Arsenal: It’s not all about Stan Kroenke’s transfer budget

Arsenal won’t have much money to spend this year, but if you look at what Liverpool have done, you can see that money spent isn’t everything.

Arsenal fans will be moaning about only having £40m in the transfer window this year, but given the situation, that should be plenty. Because it’s not all about how you handle outgoing money, but rather about how you handle incoming money.

Look at Liverpool. The year they brought in Jurgen Klopp, they spent £78m. Big money, right? But they also sold £59m, only letting three players walk for free. And it’s not it was all big sales either, it was a bit here, a bit there.

The next season, after finishing 8th, they spent £61m. They also sold £76m. And again, the biggest sale there was Benteke for £27m. The rest was just a little here and a little there, nothing huge. Only four guys walked for free.

The year after, when they spent a humongous £149m, they also sold a massive £140m. So in three years, the three big rebuilding years, they came out, not having spent hundreds of millions, but having only expended £12m.

That is fantastic work in the transfer window, and it’s helped on by contract management, which the Gunners just do not have.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

Arsenal spent £70m in Unai Emery’s first season. They only sold £1.4m (Jeff Reine-Adelaide) and 15 players walked for free. Players like Jack Wilshere and Santi Cazorla, who would have fetched that little here, little there that Liverpool were rocking with their superior management of contracts and player sales.

After that, Liverpool had righted the ship and were headed in the right direction.

The Gunners need to follow suit. They need to not just buy players with infusions of funds, but sell enough players that we don’t have to rely on those infusions of funds. If Liverpool did it, so can we. We don’t want to be like Manchester City, propped up by infusions of cash. We want to manage players, particularly youth players, such that they don’t continually walk for free, and can instead be cogs in the machine that keeps the club ticking.

Complain about Stan Kroenke all you want, but if you put him in charge of Liverpool over the next five years, he wouldn’t have changed a thing. Smart sales funded the club’s improvement, not cash infusions.

If you don’t like Kroenke, that’s fine, but the people in charge of these contracts, and of youth movement, and getting the right price for players – these are the guys that could have really changed things.