Summer Transfer Window 23/24

We're apparently doing it as a) we're happy for him to leave and the transfer obligation trigger is a low amount of games but more importantly b) Arsenal have finally hit their FFP limit... or close enough to make a full transfer difficult to pull off.
The latest tifo podcast states that Arsenal are nowhere near FFP limits. Surprised me tbh.
 
There accounts for last season aren't out so it's pure guess work from anybody to say what they can or can't spend and meet ffp. Also there is the PL's financial limits, which are far more lenient, and then there's UEFA's and Arsenal were put on UEFA's watch list 12 months ago for possible FFP breaches so they were clearly close to the limits then.
We was taken off that list very quickly
 
There accounts for last season aren't out so it's pure guess work from anybody to say what they can or can't spend and meet ffp. Also there is the PL's financial limits, which are far more lenient, and then there's UEFA's and Arsenal were put on UEFA's watch list 12 months ago for possible FFP breaches so they were clearly close to the limits then.

I can't remember the details but the podcast do break it down more than i have. It's the last 9mins.

......ah....I'll listen to it and type it out for you, word for word.

Question - John (the host) - How can Arsenal afford to do this? 58:17

Answer - In fact, if i go a little further back John, they spent £300mil in the last 2 years. So if you add that up its about £500 mil over 3 seasons right which is huge. How is Arsenal been able to do this? I think a few reasons that explains it right. I know there have been questions about FFP and why Arsenal are not close to FFP. Arsenal are miles away from being in any kind of FFP trouble right, and I will try and explain why that is.

Firstly, Arsenal's wages are very well managed, as I said earlier right, basically they have a £212 mil wage bill, which is £170 mil, to put it into context, £170mil lower than Manchester United. Manchester United has £384 mil, and Arsenal is £212 mil, so that gives them a lot of flexibility on wages, to bring players in on good wages, renew contracts on players like Buyako Saka, Gabrelle Martinelli, who are important for the future of the club. It gives them a lot of wage flexibility. That's the first point.

The second point, is because they are back in the Champions' League, the earning potential goes up significantly for various reasons. Firstly, their staduim sponsor Emirates, Emirates actually built into their sponsorship contract, with a clause that if Arsenal gets into the CL, they get a bigger payout. And they get that payout immediately at the start of the season. So they would have earned a lot of money, literally without kicking a ball in the CL.

Second, the actual CL group stages is about 30-40mil in euros right, which is great, just for participating, even if Arsenal don't go further, which they very easily could.

The 3rd thing, which is worthly of note, which is, erm, is Arsenal's amortisation, is still only the 4th highest in the PL and so we spoke about Chelsea being the highest, Arsenal is the 4th highest. So obviously we go up more when they complete all the signings in this window but it is still at a fairly manageable level I would say right, its not gone completely off the handle. I think one thing that Arsenal have faced as an issue and really need to think about is the revenue growth. And so if i look at the last 5 years' 2017-22 Arsenal's revenue has actually declined by 13% in that period right and so it was £423 mil in 2017 and it was £369 mil in 2022. So (something i can't make out) now if i look at Tottenham's, they actually grew revenue by 45% in the same period. And Totthem actually went from having literally 40% less revenue to 30% more now, right, and and a big part of that is actually commercial revenue.

Where Arsenal are actually the commercial engine are much weaker compared to other Premier League clubs, and that is something that they need to invest in and push further now they have CL qualification they will 100% be doing that. but commerican revenue for Spurs now is 30% higher than Arsenal, which is interesting because it was lower in 2017. so again, Spurs has managed to accelerate fairly quickly and if you look at all the other clubs, Man City, Liverpool and even Manchester United's commercial revenue is well above Arsenal's right? so that is the first step, how do we bring it commercial revenue as a meaningful stram of revenue. We spoke about revenue mix earlier, Arsenal actually have the highest match day income, at 24%, so they were badly affected by Covid, again, which basically went to zero during covid.

So right now Arsenal are in a good position to spend heavily now John, again, as I add these things up, 1 - Champion's League qualification, which has a snowboll effect on revenue. 3 - their wage bill is actually fairly low, so it gives them a lot of flexibility to sign players on higher wages. The 3rd thing is the PL's FFP covid regulation right, so we spoke about right, because Arsenal had such heavy losses during covid, they can basically write of massive amount of losses and be no where near the FFP limit. So Arsenal's pre-tax loss, was I think, the cumulative loss £160 mil or so if i look at the data over the last 3 years and the covid loss was basically that so they can basically wipe out the entire thing, so that gives them a £105mil * of flexibility. Now remember this is a cumulative loss, so this obviously there are other elements that comes into it, so because they have that covid flexibility now, and they won't have it next season, this is the right time, if you want to go big and really strengthen the squd. I don't expect Arsenal to continue to do this in subsequent seasons, i don't think they will need do actually because they have built a very young squad, and very good squad and if they have tied them down to very long contracts its a well set up well structured squad and it will not need significant further investment going forward and they are well placed financially and actually nowhere near breaking FFP despite all the spending we've seen.

*The £105 mil flexibility is to do with the amount an owner is allow to invest club is allow to invest into the club and write it off, it's less than that but something else in the rules are added to make it £105mil.
 
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I can't remember the details but the podcast do break it down more than i have. It's the last 9mins.

*The £105 mil flexibility is to do with the amount an owner is allow to invest club is allow to invest into the club and write it off, it's less than that but something else in the rules are added to make it £105mil.
You didn't need to do that, I listened to the podcast and there was nothing particularly interesting in it. He's referring to the PL's limits (the £105m), as I mentioned UEFA's limits are far stricter at just 30m euros over 3 years and as I mentioned, Arsenal were already close to breaching UEFA's FFP limits 12 months ago. Like him, I have no idea just how much wriggle room Arsenal have now as Arsenal's accounts for 22/23 haven't been filed yet.
We was taken off that list very quickly
That's not how it works Rob. FFP works on a rolling 3 year cycle (the average of 19/20 and 20/21 is used due to covid) and Arsenal's losses from the previous years along with the trends going into the 21/22 accounts showed Arsenal were going to be close to breaching FFP. Once Arsenal filed their accounts with UEFA (I think they had until January to do that), they were subsequently cleared but we know they were close enough for UEFA to mark them down.

Only Arsenal's management and accountants can tell you how much wriggle room Arsenal have right now because Arsenal's accounts for last season aren't filed yet, neither publicly or with UEFA (or the PL).
 
It reads really weird when i type it out word for word....

But in short.

1 - Sponsorship deal triggered a payout due to being in CL
2 - Being in CL
3 - Covid FFP wiped off their losses of £160mil
4 - Low Amortisation
5 - Low(er) wage bill
6 - Room for growth commercial revenue with CL
(7) - lots of clever accounting !
 
I've just seen the terms of the Raya deal... there's no way he's not joining. There are other clauses not related to games being played, and a combination of them all means that he's almost certainly joining permanently.
 
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The Raya move is a very strange one. He's probably an upgrade on Ramsdale, but not by a lot?

Ramsdale must be concerned - not many teams have a very similar quality second goalkeeper, it normally doesn't work.

Arsenal must think he's a significant upgrade and will ultimately replace Ramsdale at some point very soon.

Ramsdale seems a big character for Arsenal, you wonder if this could destabilise them a bit...
 
It reads really weird when i type it out word for word....

But in short.

1 - Sponsorship deal triggered a payout due to being in CL
2 - Being in CL
3 - Covid FFP wiped off their losses of £160mil
4 - Low Amortisation
5 - Low(er) wage bill
6 - Room for growth commercial revenue with CL
(7) - lots of clever accounting !
As I said, I listened to the podcast but again, his point was regarding the PL's limits, not UEFA's. Swiss Ramble unfortunately charges for his analysis now (and being the sado that I am, I pay for it) and as part of his analysis of Arsenal's finances, he produced the following to show the difference between the two and how Arsenal were no where near breaking the PL's limits in the 3 years to 21/22 but (slightly) broke UEFA's limits:
92eeedf0-eeb3-451a-90b0-8a0d78f430df_2312x1770.jpg

Once Arsenal's accounts are published for last season he'll do the same but using the above as a starting point, Arsenal will be carrying over £18m worth of FFP loses (after deducting covid costs and other allowable losses), which would mean without an equity injection, Arsenal would have needed to record a FFP profit of £13m last season to be within UEFA's limits.

Looking beyond that is pointless because nobody has a clue how much Arsenal's wage bill will be this coming season (we don't even know last seasons), let alone all other costs and revenues.
 
The Raya move is a very strange one. He's probably an upgrade on Ramsdale, but not by a lot?

Ramsdale must be concerned - not many teams have a very similar quality second goalkeeper, it normally doesn't work.

Arsenal must think he's a significant upgrade and will ultimately replace Ramsdale at some point very soon.

Ramsdale seems a big character for Arsenal, you wonder if this could destabilise them a bit...

Artetas plan is 2 strong players for every position, it creates competition its not a case of one leaving. Look at city they have ortega and ederson

Ortega is easily a no1 keeper
 
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Artetas plan is 2 strong players for every position, it creates competition its not a case of one leaving. Look at city they have ortega and ederson

Ortega is easily a no1 keeper

Not sure that works for goalkeepers really. Ortega is miles off Ederson, he's never going to displace him from the first team.
 
Not sure that works for goalkeepers really. Ortega is miles off Ederson, he's never going to displace him from the first team.
i dont agree he's miles off ederson ortega is a top class keeper

and to clarify when say hes a no1 keeper i mean in majority of other teams he would be a no1 hes that good
 
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i dont agree he's miles off ederson ortega is a top class keeper

and to clarify when say hes a no1 keeper i mean in majority of other teams he would be a no1 hes that good
Is he that good? He's 30 now and never played at anything close to the highest level. You'd have thought after this many years a half decent keeper would have done more than hover around the bottom end of the Bundesliga and the 2nd division in Germany.
 
Is he that good? He's 30 now and never played at anything close to the highest level. You'd have thought after this many years a half decent keeper would have done more than hover around the bottom end of the Bundesliga and the 2nd division in Germany.
well he more than made his mark last season he kept ederson out for all of man citys fa cup games and kept 9 clean sheets in 14 appearances overall. Hes very good with his feet also same as ederson

Martinez was a nobody until his breakout season 2 years ago with arsenal just because hes been playing bottom of bundesliga doesnt mean hes not quality
 
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well he more than made his mark last season he kept ederson out for all of man citys fa cup games and kept 9 clean sheets in 14 appearances overall. Hes very good with his feet also same as ederson
He didn't keep Ederson out, Pep plays the 2nd keeper in the domestic Cups and I'd have kept 5 clean sheets for City last season too. I'm not saying he's a bad keeper but he's hardly got a CV to say he'd be number 1 for most clubs. Other than being City's number two he's played Championship level football his whole career.
 
He didn't keep Ederson out, Pep plays the 2nd keeper in the domestic Cups and I'd have kept 5 clean sheets for City last season too. I'm not saying he's a bad keeper but he's hardly got a CV to say he'd be number 1 for most clubs. Other than being City's number two he's played Championship level football his whole career.
thats fine your entitled to your opinion, mines different
 
But how many top clubs have two very similar quality goalkeepers?

The plan must be for Raya to replace Ramsdale. I think it could quite easily cause some problems.

-

Chelsea trying to nick Liverpool's target

if he goes chelsea then it serves liverpool right for ****ing about with the bids

as for raya, arteta will drop anyone in a heartbeat if he thinks theres a better option so yes ramsdale has gotta pick it up and keep performing or raya will be in. Artetas wanted raya for a long time probably because our GK coach knows him very well from when he was at brentford
 
thats fine your entitled to your opinion, mines different
Yea, I realised that when I first replied to you. I was hoping you might expand on your point a bit more.

2nd choice keepers are always a challenge. Everybody wants the best back-up they can have but it's very difficult to keep a high level 2nd choice happy because it's unlikely they're going to feature much, if at all. I can't recall there being a situation where two keepers (at a high level anyway) have ever genuinely competed for the number 1 spot so it would be a surprise if that was the case. Either Arteta thinks Raya is going to be his number 1 or Raya has decided he's happy to settle as a number 2.
 
I don't think it's a bad idea to have two top keepers if you're competing on 4 fronts. Raya will get plenty of PL games as well. If Ramsdale proves himself to be the no1 and Arsenal have a big CL game midweek, just put Raya in for the weekend game. He'll easily have 25/30 apps this season
 
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