Will Unai Emery stay at Arsenal if transfer funds continue to be restricted?

It is almost impossible to effectively challenge the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool in the Premier League if huge amounts of money are not spent on new players, not even Tottenham are close to them and they are being held up as some sort of standard-bearer of a club that can be competitive when spending so little in the transfer market.

Last season Liverpool finished a massive 25 points behind Manchester City and so they went out and bought Virgil van Dijk in the previous January transfer window for £75 Million, then at the end of the season they spend a further £13.5 Million on Xherdan Shaqiri, £39 million on Fabinho, £52.75 million on Naby Keita, although technically he was bought the year before and loaned back to Leipzig for a year and £66.8 million on Alisson.

That is a grand total of £247 Million on players that made their debuts for the club in 2018, a cool quarter of a billion.

They are now in the Champions League semi-finals and competing with City for the Premier League title.

Of course, it does not always work like that, Man United have spent fortunes but if you have the right manager and he spends big money wisely then the results will follow on the field, Liverpool had the right manager and so do we, but the huge difference is that Klopp can spend massively, Emery cannot.

If that continues then you have to worry that Emery will start to have second thoughts about staying with us, it is not as if he is overseeing a new stadium being built with a promise of funds to come in the future, no, he has to know that how it is now is how it is likely to stay for a few years yet.

Managers are just as ambitious as players and the Europa League and minor domestic trophies will not be enough to satisfy any ambitious manager, why do you think that Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino is constantly linked with other clubs no matter how well he is doing with them?

If no major silverware or the prospect of no silverware becomes the norm then it cannot be a surprise to anyone if a manager leaves in pursuit of that elusive silverware.

We are probably not at a point yet when Emery will start to become frustrated but if he is not backed properly in the next couple of transfer windows and we finish next season no better than this season then watch the links to other clubs start to gain momentum.

I know we could win the Europa League this season and if we do then Emery’s ambitions may be served but it simply is not sustainable to deny a manager significant funds on a regular basis and expect him to make the club realistic challengers of the two major trophies that matter in club football, the Premier League and the Champions League.

24 Comments

  1. I cannot see transfer funds being an issue at all. Apart from PSG, he’s always had small/non-existent budgets to work with, and I actually think he not only prefers this, but that he thrives in these types of situations. Emery just needs time to get “his” type of players in.

    Look what he did at Sevilla with small budget. At Valencia he took over when they were half a billion in debt, and performed brilliantly! He also did wonderful at his earlier clubs with no money. Money isn’t the be all, and end all. Arsenal have spent plenty of money in the last 5/6 years, with our net spend being higher than Liverpool, not far off Chelsea, and a huge amount more than Spurs, yet our performances tell us a different story.

    1. Spot on, I can’t convey it better than you

      The author mentioned the expensive players Liverpool bought. But from those names, I can only see Van Dijk, Salah, Firmino and Mane as the game changers

      Arsenal’s staffs should have done better in assessing their targets before purchasing, as what Liverpool have done effectively. We have wasted a lot of money for erratic players like Mustafi, Mkhitaryan, Xhaka and Ozil

      1. Exactly .We can’t keep banging on about how we need to spend ,spend ,spend.It simply isn’t going to happen .So we need to spend the small budget wisely and use the academy players .We need to create a team of players who want to work and not here just for the money

        1. And it is not even confirmed that we actually have a small transfer budget.

          If you want to buy players it would be a smart move to create the illusion that you are under a tight budget. As opposed to letting the seller know you have lots of money.

          Would not surprise me at all if the rumour of a small transfer budget originated from Arsenal.

      2. In the last five or six years, we have qualified for the CL four times, finished in the top four four times and won the fa cup three times.

        Pool have won….nothing…zero..three top four and three CL.
        spud have won…nothing..zero…three top four and three CL.

        Performances are the equation of success, what club of the three mentioned has been the most successful? I make it The Arsenal by a country mile!!

        Both poch and klopp have been at their clubs during this period and yet the media and (some of) our fans laud them for achieving diddly squat!!!
        It might all change come the end of this season of course, but The Arsenal might finish fourth and win the europa cup.

        Check back on the players spuds bought when they received the money for Bale and how much they lost when they sold them.
        Pool had the courtinho money to go out and buy the top players. They bought well and are the second best team in the PL at the moment.

        The net spend referred to must also be compared with the net income regarding transfers and a classic example is the year we bought in Aba and Lacs.
        The two of them actually cost us, when subtracting sales out versus sales in, just over £11,000,000, but don’t let facts interfere when discussing our shortcomings as a club.

        Every single manager who made transfer decisions has made mistakes, that is a fact for all to see.
        Some managers have made transfer decisions that have been fantastic.
        They all live by these decisions, just as UE will.
        I am always amused by the list of “erratic players” we have signed, but no mention of the fantastic players bought and sold, some at enormous profits, after giving so much pleasure to the fans.

        All this on the same equivalent budget that UE has to contend with today.
        Will he stay at The Arsenal? The end of season results will determine that in my opinion.

        1. Exactly scousers sold coutinho to basically pay for half of their summer layout.

          Chelsea and Spurs also seem to get big money for their outgoing players

          What united and city are basically allowed to spend what they want. United have spent more on sacked managers recently than most clubs have spent on players.

          Whilst they will all be scouring waitrose or even Harrods for their summer purchases. Arsenal will be found in poundland or if we are lucky Lidl, looking for yet more products 1 day off their sell by date.

        2. But Ken these “fantastic players, some sold at enormous profits” are now a long time ago. I live in the present and only the present as you well know and so , I suggest, do most of our fans . THEY AND I ARE CONCERNED ABOUT RIGHT NOW AND HAVE MOVED ON FROM PAST SUCCESSES. We are , obviously, proud and grateful for it but if you are content in life with what once was but is no more, than you stagnate and start living in the past. A vibrant , forward thinking club , such as -and whisper it only, SPURS – lives in the present and is clearly seen by all to be actively planning for the immediate and medium term future. Our club has a manager and backroom team behind him that is NOW doing likewise, at long last, BUT is held back by an owner who cares nothing for our club beyond what it can earn him personally, both directly and indirectly.
          In football, as in life, things constantly change and there are undercurrents of ebb and sway that one moment show improvement and that in the next moment seem to move the other way. THIS IS HOW LIFE WORKS AT MOST LEVELS AND IS NORMAL. We all see the way that immature people change their minds about how our club is going from one week to the next, when the flow is in our favour, and then SUDDENLY want total change, when a mere couple of results change the undercurrent flow. These daft , unthinking fools that dominate ALL social media, everywhere, should be ignored. They are not worth wasting our intelligence on and will always be reactionary shallow thinking types, incapable of or unwilling to apply any real thought. I am curous to know precisely who, in your view, was the LAST of these “fantastic players sold for enormous profits after giving so much pleasure to the fans”? RVP, I would agree but isn’t he, if not exactly ancient history, quite some years ago now? And what exactly constitutes an “enormous profit” given the ever increasing transfer market anyway? Perhaps the real root of all our previous arguments has been a stark difference in our relative ambitions and with one of us, you Ken, being far more content to with what we won in the past THE RECENT PAST IS, DAILY, BECOMING, ALBEIT SLOWLY, THE LONG AGO PAST! History shows us all, either evolve(show ambition) OR become a dinosaur. THE PARADOX IS THAT YOUR SOCIAL ATTITUDES ARE EXTREMELY EVOLVED, BUT YOUR ARSENAL ONES LESS SO. That is , of course , merely my own opinion. I may say that, in general, I much agree with everything else in the thrust of your post( though I think our press rightly praise both Klopp and Poch and neither will now be long without silverware in my view). And they are both clearly going, speedily too, in the right direction, BACKED by owners who CARE for them. Perhaps that final comment is the critical difference twixt them and us!

    2. The following statement appears in the article.
      “it is not as if he is overseeing a new stadium being built with a promise of funds to come in the future”.
      Emery may not be overseeing a new stadium being built, but Silent Stan Kroenke certainly is. The $2bn stadium he is building for his NFL franchise in LA is running a billion over budget. So where does the writer of the article think that money is coming from.

      1. Any prove you have indicating that money is coming from Arsenal. I only heard once he took about 3m as consultancy fee and that was 6 to 7 years ago and never again. If you know what most fans don’t know it is time to tell us.

        1. Someone said this about constant blame on Kroenke for the appalling state of our club…..The Kroenke commentary is pointless, he is going nowhere, there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it, so what exactly is the point of bitching about it? Yes I would swap him for a passionate owner who loves the club and understands football but wanting it doesn’t change shit.Having said that, the only constraint Kroenke has set on the club is that we have to spend what we make, he hasn’t taken out money and we have spent around 290 million in the last 5 years. 300 million if properly used could have built a pretty decent core (6-8 players) and yet here we are debating squad quality.The problem of the squad doesn’t come from Kroenke not throwing money at the club (though him clearing out the debt etc would be welcome but that was not a stipulation when he bought the shares). The problem comes from the fact that our recruitment over the last 5 years has been pedestrian while giving away massive salaries to average players.Expecting us to clear the dross away in a window is just foolish, many of these overpaid prima donnas will still be with us, simply because their last contract was handed to them without discretion. This I agree with it completely. We should have sold Ramsey after last European Nations cup, went through with Sanchez sale to City , sold Elneny last season when interest came in for him, release or cancel the contract of injury prone players like Jack and the rest on time. This would have made money available for transfer and nullified the financial constraints we are having.

        2. You are totally correct Mobella, Kroenke hasn’t taken any money out of the club since that initial 3m. So much bull? is spouted on here.

          1. Mobella and Declan, both of you are so correct.
            The way falsehoods are presented as facts is a complete joke and when one tries to question these lies, one either gets a complete gobblygooche reply or is accused of being a”toyboy”.
            Such childish behaviour should be met with the contempt it deserves, but despair makes me try to get them to use facts over fiction.

            1. Kroenke is not using Arsenal as collateral for any of his other interests as far as I can ascertain. Just to put things in perspective his personal wealth is 8.8 billion dollars and his wife’s is 6.9 billion so ask yourselves why would he need to.Just a thought.

  2. I can comfortably say that Emery has slightly a better squad that what Wenger had . At least with the few additions he has done. Yet when the team lost all the blame was on Wenger. Now that Emery is loosing, he is a messiah only that we got a poor squad. God will forever punish our ignorance till we accept the fact

    1. A slightly better team that finished 5th and 6th consecutively for the last 2 seasons. A team that never challenged for th Top 4 in that time. By this time in the previous 2 seasons we were way out in the race for Top 3-4. Isn’t?

      He added Sokratis, Torreira, Leno, Guendouzi and The Leech etc, due to limited funds. And I bet you not many of us had ever heard of some of these players or were very thrilled about being linked with them.

      On Guendouzi. Most of the Arsenal support base was like “We finish, 5th and 6th but our ambition is to sign another non league French youngster.

      On Leechestainer. “Hahaha, our club is now a complete joke. We are now relying on Free transfers of finished defenders.”

      On Sokratis. “Now we can accept that we are a midtable club. Out rivals are putting their money where their mouth is by signing a single defender worth £70 million while we are rummaging for cheap, finished defenders like Sokratis that is a now a bench player for Dortmund. Dortmund that are struggling in a one team league don’t even rate or want him anymore but is good enough for a club like Arsenal trying to compete again with the likes City, Liverpool, Spurs, United, Chelsea etc.

      Leno was a mixed bag, some were happy and others were skeptical about him. But we all agreed that anything different and new is better than aging Cech.

      Only Torreira excited most of us even though he himself was an unknown.

      So last summer transfer window was not the most uplifting for us on player dealings.

      At the same time People were not that enthusiastic about Emery as the preferred manager.

      Now you have a deadweight squad hoping to be lifted by these new signings that not a lot of us were even that excited about?

      And most of our new signings have done better than our old journeymen.
      Can you see where I am coming from?

      1. “By this time in the previous 2 seasons we were way out in the race for Top 3-4. Isn’t?”

        Yes. It isn’t. 2 seasons ago Arsenal lost out of top 4 on the last day of the league finishing 75
        points in 5th place behind Liverpool on 76 points in 4th.

        It was only last season that Arsenal lost out before the run in. Even at that, they made the league cup final, Europa league semi final (could have won if not Koscielny’s error), and had a pretty solid home record (15 wins, 2 draws and 2 loses only bettered by City in the league) while playing the entire season before a hostile fan base. Baring the poor away results (yes, results, because Arsenal dominated many of the games they lost without being clinical) Arsenal would have finished in the top 4.

        I dare say that this season is nothing to gloat about if one objectively assess last season because the results are similar, unless Arsenal wins the Europa.

  3. I’m sure if we continue to spend the poultry amounts we have( estimated 45m) in the summer we will soon catch Liverpool and city

  4. Bad transfers and even worse wages have bloated our squad with over-paid average players. Hard to sell with their wages and less interest from other clubs.

    We need to sell for a loss to get them out and free up opportunities for others. Hopefully our youngsters can step up.

    Can Saka or Eddie be worse than Iwobi and Mhki?
    Willock worse than Elneny?

    Chambers can be rotation or competition for Torreria.

  5. Watching Man u vs Man city, realised what a difference a player like Gundogan makes a huge difference. He’s very similar to Cazorla.
    Also a player like Sane on the wing

    1. Sane cost City £37m and Palace want £75m for Zaha and the media say we are interested. It’s got to be a joke!!!

  6. Can someone please explain why Pochettino is lauded as a great manager?

    19 points off the lead in the EPL, 11 defeats so far and are only four points above us. Is this is success I would hate to see what failure is. Can you imagine the stick Wenger would have got with these results?

    To answer the post, if Emery continues with recent results he may not get the choice. The gutless board members have to have a scapegoat, they are untouchable.

    Regarding the new NFL stadium Kroenke is building in LA, he’s not taking any money from AFC only using it as collateral for his huge loan. He or his son do not give a toss about us and the only way they will sell the club is when they start losing money.

    After 61 years supporting this great club I no longer feel sick when they lose, just sad and frustrated.

    1. My feeings exactly Andrew. None of us know what key performance indicators Emery may be required to meet under his contract. He may be sacked at the end of the season, with the board to deflect criticism for their lack of support going down the Chelsea road of “revolving door managers”. However unlike Chelsea they won’t support any new manager with funds, so who would be prep

  7. Of course Emery will go nowhere! He needs a job like everbody else and the Arsenal manager job is a very well paying job. Let’s not pretend money is not 99% of the reason why people accept jobs, especially high pressure ones like managing a football club. Only way Emery leaves is if the club fires him, not a day sooner.

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors