That's clearly not the simple interpretation though. But whatever floats your boat.

It has neither the hyperbolic connotation that some would make you believe.

It is fairly obvious that some fans hold an overinflated view of his CV and this is subsequently reflected in their unrealistic expectations. The leap between MLS and PL is like day and night and akin to a footballer making the same crossover. You also can't talk up someone's qualifications and then turn around and accuse him of incompetence. Within the context of his remit and what he was recruited to do, I think he's done alright and commercially he has played his part in our progressive improvement over the past couple of years. We still have some way to go but all this outpouring of grief over his comments in the media is a wasted emotion. His influence on footballing matters is non existent and he lacks sufficient gravitas to bring about the material change that people are expecting. It is no coincidence that several years after joining the club, we still operate an outdated organisational structure and Wenger's sphere of influence is still as extensive as ever.

That's not the same as getting worked up over the use of the word 'soccer'.

Try and focus on putting your points across rather than on the ad hominems.

I didn't.

General wrote:

Try and focus on putting your points across rather than on the ad hominems.

Being criticised for something you have said a few posts ago isn't an ad hominem attack.

Yawn

Gazidis has done a par job just like Wenger. I would expect our commercial situation to be how it is now as an average performance. Problem is the Ivan and Arsene like to talk a Real Madrid game while delivering a distinctly Arsenal return.

Oh man! Ivan got parred!

evoh_1 wrote:

Gazidis has done a par job just like Wenger. I would expect our commercial situation to be how it is now as an average performance. Problem is the Ivan and Arsene like to talk a Real Madrid game while delivering a distinctly Arsenal return.

To be fair we were already locked into some tricky commercial deals before he joined so there wasn't much room for manoeuvre. His ability to close out transfer deals is again dictated by this club's lack of ambition, resulting in some laughable failed bids. On the footballing front he's about as influential as the tea lady. This club needs a root and branch approach before it completely loses its identity and the sooner we can get rid of all 3 of them the better, starting with the pensioner next year.

Would you not expect us to have got a £30m a year deal for a shirt sponsor? We didn't get it early and we just negotiated what is in front of us, the stadium naming rights was a particularly large cop out.

Evoh, have you ever negotiated a deal?
You do realise that we re-negotiated our deal with Emirates early. When you are in that position, it is hard to just see everything go up on your end. This is what we got

• more money
• money arriving before the actual sponsorship years to help ease our cash flow situation

so we had to give something back. in this case, it was an extension on stadium naming rights.

An option would have been to buy out our contract from Emirates, incur penalties for leaving early, and then go find another sponsor, and hope that we are net better off after that.

In Wenger's presser ahead of the Chivas game Wenger said he sometimes has to calm Gazidis down when it comes to transfers. To me, it is pretty clear that Wenger is the main culprit when it comes to us not being willing to push the boat out.

Definitely.

Undoubtedly.

Claudius wrote:

Evoh, have you ever negotiated a deal?
You do realise that we re-negotiated our deal with Emirates early. When you are in that position, it is hard to just see everything go up on your end. This is what we got

• more money
• money arriving before the actual sponsorship years to help ease our cash flow situation

so we had to give something back. in this case, it was an extension on stadium naming rights.

An option would have been to buy out our contract from Emirates, incur penalties for leaving early, and then go find another sponsor, and hope that we are net better off after that.

Cash flow situation? I don't think that is a very sensible thing to bring up when we have been laying down cash each year.

As I said this is what I would expect, anything less would be rubbish. The fact is that it wasn't an amazing deal and leaves us constantly in a position of catching up on the likes of united and Chelsea on duration and value. Hardly the biggest issue anyway, it just increases the wage bill and allows us to be nominally better with our wage bill.

the important thing to note is that the cash-flow in both of these Emirates deal is not uniform across years. In both instances, it is frontloaded. the first deal was frontloaded to finance the stadium, thus it was providing us close to no money by the time we were negotiating the second deal. it was a sponsorship in name only.

however, even if money isn't coming in, the sponsorship might assume uniform distribution of monies across the years of sponsorship for contractual purposes. thus, exiting the deal would have likely required us to pay back the monies due in the last 2 years + a penalty.

the only concern i have with Emirates is just how heavily invested they are in sports. they are doing 130-150m pounds a year across various teams and competitions. always makes me wonder if we should go somewhere else and structure a maximum-exposure relationship with another party. for example, i would look east. companies like baidu, tencent, ping-an, alibaba, etc., have tons of money but aren't sponsoring global sports teams. why not one of them?