Hi Hodd,

I thought I read he was set to be one of the vice-chairmen of the Superleague, along with John Henry and Joel Glazer? That implies more than just a last minute arrival at the party, unless every club's owner was set to be a vice-chariman.

Our fans are little different to those of other big clubs. Every club has a mix of fans from different class backgrounds, gender, spreads of wealth (rich, middling and poor), age profiles (young, middle-aged, old), ranges of ethnicity, sexual orientation, political beliefs (far left to far right and everywhere in between), and religions (which probably has most relevance in and around Glasgow and Rangers have Catholic fans just like Celtic have Protestant fans).

I have a long-term close friend from Merseyside who supports Liverpool. They have fans who lack patience with Klopp, just as some Arsenal fans have with Arteta and had with Emery and Wenger. Tottenham and Chelsea fans lose patience with their managers just as much as Arsenal fans do with theirs. It’s the way modern society has moved, perhaps with social media sites in the internet era making it more obvious and intense. Arsenal fans are no better or worse with regards patience with managers (at least to a material extent) than other clubs.

If Arsenal don’t win the Europa League and Arteta gets sacked, it won’t be any more to do with the fans than any other sacking of managers at big clubs. If it happens, and I don’t expect it to, I think you got the reason a short while ago when you suggested Kroenke may want to deflect blame from himself.

It’s nonsense soc

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football ... er-league/

We have just baled too.

Arsenal have withdrawn from ESL.

Lots of reports that Arsenal are formulating plans to get out of the super league.
Absolute shambles.

Hope the planned protests for Friday night before the game still go ahead as a Kronke Out protest

Out.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/dailycanno ... ports/amp/

Waiting to see if Spurs leave. They needed the ESL money the most. What with a cupboard so bare, even old Mother Hubbard herself would be ashamed.

Now time to get Kroenke out too.

*%^@*** weasel

Got this from Twitter:
Sp*rs sacking Mourinho and intending to use the Super League money to pay his compensation! Brilliant!

#KroenkeOut

Well maybe....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.footba ... 430504.amp

One by one the cockroaches are scattering.

Must say I didn't expect it to implode so quickly. A complete farce from start to finish by all clubs involved.

Arsenal have written an open letter to fans.
“We made a mistake and we apologise”

Lots of other statements from other English clubs. Arsenal the only ones to actually apologise and admit their mistake so far.

Doesn’t make it any better.

#KroenkeOut

I agree that Kroenke must go. He has irretrievably damaged our reputation. Only politicians can make such a clusterf..k and get away with it.

At least we were unbeaten in the ESL...

We learned a couple things. The owners want a super league. The owners flew up a trial balloon and saw that their timing is wrong. If anyone thinks this is the end of it, they are sadly mistaken. They will simply bide their time and wait for the right moment. In the interim, greasing the wheels where they can. This didn't kill the league it merely delayed it. The 1 percent get their way...eventually. In today's world they do. Naïve to think otherwise.

A thought - if the ESL had become a successful reality, and Arsenal had turned down the invitation to join, would our fans have been content? As one of the older generation who expected no more than the occasional league or cup trophy, I was not especially pro or con this latest initiative. I suspect the younger fan base, developed primarily as TV spectators over the last 20 years might think differently?

AG I was thinking the same. A major criticism of the ESL was its 'closed shop' nature and the lack of relegation, but presumably that model, along with salary caps and player drafts, ensures some level of long-term economic stability for participating clubs. The debt issue will still have to be addressed by European football, and that is why the ESL idea will not go away.

The ESL was slammed for being non-competitive, but that is already the case with most European football leagues in which just a few teams dominate. Since it began the Premiership has been won by just 7 clubs and in the same period Bundesliga by 6; La Liga and Serie A by 5. In contrast the closed NFL has seen 16 different clubs as champions.

omoh, the owners see the potential money to be made and its staggering. So, now we're to believe, they'll forget about it and leave that potential amount of money out there. The league was about money. A god awful amount of money. They won't give that up. The pandemic has taught them that the money they were already making wasn't enough. Kroenke and the American owners specifically are likely saying. "Look at the amount of money we are making in the NFL. A sport that is only followed in one country? Imagine how much we will make with this with a similar contract that the NFL and NBA gets in America as well as the rest of the world?"

No, this isn't going away forever. Truth is, the owners don't care how non competitive it is. The push back is why they have halted it temporarily. They'll regroup and as I said, bide their time.

You said we were not the main proponents when clearly if Raul Sanelhi said in 2018 “There is nothing secret,” Sanllehi said.“We need to make sure Arsenal is in the driving seat of anything that may happen” and that we were central to the discussions.


Sorry Hodd, Something like this deal wasn’t constructed in the last 10 days. Arsenal would have needed to consult with lawyers, publicists even and would have sought assurances on the commercial deal streaming provider DAZN had agreed. All this makes our apologies yesterday hysterical which we can agree on.

Just woken up to find that it was a bad dream. All 6 English have clubs withdrawn.

I have now just found that similar is happening in Italy and Spain. It would be interesting to see the order of deserting. The reporting on this is very unclear. Did all English clubs jump first or was it mixed?

Well I'm disappointed for one. We missed an opportunity to take the Cities out of the equation and lostc the chance to concentrate on promoting our youngsters ahead of paying out sick amounts to buy so called stars and pay obscene wages to them.

We missed a chance to make football about football.

Not sure I follow your train of thought on this. Are you of the view we would not need to buy any new players because we would be guaranteed money and a place each year if we joined.

Didn't watch any of it. The very fact that it took a lot of protesting and a great deal of public pressure for it to actually go through the process says it all. There are many such similar cases. 99% get no media attention and go unaddressed. Also, the very fact an open and shut case stood a good chance of being found not guilty is again, a symptom of the state of affairs. Being relieved that an open and shut case was adjudicated properly isn't cause for celebration for me. It should be the norm. If the cop did that to the son of a business man in Beverly Hills, it wouldn't even have been a trial. He'd have taken a plea. The cop took a chance with the jury because he knew that there were enough prior cases of cops getting off under similar cases considering the victim, for him to take that chance. The public pressure perhaps made a difference in this particular case.

The case of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky was, in my humble opinion, a far better example of the state of things. Police went to the wrong home, no knock warrant, didn't announce themselves, lied that they did, shot her while naked multiple times. Her boyfriend shot once in self defense with his legally obtained gun and wounded a cop. Obviously he had no idea it was a police officer. He obviously thought it was a home invasion. He got arrested for the temerity of wounding a police officer who had no right to be in his home unannounced and it took a lot of public pressure for him to be released...weeks later. The matter would have ended right there and then. It took a lot of public pressure, protesting and weeks, months later for it to be addressed and even then, the government, police department is trying to throw it. I doubt anything will come of it.

If you notice in such cases, the NRA (National Rifel Association) never, ever, ever says anything? Their mantra is people should have the right to own a firearm for self defense. Philandro Castille in Minnesota, registered gun owner, shot while retrieving his license by a cop. 12 year old Tamir Rice of Cleveland, shot within 2 seconds (video shows) of a cop getting out of his car because he had a toy gun. Cleveland is in Ohio, an open carry state. By law the cops should have asked (a 12 year old boy) if he had a license. Nothing came of it. Nothing happened to the cops.

The NRA didn't say anything in any of these cases. One would ask why? Well, there is a common denominator in all these cases. The NRA's main support is from these far right, militia types. The truth is these 2nd amendment, I have a right to a gun, far right types really only want themselves to have guns. The NRA markets themselves to these groups telling them in coded speech they need to protect themselves aganst people like Floyd. If you strip away the rhetoric, the NRA only intercedes politically, financially when its one of these far right yahoo types. They backed the insurgents who went to the Michigan state house for example.

The military is finally, quietly getting rid of the large extremist, supremacist members among its rank and file and a lot of them are officers https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/ ... 566463001/ The police departments large and small across the America have 1000s of them.

We're irrevocably broken. We are too nationalistic, prideful and frankly blind, to see it. Mass shootings are normalized and accepted as part of American culture now. I can only imagine what will happen when we have the next big recession and many of these guys have lost their jobs, feel neglected and lost and all they have are the guns and rounds of bullets left they spent their meager resources on. Trust me, the politicians know this and are scared sh*tless. The Capital building invasion finally made even the Republicans in power see the issue.

The BLM protests, Antifa, and others now have a possible similar reaction from the left. Its going to be messy. Very messy. When the politicians themselves get targeted, is when it will be addressed. They were fine with 'thoughts and prayers' when it was the citizenry getting shot in mass shootings, etc. The Capital Building and the Michigan state house made them vulnerable. They know it but still have no idea how to address the issue or even aware of the root causes.

On seemingly a different issue but related, is that Biden announcing we are pulling out totally out of Afghanistan. (I have my doubts but...). The Republicans obviously have an issue with it but what may be surprising to some (not me) is the Democratic leadership taking issue as well (as they did with leaving Syria). The infamous military-industrial complex is all powerful. They have both parties. They are located in many blue states such as California, Washington state.

The UK, France, Germany, our allies must know this and see this. If I can, some regular schmuck, average Joe, literally in his boxers typing on a pc (sorry for the visual), can see this, your governments know this. I assume yours and other governments are taking all this into account and are quietly preparing itself. I think the 'special relationship' is pretty much gone. There are mutual concerns that both parties still have, especially in terms of security. That's a given. But I think America has broken the trust. The long time bureaucrats who worked together still have a relationship but overall, I have to assume, the next time we want to go full steam ahead in some foreign conflict and expect the UK to come along, the U.S. government will be surprised at the response and response may be a bit more terse than we're used to.

lol...rant over.

It’s always interesting to get from a country the view from an ordinary person.

In the sixties and seventies for me television series promoted the true American dream. It looked glamorous and better and aspirational and upwardly mobile whilst being the clear world leader in all that was good.

Suffice to say I no longer have that view.

Actually, I think there's two of you.

If this is anywhere near true then the nature of what was intended would just destroy football as we have always known it.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/amer ... 967372ce29

It is a bit rich that some media outlets are holding City and Chelsea up for some sort of praise because they were the first to pull out of the super league. With unlimited money already they can easily afford the shelve the idea. On a purely competitive basis it isn't in the interests of City and Chelsea to have those other teams hugely inflate their income by the super league as their advantage over those teams becomes more negligible

Ironic also that whilst the other 14 clubs wore T-shirts at matches saying 'earn it' and all received wide backing from the media for doing so there has never been any such criticism from the likes of City and Chelsea not 'earning' their success.

Hi OMOH,

I can see both sides of the argument, but these owners are not stupid people so my sense is that apart from the obvious greed factor there is more to this than meets the eye, otherwise they would not have been prepared to take such drastic measures knowing the likely fallout and repercussions from it.....even if they massively underestimated them.

They clearly see the way the wind is blowing and that the current football business models, post covid, are simply unsustainable.

I suspect fans may have won the current battle but are a long way from winning the war. This project may have been put on the back burner but I don't think it will go away.

It's quite honestly staggering how out of touch they are with the football world, just shockingly bad PR for everyone involved. They announced it by a standard, copy-pasted statement that said nothing of value and looked like it was typed out by an AI. They had no clue the fans would react so poorly. They didn't even take the time to notify people at the club, with players and managers - the people that fans actually connect to - being completely blindsided. And now they've all been forced to backtrack just two days later.

Rich,

100% correct and I said as much yesterday.

It's hypocritical. If City and Chelsea genuinely have the interests and integrity of english football so at heart then they will acknowlege that their obscene spending over the last decase or so is one of the big reasons for the inflationary pressures in football, that in part have led us to where we are now.

Both are midtable clubs who have bought success through the deep pockets of their owners, nothing else, and in truth the owners could have bought any PL club and the same thing would have happened.

I’m actually surprised that they’ve stepped back given the clear disdain that the owners (particularly the Americans) have for fans. Not remotely interested in us.

All very odd, Haz, but I suspect there is more to this (in particular the timing) than meets the high. These are not a bunch of chancers they are incredibly astute business people with an array of top lawyers and other people advising them.

It makes no sense to do what they did when they did it without very good reasons and we may see that in the fullness of time.

This may have been put on the back burner but I think its just a battle that hs been won and not the war.

Haven't UEFA suddenly found an extra £4 billion or something down the back of their sofa to add to the CL and EL packages. That shows the kinds of people we are dealing with here. UEFA are not exactly a paragon of virtue and are probably one of the reasons why clubs felt the need to break-away.

I would be surprised that if this wasn't one of the reasons that Americans got into football. If you notice, they didn't buy non English sides. Kroenke, Glazer, Henry went for the most popular league in the world. Not Milan, not Dortmund, not Ajax, not Valencia but big, iconic clubs in the world's most popular league. These are businessmen. They analyse everything about purchases of this size. They have people who write up potential revenue, etc.

They know the American league and obviously saw the present football system as a flaw. I really don't think people realize the amount of money this league would be worth. Astronomical amounts. It would dwarf anything present both in America and outside America.

How can anyone be shocked at any disrespect for tradition from people who have zero issues with rooting up iconic American sides from decades of tradition and moving them to other cities. I can think of one, maybe two stadiums that likely never be moved. The Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox stadiums. The rest? Well, Yankee Stadium was home to the most iconic team and player in American history. Babe Ruth, the Yankees are the Man Utd of America. The Real Madrid of America. Juve of America. It's Americana to its core. There is a century old joke of a Brit and American arguing and the American says 'Damn the King' and the Brit says 'Damn Babe Ruth'. Not the president. He insulted the one person that was loved more. The one thing he can think that would insult an American to his core. Well, Yankee stadium was torn down and moved. So much for Americana.

Therefore, how can you expect them to respect the traditions of football? Its laughable to expect it. The one thing I loved about football (the traditions, etc.) they disregarded and looked at football only through a financial lens.

My guess? America wants to be the major or biggest influence on the World Cup and world football. Long term? The hope is to make the MLS the top football league in the world. That would be a herculean task and won't work. They will underestimate the lack of interest in it, in part because its American...lol. You can't buy passion. You can't buy tradition. They probably know that and would be satisfied if the MLS would be on the same par as baseball, which is now visibly the 3rd sport after being by far the most popular sport from inception up to the 70s.

Fact is we got into bed with a man that doesn't respect us, our traditions, and instead of a loving marriage its more of a pimp/whore relationship.

I should have included intelligence in my paragraph above. I’m sure there will be similar spreads in cleverness amongst the fan bases of all clubs. Some geniuses, some idiots, and most somewhere in between. Arsenal fans will be no different to Tottenham, Chelsea, both Manchester clubs and Liverpool.

The only obvious qualification I will make is fan base size driving the actual number. For example, Manchester United have a bigger fan base than everyone else in this country. Hence they will have more ultra brainy people who support them, as well as more utterly thick fans.