Ivan Gazidis vows to invest 'all available revenue' in hunt for Arsenal trophies

Ivan Gazidis says Arsenal will continue taking a “long-term” view to their transfer business after investing over £200million on Arsene Wenger’s squad over the last three years.

Arsenal broke their transfer record during the summer, signing Alexandre Lacazette from Lyon in a deal that could be worth £52.7million, as well as bringing in Sead Kolasinac on a free transfer from Schalke.

Those have not been the only significant investments over recent seasons, with Granit Xhaka and Shkodran Mustafi having arrived for fees in excess of £30m.

At the same time Arsenal have run into trouble removing players that no longer have a role in Arsene Wenger’s squad from the wage bill while proving unable to keep pace with their rivals, slipping out of the Champions League for the first time in 20 years.

Gazidis acknowledged Arsenal will have to continue making “substantial investments” if they are to compete for silverware.

“Our ambition is clear - to win major trophies,” Gazidis wrote in Arsenal’s full year results. “In order to compete at the top, we need to strive to be better than our competitors in everything we do.

“That is why during the past season we have continued to make substantial investments to drive the club forward. At the top of the pyramid, we have scaled up our investment in our first team squad significantly in recent years, spending a net £203m in transfer fees in the last three seasons.”

Gazidis added: “With few notable outward transfers during this period, our squad size had grown and we therefore had two major objectives for the summer transfer window. To add to the squad only where we could improve the quality of the players available to our manager – quality over quantity – and to reduce our overall squad size.

“To that end, we secured Sead Kolasinac and Alexandre Lacazette, our two primary targets for this transfer window. We also transferred or loaned a number of squad players to enhance the efficiency of our spending, to generate transfer revenue for reinvestment into the team and in some cases (for example, as in the case of Emi Martinez) to aid their development.

“At the same time, we retained Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil and promoted new young talent from our academy pipeline into the first team. These decisions, taken as a whole, have again strengthened our squad for this season’s competitions. We will continue this long-term approach of progressively reinvesting all our available revenue in our playing resources as we look forward.”

Speaking before the end of a season that saw Arsenal endure a dramatic slump in form and finish fifth in the league, Gazidis had promised to be a “catalyst for change” over the summer.

Debate continues to rage as to how much effective change was achieved when Wenger agreed a new two-year contract with owner Stan Kroenke and Gazidis was forced to scrap his plans for a director of football after resistance from the manager.

However Arsenal did make changes to their staff, with fitness guru Darren Burgess, legal expert Huss Fahmy and ‘Invincible’-era goalkeeper Jens Lehmann joining the backroom setup.

“We have transformed our training ground and completed a total rebuild of our academy,” Gazidis added. “We are focused on ensuring that the structures, in terms of people, expertise and facilities, in place around the manager and the players are the best that they can be.

“By getting that environment right, down to fine tuning the detail, we optimise our chances of achieving the results we want on the pitch.”