Hello and welcome to a brand new R-Splug R-Scast right here on R-Splug.com.

How are you?

Well, thanks for being here as ever. Thank you for listening, subscribing and all the rest on today's show The Big Question.

Red for Arsenal and red for the Arsenal accounts, posting a loss for the first time since 2002.

So on today's show we're going to take an in-depth look into the accounts, into the finances. Why have we gone from posting a big profit to posting a fairly substantial loss?

Where are we weak? Where could we improve? What does it mean for what we want to do this summer in terms of how we fund transfers and European football now that we don't have any this season? How much is that going to cost us?

How much is it going to cost us next season if we don't have any European football at all? There is a lot to unpack and we're going to do that very shortly with our first guest.

A little bit later on I'll be talking to James Bench from football London. It's been mostly a good week for Arsenal on the pitch, beating Port Smith.

Of course in the FA Cup and going through to the FA Cup quarterfinals, that's good.

Losing Lucas Tarrera until probably next season because of a fractured ankle, that's not good. In fact that is pretty bad.

What's that going to do for Mikaela or Tettas plans between now and the end of the campaign as our only real defensive midfielder?

We are sure of a fairly important option in midfield so we'll talk a little bit later to James about that looking at the West Hand game, the Man City game of course coming up next week too and how all that might go together.

But as I said, the focus today is on the money and last week Arsenal posted their financial results for the year ending 2018-19.

The bad news is that the club has posted a loss for the first time in well over a decade around 27 million pounds.

It's worth delving into this and looking at all the various aspects of Arsenal's finances because it has a major impact on what we do and what we can do and what we might be able to do in various aspects of the game.

The good news is that the players are going to be able to do a lot of things and that's going to be a lot of things that are going to be done in the future.

I'm sure you read it's Kiran Okan or better known as Swiss Rambel. Hi Kiran.

Good, thank you very much. Let's just start at the bottom line figure here.

So Arsenal posting a loss after tax of 27 million pounds from the previous year making a 70 million pound profit.

So we have an almost 100 million pound swing. What are the key drivers behind that and is that as bad as it looks from a layman's point of view?

Yes, it's pretty bad. In fact, the 27 million loss that you mentioned is after tax. So it's less of a 5 million tax credit before tax.

It's even worse. It's 32 million. As you say, that was down from a 70 million profit the year before.

...