Ivan Gazidis has claimed that Arsenal will ‘continue’ to invest all incomes back into the club, but has that been the case?
The first thing that fans look at when considering spending is of course the transfers that have come and gone, and on that front our income has simply not been spent, with AFC pocketing a net profit on transfers this summer.
Alexandre Lacazette was the only arrival to have cost a nominal fee, while Sead Kolasinac arrived on a free transfer, and the fans were aggrieved with the transfer window, but the team is turning things around at present, but have the club have done enough? Gazidis seems to believe they have.
“Our ambition is clear – to win major trophies,” Gazidis wrote in Arsenal’s full year results. “In order to compete at the top, we need to strive to be better than our competitors in everything we do.
“That is why during the past season we have continued to make substantial investments to drive the club forward. At the top of the pyramid, we have scaled up our investment in our first team squad significantly in recent years, spending a net £203m in transfer fees in the last three seasons.”
Gazidis added: “With few notable outward transfers during this period, our squad size had grown and we therefore had two major objectives for the summer transfer window. To add to the squad only where we could improve the quality of the players available to our manager – quality over quantity – and to reduce our overall squad size.
“To that end, we secured Sead Kolasinac and Alexandre Lacazette, our two primary targets for this transfer window. We also transferred or loaned a number of squad players to enhance the efficiency of our spending, to generate transfer revenue for reinvestment into the team and in some cases (for example, as in the case of Emi Martinez) to aid their development.
“At the same time, we retained Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil and promoted new young talent from our academy pipeline into the first team. These decisions, taken as a whole, have again strengthened our squad for this season’s competitions. We will continue this long-term approach of progressively reinvesting all our available revenue in our playing resources as we look forward.”
“We have transformed our training ground and completed a total rebuild of our academy,” Gazidis added. “We are focused on ensuring that the structures, in terms of people, expertise and facilities, in place around the manager and the players are the best that they can be.
“By getting that environment right, down to fine tuning the detail, we optimise our chances of achieving the results we want on the pitch.”
Do the fans see what has gone behind the scenes as building for a better future? Does more need to be done on transfers? Is our squad capable of challenging for all honours?
Pat J