Happy Easter Mondy y’all. Hope your Easter Sunday was as fun as you can make it. We had decent weather in West London so I managed to get out for a walk, before things got a bit tropical with a thunderstorm and lightning display, which worked out ok as The Management and I went full roast turkey dinner (it’s a family tradition on her side) for the two of us along with a family Zoom call.

As for all things Arsenal, they say the devil is always in the detail, so the latest news/scoop from The Athletic is one of those headline grabbers that you’ve really got to read in more detail before starting to make judgements that are too extreme.

For example, the Athletic article by Ornstein went hard emphasising that the players are set to reject a 12.5% pay cut for an entire year rather than a shorter, sharper, shock in terms of drop in wages, but if you were just to read the subject lines floating around by people nicking the story and repurposing it as their own, it makes it sound like Arsenal players are being completely blind to the current situation and rejecting a proposal from the club. But as the Athletic article points out, the players are cognisant to the current situation and they are happy for their wages to help to pay to keep other staff from being furloughed or being made redundant. Again, the notion that the players also want a confirmation that all jobs will be protected is the right one; we all know that the Kroenke’s have been trying to find ways to cut costs out of Arsenal by any means necessary and so let’s not pretend that when we get out of this, they might use the current situation to try to cut costs out of a business that they’ve supposedly already been emailing and telling people who work at the club to ‘keep it tight’.

I mean it’s not as if KSE have a billionaire man at the helm who could swallow some of the current plight that many businesses are facing and therefore emerge from it with an advantage by ensuring that they keep staff together, keep their businesses afloat and ‘do the right thing’.

No, what we’re seeing by the players wanting the club to guarantee jobs, is a tacit admission that they don’t trust the club – who will be governed and directed by KSE – to use this as a way to shave some costs. And the fact that they’re trying to suggest the players get all of that money back if they win their place back in the Champions League or the Europa League, does make it sound a little like the club are just trying to find a way to drop a wage bill that Josh Kroenke admitted last summer was too big.

Obviously this is just my opinion and if you read my stuff regularly you’ll know I have little time for KSE or their overall custodianship of the club, but when things like this come out as leaked info, you start to worry about how much of Arsenal’s values have been eroded since KSE took full control. And how much further this will go.

What is positive though, that I think I will end today’s blog on, was the news from the article that Arsenal are contributing towards charitable causes in Islington to support the current global pandemic. Their helping to deliver a load of emergency supplies, free meals, etc, to local people to help the cause. That’s the kind of initiatives we hear a bit about from Arsenal in the Community and I think those guys should certainly be given a big thumbs up because that section of the club does amazing work and should always be applauded. Keep it up guys!

And on that note I think i’ll end todays ramblings. Stay safe, stay home, stay in touch with friends and loved ones from afar. We’re all in this together peeps.

Laters.