Austria 2010 An excerpt from today's AGM "He (Arsene Wenger) ruled out pre-season tours outside Europe. Every other year there is a European Championship or a World Cup, he said, and it was critical that the team was prepared for the Champions League play-off round if the club needed to play in that. He also felt it was wrong to tour without the club’s international players which it would in years when there were big international tournaments. This appears to rule out tours to Asia or North America in the near future. Clubs that undertook such tours spent time travelling and not training he said. He preferred the solution of the Emirates Cup at home.
Selfishly as an American, I'd like to see my club getting the exposure here and to get to see them live here. As an Arsenal fan, it's the best policy, though. Carting all over the world for meaningless friendlies does nothing for the players' fitness for matches that count.
now if we used that 12 million quid profit from the preseason tour to provide some ace depth, id be for it. but that would never happen anyway...
I really don't see how a week long trip to Africa or North America is notably different than going to Austria. Personally I think we don't travel because we have the Emirates Cup which makes the club a bunch of money.
Austria is an 1-1/2 flight away and mostly spent around the team hotel\training ground with a couple of games a couple hours away by bus. North America is 6 hours away with games spread around the US again a significant distance apart. Asia the same as NA only moreso. If it was a money or Arsenal\Emirates brand building exercise any trip to NA or Asia would blow the Emirates Cup out of the water
its a longer trip, and goes across many time zones (to Asia, or North America, Africa, not across time zones) and I think we could do both, a preseason tour and the Emirates Cup... I am not sure why it would be one or the other
While I can see how a 12hr trip to Malaysia, and then jetting around all over Asia can be disconcerting, and a set back to preseason preparations, but a 2hr flight to Austria compared to a 5 hour flight to NYC? That doesn't exactly take much of a toll on the players. You could limit the games to just Boston-NYC-DC to cut down on the traveling. It's a minor inconvenience that could bring in a lot of money, and these days we could every penny. Stick to Austria in WC/Euro years, and come to NA in the odd years when most of our players aren't involved in summer tournaments. I'm a little biased since I hop up and down the NY-DC corridor all the time, but it is definitely something we should be doing (considering we are trying to overhaul our commercial revenues).
Obviously it is a longer trip. But you aren't required to do a tour across all of North America. I think the problem is that the time in Austria is the training time and the Emirates Cup are the tune-ups. A overseas tour would be tune-ups. We would still need to do our training.
I understand where Arsene is coming from, however it seems that other big teams can cope. The extra revenue and support that would come from a tour to North America would really help build the club. It also adds to the "glamour" of the club, which might persuade our best players to stay rather than leaving for "bigger" clubs.
touring usa would have no influence at all, players can go to the usa if they cared on their holiday at the end of the season this idea would not make the club more 'glamorous' what a load of old shit it's only commercially viable to the brand name of the club, nothing else i personally would like wenger to keep us where we are as he likes his routine