Football: Arsenal have spending limit, says chairman

We can’t spend £50 million on one player: Hill-Wood

LONDON: Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood has admitted the club ‘can’t compete’ in the transfer market with rival Premier League teams. However, he insisted the Gunners could still challenge for the title and that manager Arsene Wenger was not under pressure from the board to end a trophy drought spanning seven years. Hill-Wood added he was ‘disgusted’ by those fans who verbally abused French manager Wenger, in charge at the London club since 1996, last season. “Arsene has money to spend but there’s a limit,” Hill-Wood told Tuesday’s London Evening Standard. “We can’t spend £50 million on one player. At a certain level, we can’t compete. I don’t think Stan Kroenke [Arsenal majority shareholder] is going to put the sort of dollars in that [Roman] Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour are putting into Chelsea or Manchester City.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2012.