“Arsenal to play in blue and white at home next season” « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Over 750,000 visits in the last month

By Tony Attwood

My last article in the Billionaire series (full links to all the articles in the series, at the end of this piece) was called  “How football is being taken over, and the huge danger these changes bring”.

I mentioned earlier in the series in passing that new owners often disregard the tribal origins of football – origins that I hold dear.  (I was brought up in Tottenham, but support Arsenal because it was made clear to me from the start that Arsenal was my tribe.  My parents were Arsenal, their parents were Arsenal.  At school on Devonshire Hill Lane I knew that if I got picked on, I could rely on some fellow tribe members to help me out.  That was how it went).

Billionaires and corporate giants however are newcomers, and don’t share this history.  Even when the people taking the club over are not about to do a Portsmouth or a Rangers and bring the club to its knees, they can still do what they like – including changing the colour of the club.

And this highlights the problem.   They come in all nice and smiley with their millions and millions of pounds, and say, of course we respect you.  Of course we understand you are 100+ years old and have history.  Don’t worry.

And then they change the colour of the shirt.  It is a point that everyone who has angry questions for Ivan Gazidis at the AST meeting tonight might care to ponder.  Just how far would you go to get more and more money into the club?  What would you sell out?  Do you know if another buyer of shares would keep the colours red and white, or would he change the colours to something more corporately in keeping?  Would you mind?

How much change would you put up with, in order to win the league?

Nowhere is this question more apposite today than at Cardiff City.

For Cardiff, who as you will remember from our cup matches with them in recent seasons, are blue and white, and have just confirmed that following instruction from their new Malaysian owners they will play in red and white, this coming season and have a new club crest.  The directors have agreed – but of course they had no choice.

The change comes with sweeteners: a new training ground, debts paid off (remember this was a club run by Peter Ridsdale for a while, although of course I suggest no wrong-doing), a huge transfer fund, and a further expansion to the stadium which itself is only a year or two old.

If you want to get a feel for the way this is hitting Cardiff City, just look at my headline on this article.  It is like that.

Of course in such a move there are always cock-ups and embarrassments.  A couple of weeks back Dato Chan Tien Ghee (chairman) said the club would not be changing its colours.  Full stop.  No argument.  That’s it.  Definitive.  The end.

Now it is the chief executive, who has said, “Sometimes in difficult economic times and challenging market conditions, in order to attract investment to survive and progress, brave, bold and compelling decisions and sacrifices need to be taken and made. By securing this investment we can safeguard the immediate and long-term future of this club. ”We are only too aware that the change of colour is a radical and some would say revolutionary move which will be met with unease and apprehension by a number of supporters, along with being seen as controversial by many. To those I would like to say that this was not a decision that has been taken lightly or without a great deal of thought and debate.

“There is no getting away from the fact that history and traditions are the lifeblood of any club and as such should be jealously guarded and preserved. Both the board and our investors fully understand and respect this and will do their utmost to uphold, protect and promote the values and virtues which the club stands for.

“However, the changes are believed to be vital to enable the club to progress to the next stage in its development and very much in the club’s best long term interests.”

So there you are.  A perfect example of what can happen.  You take their money, and they call the tune.   It can be a Champions League success like Chelsea, or a sad fall from grace like Liverpool under their last owners.  It can be winning the Premier League while ignoring FFP (like Man City) or it can be relegation and relegation, like Portsmouth.  It can be over $100 million, buying new players and a new 62,000 seater stadium plus winning the league two years  running like Zenit St Petersburg or it can mean waiting for the letter that says you have been thrown out of the league (like Rangers).

You take the money, and then you have no choice.

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