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There won’t be too many Manchester United fans heading to Old Trafford on Friday night worrying about the £147million that’s been spent this summer.

Because Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly didn’t cost those fans a penny. They cost Aon, Adidas, Abengoa, Aperol Spritz, Apollo Tyres and Aeroflot (just to mention the club sponsors that begin with A).

Season-ticket holders would only feel the cost if United’s burgeoning income streams hadn’t been showered on players who give them a shot at the title but flowed instead into the owners’ off-shore bank accounts.

For their part, the Glazers know that if they don’t pay the vast sums needed to bring in world-class players, their investment will suffer and the sponsors may flee.

To football’s traditionalists, that’s morally obscene; but if you want to emulate rivals with limitless funds it makes economic sense.

What doesn’t make sense is Arsenal.

(Image: Instagram/iamzlatanibrahimovic)

What most of their fans find obscene is being told that a club of their size can’t compete with Man United, despite neither having a sheikh or an oligarch backing them.

Many Gooners feel they are paying the highest ticket prices in world football to buy into a decade-long scam.

They were told that unless they left Highbury they couldn’t compete at the top, so they reluctantly agreed to the move and the lack of transfer money, while the new home was being paid off.

Watch — Arsenal fans have it out after their season-opening loss:

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Yet now that it has been, and income has never been higher, they’re STILL being told they can’t compete with the best, but instead need to keep faith with a manager who may not win titles any more but never fails to milk the Champions League cash cow.

That’s why Arsenal fans went into the Emirates on Sunday with a sick sense of deja vu.

Arsene Wenger has been rightly slaughtered for saying, after the 4-3 defeat, that his squad wasn’t physically ready to compete with Liverpool.

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But surely the real reason for another miserable Groundhog Opening Day was revealed in this quote from chief executive Ivan Gazidis last month:

“We can’t afford to make huge mistakes in the transfer market. We can’t afford to out-gun competitors that have far more money to splurge on transfer fees than we do. So we have to be very careful, very selective about how we do things.”

Why can’t they risk mistakes?

Arsenal were last valued at £1.5 billion, rake in more match-day revenue than any other club in the world (£101.84m) and last September had reportedly £193m in cash reserves.

They are the richest, most historic club playing the biggest box-office sport in Europe’s most cosmopolitan city.

So how can they plead poverty?

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How can they get away with claiming they couldn’t afford to do what United have just done and bring in the new spine they so clearly need?

Did they have the £100m needed to bring in the likes of Shkodran Mustafi , N’ Golo Kante and Alexandre Lacazette for that opening game? Yes.

Did they have the will? No.

The debate about whether it is Wenger’s or the board’s fault that Arsenal don’t compete financially with their rivals is surely redundant.

The buck must stop with the board.

(Image: Getty) (Image: AFP/Getty) (Image: Reuters)

If you believe your manager is acting like a pensioner after decimalisation, refusing to open his purse because he distrusts this new funny money, you thank him for 20 years' service and get a new one.

In the past year, Manchester United have sacked a manager fresh off winning the FA Cup final, Liverpool one who was a slip away from delivering their first Premier League title since 1990 and Chelsea one who’d made them champions just six months earlier.

So, why would Arsenal’s board continue to ignore fans who suggest a manager who hasn’t won the league for 12 years is past it?

Unless that manager is taking all the flak while their profits, bonuses and dividends remain healthy.

Unless that manager is their shield from the pricey risks and harsh realities of modern football.