Why Can't Arsenal Sell?

There's a lot to commend about the way Arsenal handle their business behind the scene. They've boasted using a self-sustaining model and have reaped the rewards in a more organic way. Under Arsene Wenger we were known as a club that always needed to sell to buy and quite famously neglected spending anything on transfer fees, baring some deals early on in his Arsenal tenure. Wenger's philosophy was to make a superstar rather than buy them and it worked pretty well for him, he uncovered and polished a number of gems that went onto to have glittering careers.

However, since the arrival of Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour to British football, the whole landscape of transfer fees changed. Of course inflation has played a part in modern transfer fees, but those two men and a few others flooded their wealth into football. Arsenal couldn't survive under the changes and had to adapt, but tried as hard as they could to remain close to their beliefs about an honest and self-sustaining business model. More money did become available, but not even in the same stratosphere as Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United.

Fast forward to today, with Mikel Arteta at the helm, we're able to spend quite a bit of money. In this transfer window alone, our net spend is sitting at £188 million. A lot of that money would've been generated from last season's 2nd place finish and reaching the Champions League semi-finals. It's fantastic what being in the best competitions can do for your wealth.

The unfortunate aspect of Arsenal's net spend is that they have only accumulated around £6 million in transfer fees, but 8 players have left the club. There in lies a big issue, which is engulfed by an even bigger issue. How have we allowed 8 first team players leave and only generated £6 million? In fairness, two of those players were just loan deals expiring, but that still leaves 6.

The bigger issue Arsenal have, that seemingly none of the other largest 6 clubs appear to have, is that they cannot sell an asset for any decent amount of money, let alone turn over a profit for a player. We've only become slightly better in the last year or so, but when you look at our top departure list of all time and it's a stark reality. The biggest transfer fee we've ever received is £33 million for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to Liverpool in the 17/18 season, coming up to a decade ago. Our second highest came before the turn of the century, yes BEFORE THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.

We've had hundreds of assets over the years that could've been sold to generate some extra cash to put into the transfer kitty. It's actually embarrassing as a football institution that claims to be one of the biggest in the world.

So, why can't Arsenal sell a player?

There's clearly a perception held across Europe that Arsenal are either easily negotiated with or we don't have anyone to sell that would generate good money. The latter is certainly not true. We did manage to secure relatively good deals for Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith-Rowe, but when you look around at similar transfers and you'd consider us robbed.

Chelsea are a fantastic example of a club that can generate a transfer fee of considerable proportions out of nowhere. I mean yes there is definitely something dodgy going on behind the scenes, but they know how to sell a player and not take anything less than what they deem to be fair. They've earned £131 million from player sales without the inclusion of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who will take that total figure to around £160 million, reportedly. Now, they haven't sat on that money and let it build as they've parted with £242 million in recruitment. But, their net spend is cut all the way down to roughly £82 million. On the face of it, they've sold their disposable assets and recruited players in line with their vision for the club.

If we pivot to Liverpool who haven't bought to sell, but they were brave enough to sell one of their most in form players in Luis Diaz. They received £60 million for him and they can easily use that to put towards a deal for Alexander Isak if they wanted to. Diaz finished last season with 25 goals/assists in 50 games, a pretty good return. At 28 years old Liverpool knew they'd never get an offer like £60 million ever again, so they cashed in when his price was at its peak. That right there is what Arsenal don't do.

As soon as a player enters some sort of form that drives up his price, we decide to keep them. Of course you want to keep your inform players, but sometimes you need to know when to cash in. Every top club will have players that are pretty much off the table in terms of selling them. Liverpool have Virgil Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah. Manchester City have Erling Haaland and Rodri. Chelsea have Cole Palmer and Reece James. Arsenal just have too many we feel like we can't sell. However, I'd say the only individuals that really hit the category of players listed above is Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice.

Every single other player has a price. William Saliba has attracted interest from Real Madrid for a very long time, if the Madrid club come in with a £80/£90 million bid then we need to be brave enough to accept. As difficult as it would be to lose Saliba, he's replaceable. As is Gabriel, as is Martin Odegaard, as is Gabriel Martinelli. You don't want to lose them, but they could easily fetch £60m+. Suddenly that player that seemed so unlikely to join doesn't sound that unrealistic. Right now I don't think there's many Arsenal fans that would say no to cashing in on Martinelli and going after Rafael Leao or Rodrygo. However, without his transfer fee, we can't upgrade. Like any good stock trader, sell when it's at its peak. Don't let the stock depreciate in value otherwise you're stuck with it until you have to discard it.

Looking at our current squad and there is value beyond selling our key players. Oleksandr Zinchenko, Fabio Vieira, Albert Sambi-Lokonga, Reiss Nelson, Karl Hein, Jakub Kiwior and Leandro Trossard. Those are the players we should be maximising our expenditure on. There isn't a player there worth over £30 million, but Andrea Berta will have to try and get as close as he can. Berta might be more aggressive in selling players compared to Edu. If we still had the latter handling transfer business, we'd end up keeping Trossard and Kiwior and loaning the rest out again until they can leave as free agents. Like Kieran Tierney, Thomas Partey and Jorginho.

Something has to change. We can't keep watching our rivals sell for big profits which allows them to increase their transfer funds, all while complying with PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules). Sell when a good offer comes in and don't be bullied into lowering your expectations.