When it comes to signing players why do Arsenal seem so slow?
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By Tony Attwood
Sheffield Wednesday finished last season 42 points and 62 goals off promotion. In short, nowhere near promotion but still easily safe from relegation. And yet they are in trouble: the coaching staff are out of contract, the manager is said to be negotiating his severance terms, there is talk of a league-imposed transfer embargo, plus a fine and points deduction among other things.
So the owner wants to sell Wednesday, having thrown hundreds of millions of pounds at the club, although his price looks to be putting potential buyers off. As is the fact that buyers know the current owner is having a few financial difficulties of his own, and so could reduce his price just to get a sale. The club has come back from two years in League One and done well to grab 12th place in the Championship, but the financial cost has been frightening.
Added to which, the Thai Union Group which seems to bankroll the club, appears to be in trouble.
Not as much trouble perhaps as Olympique Lyonnais, who for so many years were the unmoveable champions of the French football league, perhaps. They have beenrelegated to Ligue 2 for failing to meet their “financial requirements,” but of course that doesn’t make it look any better for Wednesday.
And such problems are everywhere. Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, and Trabzonspor who are pretty much the front runners in the Turkish league every season have combined debts of over €1 billion, as they endlessly battle each other for top spot by sacking the manager and bringing in a new man to buy new players.
Meanwhile, back in England, we see the same mess with Manchester United. In terms of just matchday income, they get the most money per game but they then spend it all on players, most of whom seem to be unable to get the club up to where they seem to believe they have god-given right to be.
Indeed, in the 12 years since Ferguson, Manu have had ten managers, and yes several of those have been stand-ins, but stand-ins count when they give a sense of continuing insecurity and uncertainty to a club. In that same time span Arsenal have had four such people: Arsene Wenger, Unai Emery, Freddie Ljungberg and Mikel Arteta.
Now the big problem with ever-changing managers (apart from the fact that most of them don’t improve the club’s league position) is that each manager demands money to buy his favoured players. But in so doing he effectively puts each incoming player’s price up, because everyone knows the new boy in the club is desperate to get his way.
Of course, it is not just in England that this happens. Juventus came fourth in Italy last season, 12 points behind Napoli, and are now swept up into a tax investigation all of their own. And this is not uncommon where some new financial mastermind takes over, and criticises his predecessor’s incompetence. The trouble is that tax authorities around Europe have been hearing these stories for years, and are very happy to take on clubs, not least because most of the time the state-funded tax authority wins hands down. Juventus, as a result, are in trouble.
Barcelona are, as we have said so often, a financial basket case, and I won’t bore you with their odd world-view again, but what we can note is that year on year the number of clubs that really are getting toward the situation where the tax authorities do actually take action, is increasing.
At the heart of the problem is that although club incomes go up each year, player wages go up more. Financial Fair Play Regulations from Uefa have allowed clubs in the European competitions to spend 90% of their income on wages, transfers and agents’ fees in 2023-24, but only 80% in 2024-25. Next year it is down to 70%.
But how does a club that is spending 80% of its money on wages, transfers and agents reduce that by 10%? In fact, they don’t. If Tottenham saw Arsenal having problems with their transfer costs, do you think they would help Arsenal out by reducing the price?
The problem is that Uefa thought their plans could help club incomes to rise. It hasn’t happened as they hoped, leaving some clubs taking the view that “they can’t come after all of us at once.”
But at least in this regard, we know that Arsenal are ok. The club’s income rises each year, and last season with the Champions League the results have been markedly better. Also, Emile Smith Rowe and Eddie Nketiah brought in good money, but cost the club nothing – which also helps in the accounts.
This of course is something other clubs know, so they are putting their prices if Arsenal come looking for a player, which is in turn why Arsenal are not rushing in to do early deals. Besides which, although the media at large refuse to recognise it, the rest of the League know that Arsenal only slipped up last season because of injuries, and at present most of last season’s injured players are back and raring to go.
In my view, it’s back to where we were before last season’s injury storm hit, which is rather encouraging.
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When it comes to signing players why do Arsenal seem so slow?
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