European Super League

[Majora]

I still haven’t processed any of this whatsoever. Had already reached a point where I was no longer really watching any non-Arsenal games and this might be the final nail in the coffin for me with football. Arsenal as a club is now so far removed from the one I fell in love with, the badge and name is basically all that remains.

Even ignoring all the other issues and looking only at Arsenal, we’re going to likely be finishing bottom three every year with no incentive to improve or invest heavily since we can’t be relegated. At least when you support a team fighting relegation and expect to lose most weeks, you get the odd result and it’s huge, you get a massive three points to take you further from the drop. Otherwise, you go down and then watch your team fight the next year to win the league or gain promotion. With this setup, we’d lose most weeks and the odd win would feel pretty empty. Yes we’ll play big teams all the time but how long would it take for that novelty to wear off? I just feel that it would be season over before it starts every single year, why bother even watching the games?

I’m maybe misunderstanding a lot of the plans but in any case am very disappointed in the club.

 

[SingmeasongSong]

What's the most annoying is that, if the clubs and leagues hold firm, breaking these big ones, it will have them all fall into nothingness when the real target should just be a few owners.

This Super League has nothing to do with 99,99% of those big clubs' fans, players, staff ..

 

[Rex Stone]

 

[Gooner1988TK]

They were discussing a revamp of the CL. That would’ve been a compromise.

What’s CL money, 50-70 mill a year or so? This new league is an immediate cash injection of several billion and 300 mill guaranteed a year. Most clubs are broke and heavily in debt. Money talks. The leagues should just suck it up, take a quick bribe, pocket some as usual then use the rest to save lower league clubs they keep moaning about will go extinct.

 

[dashsnow17]

My fave thing in life in general is when people accuse others of hypocrisy like they're f*cking Sherlock Holmes and they've unearthed a shocking and rare crime, when hypocrisy is just an everyday facet of living in a society and being hypocritical doesn't automatically invalidate everything you say and think.

 

[Highbury_2006]

The Kroenkeboys think that smaller clubs doesnt deserve to exist apparently.

 

[Riou]

Can't believe this is the end of Steana Bucarest as a top club

 

[Vicki]

The clubs didn't even bother to talk about the ESL with their managers/players, impressive.

why would they?
managers, players, even fans are all interchangeable

 

[Rimaal]

Realistically like you’ve rightly pointed out, what are we gonna do anyway? There’s way too much money involved for them to care what fans think.

The very least you could do is voice your displeasure, anger, disgust, and keep voicing it. Make no mistake, pragmatism in this situation is a sin be cause it empowers the greedy, and hastens the destruction of a sport that has sustained us all emotionally and mentally for decades upon decades.

 

[OnlyOne]

Given a lifeline? What about West Ham’s lifeline? Clubs like Everton and Leeds being shut out?

This is a rich mans party now and YOU mean nothing mate, let it go.

I'm looking at it from an Arsenal perspective if you actually read what I posted. And if you have paid attention fans from most clubs mean nothing to their owners, honestly.

They buy the clubs for profit, hire guys who are supposed to care and sit and watch their money increase, that's business. They'd never turn an opportunity down like this, and if they did they're idiots.

Say you do invite your West Ham's, Leeds and Everton's, think they'd turn it down as well? Of course not. Each clubs are leeches, our history is just giving us a chance to further it.

 

[OnlyOne]

A lifeline?! What sort of lifeline is that that sinks the very boat you're hoping to sail on??

Our boat would sink if we said no, football is moving forward with the ESL you get on board or you sink.

 

[SingmeasongSong]

And do what instead? Spend quality time with their families...?

View attachment 2527

People will get over it like they got over the UCL admitting clubs that weren't the league champions into the competition.

I'm still not sure who's going to win in this battle if German clubs and french clubs say no and players are denied joining the Super League for years to come.

But if so, you are obviously right, people will just accept it at some stage, no matter whether it entirely destroyed football for good.

I mean, how many people have REALLY cared about Katar World cup basically being a mass murder event.
Totally unthinkable in essence and all people involved, without money and weird power structures in these countries would be in prison for their entire lives.

 

[Riou]

@OnlyOne makes a good point, tbh...from Stan's point of view, he's got us into the biggest football comp ever, what an owner

Does Arsenal in 2021 deserve that lifeline though, since we are an average team now?

If this was say 2004, just after the Unbeaten season...would that be better or worse for everyone, if this happened then?

 

[ArtetaOut]

Utter pillock. I'm not even a supporter of the ESL. But it's been floated for nearly 30 years now. And who sold the shares to kroenke? Answer that to me.

Here, let me quote something that will make you think less of your ejaculation over David Dein and our 2000s bord.




In May 1991, a storm was brewing in London N5, the like of which hadn’t been seen since Sir Henry Norris relocated the club to Highbury. Norris had used his contacts in the local press to silence the protesters who complained about the ‘vulgar project’ in their midst. Eighty years on, it was impossible to gag the protesters. As this book has shown, it was nothing new for drunken stars or scrapping players to attract controversy. This was a crisis with a difference: a raging battle between Gunners supporters and the board of directors. After this messy episode, some Arsenal fans chose never to return to Highbury. For them, the link between themselves and the club had been permanently broken.

The club pretends the whole saga never happened. For example, Phil Soar and Martin Tyler devote one sentence to the furore surrounding the scheme in their official history of the club. In the very best traditions of club propaganda, the incident has been forgotten. Several of the fans who opposed the scheme now admit that Arsenal had no option but to pursue it, but they can’t forget that it signalled the death knell for football as the working-man’s game, or the appallingly high-handed manner in which the club went about it. Dein was at the centre of the cyclone.

In a souvenir Coventry City programme, compiled after Arsenal secured the 1991 league title, it was announced that the club had decided to finance the £22.5 million cost of making Highbury all-seater through a bond or debenture scheme. The club hoped to sell £16.5 million worth of bonds to fans, while the rest would come from within the club’s not unsubstantial coffers. Rangers redeveloped Ibrox through such a scheme, as had several clubs in America. For an outlay of either £1,200 or £1,500, buying a bond would entitle a fan to ‘exclusive rights’ to a season ticket for up to 150 years, and a bond certificate signed by Peter Hill-Wood and George Graham

The battle to save terracing had long since been lost. Hillsborough had changed everything. In the wake of 95 Liverpool fans dying in April 1989, clubs were informed that if they refused to comply with the findings of the Taylor Report, their safety licences (i.e. right to stage matches) would be revoked. It was a coup de grâce – over a century of tradition was all but over. What rankled most of all was the way in which Arsenal proceeded with the all-seater process. Rumours about the Bond Scheme were leaked in the Evening Standard. The consultation process with fans that the Taylor Report advocated consisted of a few vague public meetings and a half-baked questionnaire in an Arsenal v. Leeds programme. The questions were hardly designed to gauge public opinion on the all-seater debate. In truth, the most important information the club received through the survey was contained in the box after the word ‘Address’. Those who responded, an estimated 15,000, were sent a glossy brochure on the merits of the scheme. As for the findings of the questionnaire, they were never made public.

Immediately, it became clear that, if pursued, the Bond Scheme would have a major impact upon the social make-up of the Highbury crowd, due to the necessary outlay in instalments (around £100 a month for a year or more) or as a lump sum of £1,000. This was on top of the price of a season ticket. One band of Arsenal fans spent the summer of 1991 establishing the Independent Arsenal Supporters Association (IASA). In the words of one of its founders, Ian McPherson: ‘We were incensed that the club thought they could push through these proposals at the last minute, unchallenged, and hope that everyone would forget it over the summer. It was unforgivably arrogant on the board’s part.’ Arsenal directors stood accused by the club’s own fans of two heinous crimes: social engineering and an inability to communicate effectively with supporters. The IASA achieved a notable early success. In June, a Time Out article publicised the movement, which prompted David Dein to threaten legal action against the group. Dein had obviously calmed down a few days later, because the movement’s leader, Dyll Davies, and One Nil Down’s editor Tony Willis were invited into the inner sanctum to meet with Dein and Ken Friar to discuss their differences.

The meeting was heated but fairly good-natured. A transcript from it was reproduced in One Nil Down some weeks later. One part of the conversation summed up the gulf between fans and the board. When asked the question: ‘What provisions are being made for loyal fans who cannot afford a bond?’ (namely the majority of teenagers, students, OAPs and the core of the North Bank), Friar and Dein apologised but said that ‘the club is not run as a charitable institution’.

I don't give a **** about your WoT or what Dein thinks of it. Him wanting an elitist league does not mean I should support it. I am a fan of football and not a fanboy of his and this stupid league reeks of stench and corruption and will tear football itself apart. I am certainly not looking forward to a bore-fest where the same few teams play each other week in week out that is devoid of passion and competition and founded on the self-interest of a few clubs.

 

[glitchform]

The Prem, FIFA, UEFA etc have no one to blame but themselves and their own greed.

They let Abramovich in who was the catalyst of everything you’re seeing play out now. Since him how many English clubs have been taken over by Americans and other nationalities? Football has been dead since Chelsea started this all off and nobody did anything to stop it. So all these bodies can cry all they want and Sky & BT too for that matter. None of them was crying when they was laughing and getting rich off the working man.

I saw Sky try to make fans pay for each individual game during the worst recession in 300 years, where people needed a distraction they tried to abuse that fact.

I saw these clubs claiming furlough and laying off staff. FIFA? They’ve been selling world cups off illegally to highest bidding nations. They’re only crying now because they won’t be getting paid it serves them all right. No honour amongst thieves so you can’t complain when someone you’ve been stealing money with, runs off with the money you all been stealing for decades. It’s ruthless in that business.

All of them are as bad as each other despite the narrative. There is no good V evil here.

Nail on head mate.

 

[gunner4lyfe]

From a purely footballing standpoint. Its funny that Arsenal are really going to leave a competition they've never won for one they're probably never going to win? Lol.

 

[Penn_]

But but iT’Ll rUiN tHe LeAguE

 

[Rimaal]

Our boat would sink if we said no, football is moving forward with the ESL you get on board or you sink.

Football will be destroyed by the ESL. You may enjoy floating on flotsam & rummaging through jetsam , I would rather walk on land.

 

[Blood on the Tracks]

Come on Klopp, walk. He seems like one of the few with integrity left in the game.

Imagine if Mikel walked too. The fans who can't stand him would get what they want and the rest of us would admire him for being principled. A win-win situation I feel

 

[glitchform]

I don't give a **** about your WoT or what Dein thinks of it. Him wanting an elitist league does not mean I should support it. I am a fan of football and not a fanboy of his and this stupid league reeks of stench and corruption and will tear football itself apart. I am certainly not looking forward to a bore-fest where the same few teams play each other week in week out that is devoid of passion and competition and founded on the self-interest of a few clubs.

Given your name is arteta out, I really doubt you were thinking that in 2004, but go off chief.