After £200m spend, Wenger promised 'all available revenue' in Arsenal trophy hunt

Arsenal will continue to make “all available revenue” available to Arsene Wenger as they chase down “major trophies”, says Ivan Gazidis.

While the Gunners have become famed for their frugal approach to recruitment, they have spent over £200 million in transfer fees over the last three years.

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Granit Xhaka and Shkodran Mustafi were acquired in big-money deals back in 2016, while Arsenal broke their transfer record to sign Alexandre Lacazette over the summer.

Gazidis insists that Wenger will continue to be backed with the necessary funds, with the north London outfit determined to remain a competitive force at home and abroad.

The club’s chief executive wrote in Arsenal’s full year results: “Our ambition is clear - to win major trophies.

“In order to compete at the top, we need to strive to be better than our competitors in everything we do. 

“That is why during the past season we have continued to make substantial investments to drive the club forward.

“At the top of the pyramid, we have scaled up our investment in our first team squad significantly in recent years, spending a net £203m in transfer fees in the last three seasons.”

Playing Surface

Gazidis added: “With few notable outward transfers during this period, our squad size had grown and we therefore had two major objectives for the summer transfer window.  To add to the squad only where we could improve the quality of the players available to our manager – quality over quantity – and to reduce our overall squad size. 

“To that end, we secured Sead Kolasinac and Alexandre Lacazette, our two primary targets for this transfer window. We also transferred or loaned a number of squad players to enhance the efficiency of our spending, to generate transfer revenue for reinvestment into the team and in some cases (for example, as in the case of Emi Martinez) to aid their development.  

“At the same time, we retained Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil and promoted new young talent from our academy pipeline into the first team. These decisions, taken as a whole, have again strengthened our squad for this season’s competitions.

“We will continue this long-term approach of progressively reinvesting all our available revenue in our playing resources as we look forward.”

Arsenal slipped out of the Premier League’s top four for the first time under Wenger in 2016-17, meaning that they are without Champions League football this term.

They have, however, made a positive start to their Europa League campaign, with a six-match unbeaten run across all competitions also allowing them to make progress in the Premier League and Carabao Cup.