Haverfordwest CEO preparing for Europe after ‘devastating’ Arsenal redundancy

Georgina Nicholas was “devastated” to lose her job at Arsenal due to the coronavirus pandemic but will now join them in Europe in her role as chief executive of JD Cymru Premier club Haverfordwest.

Nicholas spent eight years at Arsenal after managing multiple retail businesses in London’s West End and being headhunted by the Premier League club to work as their retail operations manager.

The 38-year-old “loved my job” of overseeing five stores, 27 managers and 300 people, but her world was turned upside down in August 2020 when Arsenal responded to the Covid crisis by announcing plans to make 55 staff redundant.

Nicholas was among those to get the dreaded call to join a Teams meeting and hear the bad news as Arsenal publicly defended their actions by saying they had looked at “every aspect of the club and our expenditure before reaching this point”.

She said: “I was devastated, it was really difficult to manage. It was also devastating to see people you spent so much time with lose their jobs.

“I was told: ‘Look, this is the situation we’re in, this is the decision the club has made and this is the result of that’. You’re told to go through a consultancy period where your job is potentially on the line and you can argue why you should stay in role.

“But it’s hard to argue when they’ve already made the decision. I did put some options forward about other roles, but I knew what was going to happen and that my life was going to change.”

Arsenal drew strong criticism at the time for making a swathe of redundancies in their football, commercial and administration departments.

But Nicholas remains philosophical about the call, saying: “Ultimately it was a business decision, nothing personal. It didn’t come as any shock to me.

“I’m certainly not going to criticise Arsenal because that was right for their business. I was a casualty of it as millions of other working people were during that period.”

Nicholas had left her native Pembrokeshire at the age of 17 but with few opportunities in the London retail market post-Covid she returned home to west Wales.

She helped her family provide care for her sick grandmother and briefly took a retail role that involved an “unfeasible” amount of travel across the UK.

A surreal moment for Haverfordwest County AFC! #BluebirdsInEurope pic.twitter.com/Gh9XG6Xjl4

— Haverfordwest County AFC (Q)