The latest narrative peddled out to the club to favoured journalists, bloggers and large twitter accounts is that Arsenal have no money to spend. It’s lies. All lies.
The claim is that the signings of Alexandre Lacazette and Sead Kolasanic have taken up all our wage increase allocation. That there is no more in the pot. That (as one journo put it) there is no bread for our jam. It’s lies. All lies.
Let’s break it down.
Even after signing the above two players, Arsenal were in negotiation with Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil. Both had double your money contracts on the table worth at least £125k week more than their current deals.
This equates to more than £13m.
The deals have not been signed. So where has this £13m gone?
The justification could be (and this is justified) that it has been ring fenced. Put aside. The contracts for both players is still on the table, so the club has made sure the money is still there for it. But it is still £13m.
Then you have the Thomas Lemar deal. It is widely reported that we bid £50m-ish for the Frenchman, and that us targeting him had nothing to do with the futures of Mesut Ozil and Thomas Lemar. The deal is dead, what has happened to that £50m?
You the. Have the Thomas Lemar wages. You have to assume that he would have been on at least £100k a week if he had joined. That’s another £5m.
Combine all 3, we seem to have had £65m available in the summer for transfers and salaries – on top of the £45m and £10m in wages it cost for Lacazette and Kolasinac. So where has that £65m gone?
The answer is it has not gone anywhere. We have not signed anyone else. We have not offered any big new contracts out. The money is still there.
Then you add the outgoings.
Arsenal have sold Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (£40m), Szczesny (£10m), Gabriel (£10m), Gibbs (£7m), Toral (£3m) and Hinds (£2m). That is £65m in transfer fees that have come in.
There salaries (according to totalsportek.com) cone to around the £200k mark or £10m a year.
So where has his money gone? Again, no where.
So we have spent £45m and £200k a week in wages. We have bought in £65m and saved £200k a week in wages. The salaries of what has come in and what has gone out even themselves out.
So we have raised £20m more in players out over players in (I’m trying hard not to say the words “net spend”). Now I know a lot of this cash has only just come in, but to go full circle, we must return to the beginning of this blog.
What has happened to the money for Ozil and Sanchez? What has happened with the money and salaries for Thomas Lemar? We clearly do have money there.
Now before the window opened, it was widely reported by many that we would have around £100m in the bank for transfers and salaries. This is an approximate figure from the Arsenal Supporters Trust based on analysis of accounts.
So £55m of that has been taken up by Lacazette and Kolasinac. £13m of it set aside for Ozil and Sanchez.
The equals £68m. My simple months show we still had £32m of the original pot left. I can kind of see why we then struggled a bit with Lemar as we needed to sell a little to buy him at the continually increasing figure quoted by Lemar. But we had £32m there.
Add the £65m from player sales, and £10m in saved salaries, our pot to buy players and for salaries (excluding rises for Sanchez and Ozil) now stands at £107m.
So where has this money gone?
To repeat, it has gone?
This brings me to two logical thoughts:
- We do have money, Wenger is just choosing not to spend it
- We do have money, Kroenke is choosing not to spend it
Either way, we have the money, don’t believe the lies. The way we as fans are being treated by the clubs is muggy.
Arsenal have at least £100m to spend.
Ps: Ignore the rubbish about us being limited to just £7m in wage increases a year. This can be disregarded if the club can show that the increases have come from its own revenues. Which Arsenal can.
Keenos
Follow @KeenosAFC
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 