Hello and welcome to a brand new R-Splug R-SKAS.

Here on R-Splug.com, how are you? I hope you're well. I hope you're staying safe, staying healthy, staying sane, staying indoors, all the staying things that you have to do.

I hope you're doing them and I hope the uniors are feeling as well as can be expected in this unprecedented time.

Surreal set of circumstances.

Trying times. Strange world we live in right now.

And all the other countless email greetings that we are sending and receiving in these strange and unprecedented times.

Look, we have a podcast for you all the same, a good show for you today. A little bit later on, I am going to be chatting to writer, journalist, documentary maker,

podcast maker and lots more besides John Ronson. He will be on the line from New York. He is of course an Arsenal fan.

So we'll be chatting to him about what's going on in his world and a few bits and pieces besides.

And there is some football chat as well, the issue of player wages and cuts and refusals and rejections and all of those things have been playing out during the week.

So we're going to get right into it and first up my guest from football London or more appropriately no football London. Unfortunately, it's James Bansch. Hello James.

Hi Andrew. Hi you. Hi I'm all right. How you getting on? How's things in the bench? Household. Yeah, it's good. It's all right. I'm staying with my partner's parents, which has has numerous upsides, including having my tea cooked for me like I'm still a child.

Lovely. There is a silver lining to every cloud. Yes indeed. The thin silver line. Very, very thin and a massive huge gray cloud. But let's not go into the details.

Let's talk a little bit about pay cuts and football and finance and all those things because it is really the only thing that's been going on from an Arsenal point of view.

And earlier in the week, the club announced that they had reached an agreement with with most of the players regarding a pay cut.

And you know, I've sort of been over the nuts and bolts and the rights and wrongs of billionaire owners and everything like that in in previous discussions.

But just sort of from your understanding in terms of, you know, the complexity of these negotiations and how they've reached this sort of agreement with the majority of the players, despite the fact they've had to do it from distance, you know, zoom meetings or whatever kind of meetings people are having these days, you know, has added a layer of complication to something that's already extremely complicated.

So just your thoughts on how it's come together and kind of how quickly it's come together.

I think I think the remarkable thing is how quickly it's come together. And I guess when we talk further, that's almost what makes you question just how sustainable this agreement will be and whether it might be rushed through.

But I mean, as far as I understand, Hector Bellerin has kind of played the role of the go between the first team squad and the Arsenal hierarchy.

Obviously, Michaela Artheter has done a lot of work there as well.

Once the initial proposal was rejected, but you know, with a degree of persuasion from Artheter in particular and also, you know, Bellerin putting across the club's case very well, I would say.

...