It is now four years since Arsene Wenger bowed to modernity and accepted that a gentle preseason training camp in Austria was not sufficient for a club with global aspirations.
The now annual tour to Asia has become a commercial imperative and a diplomatic exercise designed to reinforce Arsenal's position in a market which has huge potential for exploitation. It's a modern football fable and an inescapable part of what it means to be a Premier League institution.
This weekend they fly to Singapore for the Barclays Asia Trophy, a curious construction which also features a Singapore Select XI, Everton and Stoke.
As well as being an exercise in Premier League expansionism, this jaunt also has enough sporting value to make it viable for Wenger. Either Everton or Stoke will be a good test ahead of the new season and there are a number of intriguing elements for those supporters planning to watch.
Petr Cech's debut
Arguably the biggest name in the squad of 27 travelling to Singapore is the club's headline summer acquisition. Cech is expected to play against the Singapore Select XI as he begins his reign as Arsenal No. 1.
These two games at the Barclays Asia Trophy will give us the first indications of how he will slot into his first new team in over a decade; how he will interact with his back four. David Ospina does not travel due to his participation in the Copa America and if Wojciech Szczesny happily adopts the role of Cech's understudy on this trip and shows a willingness to learn from the new arrival, it should confirm the Colombian's departure.
Another new signing to show off
Cech is not the only new arrival at Arsenal this summer. On the quiet, the club also brought in Jeff Reine-Adelaide from Lens. Supporters are likely to see their first glimpse of the 17-year-old midfielder of whom Wenger spoke very positively this week: "Adelaide is a player I have identified in France. He just won the European Championship with the U17s. He was born in 1998, which is always a good year for Arsenal ... you cannot have bad players in that year!
"He's an offensive player but he can develop into an all-round midfielder as well. At the moment he plays on the right or left but I think he can develop as a central midfielder as well."
Reine-Adelaide is a signing for the youth team at present but the thrill of the new applies to arrivals of any age, whether it's watching Gilles Grimandi score after five minutes of his debut against St Albans in 1997, or the latest Frenchman to arrive at Arsenal pulling on the shirt for the first time.
Crowley could give a glimpse into the future
Every so often a youth product emerges from the ranks and seems to magnetically attract expectation. Daniel Crowley, 17, is the one to watch among the current crop. A prodigiously talented playmaker who already has extensive highlights on YouTube and was described as a "wonderkid" 12 months ago, all Arsenal fans are aware of Crowley, who has been linked with a loan move to Birmingham City already this summer.
Inevitably compared to Jack Wilshere, who says he has a "great future," Crowley has trained with the first team on numerous occasions and travels to Singapore hoping to have the same kind of impact Wilshere had on his own debut for the first team against Barnet in July 2008, when to all in attendance it was immediately clear that this was a supreme 16-year-old talent who understood the game better than many of his senior colleagues.
It was a moment which allowed you to peek into Arsenal's future. Perhaps Crowley can provide another.
Zelalem's time to shine?
Two years ago in Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan, all the buzz was about a 16-year-old called Gedion Zelalem, who played with unusual élan, picking out imaginative passes and displaying such unbridled enthusiasm for the game.
Those performances left a deep imprint but the midfielder has only appeared twice for the club in senior matches since.
Already something of a sensation in the States, for whom he starred at the U20 World Cup this summer after deciding against representing Germany, Zelalem will be hoping for an impressive preseason to force himself into Wenger's plans for an already packed midfield.
Most likely he will go on loan, but the young man does not lack confidence. He said in June: "I'm going to go back for preseason and try to get into the first-team and play some games.
"If I can do that -- great. If not, I'll look to get out on loan somewhere. It's a dream come true to be at a club like Arsenal and I want to get into the first team this season, play minutes and start matches. I have high expectations of myself and if I was to be starting week in, week out, I wouldn't be surprised."
Such is the heady promise of preseason, when, briefly, all seems possible -- whether you are in leafy Austria or touring sweltering Asia.
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