Ivan Gazidis has told the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust that the club have considered the consequences of Arsenal playing in the Europa League, and what that might mean for season ticket holders, ticket prices etc.
Unless Liverpool or Man City stumble, Arsenal will be facing a season without Champions League football for the first time in 18 years.
The top table of European football means clubs are offering that fare to fans, whereas a group stage against some of the lesser lights does not hold anywhere near the same appeal.
The AST wrote to the Arsenal chief executive to lay out their proposals regarding ticket pricing, the key points of which are:
- The three UEL Group stage games are not included in the Season Tickets. These should be treated similarly to League Cup games and priced at £10 and £20 with a general sale taking place for all fans. Season Ticket holders would be given first choice to purchase their existing seats.
- The subsequent UEL knock-out games to be priced at category C and B.
- The usual season ticket with seven cup tie credits should continue to apply and these seven cup tie credits to include all FA Cup games and the final knock-out stages of the UEL. This would work as is standard practice now with credits/debits being issued at the end of next season depending on how many home cup ties are played.
Their full communication to Gazidis can be read here, and his reply was as follows:
“Many thanks for your thoughtful letter about pricing for next season. Although it is something we don’t want to happen, we have obviously given this a good deal of thought both this season and in previous years.
“I can assure you that the key objectives you have identified – fairness and strong attendances – underpin the work we have done in this area. Should we end up in the Europa League we will announce our plans swiftly so people know what is happening.”
It’s good to know he’s still alive, I guess, having still not made any public comment about the future of Arsene Wenger whose contract is just six weeks away from expiration.
And quite what the club have planned we won’t know until after Sunday, but hopefully results go our way so we don’t have to find out.
It takes the pro-activity of the AST to draw comment. Says it all about the culture of silence from Stan and Ivan
This is ultimately their own doing. This is what happens when you don’t take the transfer market seriously in the summer. We are never prepared for a season to start which is nothing short of incompetence. This season has always been on the cards for a long long time. And it doesn’t look like we are going to be able to save ourselves this time. And you know what, relying on Middlesbrough to get a result away at Liverpool in order for us to qualify kind of says it all – we don’t deserve to be in The Champions League.… Read more »
I agree that we have been poor at least in the second half of the season but it’s worth remembering that assuming we manage 4 points from our last two we would have enough points to get at least 4th in past 7 seasons* barring one when we were 4th with 79 points (13/14 – 5th had 72 points).
There you go Wenger/Ivan some free spin for you.
*I could only be arsed checking 7 seasons.
I just wonder, the fuck they need all the ticket money for. EPL TV rights give them enough to run a country
Kroenke and his wife are worth more than 99 percent of US households combined.
It’s wrong from the fans to consider Europa league as less attractive. Of course, this is, but the games are entertaining and the level very good. AND at least there can be surprises unless for the CL…
The Championship is an entraining league too, doesn’t mean I want to pay Premier League prices to see it though.
Ah me ballacks
No doubt. It looks unlikely we will finish above 5th. With one game to go for Liverpool (against nothing to play for Boro), I can’t see them dropping points. And it is unlikely we will see City collapse with two games to go against West Brom and Watford. In which case the consequence of not achieving that sometimes unfairly despised 4th spot trophy will come home to roost. Not only do we risk losing key players but we will have to pay higher to attract the top pedigree players (See United) I think we will will have planned to cut… Read more »
Missing the CL for one season won’t make any difference to players joining us. But we can’t afford to miss out for 2 or 3 years consecutively, because then we will have problems getting the top players in.
Spuddies will have that problem as they’re still seen as an occasional CL participant (and their salary structure doesn’t help). The same for Everton, Leicester and Liverpoo! (although Liverpoo! do have a notable history that makes people continue to think of them as a top club).
i dont see how missing champions league wont make a difference in our transfer plan , if anything we need to analyze our entire transfer strategy altogether. i mean without champions league no top player would want to sign for us, certainly not the kind of players we have been buying like alexis , ozil , xhaka etc…the guy above said we could buy players from sevilla and monaco ,but im not so sure .i mean which top player would want to step down from a champions league semifinal contenders like monaco to join arsenal who are not even in… Read more »
Yernited managed to sign some top players last summer with no hope of CL games. I don’t think the idea that a team has to be in the CL in order to attract the best players holds much water. It’s part of the equation, to be sure, but there are many other factors that will influence someone’s decision to sign with us.
i did pointed about yernited and in the last part. sure united did not have champions league but they shelled some serious money to attract top players and managers . and the presence of managers like van gaal and mourinho meant more players followed them which again cost more money . the sheer amount of money they spend in last few seasons is staggering . arsenal does spend money but i dont think this stingy board will ever spend that kind of money .
We’ll still be considered by top players as a CL team, but just like Juve, Milan, Bayern etc, we’ll miss A year.
The problem will come if we start missing a couple or more years, or start yoyo’ing in and out of it… Then players won’t be so sure we’re a CL team.
As a Spurs fan (lifelong), it should not matter much for one season out of the CL, 2-3 as you say will definitely have an impact. Our wage structure has always been a problem, however, more so in recent times as we needed to stock pile cash for the new stadium, and typically run at 100M less in revenue per year less than Arsenal, that pays a lot of salaries. Then there is the attitude of the club, buy fringe developing talent, look for them to improve, sell some for profit, keep the best for the team, all while developing… Read more »
What do you think of shit…?
Thanks for taking the effort to write something thoughtful.
to be fair if we’re a top club, Liverpool are a top club….
Isco, yes please.
Other players I’ve been advocating for awhile for us to sign: Terence Kongolo and ahmed musa.
The former is a great replacement for koscielny (quick, left footed cb), and musa we should have gone after years ago- he’s at Leicester now, but he’s a wide forward player with bags of pace, and plenty of European experience with CSKA and now lfc.
I was bored reading this and wasn’t even sure who it was talking till I came across “certainly Elneny” and figured “it must be Santori”.
Keep fighting the good fight against that devil Elneny.
/rolleyes
no offense but you say similar things on all the threads you participate in. Can’t you just focus on the post itself and discipline yourself from basically spamming? please I enjoy reading comments but it gets to a point where its redundant.
I’m sorry if this offends the mods on here or you Santori.
I would prefer to be smitten, rather than smote by the smiter of smits, but then I am just a craggy Gooner, and would love to love – even Ivan! 😀
As was said, “whilst it’s good to know he’s still alive, I guess”, again frustrating to see that he’ll only talk about how something may affect the clubs pocket & finacially. Maybe they have talked about it at board room level, but “for years” as stated? Oh come on!!! Let’s not pretend that any conversation has started along the lines of “You know what, we really need to be more fair to fans if we’re not in the CL”. Any discussion has undoubtedly more been along the lines of “How can we get away with charging the same (or more)… Read more »
So you don’t think the massive corporate entity that is Arsenal Football Club has contingency plans in place, should their targets not be met?
Nope, I don’t.
Ex-Arsenal player coaches team to league title for the first time in years:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3565633/arsenal-giovanni-van-bronckhorst-feyenoord-arsene-wenger/
I know it’s Holland and I know it’s in The Sun, but still… the missus likes Gio.
Not forgetting Robin the Snake was from Feyenoord too.
An excellent pricing proposal and a positive-sounding response. I’m a season ticket holder & I have little interest in the group stages or early knockout rounds of the Europa Lge. On a related point, if we do end up in the Europa Lge, I hope we rotate the squad on a Thursday night and blood some youngsters too, like in the domestic cups. I don’t want to risk our Sunday Premier Lge results because our star players have been to Eastern Europe on the previous Thursday night. We’ve seen how not having Champs Lge football benefited both Leicester & Chelsea,… Read more »
I am very confused right now. Who is the bald man in the picture??
Wait, is he that Sevilla manager??
Ivan gazidis is still alive!?!
” we will announce our plans swiftly so people know what is happening.”
Hahahah hahha.
How do we know the reply is from Ivan? What if he is being held captive in a cellar and some overlord computer system is answering his e-mails, communication etc…..? It would explain his lack of public showings.
IMHO Gazidis is a disgrace. He has no idea about football in general, Arsenal, English football & English culture or keeping Alexis & other good players. He should go as should his boss. Kroenke is no better, they just both just seem to use Arsenal as a cash cow to fund other businesses.
The Arsenal is a football instituition the fans are its lifeblood they fund a lot with the very high ticket prices but they are shown no respect.
What, the AST couldn’t have put a little “P.S Is Arsene staying?” at the end of their letter?
As much as he should be respected Arsene completely blew that first match of the season against Liverpool ( who were very well prepared and the opposite has to be said of Arsenal ) … it was close to arrogance from him then and now these points are badly missed … anyway since they stopped ( due to the world promotion ) going to the pre-seasonal training camp in Austria they were nothing but poor at the start of each campaign. Greetings from Poland.
Well, we might be in the Europa League or we might not, depending upon results over the next six days. There’s even a scenario where we could have to play extra games to decide who gets into the Champions League and who doesn’t. Consider these five (not totally impossible) results: Arsenal 3-0 Sunderland Man City 3-3 West Brom Liverpool 0-1 Middlesbrough Watford 2-0 Man City Arsenal 0-0 Everton If those five results happen, then all three of us, City, and Liverpool will be on 73 points, +32 goal difference, and 75 goals scored. There will have to be a three-way… Read more »
Good math
Is that short for mathematic?
Haha, what? League Cup pricing on the Europa League? I’d love for that to be the case, but come on.. we know who we’re dealing with here. There’s no way that’ll be the case.