Arsenal: If you did not know already, £40 million not very much

This summer, Arsenal are trying to work with an approximate £40 million budget. If you did not know already, the lack of activity will tell you: it does go very far.

Money talks. In every walk of life, like it or not, money wins. And in professional sport, and football in particular, that is especially true. Throughout the history of the sport, the richest teams win and spending often begets success — this spending, of course, must be smart and targetted, but there is a threshold where simply throwing money at a problem is sufficient to solve it, one way or another.

Find the latest episode of the Pain in the Arsenal Podcast here — The Big Season Review

In recent years, the money in football has exploded. The wages of the players, the commercial revenues of the clubs, the prices of television rights and matchday tickets, and, most notably, the prices of the players.

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

To keep up with the best of them, you have to spend with the best of them. This does not reason needless, irresponsible spending, of course. There are enough horror stories to ward off even the most desperate of clubs. But it does mean that if you want to win and win consistently, you have t be able to consistently spend. You can probably see where this is going. Arsenal do not spend enough.

I will not touch on the reasons for why that is — they are complicated and many, and extend far beyond just having a disinterested, financially obsessed and distant owner, although that does not help. Rather, I simply want to address the expectations that should be adapted based on the money that is available.

It has been widely reported that Arsenal have a £40 million budget this summer. They can increase that with player sales, but any sales that are completed will likely require a replacement. As soon as the initial report came out, there were doomsday like forecasts. If you had any doubts about their accuracy, you need just look at the present delay in activity. £40 million does not go far at all.

These are the extremely restrictive conditions that Unai Emery must work under. He inherited a lacking squad in the first place, needed to offload several overpaid, underperforming players, and had peanuts to do it with. To expect him to conduct a rebuild with an average of a Danilo every summer is absolutely ridiculous.

It would be nice to see Arsenal target some truly world-class options. Wilfried Zaha, Nicolas Pepe, Ben Chilwell or Harry Maguire or Matthijs de Ligt, players of genuine quality that may seem costly but can completely revolutionise a team. But instead, Emery must cast his eyes away from those that he truly would love to have purely because he does have the money to spend.

£40 million does not get you very far in the modern game. And so expectations of Arsenal challenging with that type of spend are futile, unfounded, folly. The big spenders are the big winners, and at this rate, the Gunners will be neither.