I have decided to write this little pretext to highlight the importance of the financial problems faced by Arsenal and which subsequently affected the performance of the team.

Point: Arsenal’s board led by Peter Hill-Wood and Co has failed to deliver on its promise to give Wenger and the fans the purported 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 he is. 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 you wish to spend them next month. In fact, some reports have suggested that the club’s hierarchy has urged Wenger 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 that it is more likely that he will 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 for that,” Wenger said.

01/02/09: 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 the papers. “You have to look to the future; in the future there probably isn’t going to be much more money coming in.

04/01/09: 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 are 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 have always maintained that they will back Wenger to the full in the transfer market, although that claim has rarely been proven 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 isn’t the first report of friction between Wenger and his bosses to surface 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 furthest of long-shots, but if the Gunners fail to secure Champions League qualification this term (they currently sit fifth in the Premier League table), their long-time manager could consider their options.

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