Liam Brady says Arsenal has made a lot of wrong decisions previously and that the Gunners will need some time before they can get back to the top of Premier League football again.
The Gunners have struggled for much of this campaign and they have just managed to turn a run of over seven domestic games without a win around by beating Chelsea yesterday.
Brady was speaking before the game and he said that Arsenal has squandered a lot of money on the signing of players that haven’t helped the team.
He said that they have wasted over £300m over the last few years in trying to get the club back to the top of the league table.
He slammed the signing of Nicolas Pepe for £72m, a fee that Lille has never seen before Arsenal splashed out on the underperforming Ivorian.
He says that things need to be done differently at the ownership and board level, else the club will continue to struggle.
‘If you look at Gazidis’s track record on buying players and that of Raul Sanllehi – who has recently left the club – the money that’s been spent in the last five or six years, you’re talking £300 to 350 million,’ Brady said on the Keys and Grey podcast.
‘Just look at the players we have signed under Sanllehi alone. Pepe for £72m. Lille have never sold a player for £72m. Gazidis had this idea he wanted to take the power of signing players away from the manager.
‘Unless things change with the owners and board we will be treading water for the next few years. I feel sorry for Mikel Arteta, having to unravel all this.
‘It’s going to take time. I can’t see them getting back to the top unless you’ve got a brilliant manager. Arteta might be that, there’s been pluses and minuses so far but he’s got to be given time to make sense of this.’