Arsenal Make Just £20m Available For Wenger To Spend In January

The summer transfer window may be closed but managers are already thinking ahead to future transfer windows so we’ll bring you all the latest news and gossip. Today, Arsene Wengers January transfer budget revealed.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger will have just £20m available to spend in January despite the club having more than £100m in the bank, according to reports.

We’ve just come off the back of a record summer of spending that saw us splash out on Alexis Sanchez, Calum Chambers, Mathieu Debuchy, David Ospina and Danny Welbeck. Our net spend was around £60m, which was the second highest in Europe behind only Manchester United – but there is still substantial funds left over in the bank.

Arsenal’s latest financial results were announced in September and confirmed that as of May 31st 2014, we had cash reserves of £173.3m – which does not include circa £30m which is put aside to service our debt.

When you take away the net £60m we spent in the summer on transfers, that still leaves over £110m in cash reserves. The club put aside a further sum in the region of £30m to cover one season without Champions League football while we also have to take into account the on-going day-to-day running costs of the club over the course of the season.

Taking everything into consideration, the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust estimate we should have around £40m available to spend in January. However, the Telegraph are reporting today that Arsenal are no longer in a position to make another ‘mega’ signing like Mesut Ozil or Alexis Sanchez, and the board have made just £20m available to Arsene Wenger to strengthen his squad this winter.

The newspaper suggests the reason for this is we are set to invest heavily in improving the clubs academy and training facilities while we also want to hold back transfer funds for the summer.

Like many fans, I think we are two players short – a centre-back and a defensive midfielder – and while £20m is still a sizeable transfer kitty, I’m not sure it’s enough. A top class defensive midfielder such as William Carvalho will cost at least £20m alone which would leave us nothing left to bring in a defender.

It means that if Arsene is planning on signing two players this winter, he’s going to have to get creative. He could target players who are running out of contract, such as Sami Khedira or Adrien Rabiot, and hope to drive the price down as the selling clubs wouldn’t want to lose the players for nothing in the summer.

It’s going to be an interest AGM today and Arsene and the board are going to come under heavy pressure about why we failed to bring in a centre-back or defensive midfielder in the summer, but lets hope they have plans in place to fill the holes in January and the boss can get his business done on his £20m budget.