Former Arsenal captain urges more spending at the club
Frank McLintock, who captained Arsenal between 1967 and 1973, has said a high-profile signing or two would help the Londoners to their first Premier League title since 2004.
Arsene Wenger, who has managed Arsenal since 1996, has been a restrained spender in the transfer windows.
This summer, the Frenchman signed defensive duo Sebastien Squillaci and Laurent Koscielny for a total of £12million, with striker Marouane Chamakh joining on a free transfer.
Arsenal, a Premier League club with comparatively low debt levels, are in good financial shape, but McLintock said a big-money signing would not hurt the club.
"The debt is very manageable and they’re making lots of money every home game, so they’re going to be very, very healthy in the next year or two," the 70-year-old told
TalkSPORT about the state of the club's finances. "Whether [Wenger] wants to spend big money or not I don’t know. If he wants to bring through the young players again that’s fine – as Man United have done in the past - but every now and then when you
need a big player, like a [Dimitar] Berbatov or a [Fernando] Torres."
McLintock also said that Wenger, who has won three league titles and four FA Cup trophies at the club, is rightly praised for his successes, but that a little extra spending would propel Arsenal to the very top of the league.
Wenger's team has missed out on the top two spots in the last five seasons.
"Most of the fans at Arsenal feel the same – that Wenger is a fantastic manager, but they don’t always agree with everything he does. A lot of people feel if he’d spent £15-20 million in the last couple of seasons that they might have gone much, much closer
[to winning the Premier League] than they did in the end."
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