At the time, the We Care Do You Care? campaign gave the impression that the relationship between certain fans and the club had basically broken down and has been seen as some sort of watershed moment.
As time has evolved it is starting to appear that it had almost no influence on the club and may have even had a negative effect.
I will say up front that when the letter was released by the Arsenal supporters trust and a number of Arsenal websites and groups that we at JustArsenal supported the message here.
However, we soon started to question the campaign and gave our support to the board here.
Then we ran a piece stating that the campaign was ill-timed and cannot take credit for the Nicolas Pepe signing here.
We jumped on the bandwagon far too quickly without thinking it through but if anyone reads the comments on this site and other Arsenal blogs our change of view is not widely supported and for the most part, there is very little trust in the owners and board.
Additionally, a large section of the fan base remains convinced the We Care Do You? campaign is responsible for forcing the club into splashing the cash in the transfer window.
I simply do not accept that interpretation of events and now Josh Kroenke has spoken on the whether the We Care Do You Care? campaign caused the club to act.
This is direct from Arsenal.com
Did fan unrest cause you to act in the market?
I would say that if you’re reacting and doing club record signings based on public opinion, you’re not going to go very far as a club. We weren’t reactive this summer, we were actually proactive. It was unfortunate that the summer unfolded publicly the way it did with some of the supporters groups. I tried to answer some of their concerns to the best of our ability, but we had instruments in place behind the scenes heading into the window where we knew we were going to be aggressive and we weren’t going to be reactive to anything, we were going to be proactive. The transfer market is an evolving, living, breathing thing. There are certain moments in time; sometimes those moments are sooner, sometimes those moments are later in the window. We identified a few key targets, worked on those deals and over time we were able to execute them. I hope that our fans are just as excited as I am about the upcoming season, because I think we’ve got some talented new players in, at an age profile where they’re going to grow and improve on the pitch over the next eight to 10 months or so and well into the future. It’s an exciting time to be an Arsenal supporter.
To me, that is fairly clear, the club did not react to fan unrest, the club was not reactive and Kroenke clearly did not appreciate the fans openly criticising the club so publicly.
Now, you can call Kroenke a liar or whatever you want and some fans will never change their minds but we did, we know we initially overreacted and are not too arrogant to admit that.