The release of the financial figures for Arsenal Football Club for the year 2014-15 will no doubt have many fans and people in the media scratching their heads and wondering just what Arsene Wenger was playing at in the summer transfer window.
The Frenchman only spent around £10 million on the transfer of Petr Cech from Chelsea and we actually sold or released a few squad members and may well have ended up better off than we were at the end of last season. We heard Wenger’s reasons for not signing a single outfield player and I can sympathise in a way, because there does seem to be a shortage of really top class strikers available.
It also seems clear that the top players want to be playing at the top clubs and being in with a good chance of winning domestic titles and the Champions League, so maybe Arsenal with our two FA cup wins in the last decade are going to find it tough to bring the best players to north London.
So maybe we might have to bite the bullet and pay over the odds, like other Premier L:eague clubs like Man City, Man United, Liverpool and Chelsea have done. Not just on transfer fees either, but on wages to attract those players that might otherwise be reluctant.
With nearly £200 million gathering dust in the bank, Arsenal can certainly afford to be a bit carefree with our money but is the wage structure at the club stopping us from doing it? It is well reported that Wenger and Arsenal are resistant to having some players on a lot more than the others and I think that the top earners at the minute, such as Alexis and Ozil, are on something like £140-150,000 a week, while some of the big players at City, Chelsea and United are on about double that.
If Wenger is really serious about signing a Benzema or a Cavani, does the club have to abandon the wage structure? Or should we try to stick with our footballing principles?