Howdy folks and guten morgen from the passenger side of a car The Management is driving to take us home from a weekend of boozing in Richmond in which we’ve seen a Willian signing, a Raul exiting, then yesterday it was the “the king is dead, long live the king” interview with Vinai Ventakatesham, who spoke about what he wants to do at the club now he’s the main power at the club.

To be honest with you, whilst we all know it is a heavily analysed and PR-machined statement, there were a couple of bits that I took a little comfort from. The main one was when Vinai talked about the club being better at communicating and connecting with the fans. He admitted that they will make mistakes, but they are going to work at being better at talking to us. He said they can’t tell us everything – which I think we all understand – but that they are going to work on to ensure they can deliver the best possible football club to us.

Hopefully this can be the start of a fresh new era in which what has felt like a bit of a mess for the last couple of years, is ironed out, because I think we’d all like to stop talking about what’s happening with the ownership and football administration and focus on what’s going on with stuff on the pitch.

Which I think will also be a little clearer too, because the statement from Vinai also made it pretty clear that the power resides with Arteta and Edu in terms of the direction at the club and that can only be a positive thing. Edu is an Arsenal man, Arteta is an Arsenal man, then we have Big Per in charge of the academy. All Arsenal men and all now responsible for the footballing direction at the club. We know that now and I’m kind of ok with it. I just hope that everyone can settle in to the ‘new normal’ as quickly as possible because we now need to get our game faces on. That’s because the apparent ‘leak’ of the first fixture is that we’ve got Man United away on the opening day. That’s in about three weekends time and we need to be ready because that’s a tough ol’ way to start the season. United are a good team, a rapid team in attack, they’ll pose a very stern test for Arteta and we don’t need any more drama at the club. We just need the players to be focused and ready.

I get the feeling that Vinai will probably take a bit of a quieter approach to managing the operational side of the club. Raul was a very visible figure at Arsenal and we all knew it. We saw him a lot where as Vinai was not really front and centre as much. He’ll obviously need to be a little more visible now I think, but I do wonder if we’ll see him less than we saw Raul and Edu will become more of a figurehead at the club. There have been plenty of questions from fans in recent months as to what Edu’s role is but now I think we have a little more clarity and I suspect we’ll start hearing from him too. He built a good reputation with the Brazilian national team and now it is time we started to see how that manifests itself as an Arsenal employee.

Dare I say it; it feels like the beginning of an exciting new era at the club. The last of the Gazidis reign has left the club. I know Vinai was there during his time, but it feels like Raul was a Gazidis appointment and with him going we finally have rid of his legacy and can start afresh, hopefully with exciting ideas and a positive future. Be excited? Not sure about that, but I definitely feel better now than I did a few weeks ago.

Short one from me today. Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.