Arsenal Offer Free Beer Tomorrow!

Morning all.

Happy Birthday to Mesut Ozil who is 26 years old today. Not that I’m sure it will be all that happy for him…..

I once saw a sign etched into the bar in a public house. It read ‘Free Beer Tomorrow’…

Ivan Gazidis on Arsenal, where it is now and where it will be..

Commercial deals:

It’s the fuel to provide what we need for our ambitions on the field. We want to win and we want this club to be one of the great clubs in the world. That’s what this entire journey has been about.

How do we take Arsenal, which is a wonderful, historic football club based in a wonderful but slightly antiquated Highbury stadium, and really surge it forward so that it can compete with the biggest football clubs in the world?

Spending some of the vast amounts of money which sits in the AFC bank would help, having a squad which is strong and deep enough to compete, really compete, not one which goes to places like Dortmund and gets blown away with ease. A squad which can cope with injuries when they occur and as we know, at Arsenal, they always occur!

Where are we:

We’re not there yet – this is a long-term journey that we’re on. That consumes us every single day in our ownership, our board, me, our staff, our football manager and it’s important the players feel that as well. We want this football club to be at the top of the world’s game.

The reason we talk about a healthy business is because that’s what we need behind it. It’s easy to talk about ambition, anyone can use flowery words about what they want to be, but you’ve got to actually deliver. That’s what is so important and that’s why the stadium move was so important. That’s why the last five years of unlocking our international and our commercial revenues is so important for the club.

‘Flowery words’ – isn’t that what Arsenal fans have had to listen to for many seasons now? Flowery, or empty words? And all the time, the fans get stung over ticket prices, for what?

It allows us to go out and, if the manager believes in someone like Mesut Ozil, he can buy him. It’s the same with Alexis Sanchez. Underneath that tip of the iceberg, those star signings that we talk a lot about, there’s an awful lot else going on.

We’re signing some fantastic young talent and we’re keeping our players now, unlike the situation two or three years ago when we were really financially challenged and were losing our top players, we’re signing our top players to long-term contracts. Guys like Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey, I could go on. Underneath that you have all of this other stuff this football club is about.

Go on, tell us more, otherwise it’s simply empty words and ‘free beer tomorrow’! Signing players like Ozil, Sanchez etc is of course great to see but we needed just two or three more like that in the summer. I don’t mean big money signings, but players who really can make a difference on their day.

And again:

Where we are currently is off the shoulder of the world’s top teams. I think the best teams in the world are in Europe and you think about the great names in world football like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich – I don’t think we’re at that level yet but that’s where we’re aiming to get to. It’s one thing to say that and it’s another thing to be able to deliver it.

Off the shoulder of the top teams in Europe is a bit of an over estimation of where we are right now in my opinion, in fact I’d say we are about as far behind the likes of Bayern, Barca and co as Merts would be if he raced Theo Walcott over 100 metres…

When it comes to Arsenal right now and for the last few seasons, we have been told that things will get better, we’ll have more money, we’ll sign proper players and yes, we’ll be a club which can not only compete with the best, but beat the best and be the best!

But no, that day and that golden transfer window which would all but ensure a successful season never arrives does it….

Maybe it will in January, maybe we’ll have to wait until next summer…..

Or maybe, it’ll always be ‘tomorrow’….

On that miserable note, have a good day all….