Arsenal should give fans option to donate membership pack to charity

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I seem to have this rant every year. And every year it comes later.

Arsenal Membership Packs finally begun to arrive over the weekend, and they are underwhelming at the least.

A cheap feeling scarf and the club Official Handbook.

It has to be the worst membership pack in the history of membership packs.

The “key selling point” and reason for the delays was that each scarf was bespoke, and would have the members initials embroidered on it.

My initials at DK; the scarves initials are GO. So the club did not even get this right.

I do not care for the membership pack. I do not collect the handbooks, and the merchandise is usually not desired.

I can probably cont on one hand how many have been good.

The one with the 89 bottle opener, and a handful with books (So Paddy got up, Invincibles: Inside Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003-2004 season, We All Live in a Perry Groves World and Football Ambassador: The Autobiography of an Arsenal Legend.)

What the club needs to do is simple.

Let the fans know what will be in the membership pack prior to membership renewal time. When you renew your membership, there should be an option to “donate to charity”.

Then all the scarves, snoods, gloves, pin badges and more can be donated to the likes of Great Ormond Street Hospital and other charities.

I am sure a kid in hospital would love an Arsenal scarf. Receiving one would probably give the child temporary relief to whatever ailment they have.

Instead, I have a scarf, and it will just go in the bin with the rest of the membership pack.

Arsenal can do better. They should do better. Give us an option to donate the membership pack to charity.

Keenos

Tottenham apply to remain at Wembley until end of season

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The latest news in the shambles the is the New Tottenham Stadium Saga, is permission has been sought from Brent Council and local residents for an additional 17 Tottenham games to be played at Wembley Stadium.

This additional 17 games will take the club up until the end of the season.

This is the latest delay to the new stadium, which was supposed to open at the beginning of this season.

Back in March we were aware (through our 9-5 work) that the stadium would not be open before the start of the season. The Tottenham hierarchy would have also been aware of this.

Despite this delay, the club still sold season tickets based on the stadium being open on time.

In June, it was announced that costs were beginning to spiral towards the £1bn mark. The dramatically increased costs explained why Tottenham were hiding the delays and selling season tickets.

They have used the season ticket money – around £80million – as an interest free loan to help finance the stadium. They have only been refunding this money on a game by game basis; at the same time they receive money from selling tickets at Wembley.

By July it was our understanding that the stadium would open 3 months late. October at the earliest we were told.

At this point, the club announced that they had failed to secure stadium naming rights and were giving full refunds to those companies who had purchased an executive box. The writing was on the wall but still Spurs management denied any issues.

By the end of July, trade Unions were urging the Government to investigate the poor working conditions and breaches of both Health & Safety and Working Time Regulations.

Spurs had begun announcing – slowly – that there were delays. The first game had already been moved to Wembley. Having requested that 3 of their first 4 away games were to be at home, it was announced to great fanfare that the first game of the season would be against Liverpool in the middle of September. We knew different.

Middle of August and it was announced by the club that the stadium would not be ready until early October; with games up to and including Cardiff on 6th October to be played at the national stadium. This announcement was a full month after we revealed the news of “October at the earliest”.

A day after the October delay was announced, we discovered that builders had actually had their contracts extended until the end of November. That it was highly likely that Tottenham would not play at their new ground until early 2019. Why would Tottenham announce mid-October when we knew it would be 2019?

Had they announced Early 2019, they would have had to have given huge refunds in August to fans who bought season tickets. Instead they lied and kept the money to assist with cash flow.

It was then announced that Tottenham were due to play all of their Champions League group games at Wembley. Their poor performance in the competition led to an investigation by the Advertising Standards Agency.

October confirmed what we knew in September. That the stadium would not be ready in 2018

Despite this being confirmed by many industry sources, Tottenham did not announce this decision until late-October. Another delayed announcement meaning that they kept that season ticket money for another month. This announcement also revealed that Tottenham had increased their loan facility to £637m.

It was at this time speculation circulated that the ground would not be open this season. With 3 test events, a January opening was highly unlikely.

https://twitter.com/KeenosAFC/status/1042424952610283520

And now we have the news that Tottenham have applied to Brent Council to remain at the stadium until the end of the season. This will probably be announced by the club mid-December; based on previous experience of news being known a month before the club announce it.

The way Tottenham have treated their fans is an utter disgrace.

They have delayed announcements and hidden behind Health & Safety to retain season ticket money.

Whilst there have been issues with the fire safety installation, the project timescale was optimistic. It was based on their being no delays, no issues.

As someone within the construction industry, projects like these always have issues, always have delays. Crossrail has been delayed until August 2018 (it was scheduled to open December 2018. The completion of the Shard was also delayed. And both of these major projects did not have the aggressively short timescale of the Tottenham stadium.

When the Olympic stadium was being built, the aim was for an early 2012 completion. This gave LOCOG 8 months breathing space. It opened in March 2012; 6 months before the Olympics started.

The Tottenham Stadium was always an ambitious difficult project. Some UK construction firsts when building. When Tottenham announced that the ground was to be completed in 1 season – 15 months between the end of the 2016/17 season and beginning of the 2018/19, most industry insiders thought this was impossible.

Most felt it was at least a 2 year project. 24 months. That 15 months was impossible.

It is now a case of waiting and watching to see when Spurs announce that they will not be playing at their new ground this season.

Keenos

Arsenal to make 3 key signings in 2019

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Yesterday I touched a little bit on how targeting Ousmane Dembele would impact on Arsenal’s summer 2019 budget. It is well worth discussing this further.

The starting point on any discussion around who we want to buy, and how we can afford them, is to firstly look at the state of the squad to truly establish what we need to buy, and what is a priority and what is not.

The way I see it, the below will be the basis of the squad going into 2019/20:

Leno
Cech
Macey

Bellerin Sokratis CB LB
Lichtsteiner Koscielny Holding Monreal
Mavropanos

Xhaka Torreira
Guendouzi AMN
Elneny

Nelson Ozil LW
Iwobi Mkhitaryan SmithRowe

Lacazette
Aubameyang
Nketiah

With debating the decisions I made too much, I will quickly touch on a couple of the players that a few people bought up on Twitter when I posted the above up.

Firstly on Petr Cech.

His contract runs out at the end of the season and I think he is well worth another one.

When you are second choice goal keeper, you have to be good enough to play a 38 game Premier League season if the first choice picks up an injury. I am not sure if Damian Martinez, Dyan Iliev or Matt Macey currently have that ability.

Keeping Cech around will be good on the training ground and also allow us to give Matt Macey (who I expect to step up to 3rd choice keeper next year) some cup games allowing the club to truly assess whether he is a long term 2nd choice.

Buying a new keeper is also not a priority. Keep Cech for a year and if no one else steps up; buy a new number 2 in 2020.

There is a debate to be had over Nacho Monreal and Saed Kolasinac. Originally I had Kolasinac in the squad, but after discussions, was encouraged to change my mind.

Like Cech, Monreal’s contract runs out at the end of this year.

Despite being 33 (soon) he is still our best left back. Give him another year, cash in on Kolasinac, and buy a youngster with potential. Keeping Monreal around will ensure we have someone reliable and who we know competing with the new man.

The last one people mentioned was Mo Elneny.

Whilst I am not his biggest fan, we need 5 central midfielders, and with Ramsey off that leaves Elneny.

It would be a pointless exercise selling Elneny to then buy someone of similar standard to be 5th choice. The other option would be to promote someone from the youth team – but in my opinion there is currently not a central midfielder knocking on the first team squad door.

Keep Elneny for a year and see if any of the kids are able to step up in 18 months time to become a first team squad member.

So ultimately, we need a left winger, a left back and a centre back.

Due to increased sponsorship revenue, and some amortised transfer fees set to full off the books, we have around £50m available to us next summer. As I have explained before, this does not mean we have £50m available for transfers. It means that we can increase club costs by £50m. This then covers amortised transfer fees, yearly wages, agents fees, signing on fees, bonuses and any increase in contracts of current players.

I would expect us to also sell Calum Chambers (who has struggled at Fulham) and Shkodran Mustafi. The transfer fees for these players can go into the pot, but it must be remembered this is a one time increase in revenue, and not something you can rely on next year to cover costs.

With Aaron Ramsey, Danny Welbeck and David Ospina set to leave on a free transfer, we would free up around £20m in annual salary over the 5 players. That can be added to the £50m we already have free giving us a total of £70million to play with, prior to income from sales.

So what can we get for £70million?

Well first up is my man Osumane Dembele.

If we secured him for £85m on a 5 year deal, his transfer fee be have have an amortised value of £17m a year. Add in a salary that would cost around £11m in a year, it would cost the club £28m over the next 5 years – that will be about 40% of our budget spent.

We could then sign a left back for £30million over 5 years. I think you could secure someone like Ben Chillwell or Ferland Mendy for this. If you assume you would pay either about £100k a week, that comes out to £6m in annual wages (by the time you add NI, pension, etc). That is then £12m spent.

Finally replicate the above on a centre back. This is where Svan Mislintat would earn his money.

Sign a powerful centre back for £30m, I back there is someone out there who could be uncovered. A similar wage structure as above would also cost us £12m over the year.

So that would be around £52million added to our annual expenditure.

By the time you add other costs (agent fees, signing on fees, other bonuses, etc) that’ll be pretty much the transfer budget done

Any fees from selling Mustafi / Chambers is then a Brucie Bonus. Money that you could spend on youngsters, or leave in the bank for another day.

It will take a few transfer windows to get the squad into a fully competitive state. Last summer we added Lucas Torreira and Bernd Leno as long term first teamers.

If next summer we add a new CB, LB and LW to the squad, it would be another huge step forward.

Looking forward to 2020, we will then need another centre back and perhaps a Mesut Ozil replacement. We might also look at upgrading on Granit Xhaka.

A top squad is not built overnight, in one transfer window. Manchester City owners have been at the club for 10 years and spent £2.7bn. Anyone who expects Arsenal to suddenly become champions after 1 or 2 windows is being unrealistic.

3 top signings next summer and we are good to go.

Keenos