Arsenal: I thought the club was supposed to be broke?
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal aren’t supposed to have a lot of money this transfer season, so why then are we aiming to go well beyond that supposed budget?
I won’t pretend to know what goes on in the financial records of Arsenal Football Club. Some kind of witchcraft hoodoo-voodoo that always ends up with the club being broke, right? Never having enough money to compete with all the other top clubs in the world in the transfer market because of modern inflation?
Right?
Here’s why I never completely buy into that nonsense. Or the whole, “We’re only going to have £40m to spend this summer, ohhh nooo.”
Last summer, we weren’t supposed to have any money, right? Unai Emery was going to have limited funds with which to usher him into his new digs at this historic football club.
The club spent £70m and only sold £1.4m. That is a pretty heavy expenditure for a club that is supposedly broke and incredibly limited in the transfer window, wouldn’t you say? Even if they didn’t make any monetarily large signings, they made a few medium size ones that equaled a pretty big spending spree.
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This summer, you look at the rumors already coming up, and the “improved bids” that have followed initial rejections.
Dennis Praet and Joachim Andersen – £44m (improved bid)
Yannick Carrasco – £25m
Alex Claude-Marnice – £10m (improved bid)
Jordan Veretout – £20m
William Saliba – £25m
Obviously the Gunners wouldn’t buy all these players (or would they?), but even the one that is supposedly just needing to be formally announced, the Sampdoria duo, would decimate the supposed transfer budget of the club, all in one fell swoop.
But Carrasco is also being heavily linked, as is Alex Claude-Marnice, and it’s looking like Arsenal are quite confident in both of them to add to Praet and Andersen.
That’s £79m spent.
Even still, new bids are coming up – a potential hijacking of Jordan Veretout. A lingering offer for William Saliba. It’s all shaping up to be a very pricey summer, full of actual solutions who are costing actual transfer fees.
Now granted, nothing has officially happened yet, and there’s still room for a ton of sales to turn around and negate some of the money spent.
But for being a club so hampered by “budgetary constraints,” they don’t look like they’re tip-toeing around anything. They are going hard in the paint after anyone and everyone that they want.