Arsenal have announced profits of £17.8 million for the six months ending in November. The news comes with the club under fire from their supporters for being reluctant to splash the cash on world class players.
Boss Arsene Wenger recently claimed that the club would be fine without the money awarded for qualifying for the top tier of European competition should they fail to finish fourth this season.
There are also reports that the Frenchman could be handed a £70 million transfer war chest in the near future.
The Gunners already have the fourth highest wage bill of clubs in the country and the full impact of new deals handed to Wilshere, Walcott, Aaron Ramsey, Carl Jenkinson, Kieran Gibbs and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will not be felt on the balance sheet until the next set of accounts later this year.
Chairman Peter Hill-Wood said in the report: "While we have our sights set on a 16th straight season in the Champions League, our aims are higher; our ambition is to win trophies. No one is more focused on that than our manager Arsene Wenger, our majority shareholder Stan Kroenke and the board and it is what we work towards every day."
He continued: "Our ability to compete at the top of the game here and in Europe is underpinned by our financial performance.
"Let me be quite clear that our intention is to keep our best players and recruit new talent to make us stronger. Although we were disappointed to see Robin van Persie leave, we have taken steps to secure our best players going forward and have recently signed Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, Kieran Gibbs, Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Carl Jenkinson to new long-term contracts.
"During this financial period we also invested £40.9m in the acquisition of new players, Lukas Podolski, Santi Cazorla and Olivier Giroud, and the extension of other player contracts. More recently we added Nacho Monreal to our ranks from Malaga. This is a strong indicator of our ambition to compete and win trophies."
