Arsenal's transfer budget does not include a centre back

By 1970's Gooner

As we all know Arsenal's transfer budget was based on the accounting cash generated from the operations of the business of running a football club. Stan Kroenke and his son are hard nosed businessmen. 

They are not some benefactors that have bought a football club in the PL in order to realise a dream they had when they were small kids of 'one day owning their local football club'. Like for example Jack Walker with Blackburn. Nor are they Roman Abramovich, an Emir or even an Arab State who literally have money to burn.

So 40m plus say another 4 m (for Ospina) and what you can raise from selling players, preferably the big wage earners, is your lot and do the best you can because the business cannot afford more Mr Emery, they say. 

But 40 to 44m cannot really buy you much with the highly inflated prices of these days. Which are, by the way, brought about by the huge sums of money spent by the few mega clubs of Europe and the English clubs owned by the benefactors, as explained above.

Faced with this what can Emery and Arsenal's transfer 'gurus' do? Not much really.

We all know that Arsenal need to add a centre back, a left back and a wide midfielder as a minimum. Arsenal's current budget can get you an average player in only one of these categories. 

Can money be raised by selling unwanted players? 

The answer is not much:

Mustafi: No takers
Ozil: No takers (unless we pay more than half his wages)
Koscienly: 5m? 
Chambers: Probably Fulham but at 5m say?
Elneny: 5m at best.
Jenkinson: 3 to 5m

That's a total of about another 18 to 20m if indeed there are buyers at these prices AND the players are willing to go of course. If we can manage to get these sort of money then we are talking at best 60 to 65m. Less the 6m we paid for Marinelly leaves 54 to 59m.

If we get the Tierney deal over the line at 20m now plus extras (which would raise it to 25m over time) then that leaves us with 34 to 39m. Can you get the quality centre back and the wide midfielder we all want with this kind of money? 

The answer is no.

My feeling is that prior to Koscienly's unexpected downing of tools the plan was NOT to buy a centre back. Koscienly and Socrates would have been the initial pairing until Holding returned to action in September. 

The money saved was to be used to buy a decent wide midfielder. Or even to persuade Mr Kroenke to chip in with another 40m to buy Zaha....

The strategy for now is obvious: Stick to the plan. Persuade Koscienly to return to the fold. In this way the plan can be fulfilled. If however this proves not possible then what? 

I still think that the Arsenal transfer gurus will be keen to stick with Socrates, Monreal, Holding (in September) and Mavropanos if Kroenke accepts to release funds to make the Zaha transfer possible. This would be too good an opportunity to miss...

Otherwise they will either spend the rest of the budget (assuming it is augmented with player sales as above) to bring in a new centre back and rely on Iwobi, Mkhitaryan and Reiss Nelson for the wide areas.

OR split the budget to buy a centre back and wide midfielder at 20m each! Not recommended of course.

All the above depend on adding to the original budget, player sales worth around 18 to 20m.

If we don't manage that we are in deep shit.