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Arsenal Has Changed From A ‘Selling Club’ To A ‘Buying Club’
In past seasons, one of the reasons used by Arsenal fans to excuse their lack of trophies was that they needed to sell their best players in order to pay off the debts created by building a new stadium. There is no question about the necessity of that move. The Emirates needed to be paid for and Arsenal’s top youth setup meant that selling young players for huge price tags was a perfect solution.
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Next July 22nd will be the tenth anniversary of the Emirates’ opening in 2006. In the nine years since Arsenal moved to a new home, they have won two domestic trophies, and their highest finish in the Premier League has been third place. During the phase where erasing massive debt was necessary, it was expected that Arsenal would struggle to win titles. Now that said period is over, do Arsenal fans have any excuses for why the glory should not be theirs?
The Emirates stadium cost around 390 million pounds to build, and it was finished in 2006. Arsenal may not have finished paying all of those debts off yet. But according to Arsene Wenger and his backroom staff, the board is assured of the club’s financial situation. In other words, if there is a debt, it’s too small for Arsenal chairman Chips Keswick to notice.
According to the numbers provided by transferleague.co.uk, Arsenal’s net spend since the 2006 move is around 66 million pounds. Most of that net spending has come in the last four seasons. Since 2012/13, the Gunners have spent 200 million and received only 85.7 million in transfer fees. It appears that after the summer of 2012, there was no longer a need to conserve funds in order to pay back stadium debt. That could be considered good for the club, but if this all balanced correctly, I would not be focused on it. So what do these numbers mean?
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A key piece of information is left out of the equation if you simply talk about Arsenal’s net spend. It must be taken into account which players the money has been spent on, and how they have fared. There have been zero players signed since the summer of 2012 who joined the club while under the age of 24 and currently get first-team football. There are also only three players currently in the Arsenal first team who came through the Arsenal academy – and one of them cannot stop getting injured.
It may be just a sign of the times that Arsenal have started to become a club that brings in outside talent in order to win trophies. Such a system also means that the youth academy will produce less first-team players. Thus Arsenal will make less money from selling talent to other teams. That can be okay, but it requires some trophies to be coming home at the end of some, if not most, seasons.
Arsenal’s team is currently at the peak of its ability on a player-by-player basis. Many first team players are between the ages of 26 and 30, meaning they have a season or two left at the top level before players start to lose their pace, their stamina, and possibly their will to fight for a title.
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The path they are going down is a precarious one if they fail to win the competitions they participate in on a regular basis. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and his compatriot Calum Chambers are the only English players under 25 that I could see becoming members of the next Arsenal generation, Meaning that other young players must be brought in to revitalize the squad sooner or later. All of the spending must be backed up with positive results. If Arsenal are content with being a ‘buying club’ they must be buying results, not buying competitiveness.