Category Archives: Arsenal

Where did it all go “wrong” for The Arsenal

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Let me be very clear to start with. This season has not been a failure. Arsenal did not bottle it. We can be very proud for what we achieved. And nothing has really gone that wrong for us in the title chase. And it is still not over!!!!

Victory on the last day of the season will see us gain the 2nd most points in our history, and just 1 less than the Invincibles. But football has changed and getting nearly 90 points is no longer enough to win the title. You need to be north of that. Finishing behind Manchester City is not a failure.

This season we have scored the most goals in our history and have the best defensive record in the league. We can be extremely proud of our 2023/24 campaign, even though we may well ultimately win nothing.

The playing side of the club does not wholesale changes. Those saying “we need XXX to compete with Manchester City” are ignoring the fact that we have competed with Manchester City in the last two seasons. And I am sure we will be up there again.

Despite all of this, there will be those who want to overly dissect our season, blame it on a single game, an individual or even the manager. These are probably the sort of people that blame all their life failures on others rather than their own decisions.

Aston Villa

Naturally, some fans will obsess over the Aston Villa defeat, and point to that game as the single reason we did not win the league. That is simply not true, just in the same way Tottenham did not gift Manchester City the league by losing to them.

The Premier League season is 38 games long, and no single game is the reason why you may win or lose the league.

One result also impacts subsequent results.

Sliding doors moments, the butterfly effect, chaos theory and so on. There is plenty of evidence out there to highlight that how one changing one action can alter future consequences.

There is no guarantee that had we beaten Villa, that we would not have succumbed to the pressure of being top and ended up dropping points against Chelsea, Tottenha, Manchester United or even Wolves.

Where it actually “went wrong”

If I was really looking for a period where the league was “lost” (Manchester City won the league, we did not lose it), it would be the one win in 5 in December.

Those last two defeats especially were tough to take at the time, especially when you consider how we dismantled West Ham in the return game and how quickly Fulham have capitulated at the later end of the season.

The above little run saw us go from top of the league after 15 games, 6 points clear of Manchester City, to level on points with them having played a game more.

That meant the ludicrous form we have shown in the second half of the season was merely keeping us up with City (and turning around a 5-point deficit to Liverpool), rather than keeping our noses ahead.

However, like with the Villa game, there is no guarantee that were we ahead as we entered 2024, our results would have been the same.

This run might not have cost us the league, but it left us with a lot to do. And we did not quite get there.

Arteta spending

A lot will be made of Mikel Arteta’s spending in the coming weeks. It will be rubbish spouted by lazy journalists and those fans that never wanted him to be our manager and will never change their tune on criticism.

Yes, Arteta has spent a small fortune on the squad since joining – around £590m in transfer fees – but he has still spent less than Manchester City during that period (who have spent around £630m).

What also needs to be taken into account is that Arteta’s spending has been on almost an entire new squad, taking us from 11th (when he took over) to 2nd.

Of the players that started 10 or more league games in 2019/20, only Bukayo Saka remains.

Meanwhile, Manchester City were 2nd in the league in 19/20, with Rodri, Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Ederson starting more games than any other City player. The likes of Kyle Walker, Phil Foden and John Stones were also at the club. That is nearly £300m worth of talent, which they then spent a further £630m adding to creating a squad that cost them nearly £1bn and take them from 2nd to 1st.

The likes of Ozil, Auba, Laca, Pepe, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Bellerin and others were all dumped gone without raising a penny for us. It was not Arteta’s fault that we had a huge amount of ageing, underperforming players on huge wages that no one else wanted to spend money on. Which brings me to my next point.

Another infographic going around concerns net spend. Net spend means nothing. It is lazy journalism produced by those who are unable to comprehend anything more complicated.

It has quickly been forgotten about that by shedding a lot of senior players, Edu and Arteta reduced Arsenal’s wage bill by nearly £100m. So whilst our “net transfer spend” might be comparable (and even higher), than our wages, the total outgoing by the time you factor in what each club is paying in wages leaves us a long way behind.

And next year?

Arteta has rebuilt a squad, spending just £590m to take us from 11th to 2nd whilst cutting our wage bill dramatically. This has put the club in its best position since 2006 – both on and off the pitch.

We are finishing 2nd (at worst) for the second time in 2 years whilst maintaining the 5th highest wage bill during that period. It is a huge overachievement.

What we now need to do is build on it.

A second year of Champions League football, and the revenue that brings in, alongside increasing commercial deals (companies that wanted nothing to do with us in 2019 are now lining up outside Highbury House) will allow us to continually invest and improve.

Arteta has shown that there are some squad players he does not trust (Nelson, Smith Rowe, and others). They will be let go and we will spend big (again), on 3 or 4 new players he does trust.

Whilst that expenditure will be big, in an attempt to take us from 2nd to 1st, it will be a lot less than what Man City have spent taking them from 2nd to 1st since 2020.

New contracts are being given out to secure the future of players that were on 5th placed wages and have proven themselves to be title contending stars. And we will keep moving forward as a club.

But even with spending more, recruiting better players, and Arteta evolving as he gains experience, it will still not be a failure to finish 2nd behind City.

City are state owned with near limitless resources. For every pound we can spend, they can spend 100. They already have some of the best players in the world, they have the best manager in the world, and will also spend big this summer (lets remember they outspent us last year, again).

The future is bright for Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. But that future also contains Manchester City. And they will not be easy to overtake.

UTA

Keenos

Player sales to finance 65% of Arsenal’s £180m summer spending spree

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In a recent blog, we touched on the subjects of amortisation and player book value.

If you do not have time to firstly read this blog, amortisation is the accounting tactic of spreading the cost of a player’s transfer fee over the length of his contract – with it being further amortised if a player extends.

Meanwhile, a player’s book value is the difference between what we bought a player for, minus what the value of the transfer fee already amortised for. Book value is a more important metric at assessing profit / loss of a player than the simplistic net profit.

To take this thinking a step further, and to try and look into the future, I thought it would be interesting to look at the players that could possibly leave us this summer and assess:

  • What their book value is
  • What profit (or loss) we are likely to see if they are sold
  • What saving they would make us in amortisation costs if they were sold

As discussed in the previous blog, book value is important as it is this difference that determines if you show a profit or loss in your accounts following a player sell.

Sell for less than their book value and you have to use additional funds to offset the difference, whilst it is the amount your sell for above the book value that becomes available to purchase replacements (and not the entire incoming transfer fee).

Assessing the amortisation saving is also important as that determines what can be spent on new incoming transfers without us needing to increase costs – IE if Player A was costing us £10m a year and we sold them, and signed Player B for £50m on a 5-year deal, our outgoings per year would be the same (without taking into account wage differences, agents fees and bonuses).

Together, book value profit determines your new cash flow when buying a player, whilst amortisation helps you understand how much space you have in your accounts to add additional costs (once the outgoing players costs have been taken off).

Note: Ramsdale’s book value has been incorrectly calculated. It should be £8m, with £16m amortised. That would increase his book profit to £17m and make the total book profit £126.12m.

Now a caveat before I start, as I know a few of you will be jumping to the comments straight away – the market value is taken from Transfermarkt. Whilst I understand that this is not accurate (as a player’s value is based on what a club will pay for them, not on an algorithm), it is a good place to start.

Every player that looks overvalued (Tavares, Nketiah) is offset by someone that is undervalued (Ramsdale, Lokonga). I think if we received north of £150m for the 8 players mentioned above, we will be doing well.

So this is where what we learned in the last blog can be put into practice.

£158m incoming transfer fees will equate to a book profit of £126.12m. That means that once the remaining unamortised transfer fees is accounted for, we will still be showing a nice profit.

When you consider I have a 5 man hitlist for the summer (yes, I know my list means nothing), which should come to around £180m in spending, we would only need to find an additional £70m in cash money to pay for these new signings.

When it comes to amortisation savings, things are maybe not quite as rosy.

The 5 players that did not come through our academy cost us in the region of £21.44m a year in amortisation costs. I am going to round this up to £21.5m. If you take me £180m and divide it by 5 (all likely to join on a 5 year contract), then the amortisation costs of those coming in will cost £36m. That is a difference of £14.5m

What is interesting is that the amortisation saving, over a 5 year period, comes to £107.5m. So not too far off the £126m we would make in book profit.

So I can comfortably say that if we sell the 8 players mentioned above, we can spend around £110m with it having zero impact on our finances – again, we are not taking into account wages yet. A blog for another day that.

So where does the additional £60m that we need in cash flow come from, and £14.5m in additional amortisation costs? Well that is not an easy answer.

The additional funds will come from one of two places – making savings and increasing further revenue.

Under making savings are things such as wages – if the 5 coming in cost less per annum than the 5 leaving, that saving can simply be transferred across to the amortisation line of the accounts (think when you adjust your budget on Football Manager).

You get Partey’s £200k salary off the wage bill and replace him with someone like Martin Zubimendi on £115k a week, that is a saving of £4.4m a year.

Likewise, I have not accounted for Mohamed Elneny and Cedric Soares. The pair will leave us for nothing at the end of the season (Elneny’s amortisation is so low after 8-years at the club it was not worth factoring in), but cost us around £6.5m a year in wages.

Considering they will not need to be replaced, that is a huge saving that can be put towards covering the increased outgoing.

The second one is further increasing revenue.

Champions League revenue for this year will make a huge difference. We can probably expect to earn around £80m more from this season’s European exploits in comparison to last year’s Europa League. That would more than pay the difference.

We can also look at selling some of the academy graduates that are not up to grade – I am thinking Arthur Okonkwo (who since writing is leaving us on a free) and Charlie Patino. you would expect those two to raise us around £10m combined. That £10m can go straight into purchasing new players.

So if we get things right in terms of outgoings this summer, we could comfortably finance a move for £180m worth of new signings without our costs increasing dramatically.

And whilst the net profit merchants will point to a £70-80m net spend, we will all know this does not really matter. What matters is what is in your accounts and that is amortisation and book value.

In the 3rd installment of this mini-series, I will explore the 5 players on my list, and the financial implications of signing them against what we could be selling. I will also further explore the salaries of those who might leave compared to those coming in and see if we can end up with a “net zero” summer.

Have a great day.

Keenos

Ange learns Tottenham have “a loser mentality fanbase.”

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“What will be will be”.

When I read that before the game it bought everything into clarity to me.

We were not reliant on a favour from Spurs, nor were Spurs going to help us win the league. This was just another game in a marathon of games to determine who the best team in the Premier League were. And in the end the result was what most of us were expecting.

Uninspiring Spurs

Spurs did not really turn up for the game, but this has nothing to do with them downing tools due to the title race situation

Since Ange won London Manager of the Year, Tottenham have played 12, and won just 5. They went into 2024 in the title race, with many online experts claiming they would run Manchester City all the way. They have collapsed in 2024 and the league table since 1 January has them 8th.

It was not their choice to put in an uninspiring performance against City. They are just an uninspiring team who embarrassingly celebrated beating Sheffield United at home back in September like they had won the league.

Whilst their fans celebrated like the winners they are not, yesterday’s defeat was their 5th in their last 6 games. They have dropped out of the title race, failed to finish top 4, and might drop out of the European places all together.

Ange is quickly learning why Tottenham are such a failure of a team. Their fans have a loser mentality.

Over the last 30-odd years, the biggest success for Tottenham fans is Arsenal not winning a trophy.

Whether that was 95, 99, 00, 06, 2011, 2019 or 2023. Tottenham have had so little success in the last 3 decades that they resort to celebrating our failure like it is their victory. And it was no different last night.

Whilst their fans celebrated losing a game at the final whistle, Ange Postecoglou was seething. There is a clear separation here between their manager who wants to win things, and their fans who are more interested in Arsenal not winning.

Tottenham fans may well have been celebrating into the night. But once again they were celebrating their another teams failure rather than their own success.

Tottenham are an uninspiring team with a loser mentality fanbase.

Magnificent City

Last season the narrative was that Arsenal had bottled it. That we had fallen off. What City had done in the 2nd half of the season went unnoticed – To clinch the title they went on a 12 game winning run, and won 14 from 15. It is form that would win the title in any year. Except this.

With Arsenal chasing them all the way, City have had to up their game to yet another level. They are on an unbeaten 22 game run, winning 18 and drawing 4. Zero losses. You need to praise that sort of form (regardless of the charges).

City are not top of the double because Arsenal bottled it, nor are they top because Spurs rolled over and let their bellies get tickled. City are top because they deserve it.

Brilliant Arsenal

The 18 games City played before they lifted the title in 2022/23, City’s form read: P 18 W 16 D 1 L 1. It is that form that won them the title.

12 months on and our form is eerily similar – P 17 W 15 D 1 L 1. Beat Everton on Saturday and we would have showed the exact same title winning from that City showed last season.

Arsenal’s form in the second half of the season has been exceptional. The only difference being our run started with 18 games to go, City’s with 23 games.

In the last 17 games, we have shown the form that would get us the equivalent of 102 points. Over the last 22 games our average drops to an equivalent of 86 points, whilst City’s maintained at 100.

What we now need to do is put together a full season – the first half of last season and the second half of this. But ev en that will not guarantee a title as Liverpool showed when they got 97 points and still finished second.

I am still very very proud of what they boys, and Mikel Arteta, have done this season. We have pushed City closer than last year, stayed in the title race longer, and all whilst playing Champions League football.

But proud does not win you trophies, and that is the next step for this Arsenal side. We do not want to become Spurs under Mauricio Pochetinno who celebrated just competing and never won anything. We are The Arsenal and we need to win trophies.

And it is not over…

A lot of people will be writing our obituaries today. But the title race is not yet over. It still goes down to that last game of the season.

I do not expect West Ham to get anything from Sunday’s game. They are nearly as bad as Tottenham with just 2 wins from their last 6. They have collapsed in the last dozen games and their European hopes have diminished and manager set to leave in the summer.

But where there is hope there is the potential of glory, and I will still be going Sunday with a little bit of belief. Not much, but a little.

The odds are against us. Not since 1989 has a team starting the last day top failed to win the league. But then we all know what happened that year.

UTA

Keenos