Cash a goner if you're a Gooner as Arsenal continue to short-change their fans
Finish in the top four and everyone at Arsenal is paid out.
Arsene Wenger can pick up his £7m salary and chief executive Ivan Gazidis will earn £1.336m basic and a £675,000 bonus.
Arsenal's staff share a wage bill of £143m, up £19m from the previous year and the fourth biggest in the Barclays Premier League.
Only the supporters are short-changed.
Smile Arsene, it's the Champions League: Wenger prepares to face Schalke
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They pay the highest season ticket prices in the country, but this really is boom time if you happen to be an employee of Arsenal Football Club.
Nice big houses, nice cars, private schools for the kids and no questions asked. Just finish fourth.
There is no pressure to win a trophy, no demands made of the manager from the people at the top who remain under his charismatic spell.
The executives will have the fans believe differently, talking up the sense of achievement when they qualify for the Champions League and speaking of how they are 'proud to be a Gooner'.
The fans are the givers, parting with fistfuls of £50 notes each year to listen to the same bluster from the board. They are inching closer to success, so they say.
At the AGM last month they were hanging their hat on UEFA's Financial Fair Play.
What next will they come up with? Perhaps they could borrow Patek Philippe's line and tell them it is all being 'saved for the next generation'.
Spare them. Arsenal are not a two-bob enterprise. They rake in money from every orifice, exploiting every commercial avenue available to a club that are ranked sixth in Europe according to the latest UEFA co-efficients.
Finish fourth in the Premier League, or preferably third to avoid Champions League qualification, and the money pours in.
Lest we forget the stadium repayments, which are '£15m a year', according to Wenger in an interview in February this year and the Champions League more than covers the lot.
Star names: Arsenal have plenty of stars on big wages in their ranks
Last year, Arsenal earned just under £23m from the competition before they were eliminated by Milan 4-3 on aggregate in the second round.
The pay day was made up of £14.8m from the market pool, £3.1m participation bonus, £2.6m match bonuses and £2.4m for reaching the last 16.
This year, provided they squeeze through the group after Tuesday night's 2-2 draw with Schalke in Gelsenkirchen, they will earn even more.
This is not a club struggling for cash or clout when it comes to European football.
After 15 successive years in the Champions League, they have the pedigree, the history, the stadium and the location to attract the world's top players.
Don't buy the argument that it is a miracle that Arsenal qualify for the Champions League on the final day of the season. It isn't a miracle at all.
In order of revenue, Arsenal are the fifth biggest club in the Champions League according to Deloitte's latest money league: Real Madrid (£383m), Barcelona (£360m), Manchester United (£293m), Bayern Munich (£321.4m), Arsenal (£200m), Chelsea (£199m), Milan (£188m) and Inter (£168.9m).
This year they will slip below Chelsea after they became European champions following their remarkable run to the Allianz-Arena under Roberto Di Matteo.
Falling behind: Arsenal trail Premier League leaders Manchester United by nine points after former Gunner Robin van Persie helped his new side to a 2-1 victory
Year after year the club try to convince their supporters that they are punching above their weight.
They have brainwashed fans into believing that witnessing Champions League football at the same time as selling their best players is a truly remarkable feat. It is not.
Arsenal have been paying players big bucks for years, with an admirable wages-to-revenue ratio of around 61 per cent.
Don't buy the idea that this club doesn't pay big salaries to the star players. It does.
Back in 2006, Thierry Henry was given a £5m bonus to stay and signed a new five-year contract worth £130,000 a week.
Money comes to Arsenal. They don't have to look very hard to find it with a spectacular 60,000 seater stadium on a prime piece of land, a high-visibility monument for every passenger coming in or out of Kings Cross railway station.
Long memories: Arsenal last tasted success with the FA Cup win in 2005
This is Arsenal remember, winners of three Premier League titles, four FA Cups and so close to winning the Champions League against Barcelona in 2006 under Wenger.
They have the history, the Chapman years and the great George Graham team that won the league at Anfield when Michael Thomas raced through on goal.
Commercially it is not a hard sell. Every high-profile, money-making enterprise wants to be associated with a top football team in London.
Nike (since 2004) and Emirates (2006) have long-term commitments to the club, signing huge commercial partnership programmes with a team regarded by UEFA as the sixth best team in Europe.
The TV companies are still in thrall with Arsenal, swelling the club's sizeable budget by another £85m.
For the prestige of being attached to one of European football's giants, the corporate sponsors foot the bill.
Sadly it is the supporters who pay the price.
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