Arsenal announces £58.4m profit from summer transfer

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Arsenal have announced that they made a huge profit from their summer transfer dealings, as the club struggles to make the Premier League top four. The club sold Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wojciech Szczesny, Kieran Gibbs and Gabriel in the summer, leaving the club with a massive financial surplus. In their financial results for the six months until the end of November 2017, Arsenal revealed they have made ‘profits on sale of players, amounting to £58.4million’. This does not include their January business, when the £58million signing of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was largely offset by the sale of Theo Walcott to Everton for £20m, Olivier Giroud to Chelsea for £18m and Francis Coquelin to Valencia for £10m. In total, Arsenal Holdings plc, the company which owns the Gunners, announced a pre-tax profit of £25.1m for the six-month period. This is more than double their profit for 2016, of £12.6m. They say they have no short term debt, and cash reserves of £137.6million – which most Gunners fans want to see invested on the pitch. Arsenal chairman Sir Chips Keswick said: ‘This has not been the easiest of campaigns but we are all working hard to ensure we have a strong finish. ‘Breaking our transfer record twice in one season and the player contracts we have signed shows our commitment to getting the club back competing for the Premier League. ‘However our strategy remains self-financing and we must accept all the challenges that bring at a time when the inflation of transfer fees, player wages and the fees demands by agents has become super-heated. “We need to spend effectively and be the best we can across the whole of our football operations if we are to compete at the level our ambitions for the club demand.”