Just want to highlight some points from SwissRamble's figures
"To further place this into perspective, Arsenal’s cash balance is more than Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich combined."
This is from 2015/16 = only 3 seasons ago & our last season in the CL.
"Only 20% (£141 million) of the available cash flow has been spent in the transfer market, though virtually all of that (£137 million) has been in the last four seasons. The other notable “use” of cash in that period is to increase the cash balance, which has risen by a cool £191 million."
The significance/relevance of this is in regards to our initial finances structures with our front loaded commercial deals and the decade of single figure cash flow.
There were 2 criteria made by our sponsors regarding our finances:
Firstly that the club retained 30% of annual revenues against debt payments incase we dropped out of the CL;
Secondly that the club re-invested the other 70% of annual revenues directly back into the team to ensure the product remained attractive and capable.
The club then refinanced the loans in 2006 and converted them into Bonds with a repayment of 20-25m over 25 years where the Home gate from 5-8 games per season covered the repayment each season.
The second and most damning number is the drop in % of investment made back into the team, from an initial required 70% to an actual 20% made of our own choice, and that 20% came mostly only once the original sponsorship deals ended and our cash flow increased from the new deals.
This financial structure was put in place long before either Kroenke or Usmanov were on the scene, and the refinancing was done they year we moved and saw what our match day gates were worth, and a year before Kroenke bought his initial 9.9% shareholding from ITV. All this was done whilst PHW was chairman.