I have decided to write this little pretext to highlight the importance of the financial problems Arsenal is facing and which subsequently affected the team’s performance.

Point: Arsenal’s board led by Peter Hill-Wood and Co has not followed through on its promise to hand over to Wenger and the fans the alleged budget to buy players.

30/08/2008: Hill-Wood says Arsenal have plenty of money to spend and Wenger’s critics should stop telling the Frenchman how to do his job. He said: Everyone tells Arsene how to run the place, but no one is a better judge than him. We have a lot of money and enough to spend.

12/19/08: Arsenal management have made it clear that the funds are available should they wish to spend them next month. In fact, some reports have suggested that Wenger has been urged by the club’s hierarchy to spend money. In his pre-match press conference, the coach reiterated that HE has the final decision on possible reinforcements. “They [the Board] let me do what I want to do,” Wenger said. “I know how much money I can spend and I’ll try to do it wisely.”

12/23/08: Arsène Wenger admits he is more likely to enter the transfer market next month after Cesc Fábregas’ knee injury. “Yes [I am more likely to buy]but we also have internal solutions, so we’re not desperate about that,” Wenger said.

02/01/09: Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood admits manager Arsene Wenger has a limited budget for the January transfer window. “I don’t think there’s a lot of money anywhere,” Hill-Wood told newspapers. “You have to look to the future; in the future, probably not much more money is going to come in.

01/04/09: The Daily Mail reports that Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is on a collision course with his superiors over the modest transfer budget he has been given this winter. The Frenchman is keen to sign Andrei Arshavin, but Zenit St Petersburg are demanding more than €20m for their star striker, a figure the Gunners have so far been unable to match.

The north London club has always maintained that it will back Wenger to the fullest in the transfer market, although that claim has rarely been tested due to the manager’s low-budget, youth-oriented approach. But now that the former Monaco boss has set his sights on a big-money target, the Emirates board is unwilling to release the funds needed to seal the deal. This is not the first report of friction between Wenger and his bosses to emerge this season. In fact, it has been rumored that the 59-year-old could break his contract with Arsenal to join Real Madrid next summer. That remains the remotest of chances, but if the Gunners fail to secure Champions League qualification this term – they currently sit fifth in the Premier League table – their longtime manager might consider his options. .

May we know where the 50 million pounds that the board has promised us are? Where is the support Wenger was supposedly promised, now that we want a player?