Up until the last two seasons, Arsene Wenger has been repeatedly chastised by Arsenal fans for not spending big on major players and allowing the team to slip behind its rivals.
He seems to have been onto something though. Data provider S&P Capital IQ was used by researchers to look at 17 publicly listed major European teams and Arsenal was deemed to be the most credit-worthy of the lot with a score of bb+. This means Arsenal is roughly on the same investment level as Croatia, Indonesia or Turkey.
However, the north London side, like every team analysed was deemed subinvestment - or junk - grade. Celtic and Manchester United both got bb scores.
Explaining why Arsenal fared comparatively well, researchers said:
This could be a result of Arsenal’s consistent match performance and increased revenue from the Emirates Stadium, and could indicate that Arsenal controls its finances in a more conservative way than the other large football clubs - something perhaps mirrored by its manager Arsene Wenger’s historically and comparatively frugal transfer policy.
Rangers, who a few seasons ago were punished with relegation down to the Scottish third division after some extreme financial turmoil managed a ccc+ score.
Credit Football league
On top of giving scores to those 17 publicly listed teams, the researchers added a further 27 privately owned clubs from across the continent, to produce a creditworthiness league.
Ajax, Arsenal, Celtic, Manchester United and French club Saint-Étienne are the only ones that registered top scores across the three financial components looked at: operational, solvency and liquidity.
Those familiar with French football might be surprised by Saint-Étienne’s inclusion, given that they have hardly been big hitters on the international football scene. One of the reasons for this is that the club has not accumulated much debt, placing much more reliance on equity financing (selling stock to investors) instead.
This article was amended on 13 October. It previously described credit scores as “credit ratings” and S&P Capital IQ as a “ratings platform” rather than as a data provider.
