Plenty More White: Why Arsenal should continue No More Red and play in anti-knife crime kit 

Harry Lynch on why Arsenal should continue playing in white to help boost anti-knife crime initiative 

“No More Red is an initiative between Arsenal and adidas that will see adidas support the long-standing work being done by Arsenal in the Community to keep young people safe from knife crime and youth violence.”

This is a club statement on No More Red, an initiative supported by Idris Elba and club legend Ian Wright. 

Some fans don’t like the shirts and would like Arsenal to stop playing in them.

I for one hope the project continues and sheds more light on knife crime and youth violence.

The “experiment” hasn’t failed. The players have

It has been said, including in this very publication, that the white shirts might be making it difficult for the players to pick each other out.

Could there be more of a nonsense statement?

I play a little 5-a-side myself and whenever I’m wearing a lighter coloured shirt it’s a lot easier to pick out my team mates.

I’ve heard it said that the boys are used to wearing red in the Emirates so having to wear white is “disorientating”. This assertion is ludicrous and deluded.

These guys are professional footballers, not idiots. They train in different coloured shirts and are quite used to playing in any colour you can imagine. The colour of the away kit changes every year and our lads occasionally even stride out onto the pitch in a third kit and guess what, they are actually capable of scoring goals and winning those games despite the “disorientating” different coloured shirts. Who’d have thought?

OK so the stats aren’t quite backing me up.

We’ve played four games in white in the FA Cup and won only one against weak opposition, losing three. 

However, that simply isn’t enough games to confidently say there’s a trend. Two of those games were against tough opposition (I won’t mention the then Championship side Nottingham Forest) in seasons where cups were their only realistic chances of silverware.

Maybe it wasn’t the shirts that were causing the problem.

Maybe we need to stop making excuses and work on our tactics, work rate and resilience.

If the players are too distracted by having to wear a white shirt then maybe they’re not good enough and don’t deserve to wear the red one.

I believe that blaming the white shirts for losing games is just failing to face up to the more important issues of a team failing to live up to expectations. 

I will concede that it’s annoying that you can’t see the numbers or names on the players backs.

I’m a middle aged, glasses wearing bloke with a season ticket right at the back of the stadium.

Sometimes I can’t make out which player I’m looking at and it’s nice to be able to see the number so I know who just pulled off a great tackle or committed a foul for example, but this would be easily fixed with an outline of the numbers or something similarly simple. 

The ?rux of the issue

Now I’m going to say something controversial. Some things in life are actually more important than football. Even Arsenal!

There. I said it. 

The ‘No More Red’ shirts the Gunners are wearing are there to highlight the very real concern about violence and knife crime in the North London area. 

This Is Important. 

Football is often cited as something which can bring people together, be a real force for good for community, be something more than just 22 players scrabbling over a ball on a field.

Well, our North London community sadly suffers from a high rate of knife crime and surely it’s worth doing anything we can to improve this situation? Even if that means losing the occasional game of football. 

While I’m not suggesting that anyone who wants rid of the white shirts is actively against this worthy cause, I do think it’s possible that some may be guilty of (perhaps subconsciously) putting the success of our team over the safety of the young people of north London.

Is wearing a white kit really going to do anything?

It’s true, a bunch of men wearing a differently coloured shirt for 90 minutes isn’t going to directly change anything.

These trends for externally displaying a belief or campaign can reasonably be accused of being empty gestures such as taking a knee, one minute silences or displaying a black logo on your social media profile.

Does anyone remember what good came from clapping for the NHS every Tuesday evening?

However, it’s noteworthy that the kit isn’t available to buy.

I think this is the right thing. If it were, it could easily be written off as a money making scheme or a pretentious and clumsy method of virtue signalling for the woke.

The absence of merch surely makes the statement stronger.

But how are white shirts changing anything?

Well, after just a few minutes checking out the Arsenal website I was able to learn about the great work taking place in the community supported and funded by the No More Red initiative.

New football pitches and spaces for boxing are being built while old decrepit ones are repaired.

Community projects to give young people something to do are funded and supported.

What better way to support the volunteers and project managers of these great initiatives than for their local heroes to support them with such a massive visible demonstration.

Imagine if you were struggling away on your local pitch doing your best to persuade some disillusioned teenagers to work on their teamwork in the middle of winter and then you see Myles Lewis-Skelly, Declan Rice and Alessia Russo donning the shirt to support your cause.

That’s got to be pretty encouraging hasn’t it?

It’s also just such a unique and eye-catching way to draw attention to an issue.

In today’s internet and social media driven society we are so constantly bombarded with advertising and marketing strategies to the point that we simply ignore 90% of what we see.

You can’t ignore a white shirt for 90 minutes. I myself have become significantly more aware of the issues as a result and am keen to contribute to the cause. 

What next?

Some readers may still disagree with me. Well that’s ok.

At least you’ve read this article and maybe it’s sparked some thoughts and maybe even some discussion amongst fans. That’s part of the battle. 

For those of you saying “this isn’t the best way to tackle knife crime, we should be doing something else”, I’d say to you “go out and do it then!”

The players are doing their bit, let’s do ours.

As someone who works with young people and volunteers for a homeless shelter, I can promise you, our community is crying out for your efforts. 

There are plenty of ways to volunteer or help in the community.

Getting things going so there’s something for our youth to do with themselves has been shown to be an effective way of reducing violence and knife crime.

If you don’t have the time to volunteer then consider buying one less Arsenal kit next season and donating your money to a charity instead.

The No More Red Charity Partners are The Arsenal Foundation, Abianda (Abi Billinghurst & Associates), Octopus Community Network Limited, Box Up Crime, Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation, Ben Kinsella Trust, Copenhagen Youth Project and St Giles Trust which are all doing great work in our community.

Then perhaps the white shirts won’t have been in vain after all.