Overall report of the fan club meeting in April
After the meeting
After we talked with Gazidis, we were able to catch up with him [again] and Gonnella and we managed to pass some interesting questions and get interesting answers. For example, Gazidis was asked questions from Dido ("After Liverpool publicly acknowledged for the provision of Suarez, will anyone punish them and why Arsenal did not react in any way?") - He directly told us that we have the best lawyers and they knew everything perfectly regarding the clause and we were absolutely right to offer 40,000,001 and try to buy him, but our club has no legal right to escalate, since he is not a party to the contract containing the clause. In this kind of situation, the player must make a formal application to transfer tribunal UEFA (Gazidis is a member of this board).
He actually told us that in fact the situation with Suarez was only personal thoughts and guides and nothing has been reached towards the final stage and that if we as Arsenal football club complained, we and him [Luis] would have won the tribunal to rule in our law [Yes for the transfer] but this would have taken months for sure and the transfer wouldn't have happened before the January transfer window. Of course, our staff and the Board now know what Liverpool did and how Suarez's situation finished.
Gazidis was asked why he was so "short" when elaborating the issues to us and what is the problem with injuries but he said that he did not think that our staff is so short, and said, for example, compare our first team as a unit with the first team of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and see that there is no special and specific difference. He admitted, however, that there is a problem with the preparation and even gave an example of how teams like Chelsea have built the physical appearance of Hazard and Azpilicueta (players, who generally have no upsides in their physics) preparing them for aggressiveness in the EPL. He expressed that future investments in sport science and player development, will give instant effect and with those investments we will catch up with those that are in front of us on this case.
Another thing that Gonnella and Gazidis personally told us is that Sagna will leave the club this summer as he had a 3-year contract on the table since last year with very good parameters [pay rise], but so far he does not accept them.
Most interestingly, asked about speculation that there maybe problems regarding Koscielny's new contract –Gazidis continued and said that Koscielny has been offered a new contract and adds that the extension will be announced soon (the new deal can't be announced for now and fans will have to wait for another month for that, but he expressed absolute certainty that it'll be finished for sure).
The Bulgarian member who was at the meeting, adds that he didn't get the full answers regarding the football front of the meeting but personally, he says that he didn't expect it as that wasn't the biggest point of the meeting. Continues to say that it seems that the club have noticed their mistakes and that they have learned how the club should be ran and expects few things to change.
After the meeting, we [everyone present at the meeting] talked with the other club representatives regarding the subjects and it could be said that the discussion and the outcome of the meeting regarding the tickets can be seen as successful approach to the club, and perhaps in the future this will be the same way that the club will run their meetings. Another meeting will be held in September right after the summer transfer window.
During the final minutes of the meeting, everyone at the meeting paid tribute to the retiring Jill, who spent years at the club and did an amazing job. The club have chosen Mark Brindle as her replacement [check the email sent by the club as confirmation]. Congratulations to Mark and in all honesty, the club have picked the perfect person for this job and hopefully, the good work will continue to flow around the club.
Read on for supporters clubs announcement.
