Arsenal has continued to struggle financially due to the impact of covid19 and that has led them to propose 55 redundancies.
The Gunners have been one of the worse-hit teams in the Premier League because of their absence from the Champions League for several years, which has reduced their revenues.
The absence of matchday revenue from fans at the Emirates as well as a drop in TV revenue has also seen their income nosedive.
After asking their players to take a pay cut at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, it seems that things haven’t gotten any better.
The club had wanted to protect the incomes of their many staff, but things haven’t gotten better financially, and they have now released a statement saying that they are proposing 55 redundancies due to the impact of covid19 on their finances.
They acknowledged that the club owners have made financial contributions to help them at this time, but it is still not enough and they hope to achieve more with the redundancies.
The statement reads in part: “…Over recent years we have consistently invested in additional staff to take the club forward but with the expected reduction of income in mind, it is now clear that we must reduce our costs further to ensure we are operating in a sustainable and responsible way and to enable us to continue to invest in the team.
“Our aim has been to protect the jobs and base salaries of our people for as long as we possibly can. Unfortunately, we have now come to the point where we are proposing 55 redundancies.
“We do not make these proposals lightly and have looked at every aspect of the club and our expenditure before reaching this point. We are now entering the required 30-day consultation period on these proposals. ”
I wonder whether it is covid! The club have made bad decision for a while including allowing free transfers. To say they are doing so to invest in the team is foolish and taking us for a ride. Players had salary cut to enable these staff to retain their jobs but this seems to be a lie to lure players. I have begun to think the 3 who refused were justfied.
But if ozil took his pay cut these staff member could still be paid
Do you truly believe that would happen? Or do you think Kronke would pocket the extra money and fire the people anyway?
I would bet Ozil gives away 2 million in charity every year, compared to Kronke who fires 55 people to save 2 million.
The more I learn the happier I am that Ozil and 2 others told Kronke “no” to pay cut. I’m glad they are forcing him to honor a legal contract he willingly signed.
Durand,
this should not be about Ozil at all.
All our dismay should be directed at Kroenke or whoever it is who decides that these 55 employees can be made redundant.
As mentioned by others, fortunes are paid out to fixers, agents, call them what you will, as well as contracts that earn the players on average £75k pw. It is outrageous that footballers from any club earn so much money when a couple of months of the said salary will cover all 55 for a year. Crazy priorities in my opinion
Shame that fans are going to blame Ozil when it has nothing to do with him at all .
No doubt this article will turn into an Ozil fest once again ,rather than discussing the real problem .
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Not a great fan of Ozil ATM but It’s not his problem in fact we are trying to get rid of him and at the same time asking him to reduce his wages on the other hand his boss is a billionaire he should put his hand in his pocket for his 100% own club,
Recently I read an article where Arsen Wenger said when they moved from Highbury to the Emirates they went mad and employed something like four times more personal and now they are offloading some and I think there might be more to follow
Please tell me this is a very poor
attempt @ humor.
Last I checked Stan Kroenke, not
MO was the billionaire owner of
AFC and the Greedy Yank either
personally authored or
enthusiastically endorsed this
repugnant cost saving plan.
I, like most Arsenal fans have always
been critical of Kroenkes hands off,
penny pinching ownership style
but this act of financial cowardice
is beyond forgiveable.
This IMHO should be the Lighting
Rod to galvanize all Arsenal fans
to force SS out of our club. This BS
isnt out Arsenal anymore
I will just go ahead and repeat (not verbatim) what I said in a previous article where fans talked about this. I think it’s high time the fans let the club know exactly how we feel because this rot and gross incompetence on the part of the board and negligence on the part of the owner must come to an end for good. And there can be only one winner. They either prefer to run a club without fans or the board and owner leave or meet our demands. Enough of being treated like we don’t matter and laying off of this 55 employees is just a case in point as to all that is wrong with the board and ownership of Arsenal Football club.
If only the fans in North London or around London can do something about it.
Many fans just go online to rant about how much they hate the way the club is being run and when the season resumes, the same fans buy season tickets to watch games. Why not form a structured fans union(I know there’s one, but how functional it is, is another thing), come out and protest at the Emirates en masse, pick a date and time.
Support the players from home but do not spend money on any arsenal merchandise until you see the change we desire.
Create online petitions for arsenal fans across the world to sign. Publish them on popular sites such as this. We can sue the owner and board with a sizable number of petitions signed. But instead, many fans will still put more money in the greedy owner’s and clueless board’s pockets. I think we don’t know the power we have as fans. Without us the club doesn’t function. Simple as that. Now we have an owner and a board that would soon make us the next Newcastle or the team that was once great. A Quick reminder, Nottingham Forest once won the champions league. Where are they now?. We went from winning the league unbeaten, to just finishing in the top 4, to finishing top 6 and now it’s top 8. To the point where we applaud and defend average or mediocre players. How the hell did we go from a Viera to a xhaka? How? Can’t we see a trend here? Yes some of the players have improved under Arteta but come on, it is only make believe to think these players would win you the league. The best they can do is what they have just done. And we are buying aging players who are out of contracts at their previous clubs or the club no longer has needs for them, loaning players we should be signing permanently. Do we see any other big clubs doing that?
As much as I hate spuds, they do not do that and before anyone comes to tell me we built stadium and we’re repaying loans, Are we the first or last team to build a new stadium? Kroenke is like a cancer that has eaten deep into the roots of this football club. People like Dan Smith talk about the Arsenal way, the Arsenal way died when David Dein left and kroenke entered this club. In over 10 years of his ownership, we have gotten used to mediocrity.
The sooner the fan base unites aggressively to get the owner and board out, the better for us. There’s no victory without sacrifice. Missing out on games, not buying merchandise are the sacrifices we have to make for the good of our club.
Well said. I think the same, that English fans are disatisfied with how our club is run and yet they buy season tickets every year. There is a point where you have to show this horrible owner he can’t run an English team the American way.
I for one will not be buying anything from Arsenal direct if this continues. I will buy new kit from third party who based on where I live I know Arsenal won’t see a cent of that money.
I won’t renew my TV subscription either as I don’t watch TV for anything than Arsenal games. Next season streaming is a way to go even though it’s bad quality but it’s okay I am not contributing to Kroenke pouch anymore.
I have just read Ken1945 comment in the other article about English fans. He has made me realize that fans won’t drag down the club just to teach this horrible owner a lesson. A very wise person.
Still Arsenal won’t see my money if they fire those people. It won’t make a difference but still..
And while I saw the angle he’s coming from, I don’t quite agree that players have all that power. The fans do and I’m going to repeat what I told him there.
First of all, the players are employees of the club, they’re like passengers that can be replaced at any given time. They can’t even be bothered by how the club is run as long as they get their weekly pay. Fans are the constant thing a football club has, the fans are the ones that suffer the most from stupid decisions from the board and owner, the fans contribute a very large percentage to seeing the club runs successfully. We’re strong stakeholders, the players are not, they just do a job for the club and fans and get paid for the job they do. The fans pay them by buying tickets and merchandise.
Knowing all these? Would you say the fans have no power still?. Let’s protest at the Emirates just once and leave an empty Emirates stadium (Heck we’ve compulsorily done that during this corona period and see how much financial hit the club has taken). The only thing is they can blame this all on the pandemic now but if it was safe for fans to go back to stadiums and we refuse to spend our money to go and revolt and protest on grounds of incompetence from the board and constant neglect from the owners. I can guarantee you something will happen because they would really be exposed. The board will either be sacked or there would be a change of ownership just to get back on the good graces of the fans because A FOOTBALL CLUB IS NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITHOUT IT’S FANS. Players come and go but fans are forever. The board and owner do as they please because the love the fans have for the club makes them really vulnerable. They know no matter what they do, we can’t resist the urge to go watch our team play or buy a really cool kit when it’s launched. They are predators who prey on our love for the club. We have to take a stand and say enough is enough. It’s not going to be easy as it will take massive courage to do so.
Wow. So the people responsible for contract blunders, players leaving on a free, and mismanaging get to keep their jobs while employees guilty of nothing get fired. Am I missing something?
Perhaps Kronke should sell the club if the losses are so dire. So the couple million he will save will be invested in what exactly?
This lie is worse than his “moving to new stadium to compete with the biggest clubs” lie.
Perhaps another letter to Josh Kronke; publicly calling the owners out got them spending in the market. Shame on them if they fire 55 people for a couple million; that’s around 0.025% of his net worth.
Wow, so tough being a billionaire how will he live without that 2 million dollars?
My heart goes out to those people who have done nothing wrong. Kronke should be called out and publicly shamed for this brazen attitude. I’m truly embarrassed that he’s the sole owner of the club.
👍👍👍
And this is in the same year that Stans 1st quarter profits was up by 327 million if what I have read is true .
And his wife the the heiress of one of the biggest retail chains in the world – Walmart.
‘is the’….
Well said as always Durand 👍👍
Spot on Durand
Let all fans unite against the board and kroenke. That’s where our collective anger and frustration should be channelled. No pain, no gain. There’s no reward without sacrifice. All Arsenal fans worldwide must unite and root out this cancerous owner. We can DO IT
duran the only thing we should do now as fans is to publicly embarass kroenke like our colligues did at manchester united and stop to buy merchandise from arsenal till they do what we want the club to and also we should stop buying their game ticket, we gave them money so they give us happiness…………kroenke is an asshole
Durand, I agree with you regarding the embarrassment of having Stan Kroenke as the sole owner of Arsenal “Wallymart”. The problem the people made redundant had was that, unlike the players, they had no Sanheili agent mates looking after their welfare. However can anyone state how much money Kroenke has taken out of the Club this year, apart from incurring a reported £150 million asset value loss?
I’m waiting for him to wake up and not reduce the salaries of the senior executive and Board, but dismiss them and replace with people, who know how to financially manage a football club.
Ozzie,
You are spot on. Arsenal desperately need a competent management. As you may be aware, one of those laid off is the chief scout Cagigao (sp?). This is the guy who got us Cesc, Bellerin among others. So it’s OK to rely on super agents for targets.
You know wot this means no signings apart from free 1 so here’s to the new season can’t wait
It ACTUALLY means that 55 loyal
Arsenal employees unnecessarily
lost there jobs because our pathetic
excuse of a board and owner felt
it was the best interest of the club
to disrupt and possibly destroy the
lives of hard working people to save
a measly £2.5M. A sum that in there
collective opinions is necessary to
ensure the recruitment and signing
of current or future Arsenal players.
This reprehensible act far transcends
anything as trivial as futbol.
Without meaning to be flippant, what is £2.5m in the scheme of things when running a club the size of Arsenal? Ludicrous thinking by someone somewhere within the club
👍 ACE, you and I are kindred spirits on this one.
First off, im not a kronk fan, never have never will be. From an Arsenal point of view and i did try and tell some of you people (the odd one shot me down) 8 months ago that Arsenal were in a financial hole that fans dont realise how big and how serious. The clubs philosophy of the management is so poor its killing this great club, financially we have been totally incompetent, chasing our arses and betting blindly on the future. Its now catching up with us. Bad signings, bad sales, bad management, bad financial decisions have come home to roost, propelled by covid. We are run poorly. After saying all that, what we are doing will happen at nearly all clubs eventually. Finances in all English football clubs are dire, many clubs will go to the wall outside the prem, some may in the prem. Football has been greedy to excess and covid has brought the inevitable forward. The truth is fans demand massive funds spent in clubs on transfers and wages, it isnt sustainable. I laugh at some thinking the 55 are victims of kronk. They are victims of greed from fans, media, clubs and now covid. Beying for our owner to bail a sinking ship out because we have overspent because we are all greedy is bizarre, when 90 % have been protesting that we should spend stupid millions each year regardless. If you understand football finance, you will know there are rules as to how much an owner can put into a club/business and in Arsenals case, so small, it would make no difference at all. Greed has got us to where we are and greed will ruin this club. I feel sorry for the 55, i have been there in the past few months myself but im afraid that is life, especially at this moment. The damage for this club was done 5 years ago and we have been paying for it ever since. We are as they say. IN THE S***.
Reggie, I am one who has been saying the same thing; the player and financial assets of this Club have been mismanaged for years.
Redundancies as a positive is a time to update the way in which the current world operates.
Traditionally football clubs would have their own network of agents internally. But today the market of the game means agents work freelance and advise more clubs then just one.
So releasing agents is always scary for a club and also for the agent who might not want to freelance.
But scary is the times we are in!
Gabriel and William wouldn’t be bad business in such times?
I said it before and I will say it again. This is a very, very dark day.
I partly blamed Ozil before for not taking the paycut, but I might have been a bit shortsighted. Of course there is only one to blame and we all know who it is..
I’m really worried about our future, but I think it’s just the latest move in a takover that has been planned a long time ago.
It all started when Kroenke bought Usmanov’s shares and the AGM would be history. Then they forced Sven out. I think Sven told in 1 of the interviews how Arsenal had their own datacompany and that after Raul and co joined, they got rid of it. This led to one of the reasons that Sven left, if I recall correctly. When covid started, I think we fired a bunch of academy scouts as well and now we fired our most important employee in the scouting department: Francis Cigagao..
I really dont know what their plan is here, but one of the reasons I loved Arsenal is that they always did their homework. They didn’t just splash the cash on “superstars” like the other big teams. No, they put in alot of effort in scouting and looking for gems, like Koscielny, Vermaelen, Cesc, Nasri, Adebayor and more recently Martinelli and Guendouzi, just to name a few.
We are more and more moving away from this and now we just buy or loan the players that agents are supplying us. I dont know if my concerns are really justified, but I’m really worried. Maybe it’s all part of a bigger and better future, but for now I’m really sceptical.
Sorry for the long story, had to get it off my chest
Mr Lucky, you are right. Sven Mislantat left because Raul Sanheili wanted to rely principally on player agents to identify and introduce players to the Club, whereas “diamond eye” wanted to rely on scouting and computer analysis of player attributes and statistics to identify the “gems in the rough” before they came to the agents attention. First Sven Mislantat, then Steve Morrow and now Francis Cigagao all gone to enrich agents and have Arsenal pay more.
Have been saying for a long time that Sanhelli should be the first to pack his bag.
Puzzled as to why you deleted my request Martin, an answer would have been appropriate, even if it was in the negative.
The truth is we have been mismanaged since David Dein was run out of Arsenal, not fan’s greed. I wish Kronke listened to fans as much as you suggest. Too suggest fans greed as the reason over mismanagement is shocking. For example;
1. We could have sold Sanchez for £60 million reportedly, but decided against it, and settled for a swap deal with Mhki. Fans wanted Sanchez sold
FANS GREED OR MISMANAGEMENT?
Let Ramsey run down his contract and he left on a free, greed or mismanagement?
Sold Gnabry, Malen, and other youngsters for peanuts; greed or mismanagement? Remember LW Perez who never played? Or how about CB Gabriel they sold for £10 million, he’s solid in Spanish league and worth how much?
The truth is we have been mismanaged since Dein was run off, since Kronke got his way and became majority owner.
Felt we were on right track with Sven and the diamonds he found for low fees. Raul ran him off, and Sven told us exactly what would happen with the increasing influence of agents with Raul.
Now we’re firing even more, and giving Raul complete power. How has that worked out so far?
Greed of fans, as if Kronke has EVER given fans what they want. He has mismanaged his American franchises, but there are drafts to bail him out.
👍 and for an apparently successful businessman, he cannot select or maintain a competent Board or senior executive.
Durand, we will regret the day David Dein introduced Kroenke to Arsenal and suggested he joined the board, for ever more.
Always said that David Dein is responsible for the mess we are in. I think going forward we are going to see more loans, or freebies at Arsenal. A bit like signing free agents in North American model. And of course developing players for sale. If Martinelli, Saka etc… really reach the heights, they will be sold in a couple of years. Almost guaranteed.
Admin Pat, is there any chance you can move the comments from the article that discussed the 55 onto this article?
It would allow the flow of thoughts and conversation to continue.
My previous two requests appear and then disappear for some unknown reason.
I’m interested to see if we’ll stand firm with this or will reconsider…. seeing as pool/spuds reversed their furlough decision after fan criticism…
In simple terms, our Club has been mismanaged for some time principally because we have a top heavy structure which was not so apparent when we were Champions League regulars.We as fans have to an extent contributed to this situation as a majority have demanded high fee high wage players at a time when our revenue has stagnated.Those who call for the signing of Willian and Coutinho should consider the 55 casualties before they back the huge wages these aging players will earn.By paying off scouting staff we are taking a very dangerous route which is being led by agents with a vested interest in bringing their clients to Arsenal.If our Owner is aware of this policy he should realize that his investment in Arsenal FC will plummet in value as the Club will never be successful in the pitch with such an incestuous policy. Saka , Martinelli and Tierney are the route to follow.All three talented and paid a fraction of the salaries demanded by Willian and Coutinho.It ain’t rocket science, just simple common sense.
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The youth approach itself is commendable, and sensible. However my fear is that they will be sold once they can fetch significant sums. Almost guaranteed.
The reaction against the proposed redundancies have already started. The Arsenal Supporters Trust has asked for further clarification and have expressed their dissatisfaction.
Also the Arsenal players took the 12.5% pay cut, primarily to preserve the jobs of the ancillary staff they interacted with most days. They have apparently expressed their displeasure at Arsenal’s action.