Arsenal will seek to balance a summer of high-profile recruitment with significant player sales, the club has decided, even after securing more than £120 million in UEFA prize money following their run to this season’s Champions League final. The Gunners’ 1-0 win over Atletico Madrid on Tuesday completed a 2-1 aggregate semi-final victory that added £16m to their coffers and brought their total continental prize money for the campaign to £122m; a victory in the final on May 30 in Budapest would be worth a further £10m.
The decision to prioritise sales alongside signings reflects a clear shift from last summer’s transfer window, when Arsenal spent about £267m on eight new players while recouping barely £10m — leaving them with the Premier League’s largest net spend at roughly £257m. Club officials say they are preparing for multiple scenarios this summer to avoid a repeat, aiming for a more sustainable balance sheet and to comply with the Premier League’s incoming Squad Cost Ratio rule, which will cap spending on squad costs at 85 per cent of revenue from next season.
Arsenal are not being forced to sell before they buy, sources stress, but the club accepts that meaningful departures will be necessary during the window. Sporting directors have been working to “establish the market” for names understood to be available and to manage valuations for potential buyers. Defenders and forwards have been linked in recent weeks — Ben White, Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli among the senior players mentioned in transfer speculation — while academy graduates Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri are also on the radar as potential sales that would represent pure profit.
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One departure is already confirmed in effect after Porto announced they had triggered a clause to sign Jakub Kiwior for about £19m following his loan spell, a move that is expected to clear the way for Piero Hincapié’s permanent transfer from Bayer Leverkusen, reported at roughly £45m. That kind of outgoing business is the type Arsenal believe they will need to help fund interest in several reported targets this summer.
Sky Sports has reported Arsenal are prioritising additions in attack, central midfield and at full-back. Names mooted for a left-side forward position include Paris Saint-Germain’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon, while Atletico Madrid’s Julián Álvarez — who played well in the first-leg meeting with Arsenal — remains on their shortlist. Atletico are said to value Álvarez at around £130m and are reluctant sellers; Barcelona and PSG are also believed to be interested.
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Financially, the club enters the window from a stronger position than a year ago. Arsenal generated a record £691m of revenue for the 2024/25 season — lifting commercial receipts to about £263m, matchday income to £154m and broadcast revenue to £213m — and reported a pre-tax loss of just £1.4m in February’s accounts, a figure that did not include last summer’s transfers. Sky Sports’ reporting suggests those revenue gains, together with the Champions League prize money and potential additional Premier League prize earnings, leave Arsenal well-placed to pursue elite talent while attempting to meet the new sustainability demands imposed by governing bodies.
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