After putting the finishing touches on what looks to be a very controversial transfer deadline move with Andrei Arshavin, newly minted Gunner Chief Executive and former MLS Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis has opened up on Arsene Wenger, the possibility of a salary cap in England and what would happen in Arsenal missed out on Champions League.

Via DailyMail 

The 44-year-old took up his new post at the Emirates Stadium last month after a 14-year association with Major League Soccer which he helped establish.

The South Africa-born Oxford graduate, though, is uncertain whether the Premier League could adopt practices such as the salary cap or even discarding promotion or relegation.

‘I’m not sure you can ever take the US sports business model and transplant it into European football,’ Gazidis continued. ‘I don’t think it would work for a range of different reasons, some of them logistical.

‘How do you get your arms around a worldwide market to impose a salary cap, for example? But there are cultural issues also.

‘Abandoning promotion and relegation may be a sounder business model, but culturally that is not acceptable.’

Gazidis, meanwhile, has expressed his desire to see Arsene Wenger follow in Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson’s footsteps and remain at Arsenal into a third decade.

Wenger’s current contract runs until 2011, taking him to 15 years in the job, but Gazidis said: ‘Arsene is someone who is intrinsically entwined in the club and feels a sense of responsibility for it and beyond that I think he loves it.

‘I don’t think there’s any situation that I can imagine that would lead to him wanting to leave.

‘He believes in the group of players he’s developing and I think he is very hungry for success and has real ambitions. I hope he will be here for many years to come.

‘We have one of the best managers in the world, if not the best, who has ­redefined the club and has taken us to a point where everyone [outside the club] is talking about fifth as a crisis.

‘Arsene isn’t happy to be in fifth place, but we believe and he believes, more importantly, in the group of young players that he has. He believes that there is unfinished business.

‘It’s difficult to imagine Arsenal without him now. I think he’s redefined the club. We think ourselves as champions and every year that we don’t win a championship is a disappointment to us.

‘There’s been times over the period of Sir Alex Ferguson when people have said that maybe time is up and yet he’s proved them all wrong and I know that Arsène has a lot more to give. Arsène is looking to the long term.’

While reaching the Champions League is viewed as imperative for the finances of clubs likes the Gunners, Gazidis (above) believes they could cope with missing out.

Gazidis told The Times: ‘This club is in a position to withstand a year without Champions League qualification, not that we are anticipating it.’

Image via Daylife