Well, how are we all doing today? Good… exceptional you say?
Superb, let’s get cracking.
There’s another teaser for the Amazon doco that has caused a mild stir.
Firstly, let’s explore the fear that this will be bad for Arsenal.
IT WON’T.
Why?
Amazon is a serious company with outrageous financial muscle. One area they are powering in on is content. Live sport is basically all that has kept SKY afloat over the last 30 years. Premier League football is why households up and down the country pay £100 a month for their box. You think Amazon is looking at Premier League rights as a way to sell more toilet rolls?
All or Nothing is an elite franchise. They work with clubs all around the world. They get mountains of data on who watches it, what their consumption habits are, and whether they buy Spurs bog roll after watching Jose Mourinho.
When you make content with people you don’t own, you tend to want to make more.
Real Housewives was a client of mine. BRAVO owned the talent. They could cycle people in and out of shows because the SHOWS were the product. I sat with reality stars that were like ‘I AM NOT THE PERSON THEY SAY I AM’ but the truth was, you are whatever that network makes you out to be because there are always going to be another 50 people who would step in.
All Or Nothing doesn’t have talent. The talent is the clubs that agree to allow documentarians behind the scenes. What do clubs care about? Not looking like dickheads. Image is everything to managers, execs and footballers. Careers are short, jobs are hard to come by, you need to look good. So knowing that, when Amazon comes knocking, what do you think execs do? They go and watch the City, Spurs, and Chivas series to see how they were portrayed.
Also worth noting that All or Nothing also doesn’t need to be salacious to sell. Football fans would tune in to see Ramsdale lipread. The producers don’t need to kill careers to get eyeballs on the show AND the objective isn’t all on ratings, it’s data, and getting the next series commissioned.
Has any club been embarrassed? No. Fuck me, even I fell in love a little with Jose Mourinho, you think that was an accident? No. The editors went out of their way to make him look pleasant because he’s not a pleasant guy.
Now onto the scene people are critiquing.
The gist is very basic.
Arteta put speakers out on the pitch and pumped high decibels YNWA onto the training pitch to get the youngest squad in the Premier League used to playing away at the home of the best team in the world.
By any standards, that’s a pretty innovative idea based on the tools he had at his disposal for that game.
The base premise is simple: anything you can do in preparation to make your players feel a little more at ease is worth trying.
Before Presidential debates, candidates will hire in journalists and pundits to roast them.
Before pitches when I was in New York, we’re bring in senior arseholes to rip our decks apart with challenging questions to see if we fell apart.
In a new HBO documentary, a social scientist called Nathan Fielder rebuilds replica sets of people’s lives to help them practice navigating tough issues in their life… like admitting to a lie.
This is a marginal gains move, it cost nothing, it was worth a go. Did we win? No. But honestly, why does that matter? If you are the type of person that thinks trying new things is only worth it if you succeed, you probably aren’t succeeding that much in your life.
Give me a coach trying new shit to gain a little, at the very least, it shows the squad that the manager is extremely focused on winning, at the very best, you’ll win more games because your players will feel like they’re getting some of that edge.
Looking under stones and doing mad shit is how you succeed in all walks of life. Hedge fund data nerds studied flight paths of CEOs. If they were booking flights the day before earnings, statistically, they worked out that it meant that a good quarter was incoming. If there was no private jet, it was bad times. Some were using Starbucks car park data to predict consumer sentiment, if the car parks were filled, people were feeling luxurious, if they were passing on coffee, belts were tightening. There are companies that have apps that force people to rate their colleague’s effectiveness in meetings to drive productivity… imagine that? I’d be fucked. ‘He was tweeting again.’
You can call these ideas ‘cringe’ but what you are really calling cringe is having a crack at something new and that would make you a bore.
Onto transfers.
Lucas Torreira looks set to exit to Turkey. Galatasaray has apparently found £25m and the word is that we’ll now make moves on Youri T.
Good times.
Bernd Leno is going to Fulham. The package breakdown is… sad.
🚨 Bernd Leno medical at Fulham almost complete. Permanent move from Arsenal worth £3m + £1m based on PL apps + £2m if stay in PL once + £2m if twice. Totals £8m after add-ons. Contract 3yrs + #FFC have option of 4th. With @peterrutzler @TheAthleticUK #AFC https://t.co/XqDfZntu78
— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) August 2, 2022
What yah gonna do? If there’s no market for him, there’s no market for him. We will regret his exit if Aaron Ramsdale doesn’t find his early season form, but all indicators so far are we won’t be doing much defending, and his game is BACK.
There is talk that Hector hates life at Arsenal so much, he’s asking for a termination. DON’T DO IT. We should let him leave for free and put a 70% sell-on clause into his deal so we don’t get mugged by Betis.
Pablo Mari is going to… AC Monza. He’s a handsome man. But that was as far as it went for his career. He wasn’t fast enough or very good positionally. I’m glad we exited him.
Smith Rowe is OUT of the Palace game this Friday, but he’ll be back in full training next week. To be expected. I really hope he can be kept fit this season. But again, it does flag why we’re looking to add another winger to the mix, he is unreliable fitness wise and I think we’ll be lucky to get 30 games out of him this season. PROVE ME WRONG.
Subscribe here:
PATREON IT UP here:
Watch here:
Listen and subscribe here:
