Heard from someone with first hand experience of Ivan Gazidis yesterday.

Here’s an excerpt from the email they sent me –

“I met him briefly at an MLS game in Los Angeles five years ago. He impressed me with his passion for the game and his intelligence. There can't be many MDs/CEOs in the Premier League who have trodden the sacred turf at Wembley as a player as he did with Oxford University in two Varsity Matches! I'd imagine Stan Kroenke might have had something to do with pointing Arsenal in his direction. He certainly knows about player contracts and relations. He was responsible for relations with the MLS players' union, and had a lot to do with bringing David Beckham, Juan Pablo Ángel and Cuauhtémoc Blanco to MLS. He also stole Shaun Bartlett from under the noses of a load of top European scouts to take him to MLS after his outstanding performances for South Africa in the African Cup of Nations in 1996. Bartlett never became the player he should have been but a large number of top European clubs were after him at the time.”

The other positive sign that came out of yesterday’s video interview is the language Gazidis used about custodianship of the club. This idea has developed over the last couple of years, and in relation to Arsenal, was coined by the Arsenal Supporters' Trust.

The underlying principle is that the owners of the club are effectively looking after something on behalf of the fans. At the recent Arsenal AGM, the Trust distributed copies of a book called ‘Custodianship At Arsenal’ to attendees. (There were a limited number left over which The Gooner is selling here to help raise funds for the Trust).

In the view of the Trust, by looking after Arsenal, they are envisaging Arsenal’s directors running the club in a way that is healthy for its future, without thought of benefiting shareholders with dividend payments – extracting profits from the club that could otherwise be re-invested to improve Arsenal on and off the pitch. The Trust-produced book (which reproduces fascinating extracts from programmes and books relating to the running of the club since the 1930s) demonstrates how the history of the club’s ownership has had a positive effect on the team’s ability to compete.

Bruce Rioch only lasted a season, but other than that, the club have not had a revolving door policy with managers, much in the same way as can be said about board members. Let’s hope that Ivan Gazidis lives up to the promise of the initial signs, and on that basis takes Arsenal forward in the long run.