Ivan Gazidis: A man for modern football, not football fans

Ivan Gazidis’ departure seems too familiar, reminding fans that regardless of who else is involved, Stan Kroenke is always the kingmaker at Arsenal. He is a man for modern football, not for football fans.

Ivan Gazidis’ departure has been managed with the same incompetence that we saw with Arsene Wenger’s. Both have seen an inability to push for a clean-cut resolution, on Arsenal’s terms, with the ruthlessness that was required. The exits were dictated, not engineered.

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You need to be close to these situations in order to analyse them properly. The fact that the Atlantic sits between Stan Kroenke and Arsenal illustrates the mental metaphor as well as the physical reality.

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Gazidis was Kroenke’s mouthpiece and exactly who he needed to grow this division of his business empire in sports ownership. To the fans, then, he has been the most visible figurehead of the regime that swept into the club. The Captain Black to Kroenke’s Mysterons. The man with a commercial contract in one hand and an effects microphone in the other.

Everyone hates how distant and disinterested Kroenke is, but there has arguably been more disgust directed towards the man responsible for spinning so many tall tales about the ‘sustained title challenges’ (It’s even worse when you look back at them, for example in 2013, 2015 & 2017) whilst savagely plundering those business opportunities.

Unai Emery had expressed his lack of knowledge on Gazidis’ future, and you wonder if he now starts to feel like a cat flap in an elephant house – the same attitude that Wenger got beaten down by that continues to afflict the fans.

You can allow plenty of things in and out, but as soon as you remember Kroenke is the elephant, you realise you can’t change enough.

Gazidis was very good at what he was asked to do, but he will always be the one the fans could have a pop at. Suits don’t belong in football, but you still hope that they might turn out like David Dein, Ken Friar or the Hill-Woods. People with business acumen with a sense of responsibility to uphold the values of what is now old-fashioned football.

Ultimately, everyone associated with the club is like a kite dancing in a hurricane of Kroenke’s making. Gazidis was the man who floated to the top. Now he’s gone, there is only destruction left in its wake.