Arsenal have the squad to win the League – says Gazidis

The Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis has made a long speech about how he thinks the Gunners are progressing, and believes our long-term plan is paying dividends and we are improving every season. He believes that Arsenal’s policy of developing youngsters and identifying unknown talent alongside a couple of superstars is the way to go forward in this newly super-competitive League.

“This approach, for us, gives us a very, very powerful balance because it’s not just about spending money but about how you spend your money and doing it wisely,” said Gazidis. “It’s about having a strong core philosophy and values within the club that players buy into and our fans can be proud of.

“These are all things that lead to success, and when you look at Arsenal over the last four or five years, there’s no question that the squad has been progressing in strength. We’ve got a squad now that we believe is capable of competing to win the premier league. We came in second last year, which was disappointing. But we’re on the right track.”

“We’re making progress in what is a fiercely competitive world, against competitors that have the capability to spend far more money than we do. We’re doing it by being very, very disciplined; spending money where we believe it makes a difference, but also giving young players a chance and believing in ourselves and our values.”

So that doesn’t sound like a statement of intent to go out and spend squillions on an established superstriker. If he thinks that this squad can win the League then he is placing a lot of faith in our current strike force of Giroud, Walcott (haha), Welbeck and Sanchez to fire us to the title. Unless Mr Asona is our new secret weapon!

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50 Comments

    1. Delusion ? First I thought the same but now I actually think it is Arsenal’s fans who are having a delusion. It’s the delusion that this a football club with its natural ambition to win a title. The truth the club is an investment for people who made their money by investing in sports metal and telecommunication. Their ambition (and with it Arsenal’s ambition) is to make money.

      Those people spend 350 million on a single boat for their own personal pleasure. They maybe just use 4 and 8 weeks a year but it’s worth it for them. Their ambition is personal wealth.

      Let’s be honest here. Arsenal could spend the same money as ManU this summer. Difference is that at ManU they understand that their fans would run away if they would not try hard to sign people to challenge for the title. It’s not just about winning a title but that one at least shows that they want to try it.

      If Arsene Wenger should stay or go is not even worth a discussion as long as the club does not show the ambition to win a title and rather prefer to fill the wallets of their investors.

      I am wondering if it’s actually me who is having the delusion and who should stop whining and start putting my money into anything else that is not related to Arsenal shirts tickets and TV rights?

      The whole thing just works for Arsenal because they found enough delusional people like me to make the top guys rich without ever wanting to win a title.

      1. Tomsenal, that is very well said. My personal theory is that when stadium debt was a millstone round our neck and we had to sell our best players, most fans accepted high ticket prices and top four with the promise of a better future.

        Stadium debt is now far more manageable and we do not have to sell our best players. However I think kroenke took over and thought, fans are happy with top four, lets put in minimum money to achieve top four, forget about trying to win the PL. And that is where we are now, more of the same with no better future.

        As you say, Changing manager will not change this philosophy. Cash reserves are about equal to the debt (according to latest available information) and i think cash reserves will stay as cash reserves.

      2. Tomsenal, you have a lot of thumbs up. Us fans see large cash reserves, essential players not being bought, high ticket prices, no PL title, concern about top players leaving through lack of ambition, and feel ripped off.

        Sucessfull businesses look after their customers, if customers feeling ripped off becomes widespread then business is no longer sucessful.

    2. What a retarded statement by the little Moran..the most stupid thing he could come out and say at this moment. unbelievable!!!! I seriously want him dead asap…it’s for everyone’s good

      1. Seancali, he is not a moron, he is the chief executive of a sucessful business which is owned by a hard nosed american businessman. He is setting the scene for a united front to sell the idea to us fans that arsenal is doing well, given our financial circumstances. We are being prudent to ensure the long term success of the club.

        Note success for us fans is on the field, success for the owner is on the balance sheet. But that is me splitting hairs!

    1. Now, can I get an encore? Do you want more?
      Cookin’ raw with the Brooklyn boy
      So for one last time I need y’all to roar
      Now what the hell are you waiting for?

  1. If the key ingredients to win the league are a striker who can’t score for 15 games then we are indeed capable. Otherwise we are ****ed

  2. ivans won awards for his business acumen, hes good at what he does.
    an they run that club like a unit, all for one one for all so of course hes gonna back arsene, thats the professional thing to do

    doesnt mean hes right and ..iWAIT did i just just use the musketeers slogan??
    am i implying he and wenger cross swords? no , im not

  3. I tell you I hate this guy even more than I hate Wenger now so the emotional torture and the position they have put us in.

    Shameless individuals with no passion for football and winning, just money.

      1. I swear muff the man angers me I might use my 007 links and hire snipers for him, or at least kidnap his cat or something.

        Arsenal is a good club, its just run by bad people.

  4. This again? Well, it will be enough when we(fans)say it’s enough. If we had all supported ‘Wenger/Board’ out toward the end of last season, we would have been seeing more respect from these ‘money grabbers’ running our dear AFC by now. But by the time the likes of West Ham or Everton have better team than us, we would all agree it is enough. But by then, sadly, it will be too late!

  5. Even IF I agreed with Gazidis about the progression, which I don’t because of the facts (a decline in performances, and results), my question would be – why on earth is it taking so long? Mourinho came back, and delivered the league in just his second season. I also have no doubt in my mind that Mourinho or Pep or even both, will win the league within two seasons. They will both out perform Wenger in Europe as well.

    Gazidis also says about spending wisely, which again, is completely false…just look at our wage bill! Despite not paying the big, big wages like other clubs do, and having a squad packed with average/rubbish players, Arsenal some how have one of the highest wage bills in the world! How is giving players like Walcott 140k a week, spending wisely?

  6. Urrrrrrrrgh! Enough’s enough. It’s official! I will hibernate and desist from wqatching the Arsenal next season, except a change happens.

    It’s better to watch and support Dortmund in the Bundesliga than follow these jokers who have succeeded in turning the Arsenal into a joke!

  7. Its like being a man in love with a prostitute…. No matter how much we hope she will change she just doesn’t but we already in love so we feel the pain

  8. Our business is done. There will be no striker. This confirms that.

    They have sold their season tickets and all will proceed as usual. My guess is the way other teams have strengthened that we will probably get 5th or 6th this season and lose our top players next season.

    Get ready for a bit of a helter skelter ride folks.

  9. IN OTHER WORDS ARSENAL ARE CLOSED FOR BUSINESS IN THIS TRANSFER WINDOW.
    ONCE AGAIN 2 FINGERS UP TO THE FAN’S from the Board and Wenger.

  10. It hurts me to say this, but I think Arsenal needs to have a very poor season for things to change at board and management level. Gone are the days when Arsenal were run by people who desired to win the league and cups, and now they only desire stuffing their pockets with money like thieves.

    1. iGooner

      the only problem with that is all our quality players will leave and our overpaid mediocre players will stay, it will take years to get back to 4th place

  11. Many of us fan crave for a striker to come into our club but we don’t discuss who we should offload to accommodate the new striker. Financially, we can’t have a 140k Walcott, Giroud, Sanchez, Campbell, Iwobi, Welbeck and a MEGA New Striker at the same time.
    While I am totally in support of the signing of a prolific striker, I want us to ship out some of the average players we have. Our group of talented mid fielders deserve a penetrative striker to finish their work. I am honestly sick and tired of this playing and passing in front of opponents’ 18 yards box we do in the past few seasons.

    1. I think the problem is 2 fold, first we pay our average players too much. This means most clubs interested in buying them will not want to pay salaries that high, meaning the players prefer to stay at Arsenal to collect their higher wages than to go to a club that pays them less. Secondly I believe Wenger is so stubborn that it is hard for him to admit defeat in selling once promising players.

      Take the the 35 million we spend on Xhaka add an other 20-25 of for the sale of Ox or Whilsire or Ramsey and you can buy a pretty good striker.

      If we really believed in our young and up and coming players like Iwobi we could afford to let one or more of our midfield players go.

      With Ozil first choice, Santi the next best creative midfielder IMO, do we even have place in the team for Ramsey and Wilshire and Ox? Unless you play them out of postilion of course.

  12. so, who will be first to ask for a transfer… Oil??.. Sanchez??…

    footballers want to win trophies, and we will not do this with the current team.

    All the top clubs have strengthened their squads, in reality, ours is weaker than last year, yes, we signed Xhaka, but Rosicky, Arteta and Flamini have left..

    Welbeck is out till February or March, and lets be honest, when has one of our long term injuries come back on time?.

    Giroud, Sanchez and Ozil will not be fair for the start of the season, so our hopes are on Walcott, who to be honest, only ever plays well when he’s negotiations a new contract..

    i wonder if i can put my season ticket on Ebay !!

  13. On previous posts i have argued that the money made avalable for transfers is set by the board in general and Kroenke in particular.

    I have looked at arsenals financial reports for the last five years, they show that we have always made a profit, debt is falling, cash reserves are rising. It is a clear consistent policy. The reason the board rates wenger so highly is that he operates within this financial policy and delivers what the board see as success and maintains income from the sale of tickets and mechandise.

    I have read many complaints about wenger, he is dictator and can do what he wants , just spend some money, there is money in the bank he should spend it etc.

    Kroenke is a muli billionaire owner with many sports franchises. I cannot believe that a manager tells Kroenke how much of the cash reserves can be spent on player transfers.

    Over the last five years cash reserves have increased by £62m and the maximum yearly fall has been £7m. In the years we bought ozil and sanchez cash reserves increased by £55m and £20m respectively. I think that Kroenke requires player transfers to be funded by current income, not from cash reserves

    I think that the latest comments from gazidis support my theory that it is the board/ kroenke that determine what money, if any is available from cash reserves to spend on player transfers.

    For info, the latest financial figures are Profit 24.7, cash reserves 228.2, debt 233.9, net debt 5.7, all in £m.

    1. What ever our cash position or available cash. It seems to me Wenger just doesn’t believe striker is our biggest weakness. If he was given only a small budget why did he spend it on Xhaka? Unless he didn’t rate Coq and Elneny?

      With Welbeck out for the season (as far as I would count on) we do not have a proven back-up for Giroud. Walcott is not proven and I don’t believe trusted by Wenger, Campbell is not a real striker and doesn’t seem to be rated by Wenger despite many of us believing he was one of the few bright spots last season and Sanchez might very well be too small to be a striker in the PL and also has not been given a chance to prove that.

      If we only had a budget of 30-50 he should and would have prioritized a striker if he believed we needed one. IMO the game has passed him by. Teams competing on all fronts need more than one experienced striker.

      1. Jansen, my point is that I think the funds available to wenger are far far less than the cash reserves we have and it is kroenke who determines what money is available. Many pundits, commentators and fans wrongly blame wenger for not spending the money.

        Your point is very valid, that wenger is not spending the money wisely. He should be focussed on a striker rather than another midfielder. This is a very valid point.

        1. I have said many times that it is Kroenke who controls this, bleeding the fans for their loyalty, and using the clubs money for his purposes. He will never front up to questions, and pushes his employees in, to answer them for him. Fans have to create an atmosphere of negative publicity for him at every game. It is the only way to get this leech out of our club. Regular chants of the well know, but unpublishable song on this forum beamed worldwide weak after weak will bring him the attention he tries so hard to hide from.

        2. jonm – I believe you are right and it makes sense that our cash reserves do not equal our spending budget for new players. Having said that a 50 million budget in this day and age is not very large. But as stated before we could manage our existing player inventory more aggressively for my liking.

          Theoretically if we had 40-50 to spend on new players and we managed to sell 30 to 40 million of existing players we could spend 70-90 on new players.

          The other question is, why are we spending so much less than the clubs we hope to compete with? I don’t see any of them go bankrupt and I am not sure if their stadiums and TV income are so much higher than ours. Perhaps our merchandising is much less and the longer we go without winning anything the less our global reach might be on merchandising income.

          Having said that I thought we were moving to a bigger stadium precisely to be able to compete with the big boys. Now we have moved to a bigger stadium and we still have to hear we can not spend near as much as our main rivals.

          To me in football, if you can not spend as much as your main rivals, they soon will no longer be your main rivals because they will leave behind.

          Our revenue potential must be maxed out; we can hardly increase our ticket prices and they are amongst the highest if not the highest in the PL. We can neither budget more CL revenue since we are going as far as can be expected in the CL with our current squad. TV revenue will also be hard to increase and we are also among the highest PL TV revenue earners. So where are we going to get more money from to be able to compete with the likes of Chelsea, Man U, City etc?

          There must be a serious flaw in our model somewhere because our ability to find cheap undiscovered talent is simply not impressive enough to make up for the gap in spending by our main competitors.

          Fall out of the top 4 (and CL places) as a result of structural flaws like ours, (rather than an event driven one like Man U or Chelsea) and even Kroenke will see the value of his asset reduced sharply and quickly.

    2. @jonm-
      Am sorry but this debate about who won’t spend at Arsenal I disagree with you. It is not the board..it is only one man who is the stumbling block to all our signings..ARSENE WENGER. Whenever he is asked why wont you buy? He says he must first push out a player inorder to create space for a new one…then when he is asked why he won’t sell a player to create space he says he first must secure a replacement inorder to not leave the team short of players..man this guy never runs out of excuses! These cat and mouse games he’s always playing with reporters is what confirms it for me.

      1. Quantic dream, thankyou for the polite disagreement. Too many on here are impolite and forget we are all arsenal fans and want arsenal to be sucessful. None of us know what is really going on at arsenal.

        I tend to think that if wenger gave the response that he cannot buy player X because the club will not release the money then that would be a direct criticism of Kroenke and he would not be arsenal manager for much longer.

        Here is a quote on 18 sept 2015 from the bbc website “”We’re focused on delivering more success,” said Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis. The cash reserves of £193.1m are intended to cover costs for a full season and are not solely designated for player transfers.”

        In 2015, arsenal yearly operating expenses without player transfers were £281.4m and cash reserves were £228.2m. This implies that the arsenal board consider that cash reserves need to be some £50m higher. If that is the case there is not much hope of cash reserves being released to buy players.

  14. So gazidis thinks we are improving every season, so how come our points total has fallen over the last three years from 79 points to 75 points to 71 points. Last season we were ten points behind the winner which is worse than three years ago.

    Basically the perceived improvement is due to the other traditional top teams going through turbulent times, be it fergie leaving, mourinho destroying chelsea or owners undermining a good manager part way through season.

    Those other teams now look set to improve dramatically, we also have west ham with more money due to new stadium for peppercorn rent and tottenham looking very dangerous.

    We seem to have complacency at arsenal, only leicester beat us last year and they will not do it again so we are ok.

    All a bit worrying.

    1. I also think there is an intangible effect on the current or old squad when new players come in.

      A few bad results and this group will or might think “shit here we go again” “we have walked this path before”. If you have a few new players I think the chance of the same mental responses playing up is far smaller.

      I would think a high caliber striker would also lift Ozil, Sanchez and the rest of the squad. Losing some early games with our old (Walcott, Giroud) strikers missing some easy chances will demotivated the likes of Ozil and Sanchez. Let alone what it will do to believe of the fans. If the fans believe the atmosphere around the club will also lift the squad. Why would the fans believe if the squad is hardly changed?

  15. I keep saying the same thing that Arsenal won’t spend big because AW has his price for what players are worth. We should stay away from the games until he has gone. Fans don’t care at the games anymore coz it’s the same thing over n over again. City United Chelsea spuds lestster Liverpool all spend and still want more and come January they will again but he just makes our lives shit. If the new lad gets hurt we have the same team as we did last season end of. Big guns like Ozill won’t sign on for more of this. Our captain is BFG ???? Man this should go to a player who plays week in week out someone who will be around for a good few years not BFG who should be finding a new club. We need players in we all no this but it won’t happen. AW OUT tbe yank OUT

  16. All this does is confirm what Ive said all summer long and that that we wont be seeing any more signings.
    As far as the baord and Gazidis are concerned they are content to allow things to chug along as they are as long as a net profit is made each season and they keep thier dividends on the share price.
    As long as the board keep earning there will be no changes at the emirates. Wenger does what he can but he’s part of the problem becuase he doesnt appear to either tell the board that he wants to spend to improve or he’s going to leave the club neither does he come and say whats treally happening and for all I know perhaps he agree’s with the boards policy.
    Either way despite what GFadizis says we WONT be winning the league or anything else with Giroud and Walcott up front and we will be loosing Ozil and Sanchez next summer . The fans can protest all they like but it makes no difference because no one in Power at Arsenal FC gives so much as a Sh!t for what the fans think.
    No new striker, No trophy next year and no changge It not like they would need to spend again for another three or four seasons if they were to spend big but they dont see it that way if they go on to win the EPL the enext step would be to win CL and that would require further big spending, why bother when you can get away with robbing the fans and promising things and then never delivering .why indeed?

  17. Should’ve gone to specsavers. It’s a shame that Gazidis does not apply his spending rules for the club, to the fees he demands from us when we have to renew our season tickets.

    Let us not forget they have an extra 100, yes that’s 100 million this year from TV rights. Where is that money going? Kroenke’s new ranch?

    1. In addition, if the squad do not improve, players like Ozil and Sanchez are coming to their peak times as footballers. Why should they want to waste this at a club that shows no ambition? Buying a decent players not just about placating the fans and improving the current team, but retaining the talent we already have.

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