Arsenal CEO Richard Garlick on Life as Premier League Champions, Mikel Arteta’s Relentless Drive, and Building a Dynasty: Running the Game 09/01/26

0:00You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network, Suboptimal Radio. This is the start of the next chapter, not the end of something. We're not going to sit here and pat ourselves on the back saying, yeah, we've cracked this, let's put our feet up. It's actually, let's go again. This is a period of dominance. You could call it a start of a dinner state. This is what we're aiming to do. We're aiming to dominate football for the next few years on every front. It is trophies, plural. It is absolutely trophies, plural, yeah.

0:31It's a joy to be welcomed by the CEO of Arsenal Football Club, Mr Richard Garlick. Thank you, Roger. Richard, you arrived here at Arsenal 2021. I think you were Director of Football Operations then. But that summer, Arsenal are a completely different place. I think they just finished eighth and their mission was to get back into the Champions League spots. Today, we sit here and Arsenal Football Club are Premier League champions. In what way has this summer been different to the previous five that you've had before? The ambition that the club has has always been there. We've always wanted to get back to the top, get back to winning major trophies.

1:05When I arrived at the club, we obviously, we went in Europe and the first task was to get us back into the Champions League. And we did that and then we pushed on and we accelerated that success to the point where we were challenging for titles much quicker than we expected. Now we're title winners. We've got to that stage. We just want to push on. We want to win more. The ambition is there for the club. I was going to ask you that. You've just won the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years, that trophy. Does that feel like we've done it? Or do you now immediately think about trophies, plural?

1:33There was a moment where we enjoyed it and you saw that enjoyment, whether it was the players, we're celebrating the actual win, whether it was a trophy lift, whether it was that parade around North London, which was absolutely amazing. All the scenes you saw around the world, we are absolutely saying we're not done here. This is the start, not the end. We're at the start of something big. We want to push on and win more and more. It is trophies plural. It is absolutely trophies plural, yeah. I want to talk about that journey, but I do need to ask you, can you explain to our audience what a CEO is, what a CEO does?

2:03We know managers manage, we know owners own. We kind of think we know what a director of football is, we've got no idea. But when it comes to Arsenal, what does a CEO do and what skills do you rely on most? The main focus for me is to create an environment where people can win and people can succeed, whether that's on the football side obviously but also from a commercial point of view with our supporters and with our staff and bring everybody together where everyone feels that they are part of something bigger that they've all got a contribution to make that they all feel valued and they can all understand that when they arrive in the morning they are clear of what their job and what what they want to do but as i say to the staff every one of them contributed to that win this year and when that happens everybody feels part of something special so as i say generally what a CEO should do in a football club is bring people together around a common purpose and create an environment where you can win Young viewers of what I know very quickly how did you become you?

2:56I know you arrived at Arsenal after being at the Premier League, you were director of football there I know you were a footballer yourself, you were a lawyer in between these things, you were an academy player at Rotherham, you were a non-league football player, you know the game from so many angles how did you fit this all together and become the right man for this Arsenal project? Well, I think you summarised my sort of background there. I was a lawyer, a lawyer to start with, not in connection with football or sport, really. And I had one of those sliding doors moment where I happened to be acting for a football club, Plymouth Argyle, who played West Bromwich Albion in a match towards the end of the season.

3:30And Drum Thomas, an ex-Arsenal player, had committed a foul and been sent off and created a huge brawl, a huge fight on the pitch. I was representing Plymouth and a guy called Darren Eels, who you may have come across before. I know Darren Welch. Started off at West Bromwich Albion as their legal director. and legal counsel and Darren was leaving to join Spurs so West Brom were advertising for a lawyer club secretary so at Wembley I got chatting to Darren about the role and Jeremy Peace who was the chairman of West Brom at the time was there as well. Basically what you said about my background law, football and I lived five minutes from West Brom's training ground they said why don't you put your hat in the ring and two interviews later I got a job and had to make the decision to come out of private practice as a lawyer and take the step into working at West Brom and Jalbion and And then the first game that we had away at Chelsea lost 6-0.

4:15It was all his fault. Young people watching, here's how you do it. Stop fights, study law, live really close to the stadium. Look, you put all this together and you oversee at Arsenal the entire business. Arsenal are a football club, also a brand partner, a merch business, an idea, a memory bank, a footballing archive, a content machine. They're a culture club, a dream, a football team, men's and women's. What business or what businesses do you think about Arsenal being in? We're a football club, first and foremost. Our job is to win major trophies, and that's the element of a football club. But we want to do it, as I said, in a financially sustainable way, which means we need to grow our revenues, which means we need to focus on partnerships, on our venues, on our retail and all those sort of areas as well.

5:01But we also want to be a club that wins with our supporters. We've been on a journey on that, and I think we're in a really good place. We've done a lot of work to connect up our supporters, not just from a pure sort of watching football matches point of view, but from a cultural point of view as well, really getting involved in the community. We've got such a strong community base, such a strong foundation that works around North London, but around the UK and also around the world. And maybe some of the viewers have seen some of the work that they've done, like the foundation in Zatari in Jordan, the refugee camp there.

5:30We really want to create that winning club, winning culture and winning community. and everybody that works at Arsenal knows that if we can win with all those different elements, we're going to be successful. I want to touch on a couple of the different sides. Starting with the football side, you work with Andrea Berta, Director of Football. How does that balance work? How do you integrate there on transfers? Let's take the arrival of Bruno Guimoresh. What aspects of the negotiation do you fill in? Where do you let Andrea take the lead? How do you harness each other's strengths and weaknesses in a move like that?

5:59So beforehand, you'll be preparing what you're looking at for a summer plan in terms of the ins and outs. And that's in consultation with obviously with Mikel and Andrea and James King, speaking to myself and Josh around what the plans might be. Obviously, Josh plays a key role in being across that and understanding kind of the motivation of why we might want to change players or strengthen certain areas. Ultimately, Andrea and James have the responsibility of opening up the contacts, the negotiations. I used to be in James's role, so I understand how that works. And I have sat in Andrea's seat, not at Arsenal, but when I was at West Bromwich Albion.

6:34They pull the work together and then they will report back and ultimately we'll get to a point where we're all comfortable with going ahead and executing it. But to be fair, it's Andrea and James that do all of the trading, all the negotiations. I kind of try and help in the background where I can in terms of creating that environment in which they can succeed, whether that's helping from the finance side with the ownership or whether it's helping from the legal side or every now and again having to maybe get involved in discussions with my counterparts at those clubs. if there's a challenge or we've had a bit of a bump in the road just to try and find a solution to it.

7:08But predominantly, it's down to Andrea and James. What is the secret, art and the science, to a good negotiation? Well, I think you need to go in with a clear idea of what you want to achieve. You need to keep your eyes on the prize, but you need to do it in a principled way and try and stick to the principles that you have as a club and that we would have as a football leadership team. We try and do things sensibly, but you want to get the job done. Usually people say in a good negotiation everyone comes out slightly unhappy because they've not got to a place where they want to be. Ultimately, we want to have a player at the end of that transaction that's going to come in and be very, very happy.

7:45Maybe it's their agent that's not so happy or maybe it's us that are not so happy with the agent but in the end we want a happy player. That's the most English thing ever. Good negotiation, everyone comes out unhappy. I want to understand how winning the title changes your role, your life. First of all, brand Arsenal. It stands for, I mean, many things, many powerful things to many different people. How do you understand? What does Arsenal stand for, first and foremost? Arsenal's unique in how it stands. And you saw that with the connection that we had when we won the Premier League. I was on one of those buses that was going around North London.

8:16We can have a backwards and forwards as to how many people were there. I suspect there was around at least a million people out there. So it was five million. It could have been five million. It could have been 500 ,000. But I think a million sounds like a good figure to me. Anyway, it was a lot of people. But it was a lot of people who might not have always had the opportunity to come to the Emirates to watch Arsenal play, but had felt that there was a connection with the club, whether it's on a local scale, community scale, and just the passion. And I mean, for two hours, I've never experienced anything like it.

8:42What Arsenal was about was what you saw there was a cultural connection with the local community. But it was also wider than that, because I know in the US, for example, the Empire State Building got lit up. In China, the Canton Tower got lit up. You saw in Africa, people celebrating in the streets. It was a worldwide phenomenon. And I think that's only something that Arsenal could connect with. It was truly global. That was what was so striking. Millions and millions of people. North London, Nairobi, New York, Singapore, Kampala. How do you understand? Can you point towards what they were connecting to?

9:14I think they were connecting to a family. They were connecting to something that they could see that they could belong to. Arsenal is a very open, welcoming club. It's been that way right from the start. and the way in which we have worked with what started off with, whether it's just a local community around North London and the work that we do in engaging with the community and the local area has then spread and people feel like they want to be part of that. When they look at Arsenal, they can connect with it, whether it's with its players, whether it's with a women's team, whether it's with our academy players coming through, whether it's with our legends, but also with the staff that we have.

9:47We want to feel that when you come to Arsenal, when you come to the Emirates, however you interact with a club, you go away with a good feeling. And I think you saw that connection that we have. You saw that being part of a family. And who would want to be part of a family? You know, if you're around the world, wherever you are, coming together as a community, whether it's in New York or whether it's in Philadelphia, whether it's in Los Angeles. In the United States alone, we've got 87 supporters groups, which are more than the number of states that there are in the US. And you could see that they all felt like they belong to some things.

10:14That's the unique thing that I think that Arsenal's got. It's that when people look at Arsenal, they feel a connection, they feel a family, and they want to be part of it. It is amazing. You say only Arsenal can do this. I will say only Arsenal can bring together in Brooklyn, Spiteley, Jason Sudeikis and the mayor to watch 90 minutes of football. I'm fascinated. Every team has to cater to the local audience and also speak to that fast growing audience globally. Arsenal are massive in Africa, massive in Asia, fast growing in the United States. Those realities, they're never truly aligned. It is the greatest tension in football.

10:47How do you understand and experience that tension between the truly local and the global? By having a great team around me that listen and that make sure that we are supporting all of the Arsenal family. Last year, we gave away to the community over a thousand tickets so that local people could still come in and connect. We had open training where people can come in and connect. You want to give the local people that opportunity to come to the Emirates, but also the stuff that we can do in terms of outreach, in terms of some of the community programs that we've got through our fabulous community team that are delivering, whether it's football courses for young people or whether it's education support, there is that way in which we can do.

11:22But you're right, people also want to see who's connected with Arsenal. Some of the names that you just said there in the US, you know, Jason's been to quite a few matches, Spike's been to a few matches as well. And so we can connect on that, but it's in a humble way. We're trying to do it in a natural way. They're coming to Arsenal because they support Arsenal. They're not coming because they're just trying to show up at a big event. He gets them free merch. But it's a genuine connection is what I'm saying. It's not manufactured. Title win changes expectations around the club. Got to rework the business to ensure the manager's got resources for challenges and multiple trophies, multiple competitions.

11:58What's been the biggest challenge this summer, in your own words? Making sure everybody understands that this is the start of the next chapter, not the end of something. We're not going to sit here and pat ourselves on the back saying, yeah, we've cracked this. Let's put our feet up. it's actually let's go again. What can we do? Whether it's driving new partnerships or new retail ventures, whether it's driving a new connection with the fans, whether it's introducing some safe standing areas in the Emirates, whether it's investing in further in the team, men's and women's team. Our motto is always forward and we need to embrace that.

12:30And people and the staff and the supporters need to realise that we are going to continue pushing forward. We're not going to sit here and be complacent and we need to drive each other forward so that we can continue to win and dominate football in the coming years.

12:46Watching Mikel work is so intense in every facet, every detail. I mean, it's like passion bordering on obsession. Do you ever spend time thinking about how one human can bear so much responsibility on such an extended period of time? Yeah, he is relentless. There's a lot of people around Arsenal that are relentless in their pursuit of making Arsenal better in whatever way that is. We speak to Mikel a lot about the support and he feels he's got a team around him, whether it's the team that's the board or the ownership, there's a real strong connection there where he feels supported. He's got really good staff that he's very loyal to and then loyal to him.

13:21And he reaches out to a wider connection of friends and colleagues other than just in football. You know, Sean McVay is somebody that he talks to a lot at the Rams. I've seen him speak with Sean in the dressing room of the Rams after a Rams game where Mikel's just absorbing what Sean does, you know, how he reacts. and then they'll speak about maybe common challenges that they've got. He's got a good network of people that he reaches out to. A bit like we all have every now and again, you need someone to speak to, someone to maybe bounce ideas off. Third part of the triad at Arsenal, Josh Cronky, a man who in 2019 told Arsenal fans to get excited and many outside the club didn't take him seriously then.

13:58But it was a seed ultimately that he's planted in the heart of the operation and it's growing and led to the wonders of last season. Can you offer any insight into Josh as a collaborator, a person, your professional partner? How would you describe what he brings to the club? He brings that stability. He brings that knowledge. He's got a passion for winning. And, you know, we are part of a family that are serial winners, whether it's the Nuggets, whether it's the Avalanche, whether it's the Rams. They're all serial winners. And I mean, family in the widest sense. In terms of knowledge sharing. Yeah, in terms of knowledge.

14:28He is, as you said, back in 2019, he was desperate to see Arsenal succeed, to put Arsenal back on the path that they should be on. And he's worked hard and he's had a great team around him. When you've got really good people in the right place who've got a plan and they all align behind that plan, you've got a very good chance of winning. It doesn't matter how good or bad that plan might be. But if you've got a plan and everyone's aligned to it, you're going to go really far. And the stability amidst the chaos of the Premier League is possibly the greatest intangible. 100 % and we've got obviously Mikel, that stability, that strength that we've had over the years and he's been part of that, obviously along with Josh and other members of that team.

15:08And you can see now it's coming to fruition and we need to build on that platform of stability that we've got. It gives us an advantage. Past three seasons, Arsenal came second. Bit of jokes, meme club. The win has shattered all of that. Can you describe in your own words what the win changes, what it makes possible for this club, how it changes your role? I don't think it changes my role in that the ambition is still the same, to keep winning, to keep pushing Arsenal forward. I think it unlocks a confidence in the club. You can see that when you see that connection with the wider Arsenal family.

15:39And it gives us a confidence and an ambition to go ahead and dominate the next few years. It puts us where Arsenal should be, you know, at the top of the tree and winning major trophies and winning major titles. It sets us up for success in the future because I think the success that we've got now is just the start and there's so much more to come. Last question for you. Arsenal enter this season in familiar territory in their history, but in the modern period, this is new. For years, you've been the aspirants. You're now the champions. The team to beat is a brand new placement. So leave us with this, your message to Arsenal fans here for the new season.

16:18What do you envision this club growing into? What do you dream of? What do you dream of now? I dream of us being serial champions, of us repeating what we did last year and going one better maybe in the Champions League and winning major trophies. This is a period of dominance. You could call it a start of a dinner state. This is what we're aiming to do. We're aiming to dominate football for the next few years on every front. To you, to your vision, to your fans, Richard. Thank you, man. Thank you, Roger.