FourFourTwo has been granted unprecedented access to one of the world's biggest and most famous football clubs â Arsenal. We sent journalist and broadcaster Sam Delaney to have a snoop around at the North London club to find out what makes the Gunners tick, and his findings are in the new issue of FourFourTwo - out now. Here, Sam describes his month peeking behind the curtain at the Emirates Stadium...
The editor explained my mission: I was to travel deep inside the heart of one of the biggest, most talked about and often strangest football clubs in the world: Arsenal. Sometimes they call themselves âÂÂThe ArsenalâÂÂ, which is just one of the things that makes them so strange. And, to some, a bit annoying too. But theyâÂÂve never bothered me that much. IâÂÂm a West Ham supporter and weâÂÂve always reserved most of our animosity for other London clubs.
In fact, IâÂÂve always found Arsenal fascinating. I suppose itâÂÂs because, in a game governed almost entirely by knee-jerk decisions and irrational behaviour, Arsenal take a different path. They have always seemed a bit more considered. Irritatingly, they donâÂÂt bend to the will of fans or the media and make the sort of brilliantly exciting, ludicrously rash decisions that keep the wheels of this preposterous game of ours turning. Instead, the powers that be over at the Emirates seem more concerned with whatâÂÂs best for the club. TheyâÂÂre all clever and grown-up. See what I mean? Annoying.
I knew there was unrest among the fans. IâÂÂd seen the comments on Twitter from dissatisfied Gooners slagging off the board. Some were even saying they wanted Arsene Wenger out. This, of course, seemed a bit stupid to an outsider â but what did I know? Committed Gooners probably studied balance sheets, went onto the Companies House website to check out yearly accounts, attended AGMs to quiz the chief exec and generally nerded up on exactly what was going on inside their beloved club. Maybe they had good reason to be disgruntled.
The way I saw it, Arsenal were doing pretty well. They never seemed to overspend, they werenâÂÂt in the sort of crazy debt that other big clubs had found themselves in, they were run self-sufficiently and still managed to get into the Champions League every year. OK, they werenâÂÂt mounting a serious challenge for the title these days but since Chelsea and Manchester City started breaking the bank, how were they really supposed to compete?
When I first visited the training ground in mid-October, they were on a decent run, having just beaten West Ham 3-1 at Upton Park. Santi Cazorla had played a blinder and Lukas Podoski was starting to find his feet too. It felt like I was going to be writing a story about the dawn of a bright new era at Arsenal: Wenger looked all set to prove his doubters wrong again by fashioning a whole new super-team from the ashes left behind by Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas and the rest.
Recent big-name departures haven't been easy for Arsenal fans to swallow
But two days later they lost away to Norwich. A few days after that they lost at home to Schalke 04 in the Champions League. In the weeks that followed, defeat at Manchester United and uninspiring draws against Fulham, Aston Villa and Everton left them midtable, with the calls for change at the top of the club growing louder.
What IâÂÂm saying is, their season seemed to take a nosedive from the moment I started hanging around the place. Coincidence? Almost certainly. But I couldnâÂÂt help but feel a twinge of guilt each time WengerâÂÂs side took another stumbling step through the autumn months.
Especially after IâÂÂd met him a couple of times and heâÂÂd expertly won me over with his laid back charm and intelligent Gallic lyricism. Dreamy? ThatâÂÂs going a bit far. But I would say that he was rather more human than I expected him to be. I knew he very rarely gave one-on-one interviews to journalists. So I suppose I felt flattered to be there chatting to him in the first place. But letâÂÂs get this straight: I am as cynical, jaded, unimpressed and generally miserable as the next hack. I wasnâÂÂt going to be won over by a big name and fancy French accent alone.
Our meeting was scheduled for the same day as the Arsenal AGM. I knew that the nature of our conversation would hinge on what happened at this big showdown beforehand. As I got off the tube at Holloway Road and walked towards the Emirates, I checked Twitter to discover that the AGM couldnâÂÂt have gone much worse, with a row breaking out between board members and fans and Wenger having to call for unity. I was ushered into a windowless room to wait for him. He arrived promptly and without the miserable demeanour I was expecting.
I figured it wasnâÂÂt often you get some time alone with a man like Wenger, so even though it sounded as though he'd had a rough morning, I had to ask the questions that really mattered to Arsenal fans. Like why he kept losing his best players. And how he intended to stop this from happening in the future. And how he thought he could bring the good times back to Arsenal without actually signing any expensive new talent. And to be fair he didnâÂÂt hesitate or flinch from any of the questions. He was relaxed and honest in his responses.
YouâÂÂll have to read the piece to see the exact nature of his answers. But suffice to say there was a clear theme to everything he said: that Arsenal was honest, straight, decent and above board. They didnâÂÂt run up huge debts and they didnâÂÂt offer to pay people more than they could afford. He believed in building a team slowly, not throwing one together willy-nilly and hoping for the best. I looked in his eyes and could see he sincerely believed everything he said. He genuinely couldnâÂÂt see the sense in doing things any other way. And when he said it, it all seemed so obvious. Why would anyone gamble the future of the club on doing it any other way?
Some disappointing results have again left the spotlight on Arsene Wenger
When I walked out of that room I was a Wenger convert. That night I hosted the evening show on talkSPORT and found myself passionately defending the Arsenal way and the principles Wenger stood for. It was strange but it was like that time alone with the strange Frenchman was my Road To Damascus moment.
A few days later I had a similar chat with chief executive Ivan Gazidis in the Arsenal board room. Gazidis gets a fair bit of stick from Arsenal fans who think heâÂÂs an ineffectual money man. But he struck me as knowing his football: he talked excitedly about the ridiculous 7-5 victory over Reading he had witnessed the night before. This chat was longer: it was mid-morning and Gazidis seemed very relaxed about giving me as much time as I needed to go through all the issues surrounding the club.
I got the sense he was also on a bit of a personal PR drive following the fractious AGM. Maybe he wanted to prove to the public that he was more than just a bean-counter in a suit but a passionate football man. I wasnâÂÂt sure what to think. He made broad points about the financial stability of the club and did so in very long, politician-like answers. His themes were similar to WengerâÂÂs: honesty, integrity, self-sufficiency and a pride in the way they did things at Arsenal. They both declared that Arsenal was a brave club because it dared to do things its own way. That might turn out to be the wrong way, of course, but it still takes guts to take that risk.
Gazidis might have been a bit overkeen to talk about shirt sponsorship and commercial deals but ultimately I still bought what he said about building a club on firm foundations. Like Wenger, he seemed perplexed about the alternatives. âÂÂAre we just supposed to keep spending more than anyone else?â he asked, incredulous. But none of what he said addressed what Arsenal fans were asking: what about the ã70million or so lying around in the bank from all those player sales? Why hasnâÂÂt Wenger spent that yet?
Chats with fans and a few former club insiders who wished to remain nameless hinted at an inner struggle at Arsenal. The common belief is that the board have made those funds in the bank available to Arsene Wenger but he chooses not to spend it. Why? Perhaps heâÂÂs on a personal mission to prove that success is possible without excessive spending in the transfer market.
Perhaps heâÂÂs just naturally prudent when it comes to money. But the club are well off and look set to only get richer now their stadium debts are almost clear. TheyâÂÂll never be able to spend like Man City but they can certainly afford to spend more than they have done recently. Why they donâÂÂt is ultimately a mystery. Only Gazidis, Wenger, majority shareholder Stan Kroenke and a few others know the truth.
Everyone at the club felt proud that, in spite of this relative financial caution, they were perennials in the Champions League. But between my article going to press and the January issue of FourFourTwo hitting the shelves, Arsenal lost 2-0 at home to Swansea City and slipped to tenth in the Premier League. I was left thinking that this could be the year that WengerâÂÂs luck ran out.
Someone told me that Wenger is so powerful at Arsenal that he actually got to interview Ivan Gazidis for the position of chief exec. So he effectively interviewed his own boss. I wonder how Gazidis feels about that now? If itâÂÂs true that Wenger is the best paid manager in the world â as one former insider told me â and that itâÂÂs him, not the board, who refuses to splash out on star players, then you can imagine that Gazidis, Kroenke and the rest might be starting to get frustrated with the Frenchman. Next summer, heâÂÂll be going into the final year of his contract. ItâÂÂll be interesting to see how negotiations for an extension unfold.
The January 2013 edition of FourFourTwo is available now
IN THE NEW FFT Our Top 100, the Little Witch and Arsenal's masterplan
