Gazidis meets the AST - official site scores own goal

Morning all, no shortage of material despite the fact the season has ended, so let's crack on into it.

Yesterday, Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis said the club had sufficient funds to invest this summer, qualifying that with the usual:

As always we’ll only do this on our timescale, on the basis of our manager’s assessments and not those of the media. We have the youngest squad in the Premier League and we need to translate that potential into results. To the extent that the manager thinks it’s necessary, we will use our resources to supplement the squad intelligently so that we can take that vital step forward.

Fairly bog standard stuff, in fairness. Last night though, Gazidis met members of the Arsenal Supporter's Trust and Arseblog had a correspondant there. Here are some of the main points of the meeting:

• Understandably, Gazidis didn’t engage in debate about the performance of individual players but he did say that the club was disappointed at the outcome of the season and promised a ‘thorough self-examination that would not be blind to where we fell short’. He said it was a review that had to be conducted in private but stressed that there were no sacred cows and all aspects of performance would be scrutinised. This included the injury situation with IG advising the meeting that Arsenal suffered from twice as much injury as Chelsea this season. A review of the club's medical set-up is part of the 'thorough examination'.
• On the financial side the meeting was told that the Highbury Square property development is now debt free meaning that every flat sold is contributing to profit the football club. While refusing to be drawn on the exact spending power available to the manager this season he did allude to the AST analysis being a good assessment. (For the record the AST financial analysis estimates that up to £30m is available for squad investment this summer).
• Ivan confirmed that both he and the entire Board back Arsene 100% and want him to sign a new contract. He expressed confidence that a contract will be settled ‘at the right time’ over the summer. It wasn’t an issue that was worrying him.
• He would certainly have picked up from the meeting the frustration felt by many supporters at the weakened teams fielded in the FA and League Cup. One supporter making a passionate case that this young team need to win any trophy to get over the line - from there a period of sustained success could be built.
• Finally all those who attend matches at the Emirates will be pleased that the work has already started to bring the Clock back into the stadium and that the colour quadrants will be replaced by the proper North/West/East/South.

I believe there will be some video footage of this available via the official site but those are the main points from the meeting. Nothing hugely unexpected about any of it to be honest. The stuff about transfers we've heard before, very much water off a duck's back now. I do think the issue is being clouded a bit by the usual disinformation about how fans want 'big name' signings. I certainly think there's room for a big name player provided he's the right man for the job. Ronaldinho is a big name player, that doesn't mean I want him to join us this summer.

What I believe the fans want more than anything is for the manager to see where the team needs to be strengthened and to buy players to do that. If we've all heard of them fine, if not, also fine provided they're good players. I said this last week, the common ground all Arsenal fans share right now, regardless of how positive or negative you feel about the team, is where this team needs to be improved. We're all in agreement, the pundits are singing with the one voice, there's nobody saying 'Well, if Arsenal just brought in a winger they'd be fine'. 

Listen to Robin van Persie, who says:

Maybe we need a bit more depth in the squad. If you are unlucky with players who play in a central role, it is a killer blow for the team. I have been injured, Cesc and Almunia have been in and out and Gallas as well. That is the spine of the team. Maybe we can do something there.

When one of your best players is talking about improving the spine of the team then it doesn't need the rest of us shouting about it. I know he speaks about players being out injured, and that's fair enough, but he can hardly say 'We need better players'. Fact is he wants the spine of this team made better and so do we.

The top end looks to be taken care of with the arrival of Chamakhattack, van Persie says he likes the look of him and is looking forward to the increased competition in the squad. Arsene says leave the rest to him and we'll see in July. There really isn't much more we can do than play the waiting game and deal with all the names as they come in.

And on that note - I have to say this is a massive fail on behalf of the official site. They have never engaged in transfer speculation before and I was a bit shocked to see stuff like that crop up yesterday. We might not get as much transfer information as we would like from Arsenal.com but that's 100% down to the fact that we don't sign as many players as we would like!

On the plus side we know that when there is a story there then it's official and we can trust it. All this bullshit column does is add credibility to rumours which are almost all complete bollocks. Why is the official Arsenal site linking us with Yaya Toure when in Spain the story is being run saying that Toure is being used as part of a swap deal for our captain? Is it right for the official site to engage in speculation regarding players whose arrival would almost certainly necessitate the departure of one of our existing players? Are they going to mention when our players are linked with other clubs?

There are dozens and dozens of websites which spend all their time with this kind of bullshit. There's an Arsenal Silly Season blog which tries to keep on top of all the rumours and does a good job of it too - because we know it's just collecting the stories which are vomited forth each morning when the transfer windows are open. For the official Arsenal website to get involved in this Tribal Footbalesque bollocks is ridiculous and smacks of traffic snatching, hit whoring of the worst kind. I'd urge them to reconsider, consign that one column to the bin, write it off as a bad idea and just carry on as if it never happened. The last thing we need is yet another website just reprinting the fiction that has been republished elsewhere over and over again.

Fans are getting these rumours well before they hit Arsenal.com anyway so they're dealing in old news in the main. I have been critical of the timing/headline writing of some stuff on there but for the most part I think it's a great resource for Arsenal fans. Engaging in transfer speculation and rumour dents its credibility and I hope they do something about it.

In other news there are reports that Arsenal will play a pre-season friendly against Legia Warsaw on August 7th at the Polish club's new stadium. Apparently this is part of the Fabianski deal (yeah, I heard all the 'Can we do a deal to give him back?' gags on Twitter yesterday!), and takes place the weekend after the Emirates Cup. Cheers to Rich for the info and I'll let you know if and when I hear any more.

An interesting story from Sport.co.uk which says that in January Arsene Wenger pulled out of a deal, at the 11th hour, to sign CSKA Moscow keeper Igor Akinfeev. There's not a lot of detail to it and normally I wouldn't even mention it, but in fairness to the lads at Sport they've had some good info about Arsenal transfers in recent times (Sagna and Vermaelen). All the same I'm doubtful, especially as the boss is on record, and off record, during that period talking about his faith in Almunia and Fabianski. 

A couple of other strikers linked - Ajax's Luis Suarez who could easily be the next Kezman, and Wolves Kevin Doyle.

Not much else happening this morning. One final thing - my good old chums at Modern Canvas Art have offered a discount to all Arseblog reader, so if you're looking for something to hang on your wall (Arshavin, Bergkamp etc), simply use the code ARSEBLOG at check out and you'll get a 10% discount. Not too shabby.

Right so, till tomorrow.