I don’t want to say “luck” because it isn’t lucky that they have a world class ‘keeper in Alisson, but bloody hell, they got away with another one last night against PSG, didn’t they?

Enough about them, however, because I don’t want to go down rabbit hole theories of how Arnie Slot has been seen at a cult of Devil worshippers and apparently the man in the heat has granted his wishes this season in return for one soul. Certainly a better deal than Homer Simpson got all those year’s ago, that’s for sure…

In the Arsenal world, not a lot going on ahead of the trip to Manchester this weekend, although they play tonight so my hope is that they are all tired, fatigured and rubbish come Sunday. We all know they won’t be; no matter how shite United are, games at Old Trafford have historically ended in their favour and last year was the first time we beat them in the league for about 15 years prior if I recall rightly, so I’m expecting them to turn up against us, having stank that dilapidated old stadium out for most of the season already to most other teams.

Let’s hope that Sociedad win but not win by such an amount that they have no chance next week at Old Trafford (think PSV levels), because what we ideally want is for Amorim to do an Emery and throw all of his eggs in the Europa League basket. A nice rotated team against us would be grand, although I’m not going as far as to want Heaven and Chido Obi-Martin to play a part in any way, shape or form. I still have PTSD going back all the way to the Anelka years when he’d rock up playing for a different Premier League team against us every season, yet still end up on the bloody scoresheet. So I don’t want to see these two youngsters trotting out and having their big day out in the sun (har-har – it’s in Manchester this weekend so at least that ain’t happening) against us.

There will be team news from Arteta tomorrow in his press conference and so there’s time for a look at to that game on Sunday both tomorrow and on Saturday morning. That’s on the pitch, but off it, I got an email yesterday telling me that my ticket prices are going up another 5% this season, having also gone up by that amount last season. Hey, I’m lucky, because a) I have a season ticket and by the sounds of it the waiting list isn’t moving much right now, and b) I can afford it thanks to the job I have and lack of dependents. But it’s still £50+ that is being added to my bill for the same product, which does feel galling because when you put it in to the context that it’s essentially like being told by the club that I have to pay for an extra Category B game, but I don’t actually get an actual match that is assign to that cost. It just sticks in the throat a little bit when I think of it like that. I appreciate that this is a problem for a relative minority in the Arsenal fanbase, but upping prices for match going fans just to make a couple of extra million, when the big money comes from the sponsorship and TV deals, feels a little out of place to me.

But what can I do? Just got to suck it up I suppose, because I’m not giving up what has become an obsession to me. I was paying up when it was freezing cold, we were rubbish, nobody turned up to Man City in the winter amongst the snow and I had five seats to myself, I’m certainly not walking away now.

So what else is there then? well, we’ve got some rumblings about Sesko’s release clause being made a little more public, which apparently stands at 70 millions euros. That’s £58million and personally, for that price, I think Arsenal need to go and have a go at that deal. It feels like the groundwork has been laid already; we went in for him last summer, so he knows there’s interest. He will have seen that we decided to keep our powder dry in the January window and he’ll know the context of how our season has fallen away. Against that backdrop, it feels to me like the ‘sell’ is pretty easy. The question is whether Arsenal can get in there quick enough, offer the right package for him and his agent, then who else is in for him. I’ve seen Barca might be interested, but the Premier League, the fact they will have to sell before buying, the opportunity that Arsenal could put to him if they move quickly, it feels like a deal that could be done.

And to me, I think I’ve been fairly consistent, he’s been my main guy I think we should be after. Isak is far too expensive and the second he puts on that Arsenal shirt you just know he’ll be on that plush red leather treatment table at London Colney. I’ve seen that lad from Frankfurt mentioned and he does look impressive, but I just think the Sesko relationship has probably already been well cultivated and if Arsenal can move early in the summer, I think a lot of us will have our fears allayed of a another late-grab transfer window.

Right, I’m going to leave it there today. I have a hella day of meetings so I better crack on.

Catch you tomorrow.

I have to tell you, I’m starting to get apprehensive about this game at home to Brentford. They are a good team, a team in form, a side with whom we’ve had our noses bloodied already since their recent arrival in the league. Sure, we swatted them to one side in the game at their ground earlier in the season, but after our little wobble against Everton last weekend, I’m at the point in which I’m starting to get very worried that we could be about to see a blip in the team.

One thing I will say, however, is that so far this season we have reacted to any setbacks quite well. The defeat at Old Trafford was followed up by a 2-1 away to Zurich and then the Brentford win. If we can replicate the disappointment of that loss against United in the same way and to the same opponent in the shape of the Bees this Saturday afternoon, that will provide the perfect tonic for the nerves I currently have building ahead of the game. I also wonder if there is an element of the unknown this season; we haven’t had a game in which we haven’t played well, lost, which was also then part of back-to-back losses, so it is occupying a lot of my Arsenal thoughts right now. That could all be washed away depending on how we start and if we get an early goal at the weekend, but I need to hold back some of my pre match thoughts as I’ll probably bore you all to death if I start showing my workings this early in the week.

So instead I’ll turn to other news bubbling around and for those of you who aren’t season ticket holders or located near the Arsenal for this to impact them, this will probably be of no interest. But as a season ticket holder I feel compelled to give my view. The club announced yesterday that they are reducing the number of games for which the season ticket will cover holders for, from 26 matches in a season to 22. Normally that 26 games means that you get the first seven cup games after the 19 Premier League games included in your ticket. For me that has always given me the opportunity to go to some big games and not pay extra over and above the usual price of a ticket if I bought it at the game-by-game price. So if we’re in the Champions League quarter final against Dortmund, then my ticket might cover it and it would average out at just over £35. For my seat in Category A matches (the big ones), I pay £66 if my ticket doesn’t cover it. So whilst on one hand this will enable some fans who find it a struggle justifying the full spend on a ticket a challenge to be able to keep their season ticket, for those who want to go to all of the games, we will once again find ourselves out of pocket.

That’s because next season – assuming we make the Champions League – we will get the group stages and that’s it. No additional FA Cup ties, no additional Champions League games. And let’s remember that by the time you get in to the Champions League knockouts, the chances of facing a bigger side – and therefore Category A game, increase significantly. So whilst the club might position this as a move to think of the cost of living crisis and give people options, for a fan like me it could potentially end up costing me another £50+ more a season on top of the money I already spend, because that game example of Dortmund at home in the Quarter final that I gave, now costs £66 instead of the season-ticket inclusive price of roughly £35. That’s why a few people are frustrated I think and I have to include myself in this too.

I haven’t even mentioned that there will be a 6% increase for my ticket. Which will work out at my ticket being an additional £50 more for the season. So all in all if we go deep in competitions, I think I will have to pay an average of £100 more next season on the price of my ticket. That’s more than inflation. In fact it is more than 10% increase in the overall season ticket price when you bring it all together.

I get that there is inflation, I really do, and I get that the club can’t freeze prices forever, but I don’t want anyone to be under the illusion that this is anything more than a bit of extra money going in to the coffers, rather than the club putting fans first. If every one of the 42,000 season ticket holders are in the same boat as me, it’s £4.2million going in to the club. Is that just to cover inflation costs? Seems a lot to me…

Now, I don’t want to end today’s blog on a negative though, because what they are doing for young fans by reducing the prices for under 25s is a good idea. I wish they’d have done that when I was that age but there you go, they’re doing it now. And the wraps around the stadium look very good. There are some ways in which the club really get it right and the connection they build with us in some of this stuff is really good. But there are just some instances where there are a collective of fans – us ‘legacy fans’ – that just feel like we’re being drained of yet more cash at a time in which many are feeling the pinch.

I said I didn’t want to end the blog on a negative and then I threw in a ‘yeah but..’!! So how’s about this:

Top of the league, five points clear, praying for us to make it eight points by the time I go out to dinner on Saturday night!

Catch you all tomorrow.

I started the first iteration of this daily blog in August 2011. I remember it well because it was the summer that we signed Arteta from Everton. It was a platform for me to just speak my mind and because i’ve always enjoyed writing, for me to write about the thing I love: The Arsenal.

It has often been frustrating, I’ve ranted many a time, I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed the highs of writing after some of the many cup wins we’ve had since then. Arsenal has completely enveloped my life and it has been a constant throughout. I have made so many friends through it; drinking buddies, online buddies from across the world. In 2019 I met a load of Arsenal fans at 8am on a Saturday morning in Memphis; the power and joy of Arsenal and I still follow those guys on social media and we occasionally interact.

Yet right now everything feels a little up in the air. Perhaps I’m sounding dramatic and over the top today, but everything feels like it has just been ripped apart by an entity and family in the Kroenke’s with whom I have never felt any kind of affinity with. I did not trust them from day one and I have long feared that their view of ‘custodianship’ will morph into a form of greed and land-grabbing that could destroy The Arsenal.

Or at least the Arsenal that I know and love.

And that’s what it feels like today.

This blog is my opinion and as such it is inaccurate at times, it can be a little emotional, sometimes I have people telling me I’m an idiot. But it is my vehicle to voice what I’m thinking and that’s why I enjoy doing it. Well…’enjoy’ is a relative term on many occasions, granted. So with today’s thought’s I am only speaking for myself. I am not representing Arsenal fans as a collective, I am not second-guessing what Arsenal fans want, I want only to explain why I am feeling so hollow.

I never managed to get a season ticket at Highbury. The waiting list was too long, Arsenal were one of the best teams in the country, I wasn’t going to get a regular match day experience for years. So when I did get my season ticket at The Emirates I was over the moon. And I have been thankful ever since because it has given me access to seeing my passion live and in the flesh ever since. I genuinely thought that when I got that ticket there would be nothing that would prize my name from that little gold card and my space in Block Five. It was going to have to be prized from my cold, dead, fingers, so to speak. Yet with the announcement of this European Super League I am finding myself wondering whether I want to renew when all of the ESL stuff gets ratified. Do I really want to put my money into the hands of the greed-fueled American owner who has been a key player instigating what is essentially going to be a European equivalent to the NFL? Do I really want to see Arsenal getting battered each week by teams who have more money than us to spend on the megastars of tomorrow? Am I going to contribute to the problem by handing over my money to them?

I don’t want to. Lord knows I don’t. But Arsenal is an obsession and that can’t just be switched off.

It’s the same with supporting the team from afar. Can I just switch off the TV and make a stand by not watching Arsenal ever again if this Super League comes in to force? I don’t know the answer to that right now.

But what I do know is that the Arsenal I thought I knew and loved would be gone forever. Replaced instead by a  franchised sports team, owned by a billionaire who has decided his methods of not putting a penny in of his own money wasn’t generating enough cash to sweat his asset, so he’s colluded with other billionaire owners – many of whom are American and will be very on board with the American sports franchise approach of no relegation, competition or jeopardy  – to create a new monster designed to drive the profit and loss rather than to achieve glory, make history, or anybody happy other than their own bank managers.

Do I continue to bother to blog if all I’m seeing is 10 – 15 exhibition games a season? Do I still have the desire to go on podcasts? Will I still have these same friends to regularly meet up with? I’m sure they will all stay friends, but our common unifier was The Arsenal. If we’re not talking online about the Arsenal, what is our anchor point to bring us together? With so many friends I’ve met we all live so far apart. It’s not like you’re popping around the corner where you live for a beer with somebody. If Arsenal is taken from my life I will still try to meet with so amny of the people I am friends with, but will it be the same?

These are just some of the thoughts – perhaps irrational – that are going through my mind at the moment. And I realize that it is a very specific set of circumstances I find myself in: Not everyone can afford a season ticket, not everyone can go to all of the games and watch live, not everyone is geographically fortunate to be based within an hour of the ground. But as I said at the top of today’s blog, this is just my experience, my thoughts, where my head is at.

This European Super League feels like it will leave me rudderless from a football point of view. It will also crystallize whether or not I even like football. Or is it that I only like football because of the love of The Arsenal. I don’t watch too many other games of other teams these days. I just can’t be bothered. There are other things in my life worth spending time on (wife, friends, family, other hobbies, etc). And so if it transpires that I decide to make a moral standpoint and to just not get involved with Arsenal any more, do I realize that in fact, I don’t even like football?

Anyhoo, just some thoughts on a Tuesday morning. Life is too short to get too hung up on this sort of stuff, so fill your life with more things that bring you pleasure. That’s where my head is starting to turn already.

Catch you all tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll feel a little differently.

I don’t think the club would be that silly though, although they certainly won’t reduce season ticket prices I would have thought, because they want to maintain the income in the face of reduced Champions League money. It is a tricky one for all sides though. Champions league football is no guarantee and nowhere in the terms and conditions does it say that not getting it would mean that the club has to reduce prices. But having had 20 years of it there is kind of an expectation that you’re paying to see a certain type of opponent in these games and that’s why the tickets cost that little bit more. We as fans have no divine right to watch the best teams from Europe so why should we be demanding a reduction in ticket prices?

That argument works well in isolation, but when you consider other factors like we pay the highest prices in Europe for our tickets, that’s when the argument falls down. If we were paying 20% less for our tickets – season tickets or even match day tickets – then I’d probably be of the kind that we should be grateful when we’ve got Champions League and suck it up when we have Europa. But we don’t have it this way. We pay more than anyone and right now, you can hardly say we’re getting the best product to watch as a result. 

There’s also the category systemthat was set up by the club, which kind of sends the argument about ‘sucking it up’ a little less palatable. Arsenal charge a premium for games against big teams – the Bayern’s, Barcelona’s, PSG’s of this world – and reduce prices for the lesser games and specifically the League Cup. In doing so, particularly with the League Cup, the club admit that some trophies are less favourable and so should be treated differently ticket wise. So you get £10 tickets and an opportunity for people who don’t normally go to watch The Arsenal at a reduced rate. I think the League Cup approach has been good in that respect and hope that Arsenal continue it for a long time. But in reducing prices for the League Cup they have set a precedent for viewing certain competitions as ‘less favourable’ than others. The Europa league certainly fits that bill and if Arsène – who we all know will be clinging to power for another two years – fields more of a development squad in the competition – then there is even more of a link towards the approach taken in the League Cup.

That’s why I think the club will do what they’ve done in that competition and reduce prices to £10 and £20 for the group stages, as well as take the cup credits away from the normal season ticket. It sounds like the most logical option that keeps most people happy. It’ll also give more games to some of the squad and youth team players.

I’m sure there are some out there who are wondering why I’m taking so much time and effort to talk about this when it isn’t even a dead feet that it’ll happen, but pardon my pessimism when I tell you that I think it is a dead cert. Liverpool aren’t losing or drawing to Boro and that’s that I’m afraid. Even the players are accepting of their fate it seems, with Petr Cech telling us there’s no shame in the Europa League which I’d agree with, instead preferring to call it an ‘inconvenience’ instead. It means a load more Sunday matches having played on a Thursday, it means playing teams that you’ve never heard of and it feeling like a friendly somewhere in another continent, it also means fans of the teams in the Champions League sniggering at you whilst they play proper teams in a proper competition. So no, it is not ‘shameful’, just a bit of a pain in the arse really.

And it also means you run the risk of losing your best players. Alexis can talk all he likes about being happy and not letting speculation affect him, but we’re all getting too used to this kind of talk, before he disappears off for his holiday and tells the manager that he wants out and won’t sign a new deal. At that time Arsenal need to offload quick and before you know it that interview with the journalist telling him that he’s happy at Arsenal seems a million miles away.

Alexis’ Arsenal career has two games left in it. You know that, I know that, the player knows that and Arsène will know that. The challenge we’ll have is trying to convince somebody of the requisite quality to replace him, with no Champions League football and a club who – rightly or wrongly – have a wage structure that is about ten years dated.

But he can still give us some happy memories by putting on a show for Everton and Chelski, so let’s just live in the now, appreciate him as he is in this moment and hope he at least brings us some silverware in 9 days time.

Catch you tomorrow.

Am I happy about having to fork out more than any other fan? Of course not. Would I love to see my season ticket halved, to make it more affordable, so I can spend that £500 elsewhere? Of course I would. But with the publishing of the BBC’s Price of Football report yesterday, questions over the match day experience have once again been raised as to why football fans are having to pay through the nose for their obsession.

It doesn’t make me happy that the price of shirts and programmes are so expensive. I’m not pleased that the price of a pie at Arsenal is £3.70 and probably the same as a pint and a pie in Burnley. But equally I am struggling to get too ‘red mist’ over the findings, if I’m honest, because I recognise the environment that we live in. Football, the Premier League specifically, is a global product these days and as such, has seen demand rise so significantly that teams are building new stadiums and extending existing stadiums left, right and centre. There is so much demand to experience live football, that waiting lists are through the roof. I’ve got the Management on the Arsenal season ticket waiting list. I think she’s about 40,000 in the queue. That’s a whole other stadium that can be filled with people desparate to buy a season ticket. Arsenal season tickets must therefore, given this demand, be seen as a precious commodity and if the price of oil can be determined by market factors, why do we think the price of watching football would not be exposed to similar levels of demand?

Bayern Munich fans are preparing to enter the stadium five minutes after the whistle has blown next week. They say it is to highlight the future of football and whilst I applaud their sentiment, they clearly must not have the same level of demand for their tickets as the Premier League, because at Arsenal if a large selection of fans stopped going, others would replace them.

Again, I need to stress that I am not advocating paying more, nor do I believe I currently pay an acceptable price for my season ticket. I’m merely pointing out the – what I perceive to be – futility of the situation that English football finds itself in. In Germany Bayern have the pick of every player in the division. Just below them are a few clubs that operate in a second tier, but below that the quality of football and the ability to attract players, is a difficult situation. The Bundesliga is nowhere near as competitive as the Premier League and the result of that is that it is not as global as the Premier League and you don’t see mid table teams picking up Payet’s, Ayew’s or Shaquiri’s. So perhaps it’s easier to cap prices when the product does not have as global appeal?

As for the price of pies and replica shirts, well, I just don’t buy them any more. Not in the ground, anyway, as I use other food outlets for my pre-match substitutes. What I would campaign for, as I think this is something all of the clubs could and should be doing, is capping the price of children’s replica shirts. The power of the pester, coupled with the need to excite the next generation of football fans, should see that prices for items or tickets for children are drastically lower than that for adults. I can’t believe that the clubs in the Premier League make too much money on children’s merchandise, so why not just sell it at a vastly discounted rate? It would be a good PR win for the Premier League, parents wouldn’t have to blow half a months wages and we’d be encouraging the obsession that has led most of us Arsenal supporting adults to become deeply embroiled in. 

Those in power can, and should, at least act in this regard.

Anyway, we’re getting closer towards kick off for the Watford game and hopefully we’ll get some news on players by the end of play today with the traditional ‘Arsène talks to the official site first’ release that normally comes in the evening. That is if his presser isn’t moved to today because of the away game, but with it being at Watford it’s only three junctions along the M25 from London Colney, so it’s not as if the team need to travel over land and see (and Leicester) so I’d expect it to be tomorrow. I just hope that the fitness of Alexis is being monitored very closely. We all know he’s like the T1000, but there will come a point where he’ll either break down or explode into a ball of fiery kinetic energy, so I wonder if he might get a rest given his exertions in South America during the week. We shall wait and see with intrigue.

The day has just begun for me, so I’ll clock off on today’s Arsenal proceedings, leaving you and yours to enjoy whatever it is you do with your day/evening. Peace out.