FALSE: Photo does not show the drought situation in Embolioi, Kajiado County, in October 2022
Admin Arsenal might not play in Europe for the first time in over a decade and will suffer a massive financial loss unless they beat city rivals Chelsea on August 1st at Wembley..
The north London club has slumped in form and wealth since Arsene Wenger left. With the resurgence of a new generation that believes in former players taking over as managers, Mikel Arteta might just be finding himself in a tricky situation with his employers.
After 37 games, the gunners lie at 10th place on the log with 53 points. They have a tricky fixture at home on Sunday on their final game day against relegation threatened Watford.
The Troy Deeney captained away side are hoping to win against the gunners then pray to the unfair gods of football that Aston Villa slump,s Top 5 exercises to do during the holidays to stay in top form lasitan muscuexpress – replacement gels for your abdominal, arm and buttocks weight training machine. for them to survive relegation.
Even if Arsenal wins, it means nothing to them as they still are just participants of the English Premier League, a sorry look for the former title contenders.
Another aspect to look into is the financial setbacks. The gunners are set for a major loss financially in case they fail to qualify for the Europa League next season.
Having that regular Champions League income increasingly divides the haves and have-nots of European football. Outside of that elite group for three seasons now, Arsenal are fast becoming one of the have-nots, and as it seems, now missing out on Uefa Europa sounds like a fiction movie from Nigeria’s film industry Nollywood..
At the start of the year, Arsenal’s published accounts, covering the 2018-19 season, recorded a loss of £27.1million. This was down from a profit of £56.5m the previous year.
The club made no secret of the reason. In a statement reflecting on the figures, Chairman Sir Chips Keswick, who has now retired, said: ‘Another season outside the Champions League will continue to apply pressure to our financial results.’
It was the annual injection of Champions League cash that kept Arsenal’s books balanced for so long and helped pay for the Emirates Stadium.
Consider this. Arsenal reached the Europa League final during the 2018-19 season, losing to Chelsea, and earned prize money of £34m.
But Manchester United and Manchester City, who only made the quarter-finals of the Champions League that season, pocketed £82m each.
North London rivals Tottenham, the runners-up, made £92m and Liverpool, the winners, £98m.
These are clubs Arsenal would consider their contemporaries at the richer end of the Premier League and yet a wealth gap is now opening up very fast.
There have already been concerted efforts by owner Stan Kroenke and his son Josh, a non-executive director, to drive down a flabby wage bill of £230m.
So the last thing they needed was a turbulent campaign that saw a club-record £72m outlay on Nicolas Pepe followed by inconsistent results in the league and a mid-season managerial change with Unai Emery sacked and replaced by Mikel Arteta
But the impact is already being felt behind the scenes at Arsenal, where players and coaching staff agreed to take a 12.5 per cent wage cut for a year when football stopped in March.
However, one caveat of that was that each player will get a £100,000 bonus if they are in the Champions League next season.
The club also released as many as 10 part-time scouts at the end of last month in the latest of what could be many enforced financial cutbacks.
Now matchday income – which accounts for 24 per cent of the club’s revenue – has dried up for the foreseeable future.
So suddenly a club that posted only its first operating loss in 18 years back in February could find itself in serious financial trouble.
By Shadrack Andenga Odinga
