Was Jose Mourinho right about Arsenal? How much have they spent? And should they challenge?

Arsenal and Chelsea contest the traditional season-opening Community Shield in four days at Wembley, and warming to the prospect of psychological conflict on the horizon, Jose Mourinho subtly applied some pressure to Arsene Wenger in his latest press conference.

Or, as the Telegraph put it:

[ANALYSIS: How they have spent: Arsenal v Chelsea]

“If you add up the amounts clubs have spent in the last three or four years, I think maybe you will find a surprise,” he said. “If you put [Mesut] Ozil plus Alexis Sánchez, plus [Calum] Chambers, plus [Mathieu] Debuchy you will maybe find a surprise. It’s a fantastic squad; lots and lots of good players, a fantastic goalkeeper. I think they are more than ready to be title contenders.”

Generous praise from the Chelsea manager. But asked by one of the reporters in attendance whether Arsenal “get away with the idea that they don’t spend big money”, Mourinho added:

“This is the easiest thing to do – I don’t do it. Get a calculator. That is the easiest things, it leaves no space for speculation. If you want to be honest, objective and pragmatic it is the easiest job for a manager or journalist to do. If a manager is interested he can do it. I am not. But Diego Costa plus, Fabregas plus [Asmir] Begovic; [Morgan] Schneiderlin plus; Alexis Sánchez plus this one; [Christian] Benteke plus Balotelli plus this one. It is easy and objective.”

ESPNFC reporter Dale Johnson did exactly what Mourinho asked and tallied up the total spend and net spend of the top five clubs over the past three years, and the results were intriguing.

As you can see from the tweet above, Arsenal have spent by far the least of any of the clubs you could reasonably expect to be in contention for the title at the start of the season.

Manchester United – who have signed the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Memphis Depay this summer – have spent almost twice as much as Arsenal in that period. So, using Mourinho’s rationale you’d probably expect Arsenal to finish in sixth place.

No, certainly not. These figures show which clubs have invested heavily in new signings but they don’t tell you what the relative quality of the existing squad was.

Manchester United, for example, have spent in excess of £300m in the time period given but were working from a low base due to the denudation of the squad in Sir Alex Ferguson’s final years. All that money spent and they could still start the season with Phil Jones at centre-back.

In the case of Mourinho’s current target, Arsenal, Wenger’s rather less bombastic approach to spending means he builds his squads in a more measured way. And after years of steady accumulation they find themselves with a very good squad with at least two good players in each position:

Don’t let a 6-0 win over Lyon at the Emirates Cup fool you, Arsenal still have issues when it comes to winning the Premier League. But if they can replicate the form they showed in the second half of last season with the Cazorla-Coquelin midfield axis continuing to impress, and if Cech can add 10 or so points, then they should get a lot closer to Chelsea this time around.

Having won the FA Cup for the past two seasons, fans and players alike have set their sights on bigger prizes and even if Mourinho's maths are faulty, his central argument that Arsenal have no room for excuses when it comes to challenging for the title is surely a valid one.

At the weekend he had a dig, ostensibly at Manchester United and Liverpool, when saying: “In the beginning of Mr. Abramovich coming to Chelsea, Chelsea was buying the title. Now, they are buying the title. All of them, they are buying the title. It is up to us to be strong and to fight them and, obviously, to try and win it again, even without the big investments.”

In a word, yes. You might have seen this graphic doing the rounds on Twitter this week.