Arsenal should take Bayern as their benchmark

t was past 11pm on Tuesday night when someone brought up Ivan Gazidis’s promise three summers ago that Arsenal were ready to compete “at a level of a club such as Bayern Munich”, and Arsène Wenger found himself in a room with another ghost from the club’s past.

The Arsenal chief executive said it in June 2013 as the club prepared to emerge from the tail of their long Emirates-financing years, the proverbial empty-nest retirement couple leafing through a catalogue of recklessly expensive luxury cruises. Could Arsenal spend £25 million on a player and pay £200,000-a-week wages? “Of course we could do that, we could do more than that,” Gazidis said, although three years on it is not so much the money as what the club are prepared to do with it.

Few things can look relatively meagre quite so rapidly as transfer fees, and there were seven players in Bayern’s starting XI alone on Tuesday night who cost €25 million [£21m] or more, compared with three in the Arsenal side. In the years since 2013, Bayern’s revenue has surged ahead of Arsenal’s from €488m compared to €359m in 2014 to a narrowing of €475m to €436m in 2015 – and then the German club’s giant leap to €592m last year, compared to Arsenal’s €469m.

In their last full accounts Arsenal out-earnt Bayern in matchday and broadcast revenue, but it was in the commercial sector where they were dealt the equivalent of a 10-2 aggregate defeat: the German club earned more than twice as much, €342.6m compared to €142.9m.

On Tuesday, Wenger’s answer to the Bayern question was reflexive, and in much of it he was right. “In Germany nobody can compete with them, they take the players they want, and they are a bit lonely in the marketplace” he said, “which is not the case [for Arsenal] in England.”

Yet there should not be eight goals difference between Bayern and Arsenal. Nor a 5-1 scoreline in all three previous meetings – and nor should there be €123m difference in annual revenue. There should not be a disparity in seven seasons of Champions League performance, of seven round-of-16 exits for Arsenal, while for Bayern those years encompass two finals – including one title – three semi-finals, plus whatever they achieve this year.

Gazidis selected Bayern as a comparison in 2013 for a reason,