Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis has sensationally claimed that club’s summer transfer window should be viewed as a success.
Supporters were left frustrated by Arsenal’s business this window after they sold Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to Liverpool on deadline day and failed to secure replacements for Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil – who are both set to leave for nothing next summer.
But Gazidis has dismissed criticism of Arsenal’s transfer window as a result of the hysteria surrounding the club following their 4-0 loss to Liverpool last week.
‘At the end of the window, reviewing all activity, we have once again improved the depth and quality of the squad,’ Gazidis wrote in an email sent to players and staff on Friday via the Daily Star.
‘Everything is coloured by results… a positive performance at Liverpool would have coloured this transfer window very differently,’ he continued.
‘We have had a poor start to the season but have the quality to turn it around and turn around performances and compete for the title’.
Arsenal were one of the few clubs in English football to turn a profit this window, with the £52million spent on Alexandre Lacazette the only expenditure.
But Gazidis claimed that keeping Sanchez and Ozil, who are both in the last year of their contracts, ‘was a clear statement of our ambitions and should help refute suggestions we are just about the money. That is simply nonsense’.
Arsenal saw a deadline day bid of £92m accepted by Monaco for Thomas Lemar but the deal fell through, resulting in Sanchez staying at the Emirates despite Manchester City offering £60m for the Chilean.
The Gunners have endured a poor start to the campaign with a scrappy 4-3 victory over Leicester followed by a 1-0 loss away at Stoke, before the humiliating performance at Anfield.
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