Arsenal: Don’t bat an eye at reported “small transfer budget”

Arsenal headlines are reporting that Mikel Arteta will have a “small transfer budget” for the coming window, but don’t even bat an eye.

I was just perusing the Arsenal headlines and found a seemingly harmless article worth reading. Turns out that nestled into this harmless article is a statement that made me shake my head—that the Gunners were going to have a small budget, thus they wouldn’t be in the running for Hassan Aouar.

Normally, I know the drill. You ignore it and move on. But with nothing else to talk about, let’s chat. Because nobody out there should be batting an eye at this club’s transfer budget.

True, we have to factor in the £15m that goes to the Nicolas Pepe payment plan and we also have to factor in the £27m we already spent on William Saliba. Even though I believe that was paid last summer.

But once you get past those two things, even assuming we don’t make the Champions League and thus don’t get the boost, we would still feasibly be looking at around £30-50m. Bare minimum.

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Since we didn’t make the Champions League, that means we’re also selling Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for £50m, likely Alexandre Lacazette for another £30, Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan for hopefully something like £15-20m, Lucas Torreira for £25m, Sokratis for £10m and Shkodran Mustafi for £15-20m.

That’s £155m in essential sales. That’s not even including borderline guys like Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Rob Holding, etc. There is money to be made if we play our cards right.

Now assume we do make the Champions League and thus receive a cash bonus that will already infuse what we hope to have as a baseline. So count out the sale of Aubameyang, he stays. I still think we could sell Lacazette, but let’s pretend like we don’t. That still gives us another £75m, factor in Mohammed Elneny to make it an even £80m and if we really need more money from that on top of bonuses on top of the baseline, we can sell Maitland-Niles for £25m and enjoy at least a £150m transfer budget.

Not everything has to come from a moneybags owner. In fact, it’s better when it doesn’t. So pay no mind to the silly people out there trying to rile up fans into thinking it’s going to be another petty summer. We have a lot to look forward to, and plenty of money to go around.