what? with over 30,000 on the season ticket waiting list
when was the last time highbury or the emirates was not a sell out?????
Yes but that's now, I'm talking about a future situation.
It wasn't meant as a Spurs Arsenal thing honest.
I was saying if you dropped out of being serious league contenders, big if, then you would struggle to sell out in the non-big games, history shows this with Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea, they have a lot of fairweathers.
You have massive turnover now largely based on the 60k sell out's at Emirates, but the operating profit is only 36M, as you have 320M of debts to service, a lot of which is loans to develop Highbury site 220M odd loans to pay off for Ashburton Grove. Wages/management costs are 100M per year.
You're crowd base before you started winning leagues and a permanent top challenging team was 23-28,000 'ish. Obviously this has now grown but can't see filling 60k stadium if not seriously challenging any longer.
The thing to me isn't about 'when we get our full first team back', it's that there isn't a second squad to do the business which you need to win the league, like Man U and Chelsea have. Arsenal need some big plyers in key positions.
I was only putting it up as a possibility, if I had to bet on it I'd say it won't happen.
But Arsenal's finances are in large part based on possible risk areas like filling the ground (team performance) and development of Highbury (property market), where many buyers have forfeited their deposits and pulled out of the purchases.
Arsenal have alsways had a lower turnover than their statue deserved, that's why they don't often pay silly transfer fees but have relied on shrewd buys by Wenger which all worked out. They can't pay the biggest salaries around. Now the need those new big players, can they be got ?
This from a Arsenal website, not an anti-one:
This is where the size of the squad, and the composition of the squad, becomes critical. Because there is no way that Arsene can allow his wage costs to creep up from £80m to £90m to £100m. That cannot happen. It's impossible. The money isn't there to pay it, even though there is a small amount of commercial money coming in.
When you look at it, the only variable cost is your squad. And the cost of the squad has been trimmed and trimmed again. That's why Arsene cannot put Adebayor's wages up from £35,000 a week to £70,000 a week. He can't double Ade's wages, let alone treble his wages, even if he wanted to. And he doesn't want to.
IF Arsenal keep challenging and filling the ground then no problem, but if not challenging and Gallas, Adebayor and say Fabregas goes to Madrid then different story.
SJ
United go there next week.
