The rush to create a myth around Arsenal’s finances 

In 1997, Arsene Wenger bought a young Nicholas Anelka for £500,000.00 and sold him for £22,000,000.00 some two years later. In 2018 football transfer money, Anelka was sold for £156m. Arsenal & Arsene reportedly used the funds from the Anelka transfer to build London Colney, Arsenal’s world-class training facilities. 

In the same 1997, Arsene bought Marc Overmars for £7m and sold him for £25m three years later. Again, if you look at the current world transfer fee and that of 2000, Overmars was sold for the equivalent of £178m.

There is even more. Kolo Toure was bought for toffees from Asec Mimosas and sold for £16m a few years later. That is the equivalent of gazillions in transfer profit. Same with Cesc Fabregas. Bought for the equivalent of the cost of a family paella meal and sold for the GDP of a third world country.

If you have a few minutes, please check for yourself what Arsenal and Arsene Wenger bought (the ingrate) Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Gael Clichy and how much the club sold them and hopefully you will change your perception of Arsenal’s  finances.

That dull perception that Arsenal are always selling players cheaply while others sell theirs for huge sums should be dropped in 2018. It has no place in 2019.

What I find even more instructive is that Arsenal won something significant with each of the players listed above. However when the moaners in the Arsenal fan base compare the club with other club sides who sell players for several millions more than they are reportedly worth, the “what did those other clubs win with those players they sold or bought or what did they do with the money” is quietly ignored.

Tottenham sold Bale for 100 million Euros and pissed the money down the Middlesex drains. Liverpool sold Suarez and Coutinho for a combined fee of £217m and have lost three finals in Klopp’s three seasons.

What exactly is the complaint? That we are unable to pay £90m for Paul Pogba. The same transfer where Mino Raiola reportedly earned over £40m. So realistically, Paul Pogba’s transfer fee should have been £50m or going by his recent output, significantly less than £50m. So why are people upset that Arsenal was unwilling to shell out more than twice the real value of the player? The same model as the Pogba transfer is replicated in virtually all the high profile transfers we have witnessed in recent years.

The Pogba transfer is exactly why Arsenal do not want to deal with certain agents. The only exception in a life time was the Henrikh Mkhitaryan transfer and in my opinion, Arsenal did this because of the desperation to get rid of the virus infested piano player and the connection between Henrikh and Arsenal’s new head of scouting – Sven Mslintat.

So why bash Arsenal for the same values that the club professes to live by? A refusal to engage in money laundering and participate in illicit fund flows is surely not a bad thing. The owner of Monaco is currently on police bail. For the Swiss to investigate anybody for dodgy finances, you must be worse than Satan. Hope you can connect the dots on why they were never going to sell Thomas Lemar and Kylian Mbappe to Arsenal. It was more than player transfers.

Yes, things changed at some point and those transfers listed at the outset are no longer the norm with Arsenal. Arsene and Arsenal did not lose the magic touch. The football world changed. Chelsea and Manchester City especially started spending money like drunken sailors. Even to the point where Chelsea was spending silly sums on academy players. Arsenal had to drop down a few more pegs when trying to sign players. There is more of a downside to this strategy, the player quality is not top notch and there is more miss than hit.

If for any reason, Arsenal’s bargain basement purchases didn’t  work out, the club will need to let the players go and the club’s values is such that it won’t hold these players as hostages. They are let go for reasonable value determined by professionals within Arsenal and for sums that serve the interest of the players and the club. None of those holding Calum Hudson Odoi as a bait in exchange for a £40m ransom for a player that is never going to break into your first team. But you refuse to let him go despite the fact that you have another 100 youngsters on your books who are never going to make the grade. So Chelsea get lucky with selling one of one hundred players and that is a convenient stick to beat Arsenal with.

Also on the issue of finances, someone named Swiss Ramble published some data on club finances on social media. Many people inferred from the data that the Arsenal owner had invested ZERO money into the club in the last ten years. None of those doing the inferring connected this to the fact that he owned less than two thirds of the club in that period. None of those doing the inferring could relate the fact that those who have invested significant funds into their club had ulterior motives. Motives that contradict Arsenal values. These values influenced the decision of a majority of the original owners not to sell their shares to Mr. Usmanov and would definitely have influenced their decision not to sell to Mr. Abramovich as well if he had made an offer.

What upsets me the most are the people wondering why Kroenke has not been shoveling all of his wealth into a jointly owned venture when these same people go out with friends on a night out and insist on sharing the £4.99 bill amongst 16 people. Or the same people who constantly rely on the freedom to hold differing and sometimes barmy opinions are the same ones who want all billionaire football owners to spend their money the same way.

While anybody can hold opinions, those who have some responsibility in society should ensure the opinion they hold and share are well thought out. If you are going to criticize Arsenal’s spending in last 10 years with football results, shouldn’t you be balancing that with the overall value of the club? The individuals / small people who owned shares worth below £10,000.00 in 2008 and whose shares were worth £37,000.00 shortly before Kroenke bought all of the club ten years later. Where is the column for trophies won? For UCL qualifications? For the life of young players turned around? The good news stories etc.?

The dishonesty of claiming to have an insight into issues ought to stop. If you do not understand an issue, please don’t make it up. It is not by force to understand the intricacies of transfers, football tactics, football ownership and management.

The joys of the game still remains, watching football with your mates and likeminded people either in the stadium, in a pub or at home. Rooting and cheering for your team and enjoying your life. None of that includes making up stories about football and shit stirring.

Baba Grumpy works in financial services in the United Kingdom. He blogs mostly about football at http://babagrumpy.blogspot.co.uk. His Twitter handle is @BabaGrumpy