Arsenal’s lineup more expensive than United’s?

Football can be a funny ol’ game. You can (in your mind) be playing the best football on the planet, and then along comes a team shorn of their best attackers (transfered away) and defenders (ban / injury), a team that everyone has derided as going downhill, and then you’re taught a footballing lesson to rival…the footballing lesson they taught you the year before.

And to rub salt in the wounds, you can’t even use the money excuse anymore. Here’s what a United fan posted on TeamTalk yesterday:

I would like to draw some interesting facts and statistics to everyone’s attention, to end the myth about United’s spending and Arsenal’s excuses for winning silverware.

From today’s game, the Arsenal starting line-up cost a total of £84.45m vs United’s £73.6m which contained FOUR players from the youth academy (not to mention Giggs coming on). I obtained the figures from transferleague.co.uk.

Here are the United transfer costs: Rooney (27), Carrick (18.6), Nani (13.5) Evra (5.5), Park (4), Rafael (2.5), VanDS (2.5) with Scholes, Brown, Evans and Fletcher a product of the youth academy.

Arsenal’s is as follows: Nasri (15.8), Arshavin (15), Gallas (cost a £20m player minus £5m Arsenal received = £15m), Vermaelan (10), Fabregas (cost Van Bronkhort (£8.5m player)), Rosicky (7), Sagna (6), Denilson (3.4), Almunia (2.5), Song (1) and finally Clichy (0.25).

Another interesting fact is that Manchester United’s line up cost less than what Real Madrid paid for Cristiano Ronaldo. I think that should finally end all the petty excuses about arsenals lack of spending.

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