Thanks to the wealth of Stan Kroenke, the healthy cash reserves of the club, and ill-advised comments from board members, Arsenal fans may be overestimating the financial power the club really has.

Impartial and independent financial analysts CSS have looked into Arsenal’s finances and believe the Gunners can’t freely spend as much money on new players as many seem to believe.

“Ever since Highbury was sold, Arsenal have held significant cash balances,” declared Ravi Lockyer, whose full report is available here. “But do Arsenal really have £200m for spending on players? No.”

Arsenal’s money goes a long way to repaying a mortgage (£32m a year) and Lockyer also notes that there is £191.9m set aside for short-term payables.

After forecasting Arsenal’s cash reserves to sit at around £228m at the end of the financial year, Lockyer factors in the potential to use an overdraft of £50m and says the most Arsenal could comfortably spend on transfers this summer is £54m.

“This should be viewed as the amount that can “comfortably” be spent,” the analyst said.

“It is unfair to blame Mr. Wenger for not constantly changing the squad, as he is operating under internal constraints. Player decisions are to be made in the context of an overall budget.

“Arsenal have relatively low cash one your deduct the amounts it needs to hold against its borrowings and short-term liabilities.”

However, as we know from the likes of Swiss Ramble, football clubs structure the payments of transfer fees over the length of a contract signed by a player.

For instance, Arsenal signed Mesut Özil for a fee of around £42m in 2013, he signed a five-year contract. When publishing financial reports, the £42m is spread across the five years as an investment which will last that period of time.

Moreover, the money didn’t all go out at once. The deal was broken down into declining payments for three consecutive years and bonuses for the Gunners making the Champions League group stages.

That means, one would presume, Arsenal could make signings for more than a total of £54m this summer, though the financial reports wouldn’t necessarily reflect that.

Lockyer has admitted he is not major football fan and hasn’t looked in-depth at football clubs before, perhaps a reason for him appearing to overlook the structuring of payments. Moreover, he appears to have missed the important new television deals in the Premier League, which will see clubs earn around £30m a season more each than the current deals.

Only time will tell what Arsenal do in the transfer window this summer but, expected to cost £34m, the proposed addition of Granit Xhaka would take a significant chunk out of this apparent budget of £54m.

Whether or not that really is all Arsenal can spend, we’re not so sure.