Arsenal held meetings at London Colney with their players on Monday to explain the weekend’s European Super League announcements.

London Colney training pitches (Photo via
London Colney training pitches (Photo via

Charles Watts reports that meetings took place between Arsenal and the players on Monday, with Vinai Venkatesham explaining the club’s position on the European Super League and answering questions on their concerns.

The obvious implication of this is that the players didn’t already know about the plans before Arsenal’s weekend announcement, and they didn’t have a say in it either.

This isn’t exactly surprising. Though the European Super League plans weren’t exactly a secret, Sunday’s announcement certainly came out of the blue – and it was likely intended that way.

The clubs involved obviously wanted as much of a chance to control the media narrative as possible, rather than having all the information leak out through the press from sources that oppose the proposals.

Letting the players know about it would have increased the chances of leaks, so you can see why they decided to keep them in the dark. But it was a risk, as they have no way of knowing how the players will now react to the announcement.

If the players at Arsenal and the other 11 clubs involved are as unhappy as the majority of football fans seem to be, it would all backfire pretty quickly.