REAL HUSBANDS OF ARSENAL

When I worked in New York, I led the Bravo account. I worked on Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, and Below Deck. As a red-blooded man of sport, I went into the job pretending I was taking one for the team.

‘This nonsense isn’t for me’

Then I started watching the shows. The storylines started to pull at me. Before I knew it, I was looking up the net wealth of Dorinda whilst taping up the NBC staffers for the spicy behind-the-scenes gossip.

Bravo knew they had an audience of men like me that would use the guise of their partners to get a fix of absolutely top tier shows.

Amazon seems to have taken the insight that men are suckers for reality TV by combining the idea of Real Housewives with Premier League footballers. It’s a genius idea. I absolutely will be tuning in to see Jorginho with his wife. I don’t know much about Mahrez, but taking his Mancunian wife out of Manchester to Saudi sounds like elite TV.

Guys, don’t fight it. Just tune in and know this is the gateway drug into so many fabulous shows you can’t talk about on the group chat.

As a side note, I worked the first ever Bravo con. They gave me a mic to interview Captain Sandy. I was in a conference with 1000s of extremely wealthy women loaded up on rose and I’ve honestly never felt sexier in my life. That mic was a powerful aphrodisiac.

Ok, how about Arsenal news?

Good data points have been dripping on the internet like hot fudge. Arsenal, post-Dubai, are in a flow state, sweet chocolatey flow state. Everything is rolling for us, everyone looks fit, everyone is taking responsibility at both ends of the pitch.

I don’t want to bring you back down to earth – but don’t get too excited by the high highs because sustaining this for the rest of the season is unlikely. Always remember this – just 60 days ago, all the eggheads from Screamertube were calling for the sacking of Arteta whilst crying about our how bad our summer transfers were.

‘xG doesn’t matter’

Now results have caught up to the performances, we’re seeing that there was a lot of hard work going off behind the scenes, and sometimes, in football, you need a bit of luck which we were NOT having.

We are in a phase where everything is falling for us – and I wouldn’t say we’re getting lucky. What I would remind you is our season has collapsed later than March two seasons running.

Saka, Odegaard, Gabriel, Rice, and Saliba could all get injured and break our system.

The same is true of Liverpool, and it’s the same of Manchester City.

Whoever keeps their best players fittest and freshest might be the team that wins the league.

Keep your eye on the long-term though. Football is a process. Incremental improvements every season will have us winning major trophies before you know it.

Our financials have dropped, and we lost £45m. We’re not going to get done by PSR, but as I told you in January, we’re going to have to sell well if we want to do any damage this summer.

We have a basket of sellable assets and they have to sell.

Eddie, Emile, Reiss, Ramsdale, Patino, Mika, Tierney, Sambi, and Nuno all have to fetch actual fees.

There could be £150m in that pile – the homegrown lads will be pure profit.

Selling well determines what we can do to the squad.

We’ll be looking for an explosive wide player, a striker who can score 25+ goals a season, a defender, and at least one midfielder (because I think Jorginho will stay another year).

Those 4 players are not filler names – they are first team levels. They won’t come cheap.

This summer is nearly cherry on top time. It’s the final window before we can say, yes, we are title contenders from day one.

There’s also a high likelihood the ageing down of the squad this summer to ensure our peak years coincide with the fall of the big dogs could look very good.

I don’t need to talk about City – but Pep won’t last forever and you know about the grey clouds on the horizon.

Liverpool has been a surprise package this season, but make no mistake, there’s a reason Klopp is exiting and it’s not because he feels like he has a team ready to take 4 Premier League titles in 5 years.

Here’s a list of problems:

• Generational manager leaving
• No Sporting Director
• Key coaching staff exiting
• Generational players are uncommitted and coming to the end
• Owners have been looking to sell for 2 years
• A very expensive bill for rebuild is due WHILE owners are trying to sell

Arsenal aren’t where they are because we signed Declan Rice. We’re where we are because Arteta has had 4 years rebuilding the system at Arsenal whilst methodically adding new players that incrementally improve us every season. They were talking about Declan Rice joining the club 18 months into Arteta’s tenure.

You think United can catch us? Please. In a post-Saudi ‘here’s some money’ world, where are they getting buyers for players like Rashford, Antony, Casemiro, newly contracted Fernandes, and countless other overhyped and overpaid players? They have hired well, but my word, there is some pain coming their way.

Newcastle will be out of the Champions League this summer and they’ve just lost their rebuild mastermind in Dan Ashworth.

Spurs are massively overperforming this season, that’ll come unstuck at some point, and they have no record to speak of that makes them a threat to Arsenal.

The stars are aligning. The key for me is Liverpool not winning the league. We don’t want players to stay at the club after, we don’t want to give them belief, we don’t want their ownership group to give it 5 more years.

So, back to it… we’re pretty good and the stars are looking BRIGHT (and aligned). Good times.