Ivan Gazidis

I used to have hope for Gazidis. I guess he never recovered from handing his bollocks over to Wenger as he walked through the Emirates doors though.

Very much depends if we are about to sell someone for 120mill I guess…

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Seems an irrelevant figure… I am sure he does a lot of OPS stuff behind the scenes and has helped with global brand development and blah blah blah, but from building a football dynasty, he is surely as irrelevant as they come.

He’s been at the club what, 8 years? He’s not the manager, he’s entirely replaceable. And yet, here he is, talking utter contradictory shit.

I was on the fence but now I’m sure, this is the company line he’s spouting from the owner. No owner could think that Gazidis + Wenger was working, but the fact neither of them has moved says that this is what’s the owner wants. He won’t have suddenly just come up with “we’ve got no money m8”.

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Agreed - i have no problem with “hands off” ownership from a footballing perspective, but at some point results are results are results and ownership has to step up to make changes when things aren’t working. So we have to assume for now that the owner/Gazidis are complicit or the reason for our bank balance and that they are satisfied with our results based on current investment (i.e, another manager wouldn’t do better with same resources).

Either way, it is a f*ing depressing situation. I want AW gone but it may just mean more of the same regardless.

Juventus have made it clear they want to keep Pogba. They don’t need to sell him this summer.

They are consciously making these decisions behind the scenes and he’s got to come out with something to justify it. Like has been said earlier I’d be all in favor of this if we had some sort of genius scout bringing us the likes of Mahrez, Kante, and Vardy for like 10m or whatever it was. However we’ve had Park, Sanogo, the first Japanese guy who flopped, and now more guys who probably won’t turn into much.

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Bingo. This is also why its foolish to think that sacking Wenger will solve the club’s problems. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be a good (and probably necessary) start. But its pretty clear that Kroenke has directed the club to be run in a financially conservative way that prioritizes stability, profits, and club value over on-the-pitch success. Make sure there is a huge cash surplus, target top four, make at least a small profit every year that will look good to the broader community of investors, do everything to ensure that the value of the club keeps increasing and that you reap the financial windfalls of the current age of great monetary expansion in football. If you can win a major trophy, that is a nice added bonus but not really necessary. As a business model, it is completely reasonable (if somewhat conservative). As a model for running a football club, it leaves us far behind competitors who either have more money or who have owners willing to take risks, incur debts, and/or absorb losses in order to compete for trophies (and potentially increase their club’s value in the long term by buying on-the-field success, which translates into higher revenues).

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I didn’t wish to engage in any debate today but I feel like I should repeat a post i typed recently.

Let me emphasise that I could be wrong & am willing to hear the flaws in my viewpoint.

When Gazidis declared that we now have the funds to match, We finally were ready to match the market at the time.
Spending 30-40m on players & 100-150k in wages.
We had gone from 10-15m a player to 30-40m, which made the club confident in their assertion.
That situation stayed that way till last season. And Club were prepared for gradual changes in market.

However the madness of market just exponentially increased.
Football went from 60m for established Di Maria to 60m for young inexperienced Anthony Martial.
Pogba who is no where near the world’s best player is quoted at 100m.
Higuain who at 25 was not worth more than 30m is now third or fourth most expensive player.
Even centerbacks cost 30m.
Clubs like West Ham are bidding 30m plus.
Troy Deeney may cost 30 fucking millions…It’s just ridiculous.

I think Clubs is capable of spending money but Gazidis is simply referring to these transfer as something Arsenal can’t compete against.

Bigger Corporation with better market research have failed to gauge the market & act accordingly.
Yahoo couldn’t capitalise on their 90s dominance & are now sold to Verizon.
Nokia didn’t see the need for Touch Screen but are now extinct.

Maybe we just didn’t predict market inflation right or we did but there was no way to elevate the revenue to match the 50-70m per player spending capacity.

That said, Club is well capable of making 4 30m signings & should do so before end of transfer market.

I think conservative is the right word. There is a very reasonable ECONOMIC argument for increased investment… it does rather seem like they are afraid to “make big mistakes,” which speaks to some consistent performance financially rather than “invest heavily with the idea of improved valuation” - I think they believe it IS possible, but see the risk of poor financial performance leading to more of the same on the field and are just “finding their place” in the financial hierarchy of football teams, hoping to pull a LC but not willing to take risks to compete head-to-head.

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The thing is we dont need to elevate the revenue. We have it coming in already. And I’m quite happy to not engage in debate about that too. :slight_smile:

This is fair but I think the writing was on the wall re: the insanity with the advent of big oil and then secondly the massive influx of TV money in the new contracts. Anyone with half an economic brain could see over the last 3-4 years that there would be massive inflation overall. I think what perhaps caught them off guard (still, shame on them imho) is the magnitude of the mega-deal (Pogba 100mm+?)… although, to be fair, ManU sold Christiano Ronaldo for 70 million pounds SEVEN f*ing years ago. Bale was 3 years ago.

No, I think they were too smart to be truly “caught off guard” - I think they simply don’t have an aggressive, proactive plan that allows for “overspending” a year or two to jumpstart things from our days of paucity.

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Yup, they are most likely aware, just didn’t envisioned that smaller clubs would get this ambitious. (who knows perhaps next season smaller clubs would get back to old ways…TV money is new revenue)

I have no clue what their plan is to combat this situation.
As much as I hate to say this, Arsenal will have to suck it up & get dirty with others.

As someone who has lost love for club football, I can raise my arm in defeat & leave; but Arsenal can’t do that.
if Arsenal have to survive & prosper, They have to forego all ethics from here on, else we would become the next Milan.

Because we are afraid too take risks and are ok with the status quo we are on some morale high ground or something like that? Not sure where you’re getting at.

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Either that or they have to out execute and still spend near the top (which is what we do with wages) while remaining “responsible.” If we unearth more gems, if we have better squad management, tactics, and sprinkle in a plan that includes spending more aggressively ever couple of years… it is going to be hard to compete at the top every year… it is hard for the teams that spend even to do that, but we should not settle for what we have been given in the last couple of years and I dread the idea that the entire organization is complicit but it sure feels that way.

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Chelsea certainly got that right with their buy ‘all the youths & loan them till we find few good players out of them’ policy.
We may have to use that method to safeguard being lacking at so many positions & always having to approach the market for solutions.

Nah mate. I’ve defended policies and choices made by this club in the past and present. But there are some things fundamentally wrong at this club which won’t help us move forward.

It’s apologists like yourself who are looking at this only one sided. For example our current activity on the market. It has nothing to do with Arsenal, but it’s the ‘markets fault’, or so you are insinuating, why we can’t compete. ‘One who does not advance goes backwards’.

Why withdraw your post?

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I am in good mood these days so no need to troll anyone. :slight_smile:

You shouldn’t troll. You’re not good at it. Or try to be sharp in general, like in the meme-thread f.e… It’s not your thing.

Bitching about WOB’s and licking Wenger’s arse. That’s what you do.

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Trion would sooner die than see fault in the way the club is run from a footballing perspective. He’s been indoctrinated with the Arsenal business model and forgot that we’re actually a football club.

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