Highly popular and authoritative source Swiss Ramble has released information today that will be of interest to any Celtic supporter watching the Kieran Tierney transfer saga closely.
Arsenal have been ridiculed north of the border for their derisory approach to perhaps the star man not just at Celtic but in Scottish football as a whole. Celtic kicked out a low £15m bid with the Scottish Champions telling the London club exactly what it would take for them to part with their defender.
A bid meeting that valuation has not been forthcoming and today we might have some insight as to why this is the case.
Swiss Ramble report that Arsenal are not as financially sound as they once were. Even though they have posted profits for the 16th consecutive year – the eagle-eyed blogger.
The blogger writes that even though their latest profit postings for 17/18 was their fifth highest profit made in the club’s history this was driven by £120m of player sales.
The blogger writes:
“However, this profit was driven by £120m from player sales, so #AFC actually made a hefty £42m operating loss in 2017/18 – a £94m decline from the previous season’s £52m operating profit. This was due to the “double whammy” of no Champions League and a surging wage bill.
“In fact, given that there were no major player sales in 2018/19 (only Perez, Campbell and Akpom), it is highly likely that #AFC will report a large loss before tax for last season – the first time the club will have slipped into the red since 2002.
“#AFC were the only club in England’s Big Six to see revenue fall in 2018. In fact, their £38m growth since 2016 is miles lower than their main rivals, four of whom had revenue growth above £100m. Most painfully, in this time #THFC have closed the gap from £141m to just £10m.”
The blogger goes onto talk about financial costs of not spending meaning they were at the sharp end of paying the tax man and with debt still on their stadium they are a club who are struggling to keep up the with teams around them.
Why is this of interest to Celtic fans? The London club doesn’t look like it can flex its financial muscle at the moment without moving players on for fees and getting them off the wage bill. Arsenal are being left behind and aren’t the force they used to be which should also be of concern to Kieran Tierney if he has designs on winning trophies when he does leave Celtic.
All is not rosy in red.
The lad is well worth 25 m. If Arsenal don’t have that, then hard luck on them. Celtic don’t really need the money and don’t have to sell. Tierney imo is better than the lad at Liverpool.
It has to be 25m plus add ons. 50m for a basically unproven Crystal Palace player????
We all have sad story’s to tell ,but picking class players ain’t one that concerns arsenal, stealing player’ s at 25 million now seems the way arsenal want us to think they have blown there budget on mickey mouse players and they have about 8 they can’t shift hell mend them agents have them by the short and curleys in the EPL unless you say yer player is worth 60 million they don’t want them , they think your working a con