“We now have money to sign Rooney for £25m and pay him £200,000 per week” – Arsenal chief

Ivan Gazidis has revealed that Arsenal now have the financial muscle to complete a move for a player like Wayne Rooney.

The Gunners chief executive, shot down speculations that scoffed at the possibility of manager Arsene Wenger making a big bid for the want-away Manchester United striker, hinting that they were ready to revamp their rigid wage structure.

When he was asked whether Arsenal would consider an audacious bid for Rooney, if it involved the North London club paying United £25 million and offering Rooney £200,000 per week, he replied firmly: “Of course we could do that, we could do more than that,” he told reporters. “We have a certain amount which we’ve held in reserve. We also have new revenue streams coming on board and all of these things mean we can do things which would excite you.

“We can think about all kinds of things, but we don’t think about what’s going to excite our fans for the next couple of weeks, we think about what’s going to excite them when we start playing in August and hopefully when we’re in March and April and competing.

“For Arsene, it’s a question of getting the right players, the ones he believes in, not necessarily the players the fans want. He’s very disciplined about his beliefs and how he wants to structure a team. He has new tools available to him financially and I think he’ll make good use of them.

“What you will see is certainly an Arsenal team that is getting better over the next couple of years unless we make big mistakes, but historically we have got a manager who has got a proven of doing this extremely well over a long period of time.

“I think we deserve a little more credit than we’ve been given. Having said that, we’ve got more financial capability now and I’m sure that will help us to be able to secure the targets that Arsene wants.”

Gazidis admitted that the club are not able to compete in the transfer market for big players, with owners who have “unlimited resources”, but is looking forward to a successful 2013/2014 season.

“My own view is we are moving into a new phase where if we make our decisions well, if we get the right chemistry, and if we do a variety of other things as well, not just the new players that come in but the right kind of things on the football side, that we can compete with any club in the world,” he added.
“We’ve seen two clubs this year in the Champions League final and both of whom run responsible financial models. They are pretty fantastic teams and very exciting to watch. There’s no reason why we can’t do that.”