As we're unlikely to see terraces again at football, this is the virtual equivalent where you can chat to your hearts content about all football matters and, obviously, Arsenal in particular. This forum encourages all Gooners to visit and contribute so please keep it respectful, clean and topical.
With the trimming of the squad significantly, does anyone else get the feeling we may not be as financially stable as claimed? Is this to do with wage bills more than quality and strength?
Whilst the sales of Cesc and Nasri are for obvious reasons I was wondering about the likes of Eboue, Clichy and Bendtner being sold and also Vela etc going out on load without direct replacements coming in. the reduction in salaries is huge.
It would seem clear that the wage bill this season will be vastly reduced with just Cesc and Nasri going before the likes of Bentner and his £52k a week, Eboue who must be on £30k Add on Vela's wage and Clichy's and that is a massive chunk of money!
Gervinho coming in from French football will not be on anything huge nor will Jenkinson coming from Charlton's reserves. Oxlaide-Chamberlain still get pocket money so I don't see his wages as a significant amount either despite the price tag.
Also, I do not seem to remember any contracts being extended/renegotiated this summer either!
Do we really have all this money or are we not quite as flush as others think?
Herd wrote:See how much Wenger gets to spend after Nasri goes !
Given various promises in years gone by, plus the Cesc money, I'd say Wenger should have well in excess of £100m to spend before the transfer window closes....
The good news is though that he doesn't need to as the current squad is full of potential and there is no-one out there who could improve it !
Definitely not. Our financial figures from the last couple of years have been good, we have money budgeted for loan repayments, we had a lot of cash in the bank before any sales, and we've generated more cash since then.
This is down to Wenger being way too slow in making decisions over players and reluctant to spend big money as spending big money is one of his major excuses for why other clubs are ahead of us. This is 75% down to Wenger IMO, and if he doesn't change his philosophy completely, we could be mid-table this year.
I doubt that we are in a financial pickle tbh but given the amount of misinformation that spews out of our club on a regular basis I dont know that any of us can be 100% sure
It does concern me however that we are releasing so many players at the one time. Over the last few seasons I have bemoaned the lack of depth in our squad and given how unlikely it is that wenger will buy another 3 or 4 players in the next 14 days I think it is fair to say that our squad will be even smaller this season. Saying all that I will also say that at the end of last season I stated that selling the deadwood this summer (almunia, bendtner, rosicky, diaby etc) was every bit as important as the recruitment of quality players so it looks like wenger is holding up one side of the bargain but as usual reneging on the recruitment side
There is a squad issue - remember we can only name 25 (granted the likes of WS and JW are outside of this) but we lost 2 "homegrown" players in Cesc and Clichy, so players like Eboue, Vela et al need to go to free up spaces for any potential new signings.
No we are not in financial strife, not even close to it...
The bastard just does not like spending money, he truely is more interested in increasing the clubs profits than adding quality to the squad...Even as our need becomes ever more desperate he still is trying to avoid spending the clubs money, and come September the 1st he will be in profit on player trading, again... and that is his main objective...Meanwhile our bank account swells ever bigger...
The way it's going by the time we get a new manager there will be so much money in our bank account, he won't need to buy new players he'll have enough to just buy a new club... maybe thats the plan....
Rugby Gooner wrote:I think that the Club are lying to us.
Lying to us about what ?
The books are there to be read, it tells you how much debt we have, how much money we have, what our turnover is, what our profits are...there is very little they could lie about that could make much difference to those figures...
There was a reason why wealthy businessmen in the know were so desperate to pay so much money for the club and it wasn't because we are in financial strife or anything close to it...
The law says the club has to publish it's accounts, and it does so online.
From what I can tell, the greatest scrutiny of those accounts from people outside of the club is probably by the AST, and by The Swiss Rambler, a specialist football finance blog.
They claim we had £30M to spend before the summer, plus another large chunk of cash sitting in the bank as security for stadium bond repayments.
Taking into account the summer sales and purchases so far, and I will take the liberty of including the sale of Nasri and the purchase of Joel Campbell as they look 99% sure to happen, we have made a further profit of £34.1M.
So that is £64.1M to spend, sitting in the bank.
If we do not spend a good chunk of it, then five possibilities to consider:
1.) There is indeed a financial problem.
There is a further set of accounts not seen by the public, which go into detail on Miscellaneous Expenses and Player Wages. Perhaps they will reveal something, but surely too the media would have picked up on something by now?
2.) Wenger has really lost his way.
And perhaps Gazidis is not able to do his job as well as he should too?
3.) The club are putting money into the final property deal in Queensland Road.
Given the economic climate, loans are not available to the extent the club would like.
4.) Funds are being withheld in order to attempt to raise share price, ahead of a sale of shares by Kroenke.
(For further discussion see USMartin etc.)
5.) Funds are being withheld by the board to the extent that the club will have the full amount of the stadium bond repayment sitting in the club bank account.
Paying the bond off early incurs financial penalties, so it is unlikely that will happen. But keeping the full amount in the bank means the board can breathe a sigh of relief, and earn interest on the money.
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