Speaking on a recent episode of the Ask Ornstein YouTube show, David Ornstein discussed the finances behind Arsenal’s deadline day deal to sign Thomas Partey.
After progressing through the Atletico Madrid U19 side and then the Atletico Madrid B side, Partey went on to feature 188 times for Atletico, chipping in with 16 goals and providing 12 assists along the way.
However, after being chased by Mikel Arteta’s side as far back as 2018, the £36 million-rated 27-year-old is no longer an Atletico player, after Arsenal paid the midfielder’s €50 million (£45.4 million) release clause on Monday, with the player signing a four-year contract at the club.
This came as slightly surprising news, as it was generally believed that Arsenal needed to sell several players to fund spending in the transfer market this summer, which leads to the question of how exactly the club could afford the deal.
This is something that Ornstein discussed on a recent episode of the Ask Ornstein YouTube show, with the journalist claiming that the club has “instruments in place” to afford deals of Partey’s nature.
He said: “How did Arsenal finance this? Well, if you look at their books, you would probably be left scratching your head. However, we saw last summer with Nicolas Pepe that they are being backed in the market by their owners, KSE, Stan Kroenke.
“And in an interview I did with his son, the director Josh Kroenke, in the summer of 2019, we didn’t find out if Arsenal had received a cash injection or some other means, but he did say that they had put instruments in place to make this level of spending possible, and it appears to have happened again.
“Now some people might be disgruntled with this and say, ‘but Arsenal made their players take wage cuts and they laid off 55 members of staff in redundancies, plus, just recently, the man inside the Gunnersaurus suit’.
“But [the club] would point out that those are two different operations, and that many of those redundancies were necessary in any circumstances as part of their streamlining process, as they describe it, and that they need to continue to invest in their core business – the football team.
“So, by bringing a player like Thomas Partey in, in his prime, they’ve got a greater chance of success and returning to the Champions League, which is absolutely vital for Arsenal as soon as possible.”
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From Ornstein’s comments, it is clear that the journalist is of the belief that the club have had the help of their board in securing the Partey deal, with Ornstein stating that the club’s business off the pitch, such as the club feeling the need to lay off 55 members of their staff, is very different to their business on the pitch, such as signing players of the calibre of Partey in order to maximise their chances of success.