Arsenal try to make fools of us all
IVAN GAZIDIS’S salary may be testament to the old adage that you can fool most of the people most of the time, but how stupid does he think his staff are? After another transfer window with little on its side bar mystery, Arsenal’s chief executive sent an email offering perspective ‘amid all the hysteria’. Leaving aside the irony of a club who bid £92million for Thomas Lemar hours before the window closed presuming to lecture on hysterical acts, Gazidis also had an imaginative take on the Alexis Sanchez fiasco. Keeping hold of him was, Gazidis said, ‘a clear statement of our ambition’. This is rather different to the statement Manchester City believe they heard Arsenal make when they said they would sell Sanchez for £60m. City were so encouraged that they placed a party on the ground in Chile waiting to complete the deal. When Arsenal failed to secure Lemar it was called off. Not exactly a clear-headed statement of ambition, then. More a series of haphazard events. Wayne Rooney was probably driving less erratically when he was nicked by Cheshire Police in the early hours of Friday morning. Still, if Arsenal’s staff buy this, who knows what else they will fall for? Do you know the word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary, Mesut? Go on, look it up.