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Handbrake Off: The Athletic FC's Arsenal show

Squad Audit: Where do Arsenal improve this summer?

Handbrake Off: The Athletic FC's Arsenal show

The Athletic

Football, Arsenal, Arsenal Fc, Arsenal News, Sports, Soccer

4.6734 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adrian Clarke joins Ian Stone to do a squad audit ahead of what could be a busy summer for Arsenal.


They discuss the need to continually refresh especially when you’ve won, the players that are more likely to leave this summer, those who there may be questions about, if there could be some surprising departures, improvements needed in the attack, who their ideal signings would be and they touch on the story of Gabriel’s jersey becoming the highest selling at the club since the UCL final.


We'd like to hear your thoughts on the podcast, please find the listener poll here: https://forms.gle/cShwS3WaXaMZ2URi9  


If you like the panel’s song choices, check out the ‘Now that’s what I call Handbrake’ playlist on both Spotify and Apple Music and listen to them all there: 


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6cgJk1eJwQBmiUJlSFZMJN?si=pMHHbBb8S8Ky5LtlKp7pHw&pi=Rra8NSxDRVm58&nd=1&dlsi=62f2d7c1c10045ac


Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/now-thats-what-i-call-handbrake/pl.u-d2b00jZuDxWk6P


Producer: Robby Williams


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The Athletic FC.

0:07.1

The only way to score is, of course, to play with a handbreak-off.

0:14.7

Hello, I'm Ian Stone. This is Hand-Break-off, the Arsenal podcast brought to you by The Athletic today. After a winning season. We'll be doing a squad audit ahead of what could be a busy summer. Adrian's here. Hello Adrian. Hello, Tony. Morning. How are you, Adrian? You're all right? You're feeling tired? I'm all right. Tired. Do you know what, though? I did struggle to wake up today myself. I think the end of the season has just hit me. And it's a little bit like when you've had a really busy time, a busy week or whatever, and then you finally get a day off, then you get ill, don't you? Then you just like crash out. And that's kind of how I feel at the end of this season. I just feel a little bit beasted. It's a come down, isn't it? There is no getting away from it.

0:56.2

We've been in Ibiza for nine months and we now imagine.

1:01.5

Imagine how much that would have cost us.

1:03.2

Imagine that how much that would have cost us physically, emotionally and financially.

1:08.8

But anyway, that's what we've had. We've had not nine months.

1:12.0

It's 10, isn't it, really?

1:13.6

I mean, we started at the beginning of August, right?

1:17.1

And it's now the beginning of June.

1:19.7

Anyway, it all worked out pretty well.

1:22.2

Apparently, Robbie, our producer, said that Mikhail Artatsach's face has been added to the KFC sign on

1:28.8

Highway Road. Have you seen this, Adrian? Yeah, I did see it, yeah. I don't think I've seen it, to be honest with you. So is what, is he, sorry, is he actually endorsing KFC? No, no, I think they just, for the parade, I think that, didn't they change into AFC? I think, I think. I think they just made their own little sign in tribute to the Arsenal, to Macau, which I thought was quite nice.

1:48.9

Because fried chicken, I mean, nice as it is, is not really the breakfast of champions.

1:53.7

I don't think it's official. I don't think it's an official license indeed. It's not official. Okay, fair enough.

1:58.6

Yeah, any other Arsenal player affiliated person at his face?

2:03.4

Would you like to see added to a business logo brand? I mean, I mean, I got to be honest.

2:08.9

What's our question is this? I don't know. It was Robbie, he came up with it. I mean, listen, you can tell, right, we're falling apart here, aren't we, really, after all this season.

2:36.6

You know, we're down a third panelist. Yeah. I don't know. Would it encourage you to eat KFC if you saw Mikhailov Teta's face on it? No, definitely not. No, no, I wouldn't. No, I did look at logos with faces on, right? I googled it. Right, what logos? Because I was thinking, there aren't many logos with faces on.

2:37.5

And it's true.

2:34.9

There aren't many logos with faces on and it's true they're aren't you can only find about five or six of them

2:40.0

but one of them is Starbucks and it's like this sort of queen like figure uh with a crown on and

...

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