Yo yo Gooners, y’alreet?

Just getting in to the lingo for KT’s move to Newcastle, as apparently they’re ‘back in the hunt’ for the full back. The supposed reason they haven’t already gone in for him – given they are looking at signing a left back – is that they want to ensure they are complying with financial fair play rules. Which is interesting given that other financially doped clubs in the Premier League seem to agree that FFP isn’t really worth the paper it is printed on. You’ve got Man City who have 115 charges which, by the radio silence of it all, probably means that’ll go away with nobody seemingly able to enforce it. Then there’s Chelsea, who have just bid £35million for Olise, which they will add to the £53million they’re paying for Lavia and £277million they’ve already spent this summer alone. Add to that the £524.8million they spent last season and we have just the £889.8million spent on players in just over a year since last summer. With £58million recouped last summer/January, as well as the £218.9million this summer (yeah, all above board, that), that puts them just the £612.9million overspent. But that’s ok, because they have a totally above board sponsorship deal with an American tech firm nobody has heard of (Infinite Athlete) who are linked to Clearlake Capital for something north of £40million. It’s interesting that this new company formed one month ago out of a business called Tempus Ex Machina, has an annual turnover of $15million, yet they are happy to stump up $51million dollars per annum for a sponsorship deal with Chelsea.

Seems Legit, right?

Quite why the Premier League are sat there happy to see a club like Chelsea behave like this is beyond me. They will have better investigative people than me, some random fan who did some Googling and found countless links to stories like the above, or this one in which Chelsea are also on a UEFA watch list for FFP. Why are the Premier League seemingly incapable  – or just not interested – in dealing with this approach? Where has the sporting integrity gone?

To the dogs, that’s where. According to their last accounts Chelsea made £481million in revenue as this article talks about here. My back-of-a-fag-packet calculations (and again, I must tell you I am just a fan doing five minutes of Googling) says that they lost £121million in their last accounts, with that only getting worse because of all of the signings and lack of return. So we’re talking a £121million loss added to the £612.9million overspend in transfers, and the world is all supposed to just say “yeah, this is fine”.

Sort it out, Premier League. Just make things a bit more of a level playing field. I get it, the bigger clubs will always have more money and therefore the playing field may never truly be ‘level’, but what I’m looking at here from the outside in, is a club who are essentially bending every possible rule they can to gain a competitive advantage. Where is the sporting integrity in that?

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that horrendous football club any more, so let’s go back to the Kieran Tierney to Newcastle rumours. The thing is, I don’t even hate the idea of it being a loan move, if we get a guarantee that the deal happens next summer. We’ve just done it with David Raya and the noises from journos who know is that the points in which the option is triggered to make it happen are pretty realistic. There is expectations that this deal will just go through, so it’s basically an obligation in most by name by the sounds of it. So why don’t we do the same with KT? A £3million loan deal, obligation to buy next season for £35million, then Newcastle get their guy, comply with regulations, we get the cash but on an ‘eventually’ deal.

The only sticking point might be if Arsenal basically need the money now to bank it on the book values so that we are offsetting some of the deals we’ve already brought in this summer. If we don’t get actual cash for KT this summer, whilst it’s fine for the next window in 2024, it probably means we have to sell one extra player that we didn’t think we’d have to sell this summer. We’ve all talked about the fact we aren’t going to get big cash for the likes of Cedric, Pepe, Holding, etc, so unless Arsenal can do some kind of deal for one of our other players for decent money, I suspect that we may even get a surprise sale. Could that be somebody like a Smith Rowe? Potentially. If we need to balance the books – which you’d have to assume we do because we don’t fiddle systems like certain clubs – then you’d have to say that it’s probably on the cards. You can see why we’re holding out for £50million for Balogun. If the plan was to recoup circa £100million in fees this summer and most of that was predicated on a Balogun, Tierney and Xhaka set of sales for £50million, £35million and £20million respectively, then having that KT deal turn in to a £3million loan deal suddenly doesn’t seem as attractive, because you have to sell another decent squad player for at least £30million.

But this is why Edu is paid the big bucks. It is his job to find a solution and he has to do that sooner rather than later. The pressure is on for sales now, so he has to be maximising the price for our fringe players.

Back tomorrow with some more waffle.

Laters peeps.