Ivan Gazidis insists Arsenal are most consistent over-performing 'big club'

Ivan Gazidis launched a staunch defence of Arsenal's recent progress during the club's Annual General Meeting on Thursday, insisting the Gunners are the Premier League's most consistent over-performing "big" team.

In an assertion met with puzzlement and rancour by shareholders at the Emirates Stadium, the club's chief executive Gazidis contended that according to "objective metrics", Arsenal - who last season finished outside the top four for the first time in Arsene Wenger’s reign - were the League’s most consistent performers relative to expenditure.

Though he might point to the peaks and troughs endured by Chelsea and Manchester United to back up his point, Gazidis' message was not entirely well received during a meeting that ended with boos for chairman Sir Chips Keswick.

And the Arsenal chief admitted that the level the club are consistently hitting is not high enough after £200million in transfer expenditure over the last three seasons.

"There is one very accurate and objective way to assess how well and how consistently clubs perform in this area of transfers over time," Gazidis said. "This method is accurate enough to be the industry standard way to analyse.

"It is very simply to compare team performance by a series of objective metrics, usually league position or points, against expenditure on transfers.

"No club has a perfect record every year under this scrutiny but Arsenal has probably been, of the big clubs certainly, the most consistently over-performing team over time.

"That is, despite the criticism we get and the emotion here in the room, and despite some very loud subjective narratives and a great deal of inaccurate information.

"On an objective basis, we perform very well and have over a long period of time. However, I agree completely that we have to find ways to perform better."

An AGM that saw directors Keswick and Josh Kroenke have to go through the embarrassing process of being re-elected by poll voters after a display of rebellion by minority shareholders in the room also saw Gazidis offer increasingly impassioned defences of Arsenal from top to bottom.

In particular he came to the aid of Keswick, "a long-standing passionate Arsenal fan… beholden to no-one" who the club are "fortunate to have", as the mood turned particularly hostile towards the 77-year-old chairman.

Gazidis also noted the "many agendas at play" during the summer transfer window, insisting that Arsenal had never considered selling Shkodran Mustafi a year after his arrival.

He further noted that the club’s decision to retain their two best players for the final years of their contract, a matter on which they hesitated by agreeing a deal to sell Alexis Sanchez to Manchester City only to pull the plug when they couldn’t sign Thomas Lemar as a replacement, did not "fit the narrative" of majority shareholder Stan Kroenke’s critics.

"Probably, the most vocal criticism we've ever had at an annual general meeting was after we had transferred Robin van Persie in the last year of his contract," he said.

"That was one of the most difficult decisions we've ever had to make. We were told then that we were financially motivated and not focused on football.

"This summer, with stronger underlying financials, we've taken a different tact. The decisions on Alexis and Mesut Ozil are certainly not decisions that fit the narrative that we put money first.

"But we have taken that approach to give the club the best possible chance to compete for trophies this season. Again, there is a simple and accepted and objective way to measure performance, on the totality of decisions that a club makes and Arsenal do very well over time.

"It's quite possible that in retrospect, people may say that some of the decisions we have made his summer prove to be wrong or foolhardy.

"We need to be humble, continue to learn and continue to evolve our thinking and our approach but it's also absolutely clear that the decisions we've made don't fit the narrative from some that we are financially motivated.

"Strong inflation again in the transfer market has had a correlating effect on players’ salary demands.

"Of course, our focus here is on Arsenal but many clubs are facing challenges in their contract renewal discussions. That's a challenge that we have to and we will rise to."