Joe Fitzpatrick 
For a long, long time I suspected that Arsène Wenger was under pressure from the Arsenal board to turn a profit from player-sales every single season, but I was always frustrated that he would never come out and tell us lowly fans what the situation actually was.
It now appears that Arsène is growing increasingly frustrated with the financial constraints placed upon him by the current Arsenal hierarchy (if his recent quotes are anything to go by, that is). In a recent interview with the French media, he was quoted as saying "you should know that, each season, it is imperative to show a profit of between £15 and 20 million. I would add that the purpose of a coach is always to buy at a price he sees fit. I really like him [Hazard] and for several reasons - it's his creative power, his ability to mis-align the opponent, his vision of the game and his consummate skill to address the last pass which make him a very interesting player. Hazard has what it takes to play for a top-level club, and Arsenal are a top-level club".
If Arsène is saying that the real reason that we are missing out on players such as Juan Mata, Mario Götze and Eden Hazard at Ashburton Grove is that he is under pressure to make £15-20 million pounds every single season from player-trading, then that is obviously going to be seen by a huge majority of the fans as a complete mismanagement of the footballing side of the Arsenal PLC business model. Arsenal failing to make the Champions League not only results in the loss of the Champions League revenue but also has a knock-on effect for future sponsorship, merchandising and television deals for example in Asia, leading some of us to question the logic of Arsenal’s decision to sit on their cash reserves rather than add to a struggling squad.
As Arsenal face a real uphill battle to finish in the Champions League places and retain the services of Robin van Persie, many observers will be left wondering for how many more years we will have to endure the sales of our star players just so that Arsenal can rake in that extra bit of cash on top of the most expensive season-tickets and highest match-day revenue per game of all Premiership clubs.
It seems to me that, because Arsène has had his fingers burned on two separate occasions with the purchase of expensive flops, Jose Antonio Reyes and Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal would now rather finish outside the top four (but still make a profit) than pay over £15 million each for a couple of top-class players and make a real fist of challenging for the title.
The failure to recruit a top-class striker to cover for or play alongside van Persie must now be seen as a direct result of Kroenke and Gazidis letting Wenger know that profit and not trophy-success is the bottom line at Arsenal PLC.
