Arsenal is paying the price for lack of success on the pitch.
Arsenal’s absence from the Champions League for the past few seasons has cost them dearly in terms of finances after the club revealed their latest figures.
According to Sky Sports, Arsenal has recently revealed losses of £27.1m.
Their failure to reach the latter phases of the Europa League this season means that Arsenal will miss out on the kind of prize money they earned when they reached the final of the competition last year.
Prize money for reaching the final or winning the competition is not the only money Arsenal would lose.
They will also lose money from extra broadcasting revenue and they will now also have to refund their fans for failing to progress in Europe.
Arsenal made a profit of £56.5m in the year ending 2018, however, when they published their latest financial numbers for the year ending 2019, the club suffered an after-tax loss of £27.1m.
Arsenal enjoyed an increase in football revenue from £388.2m to £394.7m and the club said investing in players’ wages affected their overall operating profits.
Arsenal will hope for a return to the Europa League at the end of this season or else they could be in for even more losses when their next figures are revealed.
For anyone wanting a simplistic analysis of our overall financial state and some predictions of what effect it will have on ability to upgrade our squad there is an interesting article on the Arsenal Supporter Trust web site.
Great news, Kroenke loses and must soon sell!
Unfortunately losses don’t work like that. The value of the club is still rising and all he is interested in is the stock / share value. He doesn’t take any money out of the club and doesn’t put any in, just uses it as an investment and collateral for loans.
People have to realise we are in the do do and our past is catching us up. We have no money to buy players and we will have to sell in the summer. Wake up and smell the coffee boys and girls, our days as a big club disappeared 4 years ago and we wont be getting them back soon. Past poor buysxand past bad decisions are making life very different for this once great club. Keeping wenger on for too long, taking Emery on and poor player management is biting and biting hard.
Did I read right that 8 players combined the other night that played against Olympiakos still had lower earnings than Ozil? we can’t afford Ozil anymore – those are definitely CL wages he’s taking.
Truth is we cant afford Ozil, Lacca, Auba, Myki, Kolasinac or Xhaka. The club behind the scenes will be scrambling to get rid of as many of them as they can this summer. The only new investment on players will come from their sales. I would also add, Bellerin, Mustaffi and one other Central defender at least, who will be gone, if a buyer can be found. Times are a changing, get used to it.
Arsene Wenger left the club at the end of the 2018 season and the figures show a profit of £6..5 million year ending.
Thus ended AW’s reign of 22 years and (I believe) a profit shown for each year.
Unai Emery’s first season and a half ended year ending 2019, when he was sacked and the recorded loss of £27.1 million.
The club stated that the players wages affected the overall profit… from the end of the 2018 season, to year ending 2019, these were some (I may have missed one or two out – doesn’t matter) of the following players signed and reported weekly salaries all under the new regime of UE etc etc.
Stephan Lichtsteiner – £90,000
Bernd Leno – £90,000
Lucas Torreira – £75,000
Sokratis Papastathopoulos – £90,000
Matteo Guendouzi – £40,000
Kieran Tierney – £50,000
Dani Ceballos (loan – £52,000
Nicolas Pepe – £140,000
David Luiz – £125,000
Gabriel Martinelli – £100,000
William Saliba – ?
Denis Suarez (loan) – ?
I have no idea of the salaries saved by outgoing players, but we should also remember that UE gave increased salary contracts to five players he inherited (Bellerin, Iwobi, Xhaka, Elneny Holding).
All the above seem to make sense of the clubs statement that “players wages affected overall profit” under UE.
What on earth is meant by saying that keeping AW on for too long has to do with the reported loss is anyones guess, especially as the season he left saw a £56.5 profit, but as it seems the easiest thing to do is to keep blaming our most successful manager for all our ills, let’s just not look for actual facts!!!
profit of £56.5 million end of year 2018 – not £6.5 million of course.
Ken this didn’t happen over night, this has been happening for a long while. Profit or loss is only one problem, the other problem is players bought, sold,not sold (gone free) poor acquisitions. If we had bought better years ago, if we had taken different decisions years ago, we may or may not be in this position. We are in a financial mess because of poor player decisions that were not good enough to keep us in the top four. Poor management decisions that have led to this, that some had been predicting 4 or 5 years ago. It started with bad buys that were bought 5 years ago and it has continued to now. This slip has had the symptoms there for a while, it was always going to happen because we have been making wrong decisions behind the scenes and on the pitch for years. Our 5 year plan that was started by signing our British core on new big contracts that failed. The failure to year after year ignore our defence and once this club became financially flush, we wasted the money on players that took us to where we are now. This is something that has been brewing over a period not a couple of years, thats obvious. Wenger is only part of the blame, along with Gazidis, Kroenke, Emery and basically every one involved in this club for the last five years.
Oh and Ken, dont apologise to me for telling you correctly that we had no money and you told me i was wrong.
Reggie, we slipped out of the top four just three seasons ago and we actually missed out on two of those three seasons by just one point – in UE’s case we should have finished third.
The crisis you keep trying to elude to of five years and more just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, if you look at our final positions and fa trophies won: We were an established top four club with no hint of relegation, even in AW’s last two years.
No matter how many mistakes AW made (his biggest being part of the £350,000 a week salary offer to Ozil) and he made many of course, the squad always finished in the top four and/or won trophies, except for his final season.
The other fact that you seem to forget, is that gazidis announced that he was introducing the three wise men to take over the signing of players, their contracts, existing contracts and that happened nearly four years ago – since when the club has been in a downward spiral regarding revenue and results (bar one fa cup win under AW of course).
All the players I listed, along with their salaries, contracts and signing on fees were dealt with by these people and not Wenger, as was the Ramsey saga, so let’s get the facts straight about our current situation and the wage bill.
You say we kept AW on for too long – exactly when do you think we should have ignored the financial gains of top four, CL money and fa cup winning revenue, plus the increased revenue gained from this period? It seems to be five years ago, so let’s just take that as the ballpark and look at the results.
From 2012/13 onwards we finished 4th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 5th, 6th.
in the premier league.
We won the fa cup three times, the fifth round once, the sixth round once and the third round once.
In the CL we progressed to the k/o stages each season and the semi-final of the europa league.
Exactly when do you think the club should have pulled the plug on that kind of revenue being bought into the club?
Also, you need to explain how this was achieved with, as you believe, bad players bought, not sold.
So please explain what you mean when you say if all these bad things hadn’t happened, we might have finished in the top four?
We did finish in the top four for 20 consecutive years, despite all your arguments to the contrary!!!!
Every time we qualified for the CL, AW’s salary was paid for by that simple action – everything else was profit to the club…and this is what the article is about.
He returned a profit figure every year, even when we were building the Emirates and selling our best players, the club remained in profit – now after just three and a half years since he left we have a reported loss of £27.1 million.
It’s so easy to say this player was a bad buy, or that player was too expensive, hindsight cures everything and it makes us all premier league managers of the highest calibre – if only it was that easy.
The defence? Well forget about the price of hot dogs, the state of pitches and even different era’s…under AW’s 22 year reign, our “neglected defence” conceded less than a goal a game.
Just reflect on that actual fact…1235 competitive games played and 1227 goals conceded – only one premier league manager beats that, Alex Ferguson.
The only two competitions that this doesn’t ring true to form, is the league cup (Pld 73 – GA 95) and the CL (Pld 191 – GA 208).
No one is arguing that it was time for Arsene to go and no one is arguing that he made some awful signings along the way, but he always delivered the profits needed to make our club viable and the proof is in the pudding with these results.
Yet he we have fans saying that it all goes back to the Wenger days, when, if one sat down and studied the figures, that argument is absurd to the point of being ludicrous.
As for having to apologise for having no money, did you actually look at the list of twelve players bought in since AW left?
Whether on the never never, outright buys or loan deals, the club has committed itself to buying/bought them already and if they didn’t have any money, how did they fund these purchases and their reported salaries?
May I suggest that it was part of the multi millions that AW brought to the club with CL, top four and trophy wins?
It also seems that your views on Mari and Soares not being here next season may be a little premature as well, if the reports from his present club are to be believed.
In hindsight, you might want to think again on both him and Soares…wonder where that money is coming from?
Ken, you can fudge about and ignore the real situations at this club. You said to me Arteta would have come with a promise of transfer funds, which he hasnt. I havent seen any reports from reputable people to say we are signing cedric or mari fuul time yet (plus lets be honest we haven’t seen hide nor hair of them yet to get excited about) so we will wait on that one, please excuse me if i dont get excited just yet.The first loss we posted included part of the season wenger was here and part of the next. It never happened over night, it was predicted over a period of time. If things were so rosy under wenger at the end, i would suggest he would still be here but he isn’t because it wasnt. As far as i know, unlike now wenger had a massive say in players we got and players we didnt, so he had a massive input. But the truth is whatever you and i think, this club because of the last 3 or 4 years or more of bad decisions is the reason we are where we are now and every person involved in this club at that time and since are to blame.
Tbh its been said before Arsenal have a champions league wage bill and were not getting CL revenue. Considering that though, the Arsenal have done “financially” exceptionally. To only post a 27m loss under theses constraints of lesser competition and that wage bill. Plus when we have 267m net cash, 2nd in world football to only UTD. Take disposable cash in the bank that not taken into account in EoYF, that more than cover’s that loss.
Take for example that Ozil takes home 18.2m per year Auba, Miki, Laca, Xhaka, Luiz and Kola all take home around/over 10m per year. Thats 7 players that makes up around est 80m a year of our wage bill. At the moment we can afford to have 2 maybe 3 players on the 10-12m per year mark but no more.
Liverpool to use as an example, reformed the club to how we used to run ours. They got rid of the underperforming over payed players like the Benteke’s Sakho’s and Balotelli’s. Then they brought in a salary cap, players get a reasonable wage. If they want big bucks they earn it through being successful and receiving bonuses as a result.
We have an opportunity to let alot of this miss spent miss managed imcreased wages go. There are options, if we can keep Auba, then sell Miki, Kola, Elneny, Ozil, Luiz, Mustafi and Xhaka. With the income from sales and the est 70m+ per year saving on wages we have alot of elbow room. We need a CB maybe 2 , RB, CDM, 2 box to box midfielders and possibly a striker.
In Defense, If Mari performs well he will be added permanently. Then we have Saliba coming in, a future massive star. Then you add Tierney Holding and Chambers returning from injury. A big plus atm is Mavrinapos is having a very good loan spell with 3 MoM performances so far. @ RB if Soures proves a reliable back up sign him for free in the summer. Give him a low wage plus hes now a saleable asset at 28 for the following summer if it doesn’t work out. LB well some names have been banded around like the barca kid or our very own Bola. Tierney is world class in the making he just needs to stay fit.
In the Midfield We have Torriera Guendouzi and Willock to build on. Ozil and Xhaka should be moved on both because of performance and cost per point. Xhaka has been much improved but his lack of pace and mobility scares me. Ozil is well……. Ozil we cant have players who turn up 75% of the time now. Emile Smith-Rowe is one to watch out for coming through as we know. Cebellos would be a great addition too now hes not being miss managed by Emery, be cheeky ask for another loan, why not. My choices at CDM would Partey or Kendogbia then Dacore as our box to box. Three words Massive, Mobile and Nasty would describe 2 of these three joining. team that up with Guendouzi, Torriera, Smith Rowe, Willock, Cebellos, Partey/Kendogbia and Dacore that midfield looks very good.
Up top, well Auba if we can hold on to him, Martinelli, Pepe, Nketiah, Nelson, Saka then Balogun will probably make the step up. Theres rumors of us signing the Brentford winger, One thing we do need is a Giroud type player for a plan B maybe, otherwise were well stacked.
Our midfield an defense is our week spots as they have been for the last few seasons. The defense is too error prone and the midfield is too light weight and lacks a strong platform for our attack to build from. Financial stability comes from success and success comes from the right coach, coaching a motivated functional team. Recruitment is a must so these figures wont improve until we begin to compete at the top again. Liverpool did it from way further down yhan we have fallen, why cant we do the same.
Everything has to be taken into account i.e. competitions, success, sales and player wages. from selling Laca, Xhaka, Luiz, Elneny, Miki, Mustafi, Ozil you would say we would make 150m in revenue if we got the lower end for these players.
Then take the 70m saving in wages, if we didnt sign anyone it takes our cash rich pot to 417m in the bank and if the had the same set of financial figures as this year for example, were around 40m a year up without player sales. This is all without champions league too. Dont read the bull that the media put out, the figures are a fallout from years of poor financial management, panic buying and wrongly inflated wages.
Even if we didnt sell a single player and they all left for free, we’d still make a yearly profit even without European football.