Mikel Arteta has made it clear that Arsenal’s transfer funds and wage bill are going to be seriously affected by us finishing out of the European places and being unceremoniously dumped out of the Europa League, not to mention the fact that our latest financial figures showed a loss of 27million GBP. As Arteta said in Goal: “The damage caused by the club not being in the Champions League for the third season is really big,”
“Financially the impact is enormous because the structure of this club is built to be in the Champions League and you can sustain that for one year or two, but then after you have to start making decisions.
“So we will have to make decisions one way or the other depending on the scenario we find ourselves in, whether we are in the Champions League, Europa League or nowhere near that.
“And we’ll have a very clear plan of what we want to do and depending where we are we have to act like this.”
So, it makes sense that we will have to dispose of a lot of our high earners and peripheral players to raise funds for urgent purchases, although I imagine most of our outgoing players will be replaced by promoting our youngsters. Luckily we do have a few coming through that are looking good!
But it appears that one of the first to leave will be Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who has struggled to ever get a game in his favoured midfield, and despite covering well for Bellerin at right back he has been reprimanded by Arteta for not trying hard enough in training.
But the fact is that Niles has made it be known that he doesn’t want to play as a wing-back any more, and it would seem that there is interest in buying him from Italy already, with Sportsmole revealing that AC Milan are looking at taking him on.
I am sure there will be other interested parties, as he is not really a bad footballer, but it’s just not working for him at Arsenal. It’s good to have a versatil player around, but if he’s grown frustrated and wants to leave, should we stand in his way?