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It was a season that promised so much – but in the end it all finished in a familiar sense of disappointment at Arsenal.
The Gunners had a top four spot in the Premier League within their grasp, yet a miserable run of just four points from 18 at the end of the campaign saw them somehow throw it away.
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And then they crumbled in Baku, losing 4-1 to Chelsea in the Europa League final – a defeat which condemned them to a third successive season playing in Europe’s second tier competition.
Unai Emery’s side had two golden chances to secure Champions League football, but they fluffed their lines in dramatic fashion on each occasion.
And now the post-mortem is already well underway. Is Emery the right man? How can Arsenal close the gap on the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool with a limited budget and just what should be done with Mesut Ozil?
Those are all questions being asked as the dust settles from a disastrous end to the 2018-19 season. It is shaping up to be a very difficult summer at the Emirates and sorting out the issues surrounding the north London club will be far from easy.
Below are Arsenal’s five biggest problems, with explanations as to why they will be so tough to solve.
An absent owner
The problems at any club always start at the top – and at the top at Arsenal there is an absent owner who has been a disaster for the Gunners.
Stan Kroenke has still not put a single penny of his own money into Arsenal since arriving on the scene in north London and his lack of ambition is seeping into every orifice of the club.
There is a lack of leadership at all levels inside the Emirates and that all stems from the way Kroenke is allowing things to be run.
Arsenal are failing off the pitch, just as much as they are on it – yet the 71-year-old billionaire just sits across the Atlantic allowing it to happen.
Kroenke has made hundreds of millions on his investment since first buying into Arsenal and none of that has been put back into the club.
During that time he has forcibly hovered up all remaining shares, shunning the offer of major investment from Alisher Usmanov, one of the world’s richest men, in the process.
The fact Kroenke didn’t even bother to attend last week’s Europa League final in Baku summed him up. Yes, his son Josh was there, but Stan’s lack of attendance was an insult to those fans who had spent so much money to follow their team.
When Kroenke arrived at Arsenal, they had reached the Champions League final a year earlier. Now, 12 years on, they are a club who very much belong in the Europa League.
Standards have been allowed to slip and that’s what happens when you have an absentee owner.
In the past 12 months Arsenal have seen their chief executive, who had just replaced manager Arsene Wenger after 22 years, jump ship a few months into the season and leave for AC Milan.
That led to the club’s highly-valued head of recruitment, Sven Mislintat, leaving because he was overlooked for the technical role in the power vacuum that followed.
Raul Sanllehi was the big winner from Gazidis leaving but since he has taken charge, Arsenal have failed to land Monchi as technical director and now look set to have to wait until the the final month of the summer window to appoint Edu to the role.
It’s a situation which someone needs to get a firm grasp on, but it’s clear Kroenke will not be the man to do that.
The current set-up at the Emirates feels rudderless and with Kroenke continuing to focus on his interests in the United States, there is no sign of that changing any time soon.
A failing business model
Arsenal’s business model is based around the Champions League.
With Stan Kroenke not putting his own money in, the club has relied on Champions League funds to keep things ticking over.
But having spent the past two years in the Europa League, the coffers have run dry, very dry.
The club is now working to a failed business model. Whereas before Arsenal used to be able to celebrate the publication of their accounts, now the club will be happy that they are not so easily accessible following Kroenke’s full takeover.
It’s estimated that Arsenal’s financial performance for the year 2017-18 saw a £40 million drop in revenue from 2016-17 – with £35m of that being put down to a lack of Champions League football.
At the same time the wage bill spiralled by nearly 18 per cent, rising from £200m to £235m – a figure that takes into account the pay-offs for Arsene Wenger and his coaching staff.
This was all covered though by player sales, with the club recouping big fees for the likes of Theo Walcott, Olivier Giroud and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
That all meant that despite Arsenal’s drop in revenue, the club made a pre-tax profit of around £70m, but given the lack of player sales this time around it’s forecast that the club could be heading towards a loss of between £60m/£70m for 2018-19.
And that is not a figure that is going to improve any time soon, with this season’s run to the Europa League final only earning the club £32m. When you compare that to what Manchester United earned from reaching the Champions League quarter-finals (£82m), it shows how costly missing out on the top four has been once again for the Gunners.
It also means that the only way the club will be able to break even going forward is by selling some of their top talent, something which will alienate an unhappy fanbase even more.
The main problem with the finances is the wage bill, which is running at unprecedented levels – with Mesut Oil the top earner on £350,000-a-week.
Without Champions league football, that wage bill is massive problem – and it was the reason why the new offer which was on the table for Aaron Ramsey was dramatically withdrawn.
Arsenal have started to…
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