Gazidis: We'll survive fifth finish

Arsenal's new chief executive Ivan Gazidis believes the club can survive a potential failure to qualify for the Champions League.

The Gunners are currently fifth in the Premier League, five points behind Aston Villa in the fourth qualification place, and face the possibility of not being in Europe's premier club competition next season.

While reaching the Champions League is viewed as imperative for the finances of clubs likes the Gunners, Gazidis believes they could cope with missing out. Arsenal generate more than £90million a year from ticket sales alone.

Gazidis said: "This club is in a position to withstand a year without Champions League qualification, not that we are anticipating it."

The 44-year-old took up his new post at 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 the practices he introduced, such as a 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," added Gazidis. "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 describes himself as a traditionalist, one whose instinct is to vote against any motion to play Premier League matches abroad.