Why will Arsenal suffer a freeze on increasing its wage bill, as the media suggests?

Instead the Telegraph continues by saying, “The situation will improve next summer when a new shirt sponsorship and kit deal cycle begins.  The new main Emirates shirt deal, alongside a first separate sleeve sponsor, will alone bring in around £20 million more annually.

“Adidas are expected to manufacture the kit from 2019 instead of Puma, with Arsenal also hoping for an increase on that deal approaching £20 million a year.”

Again the implication is we are living from hand to mouth – waiting for the next increased deals to come in before we can buy.   That indeed is worrying after the club has brought in a new manager, given him a reported budget of £50m for transfers, and then increased it to £70m – which he then dutifully stopped at, despite the media suggesting we were going to buy a variety of players in the last few days of the window, all of who had fees of £40m or more.

The problem here is that there is an absolute lack of detail or explanation, and it has all suddenly arrived now, at this moment.

We know that Arsenal made a pre-tax profit of £44.6million up to May 31, 2017.  Figures for the year to 2018 have not yet been released.  And although turnover is not money that can be spent in the way profits can, that too was up to £422.8m last year.

It was also said at the time of the release of those figures that the club had considerable cash reserves and was fully prepared financially for a period in the Europa League.   Indeed although the Europa is certainly not the Champions League in terms of income, getting as far as Arsenal did this last season, will have eased the difference a little.

Of course we don’t know if the Telegraph report is journalistic fantasy of the “quick write out a piece knocking Arsenal can you, we haven’t done one for 18 hours,” variety, or whether the club is having to live totally within its means, even at a time of restructuring under a new manager.

If the latter then we are living at a huge disadvantage compared to the rest of  the clubs that finished in the top six last time around.

Arsenal spent (net) £63.8m this transfer window, compared with Chelsea (£83.5m), Liverpool (£158.3m), Manchester city (£29.6m), Manchester United (£43.5m) and Tottenham nothing.

In January the figures were as below with the total for both windows then following that in brackets

• Arsenal £7.9m (£71.7m)
• Chelsea £50m (£133.5m)
• Liverpool £31m profit (£127.3m)
• Manchester City £61.2m (£90.8m)
• Manchester Utd  nothing (£43.5m)
• Tottenham £25m (£25m)

So we are spending considerably less than the amount of all our rivals except Man U and Tottenham are spending, and we have a distance to make up.

Of course we were able to do this in the past because Mr Wenger was constantly able to pluck brilliant youngsters out of  the air, and turn them into first team regulars.  It looks like Mr Emery is going to have to continue to do that, rather than rely on further input of transfers cash if the Telegraph story is to be believed.

That could be possible, given that do seem to have a rich stream of young players emerging at the moment – but Arsenal will need to keep this pipeline running if this story from the Telegraph turns out to be true.

 

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