David Ornstein claims that Arsenal can’t afford to bring in any major new signings, with Oxlade-Chamberlain departing for a club record fee.

Ox is on the way to Liverpool for a reported £40m, which is more than Arsenal have ever brought in for a player. However, this doesn’t mean that the Gunners are ready to make any big moves in the transfer market.

That’s according to BBC Sport’s David Ornstein who explains: “Arsenal’s squad was particularly heavy only a few weeks ago – 35 [players] strong,” reports the Express.

“The outlay on Alexandre Lacazette eats into an enormous amount of their overall transfer budget – adding the Kolasinac salary into that as well. There is no money available for anymore major signings”

The issue isn’t that Arsenal can’t afford the transfer fees, at least according to what we know, the issue is that the wage budget doesn’t allow for another big signing.

According to Financial Fair Play guidelines, you can only increase your wage budget by a set amount per year (£7m) unless you can show that you have made a sufficient amount of money commercially to justify a larger increase.

With Arsenal spending a large amount on Lacazette and Kolašinac’s salaries, as well as new contracts for Olivier Giroud, Francis Coquelin and Laurent Koscielny, presumably holding some money back for new contracts for Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez, there apparently isn’t much left in the wage budget for anyone else.

The only issue I see with this, is that it’s also in the FFP terms and conditions that significant money brought in through player sales is a viable reason to increase your wage budget. If Arsenal really are selling Oxlade-Chamberlain, Kieran Gibbs and Wojciech Szczesny, among others, for over £60m total, that would surely fulfil this criteria.