Gazidis happy with Arsenal future

Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis says that he's more than happy with the future of the club, recognising the huge amount of talent at manager Arsène Wenger's disposal.

The South African was reflecting upon the season just gone by and urged supporters and shareholders to take a step back and consider what the team had achieved.

Gazidis said: "I think perspective is very important. You need to take a distance when you assess the season.

"This club has over 120 years of history and if you're looking at where we are and how we're doing at this period of our development you have to say it is one of the special times, one of the golden times. I hope we don't forget to appreciate that.

"I arrived halfway through the campaign and obviously the first half was very difficult, losing five out of our first 14 games in the Premier League. We were struggling for consistency but then there was the period in the middle of the season when the team found that consistency.

"There were times when we were having trouble being really fluid and then of course the consistency came, the players started coming back from injury and everything began to look possible.

"We had a terrific run in the FA Cup and the Champions League and we were on the cusp of doing something very special with a young squad this year.

"Then unfortunately at the end we feel like we missed out on the prizes that we were aiming for. That's a disappointment for us but there's a lot to build on from the campaign. And as we look forward to next season we're very optimistic."

User Comments

gunman

Posted on 13 Jun, 2009 at 04:58 AM - Reply

hopefully we will win silverware with playing beautiful games next season

Katuramu Absolom -Uganda

Posted on 11 Jun, 2009 at 07:41 AM - Reply

Mr Chief Executive, you are right when you say that Arsenal has emproved alot. This is absolutely true. A team's performance is relative to other teams. The only teams which are now better than ours are three: MANU, Chealea and Liverpool. But these three teams have been investing alot of money in buying ready made players in last years. On contrary Arsenal has has been concetrating on grooming your tarlets and yet we have given those three teams hard life with our your boys. E.g in last premier league competition, we got four points from MANU, the other two we shared the points. Now the question is who has done the best? Obviously it is Arsenal. Many of us fans are fully behind mr Wenger's vision of making the club self financing and entertaining fans by playing attractive football like Arsenal plays. You can only be financially self reliant if you build capacity internally not always buying read made players who are very costly.
Now another qustion is: can we win trophies with the current policy? The answeer is yes. How ?
i) Cater for possible injuries by having effective alternative players in all positions.
ii) Make sure all players have chances of playing from time to time so that they do not loose skills and get frastuated and leave the club. The only way you can effect this is to alternate players, not to play the same players all the time while others are redundant( this is one of mr Wenger's weaknesses).
iii) Study your players and determine the most optimal combinations( who effectively plays with who, on this point there is a weakness in Arsenal).
iv) If by results a player proves anon performer, do not insist on giving him games replace him with other effective player.
v) If you observe a weakness any where, address that in time by acquiring an effective player even from out side if you can not do that internally.

In summary Arsenal can win trophies with those your players if mr Wenger and his technical team take effective measures during this recess.

May Almighty Lord bless Arsenal

DRAECABO PATRICK

Posted on 8 Jun, 2009 at 03:04 PM - Reply

Arsenal is on form,the only problem our team has is that we have limited instrumental players, whenever they have injury the team begins to have series of draws sometimes loss.We need to have some players who can come in effectively during such moments,otherwise we perfomed well last season and am optimistic that we will have something at hand the coming season.

Jaylene

Posted on 8 Jun, 2009 at 11:43 AM - Reply

Arsenal has had many problems this season with injuries and consistancy.Thou the team has had many problems they played excellent and made it to both the semi finals of the fa cup and the primier league.

tom pritchard

Posted on 8 Jun, 2009 at 09:10 AM - Reply

i think we was great this season, at the start of the season i didnt expect us to reach the FA, and champions league final because we lost flamini and hleb last summer and then we lost too many star players through the middle of the season. when we lost cesc,walcott and adebayor i thought we were doomed but the team's backup players were as good if not better and started of the unbeaten run. and then we lost most of our back four if we would have had our full defence who knows what would have happened.

User Comments

• Got something to say?
• Read comments

Vs chelsea