he helped and not helped i think maybe he's he's not helped by the fact that there's not a great degree of football experience there but i think he's helped by the fact that he actually does have quite a positive relationship with josh cronky and i think one of the things that come out this summer is that arteta and the ownership have kind of opened up a more direct line of communication personally i think that's a really positive thing it's interesting at arsenal they had arsene wenger who was kind of across everything and that was seen as a bit of a negative so arsenal moved away from that they appointed these multiple voices it's their mislintation gaspar some of which have come and gone and they had a kind of head coach model under emery arteta's back and it looks like he's the manager again it's fascinating how quickly arsenal have kind of reversed and gone back to something more akin to what they're familiar with and maybe that makes up for a little bit of the lack of football experience on the board especially with ken fryer stepping down so but i think the one consistent thing we will see is that we're seeing arteta's authority grow because i think everyone associate with arsenal senses and intuits that he is the most positive thing around the club at the moment and that's where the power lies [Music] right then so this is about the center spot isn't it does it what does it how does it feel being being here now that it's like this peaceful home nostalgic passion memories good times um community just everything roll into one they're all positive things i thought there might be some sort of wistfulness there was i i've struggled to come back here in the first few years after the move and i think probably like a lot of old fogies i'd be lying if i didn't say that more or less anytime walk over the bridge to the emirates there's something missing you know there's that there's that uh feeling of going to like a sacred place and when i used to take the turning into the top end of avonell road which is a bit of a incline and you would see the crowd kind of mingling and gathering and growing and bubbling just outside the main entrance of the marble halls and you know the smells and sights and sounds and colors and all of that kind of electricity just sparking it just every single time you know shivers down the spine gets you know that's like feet you know feeling where your stomach's jumping and i can't replicate that to this day at the emirates because this is always home [Music] [Music] nowadays when you arrive at arsenal station you always head in that direction and that will take you to the emirates but up until 2006 it was always the case that you would head in that direction to hybrid [Music] finances were always a huge driver behind the decision highbury held 38 000 fans and in the final year 2005 2006 the club made 44 million pounds instantly once they moved to the emirates they made 107 more in one season it was clear they had to make the jump to a bigger arena [Music] the first time that arsene wenger actually came to an arsenal match way before he was manager uh he got a taxi from the airport and the taxi kind of dropped him out at one of these side streets and he went turned around to the driver and said but where is the stadium and uh the guy said i should see him mate and arson said he just couldn't believe how brilliant it was to have in the middle of you know all these houses and and just hustle and bustle of normal life stadiums just of of this magnitude and this beauty just suddenly appears almost like a a kind of old-fashioned brilliant ufo um [Music] and uh the beauty of it with the art deco exterior as well just has something that i think is almost unique in world football and as a fan just coming you know if you'd arrive and you'd if you just walk down and turn into avenue road the road we're on now it's a little incline at the top of the hill and you come down from the top and you just see this gathering of people and fans and colour and noise and electricity all building and crescendoing in advance of the kickoff and uh it was just you were walking towards like being drawn in like a magnet you're coming down the hill like sucked into this sort of specialness that was right here right outside the ground i mean the emirates doesn't even have a kind of real proper entrance i mean to have an entrance like that was spectacular and um really got you got you going you know got all the all the all the blood coursing through your system excited about the game and um the other thing when i look at that that i remember is of course the dressing rooms where literally you see the uh marble halls with the the old-fashioned street lights outside and just the on the other side of that but just above ground level they that was the dressing rooms and on on a particularly momentous day ian wright would literally be hanging out almost by his ankles like you know cheering and singing songs with the fans and throwing stuff out and after you know winning trophies and things like that the scenes around here were immense um you'd never want to go home but this was [Music] when you look around do you see where you used to sit absolutely is that do you do does it flicker from what it is now to what it was then i mean the clock end and you know for sure where was home for you uh uh various places over the years so i mean i spent the best part of 30 years watching football here so first game was in the west upper um and then uh a lot a lot in the north bank where i sort of you know had my teenage years and you know you felt that right of patches of growing up on the terrace and then uh over to the clock end when they rebuilt the north bank and made it all cetera the the the clock end was where it was at so uh had a brilliant time there where the football was as good as it's ever been and we had many many happy memories and of course whenever i was working it was the east upper um where the press box was and uh yeah it was a truly magical beautiful place and i'm very grateful that even though it's not the same you can still feel its essence because of the fact that you're standing on a version of a of a pitch size uh set of you know grass and you've got the four stands and you've still very much got the even the gaps in between the stands that were there before are the same and the fact that you can still feel very much that sense of the art deco with the east and the west um is and there are bits of it that are they've built they've rebuilt around the original structure rather than mimicked it and then you can little see these little bits it's like that was actual real hybri which is fantastic so you feel that connection still when you talk about what it was like there was a clear identity and there was a connection between the fans the players and the stadium has that been entirely lost by by moving to the emirates and can you can you understand why it just simply had to happen i i was a kind of stay at hybrid fundamentalist all along and even though i knew that was a case of heart ruling the head the head knew all along that at the time when arsenal planned to move it was the sensible and logical and practical and ambitious thing to do this place for all of its beauty and magic couldn't get that much bigger you know it's hemmed in by local houses and um you can't go too much higher because you mess about with people's light and space and the neighbors quite rightly are entitled to say no you just can't build a you know 20 more million feet up in the air um there was always issues about if you filled in the corners that the the the lack of sort of transparency of air would would wreck the pitch forever that the ground staff were like no no no we can't do that and it just became also if you're trying to build uh something that already exists and build around it it's really difficult compared to smashing something up and starting again from scratch any kind of builder or architect will tell you that so i think in the end they didn't feel that staying was was possible um and then came the um the the where and what and that was phenomenally tricky um and it spent it was a lot of years i think the eventual paperwork of the um documents that they had to run past essington council whether for planning permission were like a thousand page documents was absolutely outrageously you know a lifetime's work almost for people like ken friar and danny fisman who were on the board who oversaw the move and um you know the stroke of luck was an arsenal season ticket holder spotting on the a to zed um kids who don't know what an 80z is before sat nav you know we actually had books with maps in it that there was a um uh this sort of what they call brownfield site uh apache land virtually next door it was a it was a really it actually used to be the local rubbish tip and various other kind of industrial estate it wasn't wasn't the most salubrious part of the neighborhood um but it meant staying in the heartland thank god because the idea of you know upping sticks and leaving this neighborhood and ending up you know with a journey to the m25 or wembley or some other spot that didn't have a direct connection with the place that has become the club's home geographically uh that i think would have been like multiplying the the wrench of leaving hybrid and making it a million times worse people still have their same routines can go to the same pubs and go to the same restaurants can walk the same walks and a lot of people who come to games make sure they come past here first which is like it's like touching the magic stone before going off to to the match so that that's good that it's all still so close you can see if you're in the emirates if you're in hybrid house now um and in the offices and you look across this is all you can see on the skyline is the you know the frontage of the west stand kind of more or less unchanged so you feel close to the to all the important things of the past now we know that it was a special place to watch football but it is now a lovely place to live as you can see around me the gardens are beautiful and manicured and there are plenty of other things for the 650 flat residents that live here at the old stadium they've got a concierge they have underground parking they also have a nursery on site plus a gym to keep fit [Music] [Applause] [Music] what is it like living in highbury do you know what it's funny you should say that because literally as arsenal just won the fa cup it was amazing because the atmosphere when we went out on the page after they lifted the trophy was amazing it's really good i'm not an fan but my boyfriend who i live with is a gooner he loves arsenal his season ticket holder so for him it's like the dream come true i mean for me even not as an arsenal fan but as a football fan you can kind of feel like you're a part of history living here you can see with the red windows and all the features and yeah it's really great it's a great place to live you know when elsewhere won the fa cup it was amazing yeah because obviously with it being like kobe now and all the pubs not yeah you know and everyone was out on the page very good yeah so it's cool it's a cool place to live do you know what it's a i love it here so yeah okay and then if you want to go to the emirates you literally just walk like you'll see it you just walk up that hill and it's there [Music] [Laughter] [Music] my [Music] you

Channel: undefined

Views: 419,666

Rating: 4.9442773 out of 5

Keywords: tifo football, tifo football youtube, youtube tifo football, tifofootball, tifofootball youtube, arsenal, afc, arsenal football, tifo arsenal, tifo football arsenal, mikel, arteta, arteta arsenal, tifo tactics, positional play tifo, emirates tifo, state of the club, SOTC, state, club, tifo state of the club, kroenke, kronke, stan kronke, stan kroenke, the emirates, tactics, arsenal finances, aresenal money

Id: Wcxh8mXVjSs

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AhmeZa]

We're up there with Liverpool for a sense of community and pride for our club. I was too young to have gone to Highbury but I'll never forget me and my Dad walking across the bridge to the Emirates for our first game

[u/OstapBenderBey]

The football analyst guy in this video is excellent.

[u/Magicallyshit]

Gargantuan

[u/wengerboys]

Enjoy the tactical stuff just wish there was a comprehensive text book i could dig into instead of learning bits parts on Youtube.

[u/denik_]

Thank you for showing me this video!

[u/Omni_chicken1]

I tried posting it and it got deleted :/