Is Gazidis going?
Chief executive believes a club 14th in Serie A offer him a better future than the one he has always insisted rank among the biggest in the world
The representatives of Arsenal’s fans’ groups will convene for one last time with their departing chief executive Ivan Gazidis in the Emirates boardroom before kick-off today, a relationship that in the progressively more discordant Stan Kroenke era has not always been happy.
Gazidis is to become chief executive of AC Milan in December, just four months after describing the Arsenal manager’s job as “the most attractive in world football”, and it will be fascinating to hear why the club in the lower half of Serie A represent a better career option. The concern for Arsenal supporters who will gather to listen is not so much what his decision says about the future of Milan, but what it says about the future of Arsenal under the Kroenke ownership.
Accompanied by Unai Emery, Gazidis’s last major appearance in front of the fans was on June 28 at an annual supporters’ event at the Emirates, where he was given a free run to do what one observer described as “CEO badge-kissing”. That being speeches on the “values” of the club as well as other earnest stuff on issues which no one realistically expects to change: safe standing or penalising the super-rich season-ticket holders who only turn up for the big games.
He rhapsodised about the new staff he had assembled and, at the club where discontent is just one homemade A4-size protest printout away, appealed for unity with the beguiling suggestion that anything was possible.
“I can’t guarantee we will win everything,” Gazidis said, “but what I can guarantee you, if we embark on this journey together and stick together, we can achieve great things.”
Less than three months later he tendered his resignation.
The rumours of the AC Milan move were already doing the rounds before that fan event, and it took so long to resolve that some felt Britain might leave the European Union before Gazidis made up his mind to leave Arsenal. But even so, interpreting the decision has been even harder. Yes of course, there is the money – there is always the money – but he will take control of a famous European name that finds itself snookered financially in the modern game and trapped in an outdated stadium it does not own.
The American hedge fund Elliott Management, led by Gazidis’s acquaintance Paul Singer, owns the club accidentally after the former Chinese owners failed to meet obligations over a loan. Milan have Rino Gattuso in charge, a much-loved former player whom no one is quite convinced is up to the job.
The club’s summer transfer window, affected by a Uefa financial fair play sanction, was not transformative. If Arsenal are currently trailing Europe’s leading clubs, AC Milan are in danger of being lapped.
It took 10 years for Gazidis to gently introduce change to the mysteriously isolated kingdom that was Arsenal’s Wengerland, and he did so with as much diplomacy as he could muster given that the old regime was so patently struggling. Even back at the event in June he took yet another question about why David Dein did it so much better in the old days, patiently pointing out that recruitment in the modern era has moved on a bit.
Yet for all the enthusiasm that was mustered around Emery’s arrival, there was no major summer investment, certainly not in a league that would suggest that the new manager is in charge of a team who hope to be competing with the Manchester clubs, or even a resurgent Liverpool.
Arsenal spent big in the summer of last year on Alexandre Lacazette and again in January on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in what looked like an attempt to regain their Champions League status. That, combined with the Mesut Ozil contract, has led their wage bill to spike.
The Kroenke family’s buy-out last month of Alisher Usmanov’s shares and the remaining smallholdings was achieved via a loan facility negotiated with Deutsche Bank, and Gazidis will know as well as anyone what that means for the club. The new American owners of Milan have already put more capital into a club they acquired by default – around €50million (£38million) in equity this summer to stabilise them – than the Kroenkes have ever bestowed upon Arsenal.
There will be no new chief executive at Arsenal, a position so critical that they have abolished it and promoted from within, suggesting that the limited transfer budget does not just apply to Emery’s squad.
Managing director Vinai Venkatesham and Raul Sanllehi, the director of football operations, have been left at the controls, but it was the man absent from the official handover picture whose presence now feels most significance.
That was Josh Kroenke, son of Stan and now deputy chairman at Arsenal, whose remarks took precedence in the club announcement.
A club with huge expectations and ever-reducing financial firepower. An absentee American owner in unchallenged control and his son installed as deputy chairman. As Gazidis surveyed the empty seats on Thursday for the visit of Vorskla Poltava in the club’s second straight Europa League campaign, he could be forgiven for wondering what Lake Como feels like in September.
Those who know Gazidis say that at 54 he wants one more career challenge, which turns out to be AC Milan, when it feels that it should be post-Wenger Arsenal, in many respects a whole new club. Faced with the choice of allowing the club to turn into a Wenger museum over recent years, Gazidis did as much to modernise the place, and update the staff and structure as he could while the old boy was still stalking the corridors and tutting at the changes.
Milan might have seven European Cups to their name, but they are also 16 places beneath Arsenal in the Deloitte Money League with a turnover that is €20million less than that of Southampton. Arsenal would not expect to lose a player to Milan, so why a chief executive?
Gazidis appealed for unity … and less than three months later he resigned
For all the young players who never made it from Chelsea’s academy to their first team there was always the example of Gary Cahill, whom Aston Villa did not consider good enough to persevere with, then sold to Bolton. In his early days with England, Cahill (left) must have set a record for most late call-ups, summoned to the team hotel to replace another withdrawal. If anything, his career is the template for those struggling to break through at top clubs. Leave to play regular football and trust that good performances will be noticed. Cahill’s career at Chelsea makes him one of the few Englishmen with the full set of domestic and European trophies – but it is his determination, at the age of 32, to leave and play every week that is as much testament to his character.