Ivan Gazdis Interview - New Spending Power

[Marc Overmars]

A certain amount of money has always been there, obviously not enough to buy the likes of Wazza but then no one was seriously demanding or expecting worldie signings like that over the past 5 years. The problem is that what he has had available to him has more often than not been wasted because his eye for talent has become somewhat blurred.

Wenget's decline is as much to do with his stubborn and inflexible approach to managing the squad as it is with not having the ability to buy whoever he wants.

[Power n Glory]

A certain amount of money has always been there, obviously not enough to buy the likes of Wazza but then no one was seriously demanding or expecting worldie signings like that over the past 5 years. The problem is that what he has had available to him has more often than not been wasted because his eye for talent has become somewhat blurred.

Wenget's decline is as much to do with his stubborn and inflexible approach to managing the squad as it is with not having the ability to buy whoever he wants.

That's what I'm talking about. We weren't expecting mega signings each window. It's just been a shock to see how poor the quality has been. When you look around the Prem and Europe in general, you can see we've wasted our money.

Q: You talked about the boffins who drew up the wage policy...?
IG: "They don't draw up the wage policy - that is not what I said. We are not advised. Arsene and I have a huge amount of experience in this area. Arsene is the guy that decides the talent that we want to have. We also have people who do analystics, at our direction, to help us to think about that."

Q: But on the back of a fag packet, if you ask a fan, do you want to pay Squillaci, Chamakh and Djourou 60k a week or pay 180k on a stellar signing, they'd say pay someone 180k a week. Why don't you do that?
"I'm not going to get into an individual debate on individual players. I'll come back to what I told you before..."

Q: But there are players nowhere near the first team on 60k a week?

We could have spent more wisely over the years. If Wenger doesn't spend again this season, are we going to again resort back to the theory that he's been restricted some how? He's never been a big spender as a manager. Every club has to work to a budget and I have no doubts about us having to be prudent over the Emirates period but if you buy cheap, you buy twice. That's what's happened here.