Well, that was a full weekend of football! Man City won the League Cup, Atalanta blew out Lecce 7-2, Sounders started the season with a 2-1 win, Tottenham lost to Wolves, Barcelona lost to Real Madrid, and William Saliba played leading St.E in passes (31/37), ball recoveries (8), tackles (3/4), interceptions (2), and clearances (7/7). Though I wouldn’t put too much stock in any stats in that league or that team, Matty Debuchy basically led them in all the same categories plus defensive aerials, fouls drawn, etc etc. That whole St. E side is a team of either future Arsenal players (Saliba), former Arsenal players (Debuchy) or players that Arsenal were linked to heavily for years (Cabaye and Yann M’Vila!).
Yann M’Vila… raise a hand if you remember that summer. He was the DM we supposedly needed in summer 2012 and I just remember Arsenal twitter going nuts for this player. Arsenal signed Santi Cazorla (ledge!) instead.
Damn that was a long time ago.
Couple of observations from the weekend’s football. First, Villa lost to City and probably as expected but one thing about that game bothered me: City scored off a corner that they shouldn’t have been awarded. The lino was unsighted and signaled for a corner but TV replays showed that the ball clearly went off the City player. I know we don’t want to use VAR to judge every incident (because it will take too long and slow the game down) but that goal felt really harsh.
And my second observation might come as a bit of a surprise but I think we aren’t going to have European football next season and absolutely no Champions league. I know that United drew and Spurs lost but the points gap is just too large between Arsenal and Chelsea to make up in the last 11 matches.
Just to give you the maths: Arsenal are 8 points behind Chelsea with 11 games to go. To make up that deficit, we need to win 0.73 points per game more than them. They are on 1.6 ppg and Arsenal are on 1.37. We would need to earn 2ppg and they would need to drop to 1.2ppg in essence. That means Arsenal would need to win around 7 of our last 11 and they would need to lose/draw most of their last 10. It’s not impossible, it’s just very unlikely.
I do think we should set the goal of finishing above Spurs. We are three points behind them and have some eminently winnable matches coming up. West Ham, BHA, Norwich, Watford, Southampton and Villa. But we also have to play Leicester, Spurs, Man City, Wolves, and Liverpool.
The big game for Arsenal has to be the weekend clash against West Ham. If we don’t get all three points from that one, I can’t see us finishing in the Europa League places even.
Nothing in the underlying stats makes me hopeful that we will suddenly start playing well either. We aren’t “underperforming” or accidentally letting in more goals than expected or anything. We are just a mid-table football team, folks.
And speaking of that! Swiss Ramble posted an excellent thread on Arsenal’s financial results (2018/19) and they show that Arsenal are in an absolute mess financially. I don’t normally link in post but I need to give credit here where it is due. Even if you don’t have twitter, get your ass over there and read his entire thread. It’s damning of the Kroenke/Gazidis regime to say the least.
Here are some highlights:
- Arsenal posted a £32m loss
- This was mostly due to a £108m reduction in profit from player sales
- Arsenal are way behind others in profit from player sales, £170m over the last five years compared to Liverpool’s £260m
- EBITDA was roughly half what it was two years ago, down to just £78m
- Arsenal revenue declined £30m while Spurs, LFC, and others all grew
- Arsenal now 6th in the earnings table, below Tottenham Hotspur – everyone in management should be fired for this fact alone
- Arsenal now 11th on the Deloitte money list, the lowest position since 2001
- Arsenal will probably lose some more money this season, thanks to the early exit from the EL
- Arsenal are 6th in commercial income – BEHIND TOTTENHAM which once again means that not only should all of the upper management be fired but they should be fired out of a cannon and into a fucking wall
- Arsenal amortization has doubled to £90m
- Arsenal spend on player acquisition had been £379m over the last three years. And given the state of the squad, I would say that has been absolutely squandered
- Arsenal gold coins in a pile doing nothing dropped from £231m to £167m
Ok so, that’s the bad news. The good news is that Arsenal will have some modest increases in commercial revenue when the Adidas and new Emirates deals kick in.
My reading of this is that this has been one of the worst run teams in the Premier League over the last 20 years. This is a club that earned £393m in profits from 2001 to 2018 and managed to go from League champions to 10th place. The promise of the new stadium putting us on an equal footing with top spending clubs like Man U and Chelsea was frankly a fantasy. And not only that but matchday revenue continues to be a massive part of our finances. Arsenal’s matchday supporters pay some of the highest prices in Europe for the privileged of watching a team which is currently in 10th place. Moreover, the squad is so utterly a shambles that fans are talking about needing a clear out of something like 6 players. The fans are being soaked.
This club has earned £400m in profits, wasted nearly that exact same amount on player purchases and has an overpaid, underachieving, and in some key areas, elderly squad that isn’t anywhere near good enough. Not only that but our business model seems to rely on player sales.
That last fact should terrify. Because that just means that any young players coming through the ranks right now are basically lambs to the slaughter. You think Arsenal will be able to hold onto Martinelli in two years when he’s scoring 25 goals a season?
Not only that but if Arsenal don’t even make Europa League next season, that’s another £20-80m down the tubes.
The one bright spot in all of this is that if the club continues to hemorrhage money it might force Kroenke to sell. He’s certainly not going to put money into the club, we know that. And so massive losses are pretty much the only way to get him out of the club. After all, there’s only so much austerity that a club like Arsenal can take before it drastically effects the results on the pitch, profits in the books, and the overall value of the club.
The stadium allowing us to compete was true when it was conceptualised. Before Chelsea changed the market.
Quite a journey for Arsenal. We had no divine right to be as big as we became under Wenger. No guarantee it would have happened. We should be able to build on that, but might just have squandered it away.
The decision to buy only Cech is where it started to go wrong. But not just because of the mistake, which it was, and a huge one at that. But also because of what followed. We find ourselves here via StatsDNA, and then Raul and Emery dragging us down.
Remember that in the worst of Arsene Wenger, we finished 1 point behind Liverpool, and then had a great home record (but terrible away) that took us out of the CL spots. We weren’t broken.
It seemed to me Gazidis was going to spend more money in retaining our players, and using Sven to coordinate with StatsDNA, and Per with the academy, to fill the gaps.
Raul fired Sven, fired/lost Burgess, forced Ramsey out, tried and failed to force Ozil out, alienated Kos, and tried to hang on to Emery, to the point of offering to extend after a failure of a first season. He’s paid full asking price for Tierney, Pepe and I guess Saliba too. Players we HOPE will be good. He’s failed to sell unwanted players (Elneny, Miki?) He’s sold low, homegrown players like Iwobi and Jeff. Maybe even Amaechi. He’s failed to convince big players to renew with us. And last, but not least, he’s not bringing us big money in sponsorships. What exactly does he do well? His style of working is ugly and doesn’t fit the culture of the club.
If Arsenal are to recover. If at all it is possible. We need to first get rid of this monster we let in. Then we need to be patient and let Arteta rebuild the team and the club.
Kroenke isn’t selling. I don’t see the point in hoping for that.
He’ll sell if the club loses money.
Hey Tim, you predicted Arsenal finishing 10 in Wenger’s last season and I said Arsenal would never finish that low.
Looks like I was wrong ( although it’s not over ), and you were 2 years ahead of the curve.
LOL!
Let’s hope not.
Lucas Torriera being stretchered off today means we probably won’t see him again until next season. Terrible. Despite that, we are through to the QF of the F.A. Cup which is a straw these players need to hold onto. It represents something beyond playing for pride and still does have legitimacy as silverware.
The team responded and got through after the huge disappointment of just a few days ago. We live in hope until the next match which is all I can expect from Arsenal right now.
And yes, I think Kroenke will eventually sell but not before the club I love so much is a shell of its former self and takes 20 years to get back to glory days. What a shame if that were to happen.
Superb post as always Tim
This has been coming for many years. The club stagnated in this decade. It was an amazing feat that we stayed in top 4 as long as we did but in this decade I don’t think we have ever been closer then 10 points to the club that won the league and based on the number of points we collected we have been closer to 5th place then the 1st place in every season in this decade. You can stay stagnant for only so long and you either have to get better and if you don’t get better it’s almost inevitable things will go the wrong way. The reason our players sales revenue has declined so much is because our player recruitment has been really poor in the latter half of this decade and we have not had anyone who we could sell for large sums of money and we have never been able to build our own superstars from the academy so that source of revenue never panned out. We have also made a lot of bad decisions such as the Ozil contract and trading Sanchez for Mkhitaryan instead of taking the cash.
Another reason our player sales revenues have declined so much is we tend to over rate our own players. Best example is Jack Wilshere. His injury history strongly suggested that his protoplasm was just not built with tough enough materials to allow him to thrive as a professional football player. We had a chance to sell him for big money in the middle part of this decade but I think let our emotional attachments guide our judgement and we held to the unrealistic hope that at some point he could over come his injury issues. Aaron Ramsey was a similar situation and although his injury history was not as clear cut as Wilshere’s we could have sold Aaron for big money after his performance in Euro 2016. Its clear now that we made the right decision to let him go instead giving him a huge money long term contract but we should have sold him when we had a chance. . $100M spent on Lucas Perez, Mustafi, Xhaka and Elneny and taking Mkhitaryan who had never made much of an impact in the PL instead of cash for Sanchez were more examples of poor decision making. IMO, the dumbest decision of all was the new contract for Ozil when I think it was eminently clear that his ability to influence the game was fading.
We also did a poor job of handling Wojo’s sale. Many now consider him one of the top 10 GK in the world playing for Juve but somehow we only about $10M transfer fee for him. The final verdict is not in but it certainly looks like we overpaid for Pepe.
On the other hand. I think we can safely say that we did get good value when we sold Iwobe and Ox and buying Auba for around $50M has turned out to be a great deal.
Don’t forget Gnabry. Ugh.
We really are one of the worst run clubs in the league.
Yeah the way our club has been run was awfully inept. Ever since Gazidis darkened our door we have been on a slide. I look at the Kronke’s and looking at it logically and put my anger aside, i realize this is not their fault. Yes the club have been bought to strengthen their investment portfolio. Which has been used largely as equity to fund other ventures like the LA Rams new stadium. I would hope that when that project is complete the same thing will happen for us using that project as equity for project Arsenal.
But the blame has to lay with Ivan Gazidis and his management team. He was at the head of the table when this poor club management began. Commercial deals were poor our saleable assets ran their contracts down and then giving players we should have let go new massive renewals. Then Gazidis’ last poisoned chalice was Unai Emery, who put our rebuild 18 months back.
Is this the fault of the Kronke’s, unfortunately its not ladies and gents. We do need a clearout regardless of European footy. Put more faith in the young lads and bargain hunt our way around the world.
The clearout is a neccessary for 2 reasons the first is it is effecting our profitability. For example Ozil earns around 18.2m per year in wages Miki around about 10-12m per year the same for Laca, Auba, Kola, Xhaka, Luiz and Mustafi. We look at these 7 players and who can we say were geting value for the 80m in wages we spend on them.
The second reason is funds for a rebuild. We could probably get anywhere from 120m low est to 200m highest for these players. Offset that with the wage reduction if we sell our players for low 120m coupled with an 80m wages per year saving. 200m in our back pocket for our summer spend.
We all knew this was a project i said based on Liverpool, it would take 3-4 years to get back to the top. Well be 2 years in to that this summer, we now have the right manager let him build a strong balanced squad.
Boy it’s going to be a rough ride for us Arsenal fans. Some serious expectations realignment required.
– We have a majorly underperforming exec team led by a guy Ari would call ‘trust fund baby’ (one for you Entourage fans);
– We lack a recruitment specialist to spot and secure hot prospects
– We have to dramatically reduce the wage bill.
I agree we’ll likely miss European football next term. Plus the ‘chasing pack’ are getting stronger (heck most of them are ahead of us in the table).
I feel for Arteta. I think he genuinely thought he could turn the ship around quicker and he’s probably now spending more of his time in emergency meetings wargaming how we compete with an U21 squad.
Relax guys , we got our ARSENAL. Wenger is gone for less down two years and the cookies are crumbling already We really took that guy for granted. Can we now see it wasn’t easy for him keeping us in top 4 while we all berated him
Jurgen Klopp is a great manager and he has a fantastic squad but let him have to sell is best players yearly for LFC to break even financially, and let’s see if he can be able to keep LFC in Top 4 for half the years Wenger did.
Except that Wenger didn’t need to sell his players in order to break even. This is a myth promulgated by Wenger and his apologists. He had ample money. He chose to sell and not to spend because he wanted to be the anti-Chelsea, he held the new spending in contempt and he wanted to try to prove that he could win without spending, could win while staying true to his “old world” ways. He failed. Badly.
Really?!! You mean Wenger willingly sell, Henry, Heleb, Adebayor, Nasri Fabrigas etc. ” Your incompetence ” shows up in your comment below. The man that built the ” Invicible” must really be incompetent at squad building. People like you requested for your ARSENAL back. I hope you are enjoying it now
Great post. Absolutely correct re where we are: we are a mid-table team with a mid-table squad. Some people can’t see this because they can’t conceptualize that Arsenal players or an Arsenal squad could be at that level, but that is precisely where we are. And we are where we are largely because of the incompetent squad-building of one Arsene Wenger.
Keep up the good work. If Pete Wood of Le Grove continues silencing and insulting posters and being completely and totally unreasonable about Arteta and Emery, this could become the best place to discuss Arsenal.
As for Kroenke selling, I don’t know if that will happen any time soon, and I don’t really think he is the problem anyways. Would a new owner and a big cash infusion help? Sure, but we can solve our problems the old-fashioned way as well. Sell Aubameyang and Lacazette this summer and invest that money in youth and quality, develop our Academy players and younger players, and take the long view. It can be done. See Liverpool.
Obviously Arsene and David Dein did a wonderful job of building the squad and squad managing in the early Wenger era. I think they were ahead of the rest of the world in scouting and identifying players such as Henry who were on the verge of breaking out and they had a plan with how to put the squad together that culminated in the invincibles. However the rest of the world caught up with us in terms of scouting acumen and finding top players who were flying under the radar such as Henry or Pires became much harder. To some extent Arsene believed his own reputation about being able to buy undervalued players and improve them and turn them into superstars but unfortunately the world caught up to him in scouting and he was never able to replicate what he did earlier. He also fell in love with the myth that he was great at developing youth and he believed he could build an unending stream of homegrown superstars from the academy which was never realistic. All that said he did a masterful job to get the squad into the CL final and he did a great job and almost won the league in 07/08. This decade has seen stagnation and doing whatever we could to hold on to the top 4. We never got past the round of 16 in the CL and never really challenged for the top of the table. Arsene’s squad management deteriorated over the course of the decade and the squad Emery inherited was clearly on a steep downward path similar to what happened with ManU when Fergie left.
To me the bottom line was Arsene was a great manager and had a great run but he stayed way to long and the result is what Tim described in his post. I think both Arsene and Arsenal needed to go a different direction after the Fabregas era ended.
Bill,
This is the league table last season after matchday 34 (12-16 April):
1 Liverpool P34 GD+57 Pts 84
2 City P33 GD+63 Pts 83
3 Chelsea P33 GD+30 Pts 67
4 Arsenal P33 GD+27 Pts 66
Last season Arsenal at matchday 33 (87% through the season) were averaging exactly 2 points per game with a goal difference of 0.82 per game.
This doesn’t back up any claims we were in long term decline. Arguably we were at that time on course for our largest points haul for many seasons.
That was largely due to the fugazi first half of the season when we lucked into a 22 match unbeaten run despite the underlying stats looking like dogshit
Ha! But…. is a 22 game unbeaten run down to luck? Half a dozen games? Yep. But 22 feels like a stretch. If I remember rightly our strikers were over performing but when they both cost £50M+ is that unreasonable? I think we’d all agree that Wenger left an unbalanced squad but very gifted at the attacking end.
We scored a lot of goals from outside the 18. Yes, it was luck.
I should add that Auba (for example) was scoring goals from outside the 18 and he’s a player who almost never even shot from there before. He’s scored 6 from there in two seasons for Arsenal, he scored 3 in 5.5 seasons for BvB.