Vinai Venkatesham Stresses Importance Of Champions League Football

Arsenal chief wants to see the club return to Europe’s top table…

Arsenal’s managing director Vinai Venkatesham stressed the importance of getting back into the Champions League next season, though he did make it clear that our financial model is not dependent on it, Sky Sports reports.

Vinai, who joined the club in 2010, is now the main ‘money man’ at the club following Ivan Gazidis’ departure and firmly immersed in our structural philosophy.

We’re currently experiencing two seasons outside of Europe’s premier club competition and while it hasn’t had such devastating effects, we did need to make some compromises in terms of our summer spending.

A ‘restricted budget’ at Arsenal was heavily reported last summer, even before we appointed Unai Emery which worried us in terms of potentially putting off top managers.

Emery took on the task and we added the likes of Bernd Leno, Stephan Lichsteiner, Sokratis, Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi – all for just over £70m.

“It is not going to be easy but I absolutely, 100 per cent believe Arsenal Football Club can get back to where it needs to get,” Vinai was quoted as saying.

“The first step we need to do is get back into the Champions League and then we need to start competing and then we need to start winning the biggest trophies in the game.

“We need to be realistic, last season we finished sixth and we had our second season in a row in the Europa League – that is not where we want this football club to be.

“I think it has an impact across the club – it is a material impact, financially, being in the Europa League and not the Champions League.”

Last year, it was reported that we made £38m in last season’s Europa League run as we reached the semi-final, a rather healthy sum on the surface (via Swiss Ramble).

However, it was almost half as much as the likes of Spurs, Man City and Chelsea who were all out of the competition by the end of the quarter-final stage.

In terms of the financial impact the club is dealt of being in Europe’s second-tier competition, Vinai said: “It is hard to put a number on it because it depends how well you do in the Europa League and how well you do in the Champions League and it depends on how many English clubs are in both.

“But it is tens of millions of pounds, it is a material impact being in the Europa League – so that is the financial bit of it.”