RoadrunnerReloaded
Active Member
How have those clubs bypassed Arsenal?
First, I am talking about Kroenke led Arsenal so from 2010/11 to present. Stop bringing up 20 years ago as the decisions made by the David Dein led board are completely irrelevant to the points I am making which specifically relate to what has happened to our club since Kroenke took over and our Board complexion completely changed.
The best way I can succinctly summarize an answer to your question is by using Jim Collins' Good to Great concepts. Collins was long time Stanford business school professor and one of his extensive studies looked at matched pairs of companies in different industries one company which became "great" and the other which floundered and was mediocre or failed.
They extensively examined the traits the great companies shared that the mediocre ones lacked. One key is the Hedgehog Concept. Now we have to tweak this concept a little bit to include footballing success and not just profit but the basic idea is this:
There are several other areas where I think the Kroenke owned Arsenal falls woefully shorts as an organization like getting the Right People in the Right Seats on the bus. One thing that should be troubling for everyone is that even Ornstein is coming out saying that some around Wenger believe AFC lacks sufficient support structures. That speaks directly to not having the right people in the right seats and the fact Ornstein is even saying this is troubling long term.
But lets just look at this for now
What I noticed about current Monaco, Dortmund, RBL and Tottenham is that all have very clear and focused hedgehog concepts. Examples like Leicester when they won are more like they stumbled into an accidental hedgehog concept that worked but it wasn't institutional so it fell apart when The Tinkerer did what he does - tinker too much.
For RBL for instance. You can say they have "unlimited money" but that is a bit like saying Arsenal's two owners are 2 of the 3 richest individual owners in football. The fact is RBL's "squad cost" is far less than us and Bayern. But they have a very clear hedgehog concept that starts with Ralf Rangnick - buying best, cheapest youth they can find and running a tactical system that benefits from youth and energy. This fits with their resource engine and their passion.
Monaco is a great example of an agile organization that could have done a Malaga but instead completely re-vamped their hedgehog concept from sugar daddy model to what they have now. They realized they could never be the best in the world at sugar daddy'ing like PSG so they switched to what they could potentially be the best at - finding and developing youth aggressively. A Monaco squad that was much cheaper than ours bounced us out of the CL, sold half their best players, bought well, and then last year got to a CL semi-final! That is an organization that understands its hedgehog center and is maximizing it well.
Dortmund rebuilt with Klopp's help on technical from a very precarious financial situation to far more stability while maintaining success on the pitch. Like RBL and Monaco, they realize they can't just outspend like their rich rivals so they evolve their concept to a mix of finding the youth and utilizing second tier older players to their best.
Sevilla under Monchi is another example of an organization (or leader) with a clear hedgehog concept and the ability to extract maximum value from his transfers.
For me its clear Arsenal lacks anything like a hedgehog concept. Unlike the David Dein led Board, our Board does not have a passion for AFC. That is a massive problem in Collins' view as all Good to Great companies had leaders that were absolutely passionate about the business. Then its clear from how disconnect Gazidis and Wenger's public statements of the last 3 years that we simple don't know what we can be the best at. Its definitely not scouting. The whole Kante example illustrates how we are miles and miles behind the best scouting. Its not keeping our players fit. This article was first published in 2012 documenting a decade of issues. Gazidis comes out and says we can buy any player except Ronaldo and Messi. Wenger undermines that by saying we can win league with the squad we have.
Its pretty clear from the outside that we lack a coherent strategy as a club. We seem to be caught between pretending we are a truly Big Club and accepting that Kroenke will never allow us to act like a Big Club so we need to adapt our hedgehog concept to more like a Monaco, Dortmund, RBL model. By that I don't mean copying things but looking at how each of those clubs evolved a unique hedgehog concept relative to their unique situation and aggressively sought to get the right people to implement it.
Our organization seems to value loyalty over competence, silence over speaking the truth to the public and stale consistency over even slightly more risk seeking excitement. We don't maximize the value of our footballing assets and we appear to lack passion from the highest levels.
Anyway this post is nowhere near comprehensive and I am leaving out a lot of things due to time constraints so please do not assume anything I have not specifically discussed or that this is complete.