In the aftermath of the ESL controversy back in April, the mod team announced in this post that we would be distancing ourselves from the collaborative relationship we had fostered with the club. This was not a decision taken lightly but we believe it was the principled and correct thing to do in the face of the fanbase being completely disregarded by the club hierarchy. Your responses to the post indicated that the community was overwhelmingly supportive of this action, something which we are grateful for.

As stated in the original post, if Arsenal were willing to work with us and the community at large, we would consider reopening communications in the future. In the six months since that post was made, Arsenal’s media and communications department has undergone extensive internal changes, and the new team has offered us a fairly unique opportunity.

In the last week, Arsenal has reached out to the mod team to offer us a chance to meet with some of the directors and discuss how the club is and will continue to communicate and work with supporters and fan-led supporters groups such as r/Gunners. They also restated the desire on their end to recommence collaborations such as AMAs, which is something that we unilaterally distanced ourselves from in the original post.

In the preliminary communications we’ve had so far, the club seems to be genuine in their attempts to bridge the gap. At no point have they tried to pressure us and have indicated that they’re understanding if we don’t wish to reconnect, something which we made clear was in the hands of our users.

It is the opinion of the mod team that the opportunity to directly engage with the club in this way would be productive, but are wary of being used for PR, so our initial thoughts are to accept the invitation to talk with the club, but wait until we are satisfied with their intentions going forward before doing anything like an AMA.

However, we understand that the wound may not have healed for the community just yet, and since the mod team functions as a representative entity of the whole group, we wanted to take into account in our decision-making process your feedback and opinions on whether reengaging with the club is something the community would consider.

We’re happy to answer questions and go back and forth on this and we won’t rush this, giving everyone a chance to weigh in.