Despite wage drop by £34m, Arsenal’s account is still in red

Arsenal’s wage bill has dropped to its lowest level since 2017, in stark contrast to the substantial salary growth of the other so-called “big six” clubs in the Premier League.

The annual accounts posted for Arsenal Football Club plc at Companies House reveal their wage bill went down from £240 million to just under £206 million for the year ending May 31 2022, a drop of 14 per cent.

As well as that being out of kilter with the other leading clubs in England’s top flight, it illustrates the remarkable job being done by the manager Mikel Arteta, with Arsenal five points clear at the top of the Premier League.

Arsenal’s wage bill has risen by less than six per cent over the past five years, while the salary totals of the other members of the big six have gone up by between 34 per cent and 61 per cent. Tottenham Hotspur’s salary bill may even overtake Arsenal’s for the first time in the Premier League era when their accounts for last season are published.

The accounts also report that Arsenal made a £45.8 million loss last season, the fourth successive year they have been in the red, mainly as a result of missing out on European competition, but the losses are not as high as experienced during the pandemic.

The reduction in salaries is referred to in the accounts as a result of “a process of restructuring the men’s first team squad to improve the efficiency of spend”. It is likely that the drop in the wage bill also reflects the players not receiving performance bonuses for playing in the European club competitions.

There will also be an effect of some of Arsenal’s highest-paid players coming off the wage bill — Mesut Özil departed the previous season while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang left in January. However, the lower wage bill includes £6.7 million as an “exceptional item”, which may refer to a lump-sum payment made to Aubameyang to persuade him to terminate his £350,000-a-week contract, which still had 18 months to run.

Arsenal have changed their focus to buying and developing younger players. Their squad is the youngest in the Premier League, with an average age of 23.7.

The accounts state the return of fans to home matches meant the annual financial results were “considerably improved” after the pandemic period, but the absence from Europe had been costly.

“The 2021-22 season was the first for 23 years in which the club had failed to qualify for Uefa European competition,” it added. “The loss of the revenue associated with Uefa football was the principal contributory factor in terms of the overall result for the year.”