A little late to the party on this one, but on Thursday, The Arsenal announced that it will be Richard Garlick who replaces Vinai Venkatesham as the clubs Big Dawg in the summer.
Back in September last year, CEO Venkatesham announced that he will be stepping down from Arsenal at the end of the season after 14-years at the club (side note: a vacancy at Manchester City has opened up for next year). We blogged at the time as to how Arsenal’s Senior Management Team could look for 2024/25.
The favoured proposal was one which saw our Director of Football Operations, Richard Garlick, take the top role, with Edu and Julliet Slott reporting into him. The alternative would have been the unpopular Slott gaining more power.
At the time I said:
If the club want a less controversial figure [than Slott], they could opt for Garlick as CEO, with Edu and Slott reporting into him.
Garlick has been behind a lot of the improvements we have seen with the financial side of the team.
Since his appointment, we saw highly paid players depart which drove the wage bill down. This allowed for new investment in younger, exciting talent. He has also been key in the new contracts for the likes of Bukayo Saka, William Saliba and Gabriel Martinelli.
Garlick is a football man having been Director of Football Administration at West Brom before moving to the Premier League as Director of Football. But is he suitable for CEO?
A CEO in any business has to be a commercial strategic leader.
They would have a track record of track record of developing and delivering strategies, building successful teams and delivering growth and profit. It is not quite what Garlick does.
My feeling is that the CEO should be “business first, football second”.
You operate a strong and successful business model, a strong and successful football team should follow – the additional revenue leads to being able to recruit better players, coaches, etc.
If the CEO comes from a football administration background, their decisions could lead to decisions that might be a positive for the football side, but a negative for the business of Arsenal. The result could lead to financial insecurity.
Garlick was certainly my number one choice for the role, but I also questioned whether he had the right background to completely replace Vinai. It is therefore interesting that he is being appointed Managing Director rather than CEO.
Now some will argue that there is not much difference between the roles, and most of the time they both fulfil the same function within an organisation. Companies often have different names for almost identical roles, based on their culture (I find CEO to be very American, whilst MD is British).
Garlick joined us in 2021 from the Premier League, where he was Director of Football. He already has many fingers in many pies across the Premier League and the FA, reminiscent of David Dein.
As a result of his promotion, I would not be surprised if we see Slott take over some of Vinai’s more commercial roles. This would follow the fairly newly appointed Omar Mohammed Shaikh having taken some of Slott’s sales leadership duties off her last year.
It is good to see the Kroenke’s moving quickly and with clarity to replace Vinai, and avoiding the fiasco that resulted from Ivan Gazidis’s departure.
It feels right now that the club is in a good place on and off the pitch. Garlick is a football man and will continue to grow the club by putting the football first.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 