A much later than normal blog today as it has been a busy morning in the Keenos household.
The grass is cut, meat is bought for the BBQ and car has been given a run out. It is only now I am getting a moments rest.
In all honesty, I am glad I have had a busy morning as it has taken my mind off what might or might not happen tomorrow. It does a feel a little like the eve of a cup final and the nerves are beginning to creep in.
The obvious difference between tomorrow and a cup final is it is not Arsenal v Manchester City. We face Everton whilst they are at home to West Ham. It is not a case of “we win, we lift a trophy”.
I have seen a few people make comparisons with this season to 1989. That what we did in Anfield should be enough to give us all hope. And yes you are right. But also wrong.
In 1989 it was still in our hands. We knew if we won by two or more clear goals we would lift the title. Tomorrow it is not in our hands.
We could beat Everton 10-nil and still finish 2nd if Manchester City get the victory. The only way we are winning is if we win our game and City fail to beat West Ham. And I just can not see City failing to beat West Ham.
Tomorrow is more like 99 than 89 to me. We are relying on others rather than ourselves.
But that does not mean I think it is a foregone conclusion. Like Mikel Arteta, I believe the dream is still alive. And I will certainly be laying there in bed tonight thinking about what could happen tomorrow.
So plans for tomorrow?
For me it will be head to Islington for 11ish (it is a 4pm kick off remember). Go to a cafe on Upper Street before heading to The George (now called the Stag) for around 3 hours of drinking.
Sadly, The George is once again up for sale, and has been for some months. I would not be surprised the 13ish weeks of no Arsenal will see the end once again and we will return in August to see it boarded up. Once again I will be looking for a new home for my pre and post-match beers (and no, I am not going Brewers!).
If tomorrow is the last day for the second incarnation of The George, hopefully we see it off well regardless of winning the league or not.
For the rest of today it will be a case of keeping myself occupied. A few ciders in the garden before the BBQ goes on. And then it is a focus on tomorrow and the biggest question – will it be shorts weather?
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.
£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.
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.
MagnificentCity
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.
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 