Joe Fitzpatrick 
The universal opinion coming from the Arsenal fans and the media seems to be that Stan Kroenke should invest money back into the playing squad if he really wants to make Arsenal a global football superpower. Football is becoming the first truly global sport and the English Premier League is rapidly becoming "The World League" as super wealthy sheiks, Russian oil billionaires, American tycoons and erm, well Venkys the Indian chicken men, pit both their wits and their bank balances against each other.
If our new majority share holder is going to go from "Silent Stan" to "Stan the man" in the eyes of Gooners everywhere, how much will it cost him to bring us a trophy? £40m, £50m and £60m (on top of whatever money is made from player sales) have been the figures tossed around by a lot of Gooners and newspaper journalists recently but are they way off the mark or right on the money?
As the global football merchandising and television rights markets are becoming increasingly competitive one correlation is being made abundantly clear, summed up by my crude but effective equation. Trophy success for your team = increased global interest and support for your team = increased revenue for your team.
If the cost of trophy success can potentially be offset many times over by future income as a result of increased television, sponsorship and merchandising deals then, surely it makes good business sense to take a calculated risk and go "all out" in your transfer policy for trophies rather than just Champions League qualification every season?
I remember when the whole point of a big football club was to try and win as many trophies as possible, purely for said trophies’ sake but those days are now sadly long gone. English football is now a business, a business that is being run by two distinct types of men. The first type of owners are foreign businessmen with neither infinite cash or boyhood connections to their clubs, therefore meaning the cost of a trophy must not affect the bottom line too much as it is after all, an investment.
The second type of owner, as we all know only too well, is an altogether different animal. The second type of owner is the eccentric billionaire who is prepared to throw good money after bad until their trophy cabinet is full to bursting point and to hell with the cost of it all!
Stan Kroenke, you can bet your bottom dollar, is firmly in the mould of the first type of owner and is not going to plough his own or his Wal-Mart heiress wife's personal fortune into Arsenal F.C. However, Mr Kroenke being the top business sports mogul that absolutely everyone says he is, should know that he is never going to be able to market Arsenal in his home country and worldwide unless they start to win trophies again! Kids in America, Asia, Africa and even Europe are not going to support Arsenal over Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham and both Manchester clubs based on our style of football and finishing in the top four every single season alone. Football supporters above all else want to see their team win trophies and sadly a lot of people base their choice of team on how many trophies said team has won recently.
Everyone loves a winner, that’s the truth, especially our American cousins, so is it a safe bet that Mr. Kroenke will turn us from perennial "nearly men" to consistent winners? Unfortunately the answer to that question depends on how much Silent Stan is prepared to risk in the transfer market.
Our opponents on Sunday are Liverpool who have won seven major trophies between 1992/93 and 2009/10 at a cost of £196m in net player trading, working out to £28m per trophy. The good news is, that while that figure does seem like a huge amount of money, it seems as a team grows to be increasingly successful the cost per major trophy actually decreases! When I say "major trophy" I include everything except the Charity Shield, European Super Cup and international club tournaments outside of the main European competitions.
Arsenal have fared rather better than Liverpool over the same time period winning 10 major trophies at a net spend on player trading of £35.8m, working out to be only £3.58m per trophy! But before we get too carried away we must remember that when we last won the Premiership in 2003/04 we were £16.5m in the red on player trading alone.
If we take a look at the most successful team since the inception of the Premier League, Manchester united, we can see that they have a net spend on player trading of £125.6m between 1992/93 and 2009/10 bringing them a massive haul of 20 trophies! That my fellow Gooners, works out at a measly cost of £6.2m - yes that's right - £6.2m per trophy! Under £3m per trophy more than Arsenal have spent on player trading.
The last time Manchester United won the Premiership in 2008/09 they did so with a net spend of £33.75m and that reflects the increased threat of Chelsea who have a net spend on player trading (not including this season’s £70m on Luiz and Torres) of £370.4m since 1992/93, winning 12 trophies at a cost of £30.86m per trophy.
So it appears that the going rate for a top four club to win a major trophy nowadays is about as much as we all first suspected but, with the increased competition from Manchester City and maybe one day Tottenham too, we should start spending before the cost per trophy ratio goes spiralling through the roof.
Arsene Wenger spending £50m of Stan Kroenke's money wisely in the summer on top of all player sales received could just turn out to be the best £50m Stan Kroenke ever invested in any sports team in his entire life.
Arsenal will be infinitely more marketable with a championship trophy in the cabinet or even more so if we could capture the holy grail itself, the Uefa Champions League.
My figures can be most easily referenced here.
