In the last five years, Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola have spent the most on their teams. Both have signed more than 20 players.
Mikel Arteta has managed to get Arsenal back into serious contention for the Premier League title. A great progress of the team that is understood by his professionalism and by the clear transformation that the squad has undergone over the last few years thanks to the economic efforts.
The Arsenal manager is second only to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City in terms of investment. He has managed to make the club competitive in sporting terms, but it has taken that financial commitment to make it possible.
The latest arrival is Riccardo Calafiori, the Italian centre-back who shone at Bologna. With his deal set at 34 million euros plus bonus, Mikel Arteta has now spent 751.8 million euros on his team over the last five seasons.
He remains slightly behind Pep Guardiola, who stands at 755.4 million euros. The Gunners are even less profitable as their balance over those five years is -608.2 million euros having made only 143.5 million euros in player sales.
In other words, Arsenal are the second most loss-making club, only behind Chelsea (889.3 million euros).
Others such as Thomas Tuchel (669.7 million euros), Mauricio Pochettino (634.6 million euros), Erik ten Hag (631.7 million euros) and Jorge Jesus (542.3 million euros) are coaches who have gone through clubs with volatile projects that have not succeeded in sporting terms and who have sought solutions in the markets.
Arsenal changes since Arteta’s arrival
Arteta arrived midway through the 2019/20 season at Arsenal and, as a result, he began making signings from the following campaign onwards. In that season Arsenal already signed important players, such as William Saliba.
The Spanish manager signed Thomas Partey (50 million euros), Gabriel Magalhaes (26 million euros), Pablo Mari (6 million euros), Runarsson (2 million euros) and the loan signing of Martin Odegaard (2 million euros).
For the 2021/22 season also Ben White joined, for whom Arsenal paid 58.5 million euros. Aaron Ramsdale (28 million euros), Takehiro Tomiyasu (18.6 million euros), Sambi Lokonga (17.5 million euros) and Nuno Tavares (8 million euros), among others, also arrived.
The Gunners signed Gabriel Jesus (52.2 million euros) and Oleksandr Zinchenko (35 million euros) from Manchester City for the following year. They also brought in Fabio Vieira (35 million euros) from Porto, Leandro Trossard (24 million euros) and Jorginho (11.3 million euros) from Chelsea.
Last summer, in the process of trying to close the gap on Liverpool and Manchester City, Arsenal spent 235 million euros in the market with three notable moves for Declan Rice (116.6 million euros), Kai Havertz (75 million euros) and Jurrien Timber (40 million euros).
The signing of Rice was a record signing for the club, which in this current market had hardly made a move until the addition of Calafiori. They had only bought David Raya, for whom they paid almost 32 million euros.