'We cannot compete with City and Chelsea'

 AP Images Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes that FFP rules are now having little impact
Arsène Wenger believes that football's brief age of Financial Fair Play has been ended by threats of legal action and admitted that Arsenal are now back to being unable to compete financially with Chelsea and Manchester City.

Although Wenger stressed that the availability of players rather than funds is what has so far prevented him spending more than £10million for Petr Cech this summer, he believes that Uefa's attempt to enforce a 'break even' principle on football has proved impossible. 
Wenger will be well aware that City's net outlay this summer is likely to be around £150million with Kevin De Bruyne to add to Nicolas Otamendi, Raheem Sterling, Fabian Delph, Patrick Roberts and Enes Unal.
Chelsea have so far spent just over £50million on Pedro, Baba Rahman and Asmir Begovic but also appear willing to pay another £100million if they can recruit Paul Pogba and John Stones.

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Both City and Chelsea have mitigated their spending with sales and will point out that, for accounting purposes, transfer fees and wages are also spread over the length of a contract.
Asked what he made of Financial Fair Play in the context of the transfer activity of rival English clubs, Wenger said: "It has gone. I have seen the signs coming from Uefa for a while now. I thought for a while FFP would happen but now it is not possible."
Uefa was facing a legal challenge from as many as 10 clubs over FFP, with lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont arguing that the spending restrictions ran contrary to European law. It then emerged in May that the FFP rules would be "eased".
The changes would provide more leeway for owners to embark on short-term spending sprees provided that they are not borrowing money and they present Uefa with a clear plan for breaking even in subsequent years. 
It was confirmed last month that City and Paris St-Germain have had their restrictions on transfer spending and Champions League squad size lifted after meeting their targets. Only £16.3million of City's £49million fine for previously breaking FFP rules has so far been imposed.
The new £5.14billion domestic Premier League television deal, which was announced in February, also added to concern in Europe that it will become impossible to compete with the English clubs' financial strength if FFP is not relaxed. 
“The clubs threatened to go to civil court - not only through sports [courts]," said Wenger. "That brought a lot of insecurity in the decision making of Uefa so they started to soften the rules a little bit. The last decision in July was about Paris St-Germain and then Manchester City and that opened completely the door." 
Asked where that left Arsenal, who are run according to a self-financing model, Wenger said: "Exactly the same. We continue to run our business with the resources we create. We can always recreate the resources and they [City and Chelsea] can put a hundred or two hundred on top. It is always like that.
"Maybe it will change here one day. It is not a shortage of money. At the moment it is a handicap to us because we have the resources, just shortage of players."
Wenger faces being short of defenders against Newcastle United in the Premier League today, with doubts persisting over centre-backs Laurent Koscielny (back) and Per Mertesacker (virus).
Arsenal started with Calum Chambers and Gabriel against Liverpool on Monday and, although Chambers was especially edgy in the first half, Wenger believes that he is mentally ready to again play. 
"He showed character," said Wenger. "He did not have the best performance in the first half but the positive was the way he recovered. He showed his mental strength. He has lost a bit of confidence compared to the player he was last year. The under-21 tournament did not help him too much as he did not play at all. I did not sub him on Monday as I wanted to save my offensive options."
Wenger said that he told the defenders to use more long balls in the second half against Liverpool after many of the players, notably Chambers, repeatedly lost possession inside their own half.
"We want to play out from the back so the players go into the game and do that," he said. "Once they lose the ball, they think they have to continue to play out from the back. But the more experienced players maybe should have said, 'You can see that he is having trouble, let's push forward so he can kick the ball into the opponent's half and play off [Olivier] Giroud'. That is what I told them to do."