Vinai Venkatesham defends Arsenal redundancies and admits decision gave him 'sleepless nights'

Vinai Venkatesham has moved from managing director to chief executive as part of Arsenal's behind-the-scenes restructure
Arsenal FC via Getty Images
Simon Collings @sr_collings10 September 2020

Arsenal chief executive Vinai Venkatesham says the decision to make 55 members of staff redundant led to him having sleepless nights, but insists it had to be done to protect the long-term health of the club.

The news was announced by Arsenal earlier this month and it was explained at the time that the decision was made due to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Arsenal’s first-team players and Mikel Arteta had already agreed to a 12.5 per cent pay cut in April, while the executive team also agreed to waive more than a third of their salaries over the next 12 months.

The club, however, also made 55 members of staff redundant and Venkatesham has now explained how tough such a decision was.

It left Arsenal’s new chief executive having sleepless nights, but he explained it had to be done as the economic landscape has dramatically changed due to Covid-19.

“I’ve been at this club for ten years and this is not a big organisation, we don’t have hundreds of thousands of employees all around the world,” said Venkatesham.

“We’ve got hundreds of employees all based within 30 miles of each other. I know the people, I know their families, I know people very closely.

“So, to make a decision that we had to propose redundancies was really, really tough and we did that for the right reasons.

“We look ahead and we see a really, really different economy post-coronavirus and, actually, since we made the decision you have seen a few other things happen.

“You’ve seen the Government announcement on Thursday, which we hope won’t change the October 1 to get fans back in the stadium, but it’s possible that it will.

“You’ve seen the news from the Premier League around the China TV deal being terminated.

“Unfortunately we see a different economy ahead and we needed to restructure our organisation and make a really tough decision, and unfortunately my job is about making hard decisions to make sure that we have the right structure going forward to make sure we are leaner, faster and equipped to deal with a different economy and that’s really tough.

“I would be lying if I said there had not been sleepless nights and this week is a week where lots of people have been finding out about how it all lands, so this has been a really, really tough week at the football club.

“Tough for me, but much more tough for the people directly impacted.”

Arsenal’s decision to make staff redundant received a strong backlash due to the fact the club are still continuing to spend in the transfer market.

Arsenal received strong criticism for continuing to invest in new signings such as Willian after announcing staff redundancies
Arsenal FC via Getty Images

They have signed Willian on a free transfer from Chelsea on a wage of around £110,000-a-week, while Gabriel Magalhaes has arrived from Lille for £26million.

But Venkatesham explained: “We need to make sure that we are looking after the long-term health of this football club and, like any organisation, that means that you need to invest.

“If you work for an airline then you need to buy new planes. If you are working at a restaurant you need to invest in the restaurant. Here, we need to invest in the team and that’s what we’re doing.

“We’re investing in players because we want to be as successful as we possibly can be.

“I understand the position of redundancies and then investing. I think the jobs and positioning exists because it’s all people and in other organisations it’s all about machines. But when we invest as a football club, it’s predominantly with players.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in