Ivan Gazidis

[Ollie the Optimist]

what exactly has he done for this club? he joined in January 2009. I just wanted to have a look at a few things he has done, whether he is good enough to be chief executive. Im not trying to start a wenger debate, nor am i trying to blame somoene else instead of wenger (i state why later in the post). I also think discussing gazidis would be interesting too.


Commerical

So we were already in the emirates and he did nothing for the orginal sponsorship agreements with emirates airline. This year, he has managed to neogiate a rise from 5 million a year from them to 30 million. Thats one of his major contributions and a pretty good one too in terms of comercial deals. And there is a supposed one with puma too but given that hasnt been confirmed or announced we wont count this one.

WHen you look at united, they have sponsors for everything, training kit, training ground, cars, seats in the dugout, every thing they can get sponsors logos on they do, and are pretty ruthless in cutting some deals too. I know they are globally a massive club so can attract lots of sponsors, but although we are not quite on uniteds level, we still have a huge global draw, just look at our recent tour. We have a few new sponsorship agreements with some nigerian bank, or indionesian telecoms company but they hardly bring in the money.

So the new emirates deal is major plus, an extra 25 million per year (and the naming rights too but i cant remember the figures for that deal) and if he finalises the puma deal then there is another 30 million a year there. so thats 55 million more each year then we currently get. We need that and it is quite impressive to get those figures, but those are 2 deals in 4 years. Personally i feel we should be doing more, getting more sponsors in like united. But these two deals have or will happen this year, he didnt do much for the first three years.

Transfers.

This is where i think gazidis' biggest faults lie. He talks the talk, but i havnt seen him walk the walk and i get hte impression he is happy to hide behind wenger. He is chief excutive of the football club, wenger is the manager. Wenger should have an idea of the money so that he can choose realistic targets in the rough budget set, and that should be it. He shouldnt be included in the deals, nor should he sign them off because we know wenger doesnt particually like to spend, dein said so himself. IF wenger wants suarez, then gazidis should sort the transfer out. I mean, would wenger be so angry that the club spent 50 million on a player when he only wants to spend 40 and therefore not play him? of course he wouldnt. Now im turning this into a dont blame wenger, blame the board because given current situation, if wenger is choosing not to spend then he is at fault, I'm just making arugments to question gazidis.

If Gazidis took control of transfers and the money, in a way that dein did, it would be better for our club. We wouldnt have wenger trying to do everything, he can just focus on the football and ask for players, the club then sort that out for him. Now these stories that are coming out, (the amy lawrence one for example) of wenger dithering and board wanting to spend big would be stopped if transfers were given over to the board.

The reason i think gazidis is happy to hide behind wenger, is that it gets blame off him. There was people moaning on twitter this morning, it was all blaming wenger for not spending, not a mention of gazidis. He clearly is happy with wenger because he talked of a new deal and wanting to offer wenger a new deal. For someone who isnt happy with him dithering, that doesnt make sense. This brings into question his leadership. which is my next paragraph.


Leadership

As chief excutive he hsould lead club off the field while the manager leads it on the field. Look at David Gill at united, he let fergie do the football side while he went off and sorted transfers, sponsorships, the two worked well together, just like wenger and dein.
I think Gazidis is quite weak, you never see him standing up to wenger. you hear these stories about them disagreeing over how much a player is worth, why doesnt he just buy him anyway? wenger wont turn round and refuse to play him. He could just tell wenger he is in charge of the moeny and if wenger wants suarez he will get him suarez whatever the cost. He talks a lot, says we can afford rooney etc but then nothing happens and the fans grow frustatred (me included) This causes more friction, arugements between AKBs and WOBs which is not good for the club.

I also think he makes mistakes in what he says. Telling the world we have loads of money and want to spend it might be nice for the fans to hear, but then he's jsut told the world we have moeny to spend. We saw madrid up their price for Higuain, liverpool wanting 50 million. While both of those could be the clubs valuing their players higher, i also think it could be taht htye know we have lots of money and are trying to get as much as possible. I would if i was a selling club and saw the buying club brag about having lots of money.

Tours
I think this is his best contrbution to the club as of yet. THese tours, while i dont know how much they bring to the club finacially during the tours, allow fans from other countries to see their club and show us to the world. I think these tours are a great thing and hopefully it allows us to find more ways of getting sponsorship, more money and allows us to become finacally stronger and invest more into the club

Dealings with the fans.

I think this is one of the best things he does. While i know all questions are vetted beforehand and it really is just a PR exercise, i dont know many others who speak to the fans, hold Q&A sessions with them etc like he does. Fair play to him for participiting in them, even if it is PR its still a good thing that he does.


Overall

I think he has lacked on commerical deals, only one major deal in his time of being here, hopefully another to be announced soon, isnt great. The club keep annoucing small deals with nigerian banks etc but they dont bring much. I think the tours are a very good thing but overall i think he is weak, he talks the talk but then doenst act on it, stories come out of wenger dithering, which may be hte case but he doesnt stand up to wenger like dein used to. He lets wenger control him instead of the other way round.

[Marc Overmars]

I'm not going to knock him for his commercial activity, I can't imagine it's easy for him to approach any company and get them to part with huge sums of money. Also the companies actually have to want to be associated with Arsenal in the first place - with a lack of success we might be a harder draw than we used to be. He's obviously implemented the lucrative tours to pull us in line with other clubs but other than that I'm not sure what major changes he could have done up to now. It's only recently certain deals came up for renewal so I would say his work on this front is still a work in progress.

Maybe he should be more hands on when it comes to transfers but don't forget this is a guy Wenget chose. The board are comfortable with the level of control he has so whatever it is Gazidis does Wenget must be ok with it.

[Özil's Panoramic View]

Haven't read through all that, but from the bits I read, I have give props for an absolutely great attempt to deflect blame off Wenger.

[Power n Glory]

Haven't read through all that, but from the bits I read, I have give props for an absolutely great attempt to deflect blame off Wenger.

:gp:

My thoughts exactly!

[Özil's Panoramic View]

apart from the bit where i clearly state wenger is to blame? yeah you missed that. twat

Probably did.

I did say I didn't read through it all, tbf.

[Cripps_orig]

Another one of Wengers failures.

[Niall_Quinn]

If what Gazidis says is true and we have improved the revenues by some £70mill per year then it's hard to say he hasn't done his job. Has he done any of it in the interest of the fans? Probably not. But his job will be to maximise returns for the shareholders, just as with any corporate entity. The confusion here is the shareholders don't cash in each year, they cash in in one big lump sump at the end of their stint. Seems to me Kroenke is going to do extremely well, not as well as the shocking crooks who went before him but he'll still get a tidy return. Gazidis will have played a key role.

[Grebbo]

He does what he's told, he's a just your typical corporate clone.

Wenger should have been putting pressure on the board these last few seasons.

[Harland]

I actually think Wenger has final say in the amount we bid for players. If you think about it, that makes total sense as Wenger is the person who oversees the football team and knows which positions need strengthening the most and for a club like ours without an unlimited bankroll, we need efficiency in the transfer market to fully utilise value for our warchest and therefore strengthen accordingly to our priorities.

Having said that, what we're seeing now is absolutely ridiculous. I think it's time to stop defending Wenger and pushing the blame towards the board. There are unsubstantiated rumours that Gazidis is urging Wenger to spend but the latter is unwilling to go above his own valuation of the player. This is coherent with what both Gazidis and Wenger said to mass media so I do not think this is far out at all.

[Özim]

Let's not kid ourselves, Wenger shoulders a lot of the blame here, he's just not willing to take a risk which would put extra pressure on him, he's taking the easy option by not spending the money available which would require him to somehow increase profits (through success).

This club has been run the Wenger way for a long time, we know he dislikes the spending in the game and believes a club that makes profits is a healthy club, we also know he likes to find unknown players move them all over the pitch and try to turn them into stars that's the Wenger way.

Gazidis is Wenger's yes man, the guy who agree's with Wenger and supports him whatever the scenario, after all Wenger had a say in who got the job, just like he seems to have a say in everything the club does.

Am I surprised he didn't go to a bigger club when given the chance, no because let's face it he'd be required to spend money and deliver success and who is convinced he can, he certainly isn't.

Arsenal is the easy option, massive wage, 100% backing from the board, a place he can do what he wants when he wants with relatively low pressure.

If he went out and bought three top quality players for 80 million and failed to deliver a trophy (and thus profit) he knows the board would have serious questions and in truth that's outside his comfort zone, he's happy enough getting 4th place and making the club a profit, in his economist eyes that's the equivalent of success on the pitch.

We've heard all the excuses, all the theories etc, but it's been long enough now to show that he just isn't really interested in spending, it goes against the grain.

[Harland]

Let's not kid ourselves, Wenger shoulders a lot of the blame here, he's just not willing to take a risk which would put extra pressure on him, he's taking the easy option by not spending the money available which would require him to somehow increase profits (through success).

This club has been run the Wenger way for a long time, we know he dislikes the spending in the game and believes a club that makes profits is a healthy club, we also know he likes to find unknown players move them all over the pitch and try to turn them into stars that's the Wenger way.

Gazidis is Wenger's yes man, the guy who agree's with Wenger and supports him whatever the scenario, after all Wenger had a say in who got the job, just like he seems to have a say in everything the club does.

Am I surprised he didn't go to a bigger club when given the chance, no because let's face it he'd be required to spend money and deliver success and who is convinced he can, he certainly isn't.

Arsenal is the easy option, massive wage, 100% backing from the board, a place he can do what he wants when he wants with relatively low pressure.

If he went out and bought three top quality players for 80 million and failed to deliver a trophy (and thus profit) he knows the board would have serious questions and in truth that's outside his comfort zone, he's happy enough getting 4th place and making the club a profit, in his economist eyes that's the equivalent of success on the pitch.

We've heard all the excuses, all the theories etc, but it's been long enough now to show that he just isn't really interested in spending, it goes against the grain.

I'm hoping a venemous atmosphere during the Emirates Cup would count for some pressure to Wenger and the board, but sadly I don't think it will.

[Özim]

I'm hoping a venemous atmosphere during the Emirates Cup would count for some pressure to Wenger and the board, but sadly I don't think it will.
I doubt it will have any impact, if you remember after the cup exits last season there was pressure on him and people were convinced he'd spend in January, one month later everything is forgotten and he doesn't spend a dime, then come the end of the season he's getting praise for his achievements...sadly things like this are forgotten very quickly. We had a horrible season last season, some awful results, dreadful performances and yet that all seems to be forgotten due to the fact we scraped 4th place.

[Niall_Quinn]

I'm hoping a venemous atmosphere during the Emirates Cup would count for some pressure to Wenger and the board, but sadly I don't think it will.

It'll be mostly school kids on a day out won't it? Fun for all the family. Doubt there will be any venom as such. Maybe some high pitched cheering.

[Harland]

I doubt it will have any impact, if you remember after the cup exits last season there was pressure on him and people were convinced he'd spend in January, one month later everything is forgotten and he doesn't spend a dime, then come the end of the season he's getting praise for his achievements...sadly things like this are forgotten very quickly. We had a horrible season last season, some awful results, dreadful performances and yet that all seems to be forgotten due to the fact we scraped 4th place.

Time for another demonstration by the fans me thinks.

Wasn't the last one organised by another Arsenal net forum?

[selassie]

Tell us what you really think Ollie? Go on admit it? You think Wenger is blameless in all of this don't you? ;) :d

The ironic bit about all of this is Wenger hired him. :d

On a serious note, I think Gazidis has done OK, he's more of a commercial man than Dein ever was, that's not a slight on Dein because he was pretty savvy with commercial deals but he was a football man at heart, he pushed Wenger and told him that he was going to spend to get the player he wanted, he backed wenger in corners and questioned him on the player recruitment policy etc.

Anyway, from a commercial point of view Gazidis is doing well, he came in and basically had to sort out new commercial deals because the ones we had running were rotten, we were way behind the times from a financial point of view, we had mid table prem club type "commercial" deals. Slowly but surely Gazidis is sorting that out, but honestly he couldn't do any worse than what was in place. We seem to be in very good financial shape now or so we are told, it's really hard to tell at Arsenal where we are financially now compared to where we were. I suppose a lot of that has to do with the previous lack of PR which Gazidis has gone some way to addressing.

[Ollie the Optimist]

i read someone on twitter today making the point taht gazidis promised us a big summer, world class players coming in etc. he made that promise, so if he fails to deliever this promise, should he be sacked?

its an interesting one, as far as i know, i cant remember wenger promsing world class players etc, well certainly not in the way gazidis did. so he made these promises and if nothing happens, he will blame wenger but is that fair? no. as this person said, he is CEO and therefore wengers boss. if he cant control his employee then he is weak. he made the promises, not wenger, i guess its fair to put a lot of blame on him if they fail to deliver on these promises.

[Cripps_orig]

Arsenal fans' group writes to Gazidis detailing 'deep concern' over state of club

The Black Scarf Movement issues the Gunners' chief executive with a damning open letter after perceived transfer failures saw the north Londoners beaten by Aston Villa on Saturday

A group of disgruntled Arsenal fans have written an open letter to chief executive Ivan Gazidis, expressing their "deep concern" with the state of the club.

The Gunners' 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa on the opening day of the Premier League season prompted the move, with a failure to act in the transfer market chief among the worries held by the Black Scarf Movement.

The open letter in full:

Dear Ivan,

We write to you as Arsenal's largest and fastest-rowing supporters' group, to convey our deep concern at the current state of our team going into the new season.

In early June, around season ticket renewal time, you were widely quoted following your Q&A event where you spoke about the club's new financial firepower and ambition moving forward. Many fans saw this as the club finally about to break free from the shackles of moving stadium; new commercial deals were coming into place, we had a vast amount of cash available in the bank, profit from the Queensland Road property project was secured, the vast increase in TV revenue was about to land on our doorstep, and after treading water since moving from Highbury it seemed as if we were finally going to push on.

What has happened since then is nothing short of a disgrace.

There have been noises coming out of the club over the summer that the market was slow, that other clubs weren't doing much, and that things take time if you're after top-quality players. We feel all of these were poor excuses, designed to deflect focus away from our shortcomings.

The only positive of the summer has been the release of many players who were generally considered 'dead wood' – and naturally this frees up more cash for investment in the team. But with the departure of these players, virtually no movement has come in the opposite direction and we're now left with a squad severely lacking in depth and experience. Indeed, the squad registered for the Champions League in the last week had to be padded out with kids.

As a group we have been concerned for some time that the Board running our club has lost sight of the raison d'etre - i.e. we are Arsenal Football Club; not a business purely focused on posting profits year after year.

You will have seen the results of our end-of-season survey, which came out in favour of Arsene Wenger but with 70 per cent stating that he has too much control over transfer negotiations and setting of wage levels at the club. The same survey revealed that 87% of fans feel the current board of Arsenal is out of touch with the feeling among fans and that 73% feel less valued by the club since we moved stadium.

It is our view as a group that the board of Arsenal is too relaxed about the competitiveness of our team, and that as long as a top-four place is secured, it is a case of 'job done'. This should never be the case but, despite hearing you say you're not happy every time we end a season with nothing to really cheer about, nothing changes.

So in June following your statement of intent, fans were rightly hopeful but what has happened since then? Yet again we've spent the summer dithering while others around us have strengthened, and once more we start the season playing catch-up. With five competitive matches due before the transfer window closes, there is every chance that our season could be dealt a hammer blow before we've had a chance to take stock, and this weekend's defeat at home to Aston Villa should act as a huge wake-up call.

We are now in a situation where we're faced with a carbon copy of 2011, where it took an 8-2 humiliation at Manchester United to force a 'trolley dash' on the final day of the transfer window. Of course by then it was too late. For Arsenal to be in that situation once is unacceptable; for it to happen twice in three years will be unforgivable.

It is imperative that the board of Arsenal does its job and manages the Manager – an employee of the club you are supposed to be running. What are Arsene Wenger's targets / KPIs set by the Board every year? Is the he not even answerable to the board, with free rein to do as he pleases as long as he helps the business achieve a profit? Is he having to do all the running himself when it comes to transfers or if support is there, is he taking it? Clarity is required here because something clearly isn't right at the club when it comes to the acquisition of new players.

You put all the focus on the Arsene Wenger yourself at that Q&A session in June, but to fans there is little evidence of questions being asked of him; this despite approaching the end of the transfer window with no sign of needed, established quality coming in. Does the board feel that it's been a good summer? Because we've now lost our opening game of the season, our squad is already blitzed by injury, once more today there were fans coming to blows in the stands. As a board member, does this even bother you?

Of course if we used the funds we do have available, brought in top-quality players and competed for prizes, in would come better commercial deals, you wouldn't have as much trouble trying to get corporate punters back into the stadium, and naturally the more successful we are it becomes easier to attract better players. Or is the board too short-sighted to realise this?

A competitive team isn't one which scrapes the position of fourth-best team in the league on the final day of the season and gets dumped out of domestic cup competitions by lower-league opposition; you need to realise that most fans are aware of this fact. They're not duped by finishing in a position which may result in us playing in the Champions League. So what, if the cash from that competition is simply banked and never sees the light of day?

It should be noted that as long term fans of The Arsenal we've seen plenty of lean times and poor teams over the years. Silverware isn't the be-all and end-all; we follow this club out of pure love and will always do so. However, loyal matchgoing fans continue to walk away from the Emirates Stadium, unwilling to part with their hard-earned cash when they feel let down and lied to by our board. We pay the highest ticket prices in football after being sold a dream, but it's always a case of 'jam tomorrow' and many have seen through the spin.

Enough is enough.

If the board is actually intent on making Arsenal a successful force in football once again, changes have to be made. Arsene Wenger should have experienced, qualified support to help bring in top-quality players, and he needs to be managed effectively if the right business isn't being done.

Or if the board is simply intent on milking the Arsenal brand for all its worth to the detriment of the team (but to the benefit of our bank account), season-ticket prices at Emirates Stadium should be reduced accordingly. Our loyal fans should no longer have to bear the burden after doing so for many years.

Make no mistake, if there is not significant improvement in our playing squad over the next couple of weeks, the rapidly growing anger in the stands will become difficult to overturn. There hasn't been a poisonous atmosphere like this at Arsenal for over 30 years and the board has simply stood by, while things have gone from bad to worse. I am sure you appreciate, this can no longer happen.

We look forward to your response in due course.

Yours faithfully,

Where Has Our Arsenal Gone (the Black Scarf Movement)

Got bored reading it so stopped after a few paragraphs.

Fans aren't happy. Not enough insults directed at Wenger in the letter

[Özim]

Arsenal's largest and fastest-rowing supporters' group

To be honest, I don't think Gazidis will be particularly interested in rowing even if they are the fastest, I could be wrong of course.

[Niall_Quinn]

To be honest, I don't think Gazidis will be particularly interested in rowing even if they are the fastest, I could be wrong of course.

He's probably a lot more interested in rowing than football, so this could be an interesting angle to finally get his attention.