THREE THINGS ON MY MIND

I’ve been in a very “Hello darkness, my old friend” kind of space over the past few days, but I am BACK. Not quite recharged, but certainly focused. No new perspective… just a shame my current Arsenal view is the one you get when you’ve thrown yourself out of the Empire State Building.

Just kidding. Kind of. Actually, not kidding.

My main takeaways from my mini-hiatus are these three:

Luck is for the fans

I’m allowed to shit-post Liverpool supporters about their insane luck this season. I could point to the absence of Haaland, Isak, Villa’s center-backs, Spurs’ center-backs and keeper, Wolves’ center-backs, Antony Gordon telling Arsenal fans to stay humble because he’s going to a Wembley final—before getting sent off yesterday and missing that final due to suspension. That is my right.

But I don’t want to hear it from the manager.

Why?

Because even when these things are true, they are not for the leader to express publicly. You’re giving yourself and the players permission to feel like victims of things outside their control.

I once worked for a creative director who did not allow excuses. Everything was your fault. He was so adamant about this principle that if we were having a bad client meeting, he’d flash an image of a David Shrigley painting at me from across the room, just so I knew I had things to sort..

The point of the print wasn’t to shame me or to show me that I could not afford this level of fine art—it was to make sure I never excused myself from my part in bad things happening. To make sure I never let bad things happen to our projects that weren’t within my sphere of control but were in my sphere of influence.

I don’t use the Shrigley prints when I manage people now, but I do demand that if people on my team see a plate dropping that isn’t theirs, they make sure it keeps spinning.

Arteta owns all the plates. Fans don’t want to hear that PGMOL dropped a plate; they want to hear that we’re going to be extra buttoned-up because we’re treated differently. They don’t want to hear that injuries are bad luck; they want to hear how we’re going to go above and beyond to protect players' health—even if that means sacrificing some of our starting XI, reducing what we do in training, or cutting Dubai if it’s not going to be true R&R.

Luck, without a doubt, plays a role in sport. But the very best managers mitigate the luck issue by finding an edge in areas they can control.

Summer Windows

I don’t want to see another summer like the one we just had. My biggest issue isn’t with who we signed—it’s who we loaned.

Loan moves are like fairies in Legend of Zelda—a free bonus heart when you’re battling a monster. If you’re using those fairies in the summer when you’re Arsenal, it means you done f*cked up.

Raheem Sterling excited me, but even if he’d banged, it was still a crazy deal to make after spending three years on near-misses when trying to back up our best players.

"We’re waiting for the right players" just doesn’t fly for me when we’ve missed out on wide players like Raphinha, Mudryk, Neto, Kulusevski, Mbeumo, Olise, and Rashford. Ending up with Sterling last summer merited a deeper conversation from me for sure… but the club can’t let that slide without deeper investigation.

Who said, “Yeah, an injury-prone center-back that we’ll play as a full-back would be good. Oh, and how about a clogger No. 8 midfielder who’s 28 years old?” Someone did.

As for Neto—why would we waste a January transfer window mulligan on a backup keeper? Give Manuel Almunia a call? Anyone. But don’t blow a loan card on someone who has played next to no games this season. Absolutely crazy. Especially when we had Tommy Setford over from Ajax and an international in Karl Hein out on loan.

Those two signings stopped us from signing Marcus Rashford for five months. Not ideal—but still more ideal than thin air.

I wanted to talk about the summer separately, but I’ve already blown my disdain.

Calafiori is interesting as a center-back because he was a failed left-back. His Basel manager, Heiko Vogel, said this of his conversation about Ricky’s position:

"Ricky, do you want to maximize your career?"

He replied: "What do you mean, coach?"

"I think you’re playing the wrong position."

"I felt he lacked the speed as a full-back for reaching the highest level. Playing center-back, he had more than enough."

"He didn’t think about it for many seconds: ‘Let’s work together.’ I put him from the full-back position into the center, and he did it well."

Arsenal purchased a player who had already failed at left-back in Switzerland and proceeded to play him at left-back—despite him offering something incredibly unique as a center-back for a JdP manager at Bologna.

Who signed that off?

Mikel Merino was another strange signing. He has less quality than Kai Havertz but boasts a similar profile. Kai’s profile in that left 8 role wasn’t really what we needed the season before.

Spanish newspapers mourned the loss of Merino because of what he offered defensively, though they stated that Luka Sučić offered more in attack. That was in September. The Croatian hasn’t really been great this season, but overall, my thought is: why did Arsenal decide that adding more defensive ability to a team that was struggling in the final third against great teams was the right move?

Mikel looks like the sort of midfield clog-master Eddie Howe signs. It hasn’t worked. It likely won’t work.

Will Arteta pivot this summer, since that was his guy? Or will we have to do the Fabio Vieira dance for two years before Arsenal give up?

Sporting Turmoil

I’m an outsider looking in, but Arsenal lost a CEO who was part of the resurgence. And last summer, while we were messing around on transfers, our top non-Arteta guy was knee-deep in conversations with Evangelos Marinakis about a “treble your salary” deal.

You’ve been there—you can taste that pay rise, the respect, the bigger job title… while Jennifer from Operations is picking holes in an idea you’ve been working on for months. Do you fight her on it? Or do you just nod in agreement while sharing Severance memes with your new boss? I’ve been there, in London, with a new job lined up. Someone put something egregious in front of me and I didn’t react. After the meeting, they came and asked if I was quitting. I was. They knew, because I didn’t give a shit about something they new as hideous and agendarised.

Arsenal weren’t focused on the mission last summer, and it would seem nor was Edu. Coincidence? Maybe. But the optics aren’t good. Did those terrible signings slip through because Edu let them slide? Who knows, but they are legitimate questions, given what we know now.

Arsenal need to get the ship in order, and they need to do it soon.

If Jason Ayto is the secret sauce behind Arsenal’s success over the past five years, I’m interested. He’s been part of a team that’s been here for 10 years. The man knows the club, where the talent is, and how to manage a complex system.

He’s not a "looks good in a white shirt" guy like Edu—he’s an "I get on the tools and can do this job" person.

So, the only question is:

"Are you an Arteta lackey?"

If he is, then it’s an absolute no.

If he’s an independent leader who can guide the process of building a better Arsenal, then give him the job and stop messing around.

Bringing in a big name looks good in the media, but it might take a year for them to make an impact. Just look at Paul Mitchell at Newcastle.

Whatever the decision, it needs to be made soon. Then we can roll into the biggest summer in our history.

Ok, short post today. I’ll get into PSV tomorrow.