Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis says the club will continue to spend big money in order to compete at the highest level.

The Gunners have invested over £200m on players in the last three seasons, and most recently splashed £50m+ on striker Alexandre Lacazette from Lyon in what was a relatively expensive summer for Arsenal.

However, Arsenal have often been criticised for not spending enough on new players – with free-spending rivals such as Manchester United and City spending whatever it takes in order to help them mount a challenge. That is not always Arsene Wenger’s approach though, and the Frenchman is well known for his transfer nous.

Gazidis though insists that the club will continue to invest big money in the future, saying Arsenal must strive to be better than their competitors.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”
[Quotes sourced via Evening Standard]