Arsenal are on the verge of agreeing the €30million deal of Lucas Torreira to Sampdoria. Most reports indicate that the deal is agreed between the clubs and the players representatives have agreed a contract in the region of €3million a year on a 5 year deal.

That means the total cost of the Torreira deal is €45million.

Due to the amortisation of the transfer fee over his 5 year contract, his transfer fee will increase club expenditure by €6million a year. Add this to his wages and the yearly increase in our accounts is €9million.

So how is he set to cost us nothing?

Let’s start with a quick conversion so that we do not have to deal in Euro’s (Brexit means Brexit). In pound sterling, the Torreira deal will cost £7.8m a year.

This summer, Arsenal have lost both Santi Cazorla and Jack Wilshere on a free transfer. The lack of fee for both is a frustration, but in terms of the accounts, they have no transfer fee being amortised.

According to Total Sportek, both Wilshere and Cazorla were on around £90,000 per week each. This works out at a combined £180,000 a week. You multiply this by 52 (how many weeks in a year) and it gives you £9.36million.

So having Wilshere and Cazorla on our books costs £1.56million a year more than the annual salary and amortised transfer fee of Lucas Torreira.

So it is not even costing the club nothing. Having Torreira instead of Wilshere and Cazorla actually saves the club money.

But we now have 1 player instead of two you complain.

That would be a valid argument if Santi Cazorla had played a game last year.

The Spaniard failed to make an appearance last season, and made just 8 league appearances before that. In 2016/17 it was just 15 league games. So 23 league appearances in 3 seasons.

In that same time, Wilshere has made just 13 league starts for Arsenal – 12 last season and 1 2 seasons prior with a loan spell at Bournemouth sandwiched in between. In fact, Wilshere has started just 22 games in the last 4 seasons at Arsenal.

So in Lucas Torreira, we are getting a player who has played in 71 Seira A games in the last 2 seasons. That is just 5 games missed. We are getting a player who will contribute more than the two departing players, for £1.56million less.

Of course, there are a couple of other factors to be considered, agents fees and signing on fees, but that would have bee the same with Jack Wilshere anyway.

How this majorly affects the club is that is free’s up a lot of money for further transfer.

In our last accounts, we showed a profit of nearly £50m. This means that we could have spent an additional £50m on amortised transfer fees, wages, etc and still be a well run football business.

By offsetting the costs of Torreira against the departing Cazorla and Wilshere, the result, as seen is, no change in Arsenal. That means that the surplus we currently have between revenue and expenditure remains the same. Therefore our budget is unaffected and Torreira costs us nothing.

That in turn leaves us more money in the pot to push forward for more players.

By my bag-of-a-fag-packet maths, bringing in Bernd Leno, Sokratis and Stephan Lichtsteiner have increased our yearly costs be ~£20-25m a year. That leaves us about £20m in the pot

We are heavily linked with Ever Banega. He would add further depth to the midfield and ensure we are well stocked in the middle of the park.

At 29 I imagine it would be a 3 year deal he is offered. This would cost us around £10m in wages and amortised transfer fee.

The remaining £10m could be spent on an attacking midfielder. Someone for £30m on a 5-year-£100k a week deal would cost us £11m.

Losing Wilshere and Carola and gaining Torreira free’s up the extra money within the budget to move for a 5^th and 6^th signing.

Some great things are happening at Arsenal.

Keenos