Success in Football – The Modern Era

What makes a football team successful in the modern era? Multiple factors lead to success although a few are more prominent than the others. Tactics before and within a match are vital to present and future success. A way a manager analysis’s his team is vital. Another factor important to triumph is financial stability and gaining profit as a team. Arsenal FC a football team based in North London, currently playing in the EPL (English Premier League) are struggling with these aspects and have declined dramatically in the last decade. This is unusual, due to their history and quality of players, on paper they should be fine although this is heavily contrasted to their current situation. I want to explore the tactics and finances that Arsenal currently have and find out why they’re struggling as a club.

The tactics and managing within a team is one of the biggest factors in the making of a successful team. Before a match the team is addressed with various plans to execute within the match, this depends on their opposition, ultimately making the fixture a battle of mind games. The manager is the puppetmaster in this process, they analyze the players within the team and formulate their route to success. The reason the match becomes a battle of tactics is because each manager doesn’t know the others strategies when approaching the game, thus during the match, they would have to adapt to various scenarios. This is a current issue for Arsenal in the modern game.

In the last decade, Arsenal have declined, due to poor tactics made by the manager. About a year and a half ago Arsenal fired their manager due to this issue, and a week ago their most recent manager has also been dismissed. The club itself is at an unstable stage. This is due to their inability to match their success in the past. In the season of 2003 to 2004 they played 38 matches with a 70% win rate (official premier league) under the management of Arsene Wenger who lasted until 2017 to 2018 season when the team had a win percentage of 50%. The 20% drop is significant of a team of their caliber. This change also shows how a manager has to adapt to change their tactics to the modern game in order to be successful. Since the 2017 to 2018 season Arsenal have been on a decline currently in this season sitting on a 33% win rate under their recent manager, Unai Emery. 

This comes down to the attack and defensive framework and patterns the team uses with their current quality of players. “Football clubs need to create advantage and to be more successful than their opponents. However, as mentioned previously, all football clubs do not have the same goals, nor the same resources.” (Georgievski). The way a team can be successful is by analyzing their problems. It seems like top teams don’t have to do this, but in order to get to where they are now they picked these aspects out and dealt with them. The current top teams had are where they are due to the managers knowledge in their team and what formulas work to achieve success. Oberstone, a football performance analyst based in the University of San Francisco, researched a “retrodictive linear multiple regression model that defined five pitch factors (defending, crosses, goal attempts, discipline, passing) that contributed to success and more points scored by a football club.” (In football you recieve points for a win, draw, and loss. The team with the most points by 38 matches win the league). These 5 factors play a large role in success and are additional aspects to offensive and defensive balance a manager needs to address in a team. This is the main problem with Arsenal as of present as their manager hasn’t addressed the defensive problems in the squad. Their momentum going forward is on par with the top teams but their defence is lacking and the managers have yet to bring in a player of high defensive quality. “Arsenal are on track to set a record for the most shots conceded per game in a single season by any Gunners team in Premier League history.” (Express). 

The managers choice of where to put in effort for rebuilding their team, offensive and defensive wise is important and revolves around the clubs economic state. The English Premier League is one of the biggest leagues in the world financially. This is due to multiple sources of revenue though broadcasting, investments, branding, etc. From this the league has a lot of money to give out as prizes. Manchester City, a team that won the 2018 to 2019 season, won approximately 150,000,000  pounds. Their success also creates an income with incoming branding deals and sponsorships this leaves the rich to become even richer. But what about Arsenal? The clubs history was glorious and the team was marked as one of the most successful in its time. Thus they earned more money from the same outlets as Manchester City of the present. Due to all the extra cash the club turned to spend a great deal of it. Especially in players wages to make them stay though the decline of today. But because of their overspending it leaves them in a financial crisis. 

For example, a player with high controversy, Mesut Ozil. This player is being paid around 350,000 pounds a week (700,000 CAD). This is a main example of the financial issues the club is facing. As mentioned earlier, In order to be successful the manager needs to speculate the problems in the team and go out and buy players that help them in that particular position. Although due to the overspending with wages, they’re unable to, but face a dilemma as they refuse to let the player go, as well as Ozil refuses to accept lower wages. The benefit to keeping him though is because he’s popular within the team and the fanbase so he creates branding, and product revenue. “star quality has a significant positive impact on television audience whereas uncertainty of outcome has no significant impact, consistent with Buraimo and Simmons (2015)”. This is just one player though, there are about 100 more the club needs to pay every week and because the club is declining they are quickly losing money to spend on players needed to rebuild the team. “Arsenal have invested money in recent years but their approach to both buying players and paying wages looks uncoordinated and appears to lack strategy”. (The Guardian)

 Players wages are not the only issue Arsenal face financially. In the EPL each team has an owner, that gains a percentage of profit from the club and help invest money into the team. This generally helps the team with their transfer market purchases (buying new players). Stan Kronke an american real estate and businessman and is also the owner of Arsenal Football Club is unwilling to put his own money into the club. Over the last 10 years he’s given the club not even a penny. This is unusual because he owns 2 teams in the NFL in which he puts a lot of money towards. This leaves Arsenal struggling with getting the money they need. 

In conclusion various aspects of their game tactically fail to meet the standard of play in the modern game, this is due to their lack of attention in the main key points of success and failure to address the issues in their team. Of course this cannot be easily solved with their current financial situation as they struggle to come up with enough money in their decline to buy quality players in order to fix their team.