Arsenal vs Vorskla shows it takes more than bricks, mortar and executive kitchens to dine at the top table

It doesn’t matter who is in charge of Arsenal on the touchline or in the chief executive’s office, one thing is sure… the Emirates Stadium wasn’t built so that they could play Vorskla on a Thursday night.

With sincere respect to the Ukrainian side, it wasn’t even built so the Gunners could play in the Europa League.

By now, more than 12 years after it happened, the club’s move from Highbury was supposed to have made Arsenal among the most competitive outfits among the European football elite.

Yet the current net effect of the ground-switch – on the pitch at least - is that they are not even considered among this season’s title contenders having been exiled from the Champions League for two campaigns.

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That wasn’t the big idea back in 2006, although at least the bookies currently consider Arsenal second favourites behind Chelsea to win Uefa’s second tier competition.

This is the backdrop which I believe means there is still a considerable amount of resentment lurking among the faithful in north London.

There is a brooding undercurrent which asks: what happened to all the promises about the turbo-boost the new stadium would deliver? Why hasn’t the hugely increased revenue brought the championship back when we are paying the highest prices around for our seats?

It will never be far from the surface while the major transitions at Arsenal continue, the latest being the imminent departure of chief executive Ivan Gazidis for AC Milan.

Or, even more significantly, as the absentee American owner, Stan Kroenke, tightens his grip to take full control of the boardroom.

Fourteen seasons and counting without winning the Premier League title have bred a major under-current of dissatisfaction – one which finally swept Arsene Wenger from power last summer.

Yet, for all the rich promises made about how the construction of the stadium at Ashburton Grove would vastly increase the club’s power, it looks like those supporters need to buckle in for a good few seasons more without challenging for the biggest domestic prize.

How else can things be viewed? Gazidis’ departing statement suggested that he had taken things as far as they could go and it was time for him to allow someone else to steer the ship on a day-to-day basis.

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It is yet another telling measure of how much football has changed that the career moves of men like Gazidis make back page news these days.

A few decades back, most supporters of most clubs would have known the name of the chairman – usually a local big-wig – but not much else. There simply wasn’t any interest on the terraces.

Now owners, directors and negotiators are household names and the business side of the game is as avidly covered as events on the field – especially at the big clubs – because it’s all got so, well, big and important to the fortunes of the team.

That means the takeover of executive power by Raul Sanllehi and Vinai Venkatesham (below with Gazidis) will be scrutinised intently, coming as it does only three months after the appointment of a new coach, Unai Emery.

Sanllehi will now be Head of Football while Venkatesham is the new Managing Director.

Both are highly respected. Along with coach Emery, recruitment chief Sven Mislintat and with Kroenke’s son Josh expected to take a more dynamic role in the executive line-up at some stage, this is the team expected to make Arsenal powerful again.

The trouble is that they must attempt to do it while Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners are prepared to supply endless finance to increase their grip on the game. And while Manchester United’s commercial wealth expands daily. And Liverpool are finally matching their global corporate stature in the transfer market.

Given his record, Arsenal owner Kroenke simply is not going to enter a transfer arms race against any of those clubs. So the new executive regime isn’t likely to change very much at all in the title race.

It begins, in fact, following Gazidis’ resignation announcement on Tuesday, with Arsenal seventh in the table and in the Europa League.

It may be their level for a long while now. And it may sound a warning to those Tottenham fans hoping their move to a new ground will catapult them permanently to the top table. It takes more, much more than bricks and mortar and five-star executive kitchens to make that happen after all.

That gives a certain symbolism to the visit of tiny Vorskla to the Emirates this week.

Of course, small outfits will always arrive for cup ties. Lincoln City came as non-leaguers for the FA Cup quarter-final last year.

Such occasions are a rich part of football’s tradition. This Europa League tie, however, symbolises Arsenal’s diminished status in a stadium where they were meant to be swaggering among the aristocracy.