Lance Beauregarde
Ivan Gazidis has corrected some of the confusion caused by the statement he made back in June regarding Arsenal’s spending power, and the lack of transfer activity which proceeded it.
‘I’ve been widely quoted as saying that we could rival Bayern Munich as one of football’s financial powerhouses,’ he told the Male on Tuesday. ‘I would like to make it abundantly clear, however, that this is not what I said at all. ‘What I actually said was that we were sitting on a cash reserve which dwarfed those of some struggling African states, but that we were planning on keeping it all in a large vault and going swimming in it once a week just like Scrooge McDuck used to do on the children’s television cartoon series, Duck Tales. I may have said something about reviling moon bits and power outages, so maybe that’s where the confusion has come from.’
When asked in June if Arsenal could afford to pay £25m for a player and put him on £200,000 a week, Gazidis was reported as saying, ‘of course we could – we could do more than that.’ He now claims that this was taken out of context. ‘The media have cherry picked certain parts of what I said to sell papers,’ he insisted. ‘I did say that, but I went on to say that this would only be possible if we had any kind of ambition or desire to do anything other than sit around wearing Monopoly-style top hats, smoking cigars and rubbing our hands together whilst cackling in a decidedly sinister fashion, which, of course, we don’t.’
When quizzed on the statement, ‘we also have new revenue streams coming on board and all of these things mean we can do some things which would excite you,’ he explained that what he had meant by ‘some things that would excite you,’ was putting up some more pictures of ex-players around the ground and pretending that this justified charging fans ticket prices that would require most of them to become high class prostitutes just to raise the cash to go to a midweek Capital One Cup fixture against Bournemouth. He went on to clarify his assertion that ‘what excites Arsène isn’t necessarily what excites you,’ by explaining that ‘what excites Arsène is the thought of buying a French player who hasn’t been born yet but has established himself in a certain position, then playing him in an entirely new position because this is what he did with Thierry Henry and it worked, so there is no reason why it shouldn’t work with every other player ever, then move him back into his preferred position where he’ll have one good game, then sell him for £25 million to Manchester City.’
He also addressed the issue of what he had meant when he said the club was moving into a ‘new phase where … we can compete with any club in the world.’ ‘No,’ he stated, ‘I said we were moving into a new phase of doing things in exactly the same way we’ve always done, a bit like how if you’re sitting in a room watching paint dry, you can move into a new phase of continuing to watch the paint dry. It’s a well-established concept – look it up!’
Gazidis was also asked whether he thought Arsène Wenger was doing a good job, at which point his eyes glazed over. ‘He is doing a fantastic job,’ he said in a robotic monotone, ‘and we are lucky to have him as our manager.’ He then walked out of the room, crashing into a wall as he did so.
NB: none of the above quotes are actually attributable to Ivan Gazidis, apart from the fantastical, implausible ones. I’ll leave you to work out which ones those are.
