Country: England
Player:Rice
I absolutely agree with you, but there's way more factors in play here.
In short, making CL football, transfer fees this window and wages off the books over the next 9 months equate to around £120-150M.
- Partey and Aouar would go very far to securing top 4 for us. Champions league football will boost our commercial power and revenue streams in a huge way.
- Uefa and the PL have already said losses will be scratched this year.
- Whilst it may not seem like it now, Arsenal are in an excellent position in terms of "deadwood". In the next 9 months, including the rest of this window, you'll see £50M a year leaving the wage bill.
- You then have fees we could still potentially get this window. Could be anywhere between 25-50M.
- The refinancing of the loan from Kroenke doesn't indicate anything, our finances are blocked off from public viewing so nobody really knows what that will help with. What we do know is £36M cash is now available to put back into the club how we wish.
I'm quite sure the full fee wasn't paid up front for Gabriel and it'll be the same for Aouar. With the relevant sales we are likely to still break even this summer even if we get Partey and Aouar.
That's just my take on it, Arteta has said multiple times our business is dependant on who leaves.
One of the problems is we've been using the 'If we sign X player, he'll pretty much pay for himself by getting us Top 4 and Champions League money' a lot over recent seasons. None of the players we've bought in to date have done that. If a signing the quality of Auba couldn't do it I've got no reason to think a relatively inexperienced player like Aouar would, at least in the short term. This season with everything that's going on financially, it would be a massive risk.
You've also got to factor in we've got a massive wage bill / we're struggling to shift out deadwood and we're more reliant on match day revenue than pretty much any team in the league.
I think if we get one of Aouar or Partey we'll have done a very good job this window, considering the circumstances we're under and I'd consider it a success.
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