Arsenal has just announced that they will make 55 members of their staff redundant as they continue to try to save costs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Gunners have been hit very hard by the pandemic, and after asking their players to take pay cuts earlier in the year, it appears that gesture hasn’t been enough to help them cushion the effect of the pandemic.
The news of them making some staff redundant was met with surprise by some fans and others were disappointed that the club still had to do that after earning a place in the Europa League and also being one of England’s biggest team.
Piers Morgan is one fan that wasn’t impressed at all and he took to Twitter to express his disapproval at the club’s actions.
He slammed the club for firing the staff when they are owned by a billionaire and comfortably paying Mesut Ozil’s mega wage while he sits on the bench because he isn’t useful to the club’s current manager.
His Tweet reads: “Arsenal firing 55 staff when we’re owned by a multi-billionaire, have just made £££ by winning the FA Cup & qualifying for Europe, & pay Mesut Ozil £350k-a-week to sit on his arse, is morally indefensible & not what I expect from a club with our heritage. Shameful decision.”
I rarely agree with Morgan but hard to argue with him on this one.
I must admit, this could turn out to be a public relations disaster for the Club. Surely other cost cutting measures such as an employment freeze or voluntary redundancy would have been more palatable under the current circumstances.
You would have thought so RFrancis. Not good PR at all.
R Francis – “this could turn out to be a public relations disaster for the Club” – IT ALREADY IS, as Arsenal “Wallymart” is the first Premier League to take such action.
However, don’t be misled that this will not happen to other clubs, because there are a lot of clubs in such a financial state, that the fall out from Covid19 will send them the way of Bury FC.
Put your money where your
mouth is there Piers, or at the
very least use your celebrity
platform to right this wrong.
Words have a tendency to fall
on deaf ears when the author
lives in the same world as our
Billionaire owner.
ACE, watch this space, this maybe Morgan’s first step in bringing media attention to bear on the mismanagement of Arsenal FC.
Ace, I am with you on your theme and how! But it is not true to say that Morgan , well heeled though he is, lives in the same “world” as Kroenke. Multi billionaires live in a planet of their own. And Morgan has no more influence over Kroenke than do you or I . Just being honest!
Multi billionaires do exactly what THEY alone wish to do and take no notice of the “little people”, or as I prefer to call them, PROPER human beings, with hearts and souls.
Thats why ozil didnt take the paycut cause he wasnt sure where it was going and look now everything in the dark must come to light cuz i remember ozil was starting before the corona break out but all of sudden after restart hes not working hard enough the same line that emery played now arteta its all from the top and if arteta didnt win the fa cup and played badly in the rest of the games after the first two which we lost after the restart
Mesut Ozil is not playing because the front office idiots that just fired 55 people do not want to pay him his full salary. The £350,000 a week number is dependent on the number of appearances he makes. That’s why he was in and out of Emery’s side.
Arteta showed he had faith in Ozil when he first took over. Ozil played well. After the restart, however, the financial people grabbed the club and manager by the scruff of the neck and took control. They want to force Ozil out, but failing that, they want to save themselves a million or so in playing-time and achievement incentives written into Ozil’s contract.
I have no idea why Arsenal fans do not see his exile as anything other than a financial power play by the idiots who replaced Wenger, Dein, Keswick, etc. and just fired 55 people to save pocket change (relative to the cost of signing even one first-team layer) No one who has ever seen him play can possibly believe that Joe Willock, Jeff Reiss Nelson, or Dani Ceballos brings more to the team than the German.
The other side of this is that the strategy of forcing Ozil out is going to fail now just like it failed before. Ozil is not going to leave until he gets his money. If I were him I; would do the same. He signed his contract in good faith. He plays well when given the chance. What the Arsenal front office leadership is doing is criminal – robbing a professional player who has never once trashed the team despite all of the vicious, unwarranted attacks aimed his way, of his reputation in the prime of his career trying to score P.R, points with fans.
Whether you think Ozil is worth his salary or not, no one deserves to be treated like this. Watching Paul Merson and his ilk launch attack after attack on Ozil, blindly and stupidly aiding and abetting the criminal slander and libel of one of the club’s most talented players by the club’s managers; is disgusting.
But let Orzil also do his work as usual so that he is apreciated but of now he no longer create goal assists as he used to do even if they dont give him his money it is what he does in and off field that will make him at the top of the would not sitting down or not playing better to show ur anger. Right now no club needs him bcz they dont see the best of him any more and he keeps demanding for that high pay.
I genuinely don’t get the point about him being mistreated
He hasn’t been denied his salary and will no doubt see it paid in full by next summer
How many times has his agent said Ozil will see out his contract? Lots.
Would Arteta demean himself to attempt to get rid of Ozil? I mean, would he? Would the board and executive level really expect Arteta not to have control over the team he picks? Ozil has his contract. It is all above board and legal. Everyone at the club knows this and they certainly know that he won’t be budged. Time to move on from this type of debate about Ozil. If he gets the opportunity to play next season due to improvement and desire then I shall be glad to see him play. If not, I believe that our manager has made his decision on footballing grounds only. Arteta surely must have some self respect
Sue P what a welcome sensible post among the many hysterical conspiracy theorists. It is nonsense for anyone to suggest that MA will be dictated too over who he picks or who he drops. Ozil does not play because he does not and will not give effort. Simple as that. Those with clear vision and an aversion to conspiracy stories see that perfectly clearly!
Paul35mm wow that’s beautiful, can you please send any evidence to back up those claims, I will really love to read how the club ordered arteta not to play ozil because of his wages and I will love to read about the clause in the ozil contract.
This is about the livelihoods of 55 people earning on average about £36k per year, not Mezut Ozil. On those salaries they must have offered something substantial to the Club. Will that expertise be missed?
There are millions of people around the world in a worse position, without the social safety nets that exist in countries like the UK.
👍
ozziegunner, you make a good point, considering the average London wage is £36,600 pa a large percentage of the unfortunate 55 were earning below average wages. To put it into perspective, an average £700 per week per person and they are offering Auba an EXTRA £50,000 per week to stay.
OT.. The champions league is back!!
Can’t wait for City v Real, gonna be a corker!
I know people are angry, but I have a feeling this would have happened even without Covid-19.
The scouting system has been computerized. Scouts are being partially replaced with optical tracking systems.
Arsenal own a data company but don’t use it, a case in point is the Denis Suarez transfer which also happened to be the last straw for Sven Mislintat. All the data all the world was against that deal but Don Raul had to prove a point like he’s doing now AGAIN.
Here we are today and we thought Ivan Gazidis was absolute dross. This Raul and Vinai are gonna be the end of our beloved club. No more scouts, we will be relying solely on Raul’s contact list lol.
And that list is very long and can be/has to be used all the time from now on. If he can get the players in like he did with Barca then why not. Hes a wheeler and dealer who knows the right people. David Dein was the exact same.
To be fair who ever our scouts were have failed us numerous times, just look at some of the players we have had over the last decade.
If Raul & Edu have enough to do the job the by all means get rid of wages what we dont need to use, only negative is we used the pandemic as an excuse to do it.
Sean, I am with you on the part of your post that says the scouts have proved pretty useless over the last decade or more. On the total of 55 redundancies, I am though, against the sacking of ordinary folk in back offices etc and front of house etc. Their salaries are a pittance to Kroenke and shows graphically his grotesque meanness!
jon, what about the constant stream of players over the years scouted and then not signed, including Lionel Messi (Arsenal chose Fabregas as they wouldn’t buy two at the time)?
On this site “Wenger’s List” of players he could have signed for Arsenal came up quite often to make us laugh and cry!
Though I much concur with MARTINS article overall, AND have nothing but contempt for Ozil-as many on here will know only too well- the Ozil saga is not the PRIME reason for these redundancies. Ozil and his grotesque salary are but a small percent of the overall wage structure and of total club spending on team matters.
Essentially you have two entities here, the football club and team being one and the business of running the corporate being another and quite separate one.
What the club corporate side is doing is trying to reduce outgoings to aid the separate football team business, run essentially by MA. I do NOT agree with the redundancies at all and think their salary a mere pittance to Kroenke, which only shows how very mean he is.
I DO however, think there is a strong case for getting rid of the scouting system as currently run. The paucity of real scouts success is alarming over a very long time now. The much vaunted Francis Cagigao has not scouted much since Fabregas many years ago; Bellerin(ugh!!) and Martinez. The so called “Don Raul” is clearly using an agent led choice of players and though I find that distasteful, I also see that the scouting system is not fit for purpose.
When something is not working as it ought and over such a long time too, sensible folk look for alternatives.
The 55 are NOT being sacked, being made redundant is a completely different thing, the club can’t reasonably keep on employees who have no current role at the club due to NO fans,they can get their jobs back when this situation changes (not great I know) this is purely a business decision which in any other industry would be looked at as good business,KSE are not going to pocket the £2M saving as some on here suggest,AFC will benefit, as for the players they have concrete contracts ergo if they don’t want to leave they don’t necessarily have to, the club gave Ozil his huge wage in panic mode to try to appease fans, those same fans now bemoan that fact, the club allowed themselves to be backed into a corner at that time,silly as it was it’s what most fans wanted, we knew Alexis wanted to go but Ozil wanted to stay so we gave him what he wanted,yes he was greedy yes AFC were stupid yes we’ve been hamstrung by it all,the club are doing the sensible thing with the 55 & even more so with the scouts,I don’t like it anymore than the rest of you, however these staff are being paid for doing nothing,how does that make sense in any business or industry, people need to this hyperbole & think things through, we need players who earn vast amount otherwise we cease to be a football club……. we don’t currently need match day staff or some scouts due to the circumstances we are in,even when fans are allowed back it won’t be 60,000 it will be a fraction of that to start with,it could be 2021/22 season before the stadium is full again so unfortunately for the 55 they have no role at the club for the foreseeable future, the statement was awful IMO, the cuts won’t save much so they shouldn’t have said it will allow AFC to do better in improving the squad etc as that makes no sense
Why are you always concern about ozil’s salary? Has he not sign contract with the club till next season? Before the lockdown was he not playing? If the mangement think the services of those people are not needed anymore why do you want them keep these scouts? We all want arsenal good but we must also respect club management decision sometimes. Thank you.