Arsenal have given a pay rise to all eligible staff members in recognition of their efforts over the past 18 months of the pandemic.

Charles Watts reports that Arsenal have given a 3% pay rise to all staff eligible for a pay review in recognition of their efforts to keep things running over the past 18 months.

The last year and a half has obviously been difficult for most of us, and in the footballing world that has certainly been true. For a while there was no football at all, then it returned without fans, so finances have been hit pretty hard.

For Arsenal, that meant the widely-covered redundancies for 55 members of staff. An obvious side-effect of that decision was greater responsibility for the people still employed by the club.

As a result, it’s only fair that the club now offer a pay-rise to those that have stepped up to the task and ensured things didn’t fall apart behind the scenes any more than they already were with the performances on the pitch and the effects of the pandemic.

The club still probably have a way to go to win back over some of the fans disillusioned by the way they’ve acted in the last year or so, particularly with those redundancies and the Super League fiasco. But this is something, at least.