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Have we got the right person? We are about to find out if the recruitment of Andrea Berta is going to work. Who is he and what makes him qualified to work at a top football team? The latter is easy to answer, he worked for 12 years at Atletico Madrid who would certainly be comparable to Arsenal in terms of trophies won and football standing. Their ground is bigger than the Emirates although watch this space, the Emirates may be about to get bigger. While there, Berta was regarded as one of the best recruiters in Europe with Antoine Griezmann, Jan Oblak, Rodri, and João Félix among his most notable captures. He is notable for finding superstars before they become superstars and that will certainly suit Arsenal who never like buying expensive talent. A player of the calibre of Griezemann would be perfect The crucial aspect to Berta is that he is not a football man. He is a businessman and financial expert who moved into football because of a love for it. He understands money as he is a former bank manager. This is critical as it is vey difficult for a football man to understand these complex issues. Footballers get everything done for them and can concentrate on football but then how do they make the transition to being a dealmaker without the training necessary to succeed at the huge financial world of the modern footballer? The agents, the financial experts, the sharks, even the conmen who inhabit the rarified world of football finance need a thorough education in how that world works if they are to succeed. I believe Berta is proof that a footballer will struggle to learn enough to become a director of football. There is a huge amount of elements to coordinate What do they have to do? They have to oversee the team of scouts, and assessors who go with their laptops to matches to compile statistics on their targets. The football scouts assess the physical attributes and the IT guys press buttons every time a player does anything, make a run, receive or give a pass, score a goal, make a tackle and so on. A picture is built up of what a player is capable of. That can be used to compare players to the players already at Arsenal. Of course if it is a different league, allowances must be made for that. The football director must be capable of organizing and liaising with the worldwide team who perform these functions. They must be good with people. Rodri was another big success Then they must be able to be capable of creating and building networks with the armies of agents, advisors, families, legal and financial experts who surround players and become a wall to overcome if a player is to sign. If anyone of these become opposed to a move it can be hard to make a deal happen. Football has moved on dramatically from the days when managers handled everything. Everyone must trust in their abilities The other area is to be trusted by the clubs and their owners and financial people so that they can trust the director of football to make the correct moves so that a deal can be struck. A knowledge of a particular clubs financial status regarding fair play rules means they can structure a deal to suit their finances in the future. Persuading the Kroenkes to part with hundreds of millions is a big part of Berta's job But critically, they must work well with the army of staff within a large club such as Arsenal. The owners must trust them as they will be advising the owners to fork out hundreds of millions for players. They must also endeavour to get the maximum from sales of players. The next most important person is the manager. In this case Mikel Arteta. Now, it has long been my contention that Edu’s move came about because of the failure to identify and bring to Arsenal a top striker. I suspect that Edu and Arteta did not agree on who that footballer could be, or if they did, that Edu could not make a deal work to land the player. I could be wrong but we have now brought in a financial expert, not a football one and I suspect that is significant. A football decision has to be the final one Surely Arteta has to be the final arbiter? He would know what he wants and there are not many talents out there for a team who aspires to be the best in the world, and winning the Premier League or Champions League puts you in that bracket. You need the best players in all positions, and a Bendtner or a Nketiah were not such. I am sure Arteta knows who he would like and who he would like Berta to get. Jan Oblak is another world class capture Berta speaks Spanish and I believe is, despite being Italian, a part of the increasingly Spanish personnel which Arteta has been building at Arsenal. As Spanish teams are the masters of European football, this is no bad thing. But can he work with Arteta? Well, he was successful with Diego Simeone, who is known as one of the toughest managers in football. Arteta does not have the hard image of the Argentinian but has he an inner steel? His treatment of certain star players and possibly Edu, suggests that he insists that they deliver or they go. The football man and the money man On the face of it, Berta and Arteta are a match made in heaven. A guy with a proven record in getting deals over the line alongside a guy who needs the right sort of players. As always, since I have been an Arsenal supporter, we keep hearing of deals but so many never happen. Maradona and Platini were among the laughable ones in the past. As I am writing, we don’t seem to have bought any significant player yet, and even Zubimendi seems to have stalled. We will find out soon enough if Berta is the man for us. The question is, if he isn’t, then who? Joao Felix is another wonderful player for Berta I truly believe that it is asking an awful lot of a former player, in the modern scenario, to have the financial acumen, knowledge, networks and ability of a trained financial professional to be capable of making deals at the top level. It is people such as Berta who will fulfill such roles. It will be up to the football people, in this case, Arteta and his team, to ensure that the right targets are identified, and it will be their job to persuade them of the football rightness of the move and the director’s job to work with all the different elements, the clubs, the agents, the families, etc. to bring everything to a successful conclusion. Such deals are a small handful a season, involving big names, and there are also the lesser deals which can often be just as important. If it doesn’t work, then what? Then, once the deal has been concluded, the player must perform on the pitch. All that work must have a successful outcome. Who then is to blame if it doesn’t? The manager and their staff or the football director? The reality is that most deals must work out or the sack is inevitable for both sides. But the manager does have a reserve stream of players from the Academy to bring through, the football director does not. If the transfers are the problem, surely it is the director of football who is most vulnerable? Arteta's must be the final decision I feel we badly need Berta to work out. If a guy with 12 years experience at a similar club cannot land us the players we need then where can we find such a person? Andrea Berta may well prove to be the most significant buy we have made since Wenger’s time. And I fear for us if he is not.

The Kroenke era begins And so the Kroenkes took over. They brought their share up to 63% which meant they had to take over. Their quiet plan of buying up shares and staying out of the limelight meant they were a bit of an unknown quantity to us fans. I didn’t want Americans because they don’t know soccer, with Ted Lasso the exception. But they had beaten off all other contenders and they were now the bosses. We were stuck with them, it seems. Maybe they should have brought him with them? 14 years later, with hindsight, they have been good bosses mostly. Arsene Wenger was coming under fire for not being able to win trophies and we had won nothing since the Invincibles. But they stuck with Wenger. He was still performing miracles with our squads, and we really had quite a few players who were below his old standard. We bought badly We bought 8 players of which Laurent Koscielny and Marouane Chamakh where the only ones to make any real impact, particularly Koscielny who was often our best player. We sold 15 players of which four were defenders, Campbell, Gallas, Silvestre and Senderos. Senderos was definitely better than Sebastian Squillaci whom we had bought. It seems like Wenger was losing his eye for a player. We loaned out 19 players of which Aaron Ramsey was the most prominent, with Francis Coquelin and Carlos Vela also notable. It is amazing when you look back at how many players that we thought could make it, didn’t. Sebastian Squillaci - our best buy of the century The thing that strikes me most about that season was the amount of good wins we had. 6-0 against Blackpool early on and also 6-0 against Braga in the first match of the Champions League and many other comfortable wins. We started well in the league, drawing with Liverpool then trouncing Blackpool, beating Blackburn and sending Sam Allardyce home crying after 4-1. We were looking like Arsenal. The team against Liverpool was Almunia, Sagna, Clichy Vermaelen, Koscielny, Nasri, Arshavin, Wiltshire, Eboue, Diaby, and Chamakh. Koscielny had the distinction of getting sent off late in the game on his debut. We had some very good players but no-one of the calibre of Henry, Bergkamp, Pires and Ljungberg for example. Dreadful finish Winning the league or Champions League seemed like a fantasy but I always held to these fantasies until they were no longer possible. We were in with an outside chance of the league until the finish where we fell apart. We drew with Liverpool, Tottenham and Fulham, and lost to Bolton, Stoke and Villa, with our only win against Manchester United 1-0 out of the last 7. Six wins and a draw would have got us the league. Considering we were above all those teams except Man Utd which we beat, it was possible to have run Manchester Utd harder. We didn’t. 5-1 against a good Shaktar side. Surely this was our year? The Champions League? Here we flew out of the blocks with 6-0 against Braga, 3-1 against Partisan Belgrade and 5-1 against Shaktar Donetsk. Finally we are back, the Arsenal are back. Eh, no, we lost our next two against the two teams we hammered, Shaktar 1-2 and Braga 0-2 to finish second to Shaktar despite beating Partisan again 3-1, Which meant we got Barcelona in the round of 16. And what did they do? We took them 2-1 at home but David Villa scored early and it was all looking a bit bleak until Van Persie and Arshavin scored two in five minutes towards the end. We did have a chance against Josep Guardiola’s side after all. Please, bye bye tiki-taka I have to say one thing, though, I never liked tiki-taka and it has led to all the possession football it means. Sometimes a nice Sam Allardyce approach is better, more exciting, and quicker. Often in the modern game the ball is just being passed around aimlessly while we go to sleep. I feel that someone will get a good team, have them play a very direct game, and cause mayhem to the rest and hopefully banish tiki-taka to whatever hell boring football goes to. Thanks Pep, for boring football But Barcelona did have amazing players, among the best we have ever seen and it is to Wenger’s credit that we pushed them hard over the two matches. At the Bernebau, Messi scored in the dying moments of the first half to give them the lead as it was still the away goals rule at the time. But Busquets did us a favour from a corner early in the second half and the game was still live. Until a very harsh second yellow against Van Persie for having a shot at goal whilst offside put us down to ten just after that goal. Xavi and Messi again soon after put the game to bed leaving us to wonder if we could have pulled off the impossible against the megastars with 11 players. And once again my dream of the Champions League was shattered. We won the league cup, or did we? The FA Cup, our own trophy? We did ok, I suppose. We beat Leeds after a replay in the 3rd round, then Huddersfield 2-1, but then we had lowly Leyton Orient at Brisbane Road who drew 1-1. What cheek? We hammered them 5-0 in the next to continue our run of big wins only to get league leaders Man Utd in the 6th round. They beat us 2-0 and that was us out. As for the League Cup, we battered Tottenham 4-1 then Newcastle 4-0, Wigan 2-0 and on to Ipswich in the semis where we dispatched them 3-1 over 2 legs. This led to Birmingham in the final. Surely we should have had a win against Birmingham? This was a bad-tempered match with 2 bookings for us and 3 for them. We had an early heart attack as Szczęsny fouled Lee Bowyer and could have been sent off and a penalty kick awarded. But lucky it was offside and our hearts went back to beating normally. But it was a portent as to how the game would fan out. Zigic scored on 28 and then Van Persie on 39 made it level. But despite us having many shots and Ben Foster in goal for Birmingham getting man of the match, a mix up between Koscielny and Szczęsny very late on gave the game to the Blues as Martins scored. 2-1 and another trophyless year. The pressure was mounting on Arsene Wenger and the silent Kroenkes didn’t really inspire much confidence that big money would be spent. Mean old Arsenal, always misers. Would the silent Kroenkes spend? It is fair to say that we had a good team and a good manager but the big spenders now had teams of experts to help them. Wenger didn’t believe in such appointments and did everything almost by himself. I suppose he may have slept occasionally. We were able to get into the Champions League and were probably consistently a couple of positions above the level of the players as Wenger squeezed good performances out of us. It's against the religion to spend money at the Arsenal I still had belief and hope but that was all I had. The bad end to the season didn’t help. Would 2011/12 be any better? I couldn’t see much reason to believe. What about you out there? Can you remember what you felt? We had many years now without a trophy, the big boys were getting bigger, and new ones were appearing and all we had were the silent Kroenkes.

Is it necessary to be mugs? This is Lionel Messi. When we talk about his position in world football it is generally in 3 categories: The greatest shirtseller of all time? 1. He is the greatest of all time, an idea held by some fans 2. He is the greatest current player during his time at the top, again a view held by some fans 3. He is one of the greatest players ever, this time probably everyone would agree It is not, usually, except for the marketing experts at his clubs, about what he can generate in shirt sales and so on. But what he, and that other elite band of top players have, is an ability to create astounding sales for their clubs and their kit maker for their shirts and other merchandise. Messi has sold many, many millions of shirts for Barcelona, PSG and Argentina and will now do the same for Inter Miami. Generally the star players make more money for their clubs than the rest of the team combined. This is certainly true of both Messi and Ronaldo, the iconic duo that splits fans as to who is the GOAT. I am not getting into the argument here of which of them is the best footballer but I will talk mostly about Messi to make my argument. Or maybe Ronaldo is the greatest shirtseller of all time? It is difficult to get exact figures of how many shirts they have sold but it is certainly many millions each. My research reckons something like 10 million for Messi. Now, there is a counterpoint of fake shirts which could well also reach the same figures or more but they are not quite as relevant to my thesis as the money doesn’t go into the clubs. We need the fickle fans to buy, buy, buy What it means is that we, as fans, buy, and buy big, to hand over money to our chosen teams. It is strange to me that when Messi signed for PSG something like 1 million shirts were sold in his first season. It indicates that fans follow players rather than clubs, just as fans follow winners rather than teams. Take Man City and Chelsea, for example, both in the top ten brands of football clubs worldwide now, purely due to fans switching and young kids wanting to follow winners. As you go up the sporting ladder you can sell more merchandise. It seems to me that the instant fans are in the majority and they are buyers. Only a mug would buy a mug But let’s take the “real fans” for a moment. Someone who hasn’t switched clubs and takes the chance to see their team whenever they can and add to that the season ticket holders and regular attenders. For Arsenal there are 180,000 official fans in the club membership in the various categories. But Arsenal has an estimated 125 million fans worldwide as well. I basically pay to get into matches and normally buy a programme. I don’t buy merchandise unless asked to. Most of my Arsenal stuff are personal presents or freebies from ASCB or Arsenal Red membership. I have no real idea whether “real fans” also normally big buyers but I suspect maybe not too much, though for sure some of them are. Handing over ludicrous sums to attend matches is enough for me, I am not going to start handing them way over the odds for shirts, etc. Real Madrid: The kings of branding at the moment The winners take it all But that 125 million followers are a strong base to sell to. The other big clubs would have similar or even more. The thing is, it is those big teams which win nearly everything Man City, Man Utd, Barcelona, Real Madrid, etc., are also the biggest merchandise sellers. It is a crucial part of their branding. Vast numbers of people want to be associated with the brand of their team. Real Madrid were ranked first in brands at $1,636.56m in 2022, Arsenal tenth with $815.01m. That’s just the brand value if you were to make an offer for it to make money from selling official produce, not anything else. The Kroenke's paid $777m for all of Arsenal. It’s looking good for them, isn’t it? Ah, the branding is becoming essential to making money My point is, and apologies for taking so long to get to it, is, that as the other top teams make a fortune out of merchandise sales, Arsenal have to do so too. And so all the mug punters out there are helping to keep their team near the top by buying, at prices over the odds, as much merchandise as they can afford. Now, paying more than you should for something is regarded as a mugs game. Only stupid people do so. And yet your team needs you to do so. I am a bit of a mug by paying what, not too long ago, would have been seen as crazy money to see a football match. But I don’t normally buy produce except programmes. Programmes are not too overpriced, anyway. You need to buy a Declan Rice shirt quickly, it's your Arsenal duty Can I feel superior to those that are addicted to buying all the strips, home, away, alternative, special ones, cups, glasses, flags, banners, boots, shoes, etc that you can buy online or in your Arsenal store? It seems not as without them my team would go backwards. And so, I am left with only one conclusion. Yes it is necessary to be a mug to support a top football team. Welcome to stupidville, Gus, and don’t forget to keep paying big bucks. We have come a long way since shirt sales appeared in the late 1970's to small sales, mostly as presents for kids and with little enthusiasm to adults.