Latest figures suggest that the Gunners have the sixth-highest transfer deficit since the summer of 2016.
CIES Football Observatory recently released figures related to top club’s spending, earnings, and deficit in terms of transfers. Manchester City leads the way among the Premier League clubs with a deficit of negative £554 million, with Manchester United in second place.
The only club to have spent over £1 billion is La Liga giants FC Barcelona. The Blaugrana’s have also earned £614 million and have deficit of negative £413 million.
Arsenal has incurred the sixth-highest transfer deficit in the Premier League since 2016. They have spent £515 million on new recruitments and £253 million on player sales. Thus, a deficit of negative £262 million.
Player sales do not include the departures of Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Sokratis, Shrodran Mustafi, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. These players left the Emirates with mutual consent or for free and the club did not get any transfer fee for them.
Arsenal’s offloading players problem
Gunners’ inability to ship out players for a reasonable fee has been a long-standing problem. Take former player Kieran Gibbs’ transfer to West Bromwich Albion in 2017 as an example. The left-back wanted to leave the Emirates and West Brom made a bid of £10 million for him. Arsenal rejected the bid.
Few days before the transfer deadline, Arsenal was in limbo with Kieran Gibbs. They were desperate to offload him. West Brom again made a bid, but this time of £7 million. The Gunners now had to accept the deal and they did. Had they accepted West Brom’s first bid, they could have got £3 million more.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan left the club on mutual consent for Serie A side AS Roma earlier this season. Arsenal could have asked for a transfer fee but was extremely desperate to cut ties with the Armenian. Mkhitaryan has gone on to become Roma’s key player this season.
They have also allowed players like Aaron Ramsey, Danny Welbeck and Stephen Lichtsteiner recently leave the club for free.
Gunners’ inability to negotiate
Arsenal’s incompetence in the transfer is not only limited to selling players. But they also over-pay on new recruitment. They paid £56 million for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang when he only had 6 months left on his Dortmund’s contract.
They massively overpaid Lille when they signed Nicolas Pepe last summer. The Ivory Coast international cost the Gunners a whopping £72 million. Arsenal paid this obscene amount on a player who had just one good season in top-flight football.
The combined fee of £117 million was spent on Granit Xhaka, Alexandre Lacazette, and Mustafi. None of them have improved or made Arsenal a powerhouse. William Saliba cost the club £25 million and is yet to play for the first-team. There is an on-going tension between him and manager Mikel Arteta. And most recently, they splashed £50 million on Thomas Partey and he has hardly featured for the club this season.
This revelation should serve as a lesson to Mikel Arteta and technical director Edu that the Gunners need to get better at player sales.
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