"STREAMLINED!" Simon Jordan EXPLAINS Arsenal informing staff of 60 job cuts after Mikel Arteta DEAL!
talkSPORT weighs Arsenal's 60 job cuts against Mikel Arteta's new deal
The show discusses Arsenal's plan to cut 60 jobs. The host questions how the club can make lower-level staff redundant after winning the Premier League, posting record revenue and handing Mikel Arteta a huge contract, while Simon Jordan defends the business logic behind the cuts and compares it with Sir Jim Ratcliffe's cost-cutting at Manchester United.
- Cutting 60 lower-level jobs while paying Mikel Arteta a huge salary raises questions about Arsenal's priorities — The cuts come after the club was described as Premier League champions, announced record revenue and gave Arteta a £20m-a-year deal, a wage far beyond what the affected staff earn
- Paying a top manager market wages and making redundancies can both be justified — Like Coca-Cola cutting staff while still spending on advertising, elite managers and marketing protect the core product and the club's long-term economic position
- The cuts fall first on people who do not affect football results because players and managers have fixed contracts, and someone like Arteta directly drives revenue — If Arteta were removed, Arsenal's top line and its ability to keep other people employed could suffer
- It is always lower-profile, lower-status staff who seem to get hit, which is unfair — They did nothing to affect the football operation, yet they are first out; although the club says it may redeploy some, that is still the group affected
- Arsenal's cuts may be about streamlining and efficiency, and office work is better than working from home for building management teams and accountability — People need to influence and inspire each other in offices and be accountable; working from home does not do that as well
- Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Manchester United cuts may have been commercial decisions, but they failed in PR and made him look worse than the Glazers — The cuts created negative headlines and a worse mood, fixed his public image, and he is now linked to immigration comments and cost-cutting, including around Alex Ferguson
- Job cuts are usually not a boss personally swinging the axe but efficiency recommendations from management — Management identifies duplicated roles, too many people doing the same job and cases where one person can do what previously took two
- Businesses are not charities, so if they believe they can run more efficiently, they will cut jobs — Even if those staff work flat out every day, commercial decisions still prioritise cost and efficiency
- Redundancies can be a necessary evil for a greater good, with managers responsible for the bigger picture and trying to redeploy people — He made a small number of redundancies in football after the ITV Digital deal and saw it as collective responsibility rather than callousness
- Football clubs have a culture of waste, with people doing nothing because someone always pays the bills, so owners should scrutinise costs and efficiency — The independent regulator's report shows football relies on owners constantly funding it; when clubs cannot make money themselves, owners get fed up
Simon Jordan and Jim White discuss the latest on Arsenal. Subscribe: https://youtube.com/c/talkSPORT?subconfirmation=1 🏆 Ready to win? Check out the latest prizes at talkSPORTwin.com Enjoyed this YouTube video? 😍 🖥️ talkSPORT's Website: https://talksport.com/ 📲 talkSPORT's X/Twitter: https://x.com/talkSPORT 📷 talkSPORT's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talksport/?hl=en 👤 talkSPORT's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/talkSPORT/ 📱 talkSPORT's Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@talksport ? 🔴 Download the talkSPORT app HERE! - https://talksport.com/apps/ 🔎 Want to see if you feature on our YouTube channel? Check out our Best talkSPORT callers playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFVMnSsi04LGLa9pS9xDvme-Gjmlu2 arsenal afc talkSPORT PremierLeague
Transcript
What's going on at Arsenal though? Arsenal of course Premier League champions. Arsenal we understand have informed staff that they plan to cut 60 6 jobs from their workforce. This of course just months after winning the Premier League and announcing record revenues for season 242. It comes days after Mikuel Artetta's new 20 million pounds a year contract was announced making him one of the highest paid managers in world football. So the it begs a question why why does a club like this feel they need to cut jobs of people at lower levels everyday roles if you like whilst some of the most highly paid people in football and Arteta is one of them go on to receive wages now I know he's got the hottest of hot jobs but it's a wage that goes on to absolutely and colossally dwarf those of the people that they're making redundant um Miguel Delaney in the Independent you're concentrating on the 10% % of the club where most of the people are on everyday wages, one insider reportedly told Miguel Delaney. Let me tell you, Simon, where I understand that the job cuts are being made. And having said that, my information is it's a proposal. It's subject to confirmation and the club is looking at redeploying staff in other roles. So, areas not affected by these 60 job cuts. Arsenal in the community, Arsenal Foundation, Arsenal women, security at the stadium at the training ground, coaching team and performance staff across men's and women's teams and the academy. They are not affected. But this review has been going on since before Arsenal won the Premier League and it's our understanding the clubs feels in a position to kick on but only to kick on in a financially sustainable way. So it's more kind of reset and a chance to restructure. >> Mhm. >> Do you accept that that is a good enough foundation on which to base it? So crack on with your 60 redundancies. >> Well, it's like saying when if Coca-Cola were to lay off a load of people in their various functions within their business, but still spent millions of pounds on advertising, wouldn't you say, "Well, hang on. We've got to uh cut back on the advertising to keep people in their jobs." Why are you still spending money on marketing campaigns that are significant? Because you're trying to make sure that your business stays in a certain position. And by employing the best managers, your core product stays in the position or enhances this position to be able to make sure that the long-term future of the club gets economically better and brighter based upon the club's achievement. So, you pay them the market price. But let me ask you this as a layman and you know your stuff in this because you you've run businesses. Of course you have. Arsenal more successful than ever. Y >> Premier League champions. So everybody at the football club is in is incredibly happy with the way things are going. >> Yeah. >> So why do you need to shed anyone? >> You've got a 24 million pound profit on a 6700 million pound turnover. So you're working on slender margins um and always looking at the future. Now I don't I don't know whether they're redeploying these people, paying them redundancies, restructuring the business, but there was always this argument and of course it's always relevant when teams get relegated more than anything else that it's the people that didn't actually do anything wrong to affect the outcomes of the football operation that are the ones that go first. >> Well, that's right. >> But also you can't cut and >> that's not fair, >> but you can't cut fixed term employee. First of all, the players are on fixed contracts. So you can't just cut them. Um managers are often on fixed contracts. If you take Mattel, if you take Mikuel Letto out of Arsenal's team, what will that what might that do to the overall top line of Arsenal in terms of the revenue it generates to keep all the other people employed in positions of course >> that are fundamentally valuable to the football club, but not as core essential to the winning situation surrounding the football field, which is where the primary opportunity comes from, where everything spins off. >> It's it's those in lesser jobs, with all due respect to them, in lower profile positions who always seem to get hit. And I do stress and you're right to make the point the club's looking at deploying some of those uh individuals. >> All of them. So we're talking about 60 people. I don't know how many people Arsenal employ more more successful than ever. >> Because maybe they realize that a lot of the jobs that have been done can be streamlined and done more effectively and efficiently. I mean we saw this situation when Recliffe came into Man United. Everyone was outraged about the fact he made all these redundancies and made people sit up and have to clear their desks and be at their desks. All this work from home load of old cobblers had to be drop kicked out the window um because people can't do their jobs as well working from home despite their best protest stations that suits them to work from home. You need people in offices to build out successful management teams to build out influence among one another to inspire one another and also to be held accountable for the jobs that they're doing. But just on Ratcliffe, I want to throw this at you. Also in the Independent, and I quote, "Those close to Sir Jim Ratcliffe say there was eventually some regret at the cuts they made because it didn't really achieve anything other than dismal headlines and a worse mood." Well, that's someone speaking on behalf of someone. I'm speaking on behalf of someone. I mean, look, it created the optics. What it did was it created a blueprint for how Jim Recliffe was going to be perceived going forwards. So rather than have this honeymoon period of being someone that was going to be different from Glazers, he then got caught in the trap of being worse than the Glazers. And so and because he's now pigeonholding and you know as well as I do, having been in this industry a lot longer than I do, the moment someone's got an opinion on you, it's very difficult for them to shift it. And they'll always have these little things they can pull out of the archives and say, "Look what Jim Rediff did there." And what now Jim Redcliff will be endlessly associated with is making comments about immigration and cutting some of the cost implications of Manchester United, including Alex Ferguson. So all of that will be indexed and until he wins something they'll never be forgotten. So commercial decisions are hard and they're difficult to make and sometimes they're made for the best intentions and sometimes they're misguided >> and you've got to go with a PR some of it not good with it. >> He he won't be walking around with a sythe whoever it is at Arsenal going whose head can I take off? These will be recommendations from a management team that reported up to him and said to him look we think there's efficiencies in this business. We think people can absorb jobs. We're finding that we've got more people doing the same job and actually the output from these jobs is far less than two people required to do it can do it with one. Right? >> So whilst that might seem to people that work within the confines of businesses that that's really unfair. The rich get richer, the opportunities are not there for us. We're always the first to go. But the bottom line is if you've got jobs that are uh I hate to say it but necessarily you know need leaning and in fact rather than having a nice easy little job you've got a slightly more difficult one where you go work slightly harder to achieve the outcomes rather than having two people. How many times you see when a union's involved you got two people holding a bleeding ladder. One with a pencil going that's going to cost you. >> Yeah. Who are we to say that any of these six individuals do not work flat out each and every day. >> Yeah. But businesses aren't charities. And so if they think that the business can run as efficiently >> without having to pay the costs of the people that are there, then that's what they're going to do. >> You know, when you were in your financial pump, >> uh, you employed thousands. >> Yeah. >> You had to lay off, no doubt. >> Yeah. >> Individuals. Did that you? >> No. No. No. That's not true because my business was always expanding. So I built 250 shops in 5 years. So my business was forward moving. So I all I ever did was employ. I couldn't employ enough people. >> You must have cut. >> No. No. I fired people for doing bad jobs. And I fired people for for other things, but I didn't fire people because I was making economic cuts in the in in the in the mobile phone business in the football business when the ITV digital deal came up. I did. I made recession. I made I made redundancies. >> How many? >> Um, a few. Um, and then >> you to do it? >> No, not really because it's a necessary evil to serve a greater good. There's a collective responsibility. I had a responsibility to much bigger picture than just individuals. So what I tried to do was try to reposition people >> and try to give people an opportunity to as Arsenal are doing here. >> Yeah. So it wasn't just a case of I couldn't care less. I'm all right Jack. It was a case of sometimes and more more than more in football than any other industry. People get away of murder. They get away of doing nothing because football clubs have a mentality that someone's always going to pay the bills. And you've seen the report from the independent regulator about how football runs which means it requires owners to constantly bankroll it. And when football clubs aren't making money of their own valition, owners in the end get a bit fed up with walking around watching people scratching their backs eyes sometimes, including the bleeding footballers. So they look at costs, cost reductions and efficiencies with a even more focused eye than a business that would make money. If you're losing money every year and you're getting screened at by fans, told what an absolute to spot you are not put enough money in, and you're seeing people not doing their jobs. I think you're going to have a slightly different attitude. And only people that have been in that position can say that. People standing on the outside saying, "Oh, that's typical work." you know, typical baron of industry that thinks that there's only one way of working things. Nobody lays off people with glee. Unless, of course, it's a football manager that really deserves it, then I was gleeful doing that. >> And I very much get that impression that that is the situation at Arsenal. No one is gleefully lining up these. >> It's unfortunate timing because if they've done very well, I mean the last our last financial results look good. Now, I don't know what I don't obviously that's the yearbook just gone 24-25 256. I don't know what the numbers look like. They might have made a big loss this year. Well, these job cuts, 60 of them, and I reemphasize is my understanding this is a proposal subject to confirmation and the club is looking at redeploying staff in other roles. I'd love to have worked for you all these years ago when you arrived. >> Oh, man. You're out. Stay out. Thank you, Mr. Jordan.