Chippy wrote:It is impossible to read our accounts and say the club is short of money. And the club did not have to sell him to balance the books. It is making a large profit before player transactions.
I agree, read the accounts and all seems reasonably ok, but that's not really my point.
My point is, that regardless of how financially healthy we are, we don't seem to use it on transfers, as we tend to only spend money that has been obtained from player sales, and not from other revenue streams that have put this club in a, so called, healthy position.
And again this summer... Ade & Toure were sold for £40m, yet only Vermaelen arrived for £10m. Even if you include Arshavin in that, we still made a healthy profit... and previous seasons ins/outs follow a similar trend.
So, you can push accounts and numbers in front of me Chippy, and even tell me that we don't
need to sell before we buy, but in the real world, I think you'll find that whether we need to or not, balancing the transfer ins & outs is what Arsenal do.
Therefore, selling Ade might have been necessary in some ways, as he was the only expendable player who was worth enough to not only pay for Vermaelen, but perhaps even Arshavin, too.
Then we sold Toure, and that meant we made a profit and if not spent on transfers (which it wasn't) then it would disappear back into the club to make our healthy finances look even healthier.
All I'm really saying is that, in my mind, it's possible that Ade isn't lying through his teeth when he says the club sold him for financial reasons. He may be a little off with his reasoning, but that doesn't mean there isn't some truth behind it.
