How Arsenal could hijack the Jadon Sancho transfer

By now we all know that Arsenal need some more talent and creativity in their attack. Jadon Sancho is talented and creative. He’s also young (20-years old) and British. Sounds like a perfect transfer-hijack target to me, right?

Sancho is likely on his way to Manchester United this summer, that is, once the club ponies up something closer to the £120M Borussia Dortmund want for the young star. Today’s scuttlebutt is that United are balking at the price and that the move is on the verge of collapsing. United’s dilly-dallying has given the Gunners a window of opportunity to muck things up.

I vaguely remember something from my Economics classes in college about “disrupting the market” and I’ve definitely heard that phrase on CNBC after I forgot to change the channel after an Arsenal match. I think disruption is a good thing. So let’s do that disrupting. We’ve got about £100M worth of it to do.

Arsenal don’t have anywhere near the money needed, but I’ve got a few outside-the-box ideas on how they might raise the funds. Money is tight these days, so we’ll have to get creative.

1. GoFundMe: it’s how everyone raises money these days when they can’t afford something. Fans talk about feeling a sense of ownership of the club and how important the club is to them. Well. Time to put up or shut up, Gooners. Doesn’t matter that the club is valued at almost £2B and Stan Kroenke has more than four times that. Forget that either of them could pretty easily make the money machine go brrrrr. The football monster demands more of YOUR money. Feed it.

Bonus, it would be a welcome change for GoFundMe as a platform to have a campaign that isn’t about medical bills brought on by the utterly broken U.S. healthcare system. Win-win.

2. Patreon: alternatively, instead of doing what all good corporations do when times are tough — asking for a handout/bailout from somebody else (the government, the people, whoever) — Arsenal could provide something of value in return. What a novel concept! Make a sh*tty podcast. Have the players do art. Write some Gunnersaurus fanfic.

3. OnlyFans: but just for videos of outrageous Arsenal highlights. Would likely have the same effect.

4. Sell the statues outside the Emirates: I’m sure some bloke would love to stick Thierry Henry in all his bronzed glory in their front yard. Heck, offer it to Thierry himself. Strikers are notoriously vain, and he’s got all that sweet, sweet MLS money. Plus, the club has a couple other statutes to boot, what is selling one or two going to do? And Arsenal can just cast new ones later. We all saw what happened to Zlatan’s statue, right? Selling the ones outside the Emirates is really just protecting them from a similar fate. It’s good business.

Heck, if you can’t sell them, melt them down and sell them for scrap. Metals are valuable, you know.

5. Sell other things: like literally everything not nailed down at the Emirates, the training ground, the club offices, Highbury. Get some of those “EVERYTHING HAS TO GO” signs they put up when businesses are liquidating assets in bankruptcy and slap them on everything. Start repossessing memorabilia from pubs and sell that stuff too. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

6. Actually, sell London Colney too: Speaking of desperate measures, Arsenal could just sell the training ground altogether. They’ve got a pitch at the Emirates. Train there. Set up some temporary offices for the staff in the luxury boxes, or the stadium bathrooms, or slap up some tents in the parking lot. Boom. Dual-purpose. Bring on the cash.

7. Alternatively, they could develop the land: Isn’t that how Stan the Man made whatever money he has that didn’t come from marrying a Walmart heiress? That stadium project in L.A. is going so well that I’m sure he’s itching to add a new project to the portfolio. Wait, what’s that you say? It’s behind schedule and having other problems. Oh, uh, well that wouldn’t happen in London because of the, um, the exchange rate. Yeah. Dollars to pounds, money stuff, you wouldn’t understand. Just take my word for it.

8. Blockchain: I don’t really know what it is or how it works, but if you say blockchain enough, venture capital types appear and throw money at you.

9. Collect underpants, ???, profit: hey, it worked for the gnomes.

10. Have a bake sale: if it is good enough for PTAs across America, it’s good enough for The Arsenal. I hear Mesut Özil makes a mean baklava.

11. Or maybe a car wash: David Luiz’s hair definitely could double as a squeegee.

12. Speaking of luscious locks, Mikel Arteta’s hair: there’s something there, I know it. Definitely a way to make money off it. Maybe a line of haircare products. Or tutorials. Or viral videos showing how he gets it perfect. Although videos of Mikel getting out of bed immaculately coiffed might not be enough to hit “Trending Topics” on Twitter.

13. Influencers: TikTok is all the rage nowadays, right? Zoomer culture and what not. Because nothing says “let’s make some money” like targeting the demographic with the least disposable income. What could be better than using a Chinese company that is definitely stealing your data to jump on board with a bunch of teenage and early 20-something grifters who definitely are trying to convince people to join pyramid schemes.

Come to think of it, isn’t that what the transfer market is? A pyramid scheme with loads of dodgy foreign involvement and clubs buying things they don’t need? This might actually work. I can see it now. The “Jadon Sancho to Arsenal” dance is the next craze.

14. Elon Musk: Arsenal could try to convince him they’ve got an idea for self-flying soccer balls? Just tell him we’ve got a concept for something needlessly complicated that whirls and makes noise and breaks when you hit it with a sledgehammer. He makes flamethrowers and electric cars and stuff like that, he’ll eat it up.

Also, he tried to name his child X Æ A-12. He has money and is “eccentric” which is the nice word we use for rich people who are batsh*t insane. Maybe if we put together a presentation that says “Mars” over and over again in different fonts we could convince him to help us out. Wingdings, baby! I’m just grasping at straws now.

I briefly considered having the club go public with an IPO, but Arsenal isn’t an overvalued tech company or app that hasn’t ever turned a profit, so I’m not sure people would be interested. Plus, I don’t think the stock would tank almost immediately after offer, so it doesn’t fit the profile.

God, I love Capitalism.

[In case you couldn’t tell, this is a joke. It isn’t going to happen. Arsenal won’t get close to having that kind of transfer budget, probably ever. Hope you had fun.]