With a deal for Sporting CP star Viktor Gyokeres in their sights, Arsenal will be hoping the long-running saga around finding a new number nine will finally be over.
The Gunners and the Portuguese side are currently locked in negotiations over a deal for the 27-year-old Swede, with Sporting seeking €70m (£61m) for the striker, who has netted 97 goals in 102 competitive games for the Primeira Liga side since his arrival from Coventry City in 2023.
Arsenal want to pay less than that, but knowing they want him to be part of the squad for the forthcoming tour of Asia, they may have to concede in this particular war of attrition over his fee. Personal terms are reportedly already agreed.
A Gyokeres arrival, say for the £61m Sporting want, would add to the signings of Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad for the same fee, and the soon-to-be unveiled Christian Norgaard from Brentford for a guaranteed £10m sum plus add-ons. Kepa Arrizabalaga’s signing for around £5m from Chelsea adds to that.
The total amortised cost of those additions over an assumed five-year period would be £27.4m per annum. That is how the guaranteed sum of the deals would be accounted for in the 2025/26 financial year.
To put that into some context, Declan Rice’s annual amortisation cost still stands at £20m per season, and with another year of his book value having been written down, as well as other additions who have remaining book value, means that annual amortisation costs should only rise minimally for 2024/25, the most recently completed financial year, and that rise will relate to last summer’s additions of Riccardo Calafiori, Mikel Merino and David Raya against registration disposals of mainly players who had no book value and counted as pure profit, such as Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith-Rowe.
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Arsenal have put themselves in a strong financial position. While they may have found a Premier League and Champions League crown to have eluded them, consistent qualification for European football’s elite knockout club competition, allied with strong performances in it, has meant that the club has been able to supercharge revenue growth over the past five years. Revenue jumped 55% from £395m in 2019 to £614m in 2024.
It will be early 2026 before we get to see the published figures for the 2024/25 season, but it is likely that through strong broadcasting revenues related to the Champions League, money from the competition itself, additional matchday revenue thanks to a deeper run and heightened commercial activity, as well as player trading profit, that the club will be heading comfortably past the £650m mark in revenue.
There will likely be an uptick in wages as well as some fairly conservative movement in amortisation, but the club will have reduced its transfer debt quite considerably, with a significant chunk of the £229.3m it stood at in 2024 having been paid down due to it being required to be met within one year. That means transfer debt could see some £100m shaved off, meaning that the club would be more emboldened to pursue further transfer activity, having the flexibility to do so.
Arsenal have managed to create some significant headroom when it comes to PSR and also have no concerns over UEFA’s squad cost ratio rules, but the club also has one eye on revamping the Emirates Stadium to increase matchday and commercial revenues further, something that many clubs are now looking towards as the domestic broadcast rights market shows some signs of challenging headwinds ahead.
Driving a hard bargain in the market for Gyokeres won’t be a sign of a club attempting to try and make a deal work for regulatory purposes, as has been seen with increasing regularity in the past year or so among Premier League clubs, but more finding an appropriate deal for a 27-year-old who is coming from a league ranked the eighth strongest in Europe.
Some of the suitors that may have been there, such as Manchester United, would find a deal tough to strike given spending constraints, meaning Arsenal know they have some leverage in being the main team in the game, and knowing that the player wishes to make the move happen.
From a financial perspective it is an easy deal to get done, and given that isn’t likely what is delaying it progressing means that it will likely be a case of when and not if, and who blinks first. The Gunners can go again in the market after a Gyokeres deal should they wish.
