Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta defends club's decision to make redundancies due to coronavirus pandemic
Mikel Arteta has defended Arsenal’s decision to make 55 members of staff redundant and said it had to be to make the club “more stable for the future”.
Arsenal announced earlier this month they were making redundancies because of the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Gunners’ first-team players and head coach Arteta had already agreed to a 12.5 per cent pay cut, which was reduced to 7.5 per cent when they won the FA Cup, while the club’s executive team have waived more than a third of their salaries over the next 12 months.
Arsenal, however, explained more had to be done as the club now faces “more significant and longer-lasting reductions in our revenue than we all hoped”.
Nonetheless they received a public backlash for making staff redundant, but Arteta has defended the decision.
“I understand [the criticism],” he said.
“If you are only looking at the financial point of view you can get some contradictory messages.
“But what is very clear is that the club had a very thorough plan of how they needed to restructure our club in order to function better and be more stable for the future.
“They were very convincing with every argument they gave to all of us that it was the right thing to do.
“Obviously it’s really sad and it was during the Covid period that we had to make the decision to get our players to contribute to the pay cuts.
“One of the reasons was to maintain some of them. We have been trying to do the right thing and the club is trying to protect the future as much as possible.
“The players were happy to contribute and help the club in this difficult financial position. That doesn’t mean that afterwards you are going to have a say in every decision made by the club. It can’t work like that.
“At the end of the day it wasn’t an obligation, it was a choice whether you wanted to do it or not.
“And we tried to do the right things as human beings to help a club that has been supporting us, in my case for many years, and in others cases here as well, whether you were injured, sick, performing or not performing.
“We believe it was the right thing to do and then the club has to be free to try to fight for the future in the most positive and stable way. And that’s how we do it.”
Read more
Arsenal XI vs Liverpool: Confirmed team news and predicted lineup
