Vinai Venkatesham Outlines His Arsenal Vision & Transfer Strategy

Vinai Venkatesham has spoken at length about the new strategies Arsenal will put in place following the sudden departure of head of football Raul Sanllehi.

The Spaniard left his post after three years at the helm, with his role being taken over by the previous managing director, Venkatesham, who has been at the club in some capacity for a decade.

Owners Stan and Josh Kroenke said Venkatesham has their have full backing, being the right man to 'take the club forward', however there was still some uncertainty about how the club would operate under the new setup.

Speaking on the official Arsenal website, Venkatesham revealed that Mikel Arteta will work closely with technical director Edu, and that plans to strengthen in the transfer window are well under way: "We have, in Edu and Mikel, two individuals who are responsible for our technical plan.

"Of course, [that is] overseen by me and the board, but those two are the experts and they have a very, very clear plan about how they want to rebalance our squad in the short term, in the medium term and in the long term. We're starting to work on that immediately in this transfer window.

"There's of course lots of other areas that we're going to be addressing, but it's all about the same thing: trying to make this organisation as efficient as we possibly can and as high-performing as we possibly can. Because if we can do that, we give ourselves the best ability to deliver on our objectives."

The new board structure has been met with varying outlooks from supporters, some who welcome to change in direction while other fear for the continuous uncertainty behind the scenes. Venkatesham sought to clarify the situation, revealing the new board work 'very closely' alongside Arsenal's owners, while also delving into the club's transfer strategy.

"In terms of the board, we work very, very closely," he added. "So we're in regular contact with the owners pretty much every single day and we're all here to achieve the same thing and that's to push this football club forward and to get this club back where to where it needs to be.

"We've been active in the market and we saw recently that we brought in Willian from Chelsea, a signing that Edu and Mikel are really, really excited about and I'm sure our fans are excited about as well. And we'll continue to work hard this transfer window. I think it's going to be a challenging transfer window post-coronavirus, it's going to be unusual and it's going to be challenging, but we'll continue to work hard to deliver on our objectives to strengthen the squad and Edu and Mikel have a really clear plan around how they'd like to do that.

"Our objectives are to be back competing for and winning the biggest trophies in the game and if you're Arsenal Football Club and if you're in the Premier League, there's two trophies that really matter and that's the Premier League trophy and the Champions League trophy. That has to be the objectives of a football club like Arsenal. It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be straightforward, there's a whole load of competition but that has to be the objective for this football club."

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