Arsenal exposed to rising hostility as fans return to stadium during poor run of form

Last Saturday morning, it felt like the days when a long away trip would be the highlight of a weekend. Thousands of Arsenal supporters rose early, felt the adrenalin, but this being England under strict lockdown, rushed only as far as their laptops or smartphones.

They were chasing tickets, special ones. Arsenal’s will be the first Premier League stadium since March to host supporters in a competitive game on Thursday night, and though it may only be a Europa League match against Rapid Vienna in a group Arsenal have already qualified from, it is a breakthrough moment. Hence the rush to be first in the queue when the club website opened the race for the limited seats allowed at 9am last Saturday.

Jack Wilshere interview: Returning to Arsenal would be a dream come true, but that ship has sailed

Willian's trip to Dubai leaves Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta unimpressed

Mikel Arteta on 'really sad' Mesut Ozil situation: 'When Arsenal lose, his name is going to come up'

Because government easing of a ban on spectators was announced only late the previous week, there was no time for Arsenal to design a more sophisticated allocation system for the 2,000 paid seats allowed than first come, first served.

Even to get that many makes Arsenal luckier than some; London is deemed less at risk than many parts in England, so fans can attend matches in small numbers there but cannot in many parts of the north and midlands.

Players have almost universally welcomed an end to matches played out only to the sound of teammates, coaches, opponents and sometimes self-conscious radio commentators, but it may feel a little startling to them to suddenly hear passionate loyalists and critics again.

Two thousand people in a stadium with a capacity and acoustics for 60,000 - as Arsenal’s stadium has - will not vibrate to a constant thrum. But if the performance irritates, there will be enough groans in unison to be heard. And those lucky enough to have tickets will find it still quiet enough to hear the specific instructions coming from the technical areas.

Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, says he likes the idea of that close communion. “I want them [the fans] to see really closely what the team is trying to do,” says Arteta, who is in the curious position of having spent two thirds of his career so far as a senior head coach operating in emptied arenas.

He was only appointed late last December, and when he became one of the first high-profile figures in the sport to test positive for coronavirus, it signalled to the wider game that there would be no prospect of carrying on as normal.

After the long lockdown, behind-closed-doors football resumed for Premier League clubs in July. About Arteta, the novice manager, much would be learned thanks to the silence of the stadiums. Because there was no crowd noise, reporters, staff and TV viewers gained a sharper sense of how vocal, and clear, he is on the touchline.

And, indeed, how multilingual. For an Arsenal team made up, typically, of more footballers whose native language is French or Spanish than English, they have an ideal boss. Arteta, a Spaniard who grew up in the Basque Country and Catalonia and once a midfielder with Paris Saint-Germain, is fluent in many tongues.

He often selects the most appropriate one depending which player he is talking to. Eavesdroppers learnt during the summer resumption of football, when ‘cooling breaks’ were timetabled into matches, that Arteta speaks with clarity and purpose to his players, whatever the language.

His predecessors would be forgiven for thinking that a run of 30 matches without crowds present, the run Arteta is coming out of, might be a beneficial initiation for an Arsenal manager. A culture of hostility took hold at the handsome Emirates stadium during the later years of Arsene Wenger’s long reign, and it was shrill. Unai Emery, who succeeded Wenger and lasted a season and a half, heard the same tone.

So did Granit Xhaka when he was wearing the captain's armband. All big clubs have indignant, noisy fans, but Arsenal are the only club, in the last 14 months of Premier League football, whose skipper relinquished the armband because he swore at supporters who had been jeering him.

Xhaka has captained Arsenal again, since then, under Arteta, in the Europa League, behind-closed-doors. He redeemed his reputation to a degree, influential in a post-shutdown run that delivered an FA Cup triumph under the new manager. But the same frustrations that stirred the chants of ‘Wenger Out’ and chased Emery a year ago have not disappeared. Arteta’s team have lost more than they have won in the league so far in 2020-21.

They are 14th in the table, and their bad luck is that, on the first Premier League weekend with fans back, they must go to the home of the leaders.

Tottenham Hotspur are allowed 2,000 fans on Sunday, and they will certainly make themselves heard - because it’s Arsenal and it has been a while since the gap between the two rivals was quite so wide.

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”