Not many Gooners could imagine Arsenal being as high as second in the League right now after our disastrous start to the season. Our usual horrendous injury list also disrupted the first half of our season, but since then we have gradually got our act together.
Our CEO Ivan Gazidis (like Wenger) regrets the early season problems, but sees things improving drastically in the next campaign. “We are happy with the way the squad has developed and we are very focused how we can make a positive end to the season,” Gazidis said in the Telegraph.
“After that it will be a question of how can we progress the team further so that we can have an even better season next year. We have a squad that’s clearly coming together. It’s a relatively young squad so it will continue to improve.
“We had a lot of new players this year who are beginning to gel together,” he added. “We had a lot of injuries at the beginning of the season as well. Also coming off a World Cup year there are a lot of complex issues.
“We were trying to put the jigsaws into the right places at the beginning of the season. I think everyone can see those pieces are now beginning to fit. It gives us great optimism for the future.”
Having said that, Gazidis also believes that the new Premier League TV deal will make the League even harder to win as the bonanza gets spent by less cash-rich sides. “I think the league is going to get more and more competitive,” he continued. “I do think that is a long-term trend. People talk about Financial Fair Play inhibiting competition.
“I think it’s completely the opposite because what it means is, you are going to see more Southamptons, more challenger teams coming in because revenue has gone up.
“Most of this new revenue is shared very, very equally around the league,”
“We are going to have teams … who will to be able to sign top class players. There will be teams that do it very, very well and they are going to be challenging for those top four places.”
Arsenal, as always, will be up there challenging as well. Just a couple of tweaks to cover players leaving, and perhaps one more marquee signing 🙂 and we will be good to go…..