It was always going to happen, Unai Emery has reportedly asked the board for more money so that he can fund the signing of Wilfrid Zaha.
According to the Sun, Emery has gone to the board and asked them to cough up the £55 Million it will cost to sign the 26-year-old.
Now, straight off the bat, I will accept this is the Sun reporting this and the usual caveats are in play when we are talking about tabloid rumours, especially unsubstantiated ones.
That is not the focus of this article, what is the focus is the low budget and that it was always going to be the case that at some point Emery would want more money. If it is not for Zaha this time, it will be as some point for another player.
The big problem for Emery is that he cannot offload some of his prized assets which include Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Mesut Ozil, they simply will not leave on the wages they are on and no club will take those wages on.
Then there are players that few clubs will want to buy unless they are priced very low, Shkodran Mustafi springs to mind.
So, the Spaniard is put in a position where he would have to sell players that he would like to keep, Lucas Torreira as an example.
This is simply untenable for Emery, in order to sign players he needs to strengthen the team and make them competitive he needs to sell players he wants to keep thus creating a vicious circle of selling his best players to buy quality players.
Having a budget of just £45 Million is not going to be enough when your rivals are spending much more and the manager knows this, that is why he has no choice but to go to the board.
He may not be doing it with Zaha as I am not convinced this rumour is true but he will be doing it sooner rather than later and that is when a clash with the hierarchy will surely happen.
It is not inconceivable that Emery will issue a back me or sack me ultimatum and to some extent, he cannot be blamed.
He must be as confused as the rest of us that a club of Arsenal size and wealth simply will not release enough funds to do a proper rebuild, regardless of the self-imposed self-sustaining transfer policy.
Financial fair play works over a number of years and one year worth of investment can be offset against future years and Emery will know this, I mean, he was the manager at PSG.
In conclusion, whether this particular rumour is true or not it does not change the fact that there is a transfer budget storm coming soon at Arsenal Football Club.