The rise of clubs with rich owners is widening the financial gap at the top level, so it means clubs like Arsenal need to work much harder in the transfer market to stay in touch.
Ultimately that means signing players before they go on to be known as world-class stars, and then you need to sell them on for a profit to maintain a healthy financial position and you can keep investing in the team.
Of course no team is going to hit on every single transfer, but this is actually mind-blowing when you see how dreadful they’ve been in the transfer market recently:
Since 2013, Arsenal made over 30 FIRST TEAM signings (excluding free agents) and are yet to make a profit on the sale of a single one of them. The last 2 players Arsenal signed for money and made a profit on was Giroud (signed 2012) and Chamberlain (signed 2011).
— LTArsenal™ (@ltarsenal) June 11, 2021
The biggest problem here isn’t just down to the initial recruitment, they’ve also let themselves down repeatedly by either handing out huge contracts or not acting quick enough.
Alexis Sanchez and Robin van Persie are prime examples of players they were forced to sell for peanuts as their contracts ran down, while guys like Mesut Ozil and Willian had little sell-on value but they were given monstrous contracts that far outweighed their ability.
It’s something that needs to change, but this really illustrates just how shocking it’s been.