Arsenal announced yesterday a pretax profit for the six months ending November 30 of £17.8 million compared to £49.5 million a year earlier.

In a statement, the north London club said £40.9 million had been spent on signing Lukas Podolski, Santi Cazorla and Olivier Giroud and extending the contracts of players including England internationals Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere.

Player sales netted £42.5 million while turnover dropped from £113.5 million to £106 million as a result of four fewer home fixtures compared to the same period in the previous year.

The profit for the six months to November 2011 included the sale of Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy.

Arsenal said it had no short-term debt and possessed cash reserves of 123.4 million pounds compared to 115.2 million a year earlier.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.