Arsenal: Does Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang price hint at more?

Arsenal are closing in on a £60 million deal for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. The Gunners are breaking their transfer record twice in the last six months. Does that hint at more to come in future windows?

Arsene Wenger is a notoriously stringent spender. His infamous words of comparing managing a club and investing in the transfer window to spending someone else’s money have lived with him for many years. He is a man who prioritises the economic principles with which he believes every responsible professional organisation should be run, and in the case of Arsenal, that often means bowing to the greater financial power and clout of their rivals.

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Take the club’s transfer record signings, for example. All the following information is per TransferMakrt — there are some disputes over the exact prices that have been paid, thus leading to some confusion as to which players were record signings or not.

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Thierry Henry, in 1999, was a record signing. That record was then broken a year later with the signing of Sylvain Wiltord. It then took three years for the record to be broken again, this time the £18 million addition of Jose Antonio Reyes in the 2004 January transfer window. It then took them nine-and-a-half years to better that tally, the £42 million signing of Mesut Ozil in the summer of 2013.

Chelsea, for example, in the same time frame, broke their transfer record five times. That type of spending has never been the way of the Gunners. They have neither had the will nor the way to invest the type of inordinate cash that their domestic and continental rivals have. Until recently.

Before the summer transfer window, Arsenal’s record signing was still Ozil. While they had invested in the likes of Alexis Sanchez, Shkodran Mustafi and Granit Xhaka in significant deals, they had not topped the £42 million spent on Ozil. That was until the £47 million signing of Alexandre Lacazette on 5th July 2017, four years after the German’s arrival.

And now, just six months after that club-record signing, Wenger is set to sanction another club-record addition in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. There are wide-range reports suggesting that an agreement has been made between Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund regarding a £60 million transfer.

Clearly, there are several tactical, technical, and personnel consequences from such a high-profile addition. But at a very basic, face-value level, perhaps the most important consequence is simply one of spending: Arsenal are now willing and able to spend the type of money that will regularly challenge and potentially even break their club record.

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Only time will tell if this is now a trend that will be continued in the future. But certainly, there seems to be a shift in the calibre and price of player that this club is able to sign. Ozil was the start. Lacazette was the successor. Perhaps Aubameyang now hints at even more.