Rosy outlook for Arsenal finances

Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis claimed that the north London club could cope with the financial blow of missing the Champions League.

Gazidis said that it would be ‘foolish’ for any club to rely on revenue from the Champions League, which earned Arsenal 30 million euros in UEFA handouts when they reached the last 16 last season, and 52 million euros for runners-up Manchester United.

Arsene Wenger’s team are 15th in the Premier League after losing four of their opening seven league matches of the season, which has thrown into serious doubt their chances of finishing in the top four for the 15th consecutive campaign.

“We would rather qualify for it but we have a really sustainable model that can cope without it. Not just cope, but we can do well and compete,” Gazidis said.

“It would be very foolish to build a business model that relied on being in the Champions League for perpetuity and I don’t think any clubs do that and, if they do, then they probably aren’t being run as responsibly as they should be.”

Arsenal announced a 15 million pound pre-tax profit in their latest set of financial results and Gazidis says the club are well positioned for the future.

“Every club has the temptation to think that money is the answer to issues and ‘if we only spend just a little bit more, it would push us over the top of a curve’ and that is what drives the cycle of spending that you see in the game and that is not by any means always what is successful, actually,” he said.

“We will continue to act with discipline to make sure we have got a good short-term and long-term future.”

A number of players – including Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Adebayor, Gael Clichy and Mathieu Flamini – have left Arsenal in recent years for teams where they have negotiated higher salaries, but Gazidis denied that the club’s wage structure is holding them back.

He said: “We don’t have a salary ceiling. I don’t know where that story comes from. We have a very sophisticated business model that looks at what we need to do to compete today and what we need to do to compete next year and five years from now.”

“I’m comfortable we will be able to be competitive in whatever environment is created.”