Arsenal’s fiscal prudence hits close to home

After Saturday’s enthralling gripping engaging good decent mildly interesting not disastrous scrappy 0-0 draw at Leicester on Saturday, Arsene Wenger was asked, inevitably, about spending money - or, more accurately, about not spending and whether he would start. After snarking, correctly (in my view), about Rob Holding...

"Unfortunately no one speaks about the performance of Rob Holding. You should be happy, he is English and 20 years old. I am sorry he didn't cost £55 million, so he can't be good."

...he then went on to, somewhat inexplicably, conflate Arsenal’s overall operatiopnal payroll with its transfer budget, despite the fact that those two things are not combined, saying, in response to a question about whether he’d go out and spend now given that Arsenal have secured one point in six:

"I'm a bit fed up to say the same thing...we analyse everything and then make the right signings," Wenger told reporters. What matters to me is that you have 600 employees and can afford to pay them."

Which sent alarm bells ringing up and down the entire Arsenal paid staff - will the people running a deep fryer in one of the concession stands lose their jobs because Arsenal sign Shkodran Mustafi for more than he’s worth? Will the person who scans ticket cards at the gate have to go on jobseeker’s allowance?

We’ve seen reports that at least one person at the club has already resigned because of this, and now that financial crisis has also trickled down here to little ol’ TSF. When I went to check the Short Fuse mailbox today, I found this letter:

Clearly, we’re going to start shedding staff at an alarming rate if Arsenal don’t turn this ship around soon.

WON’T YOU THINK OF THE BLOGS, ARSENE?