Arsenal launch cost review with Boston Consulting Group

Arsenal have called in Boston Consulting Group to run a wide-ranging cost review, three months after the club won its first Premier League title in 22 years.

BCG's work is understood to have been under way since June. Jean-Paul Petranca, a managing director at the firm with more than 20 years advising on strategy and organisational performance, is leading the review and reporting to chief executive Richard Garlick. Arsenal employ around 800 staff and have declined to comment on the process.

Insiders describe the exercise as focused on the "non-footballing aspects" of the business, and club sources insist BCG's brief is to help Arsenal grow commercially and sustain the level reached last season, when the side also went on to reach the Champions League final. That account has not stopped a split opening up internally. Staff in the commercial department are said to be particularly uneasy, with some unable to see the logic behind cuts in an area that has just posted record revenues.

The department lost its director, Juliet Slot, over the summer after almost five years in the role. A review of the medical department followed similar scrutiny last season, evidence that this is not the first time Arsenal have restructured off the pitch without touching team affairs.

None of it has slowed Arsenal down on the pitch. The champions have won their first three league fixtures of the new season and trail only leaders Manchester City in goals scored. Bruno Guimarães, signed from Newcastle United in the close season, has yet to open his account, while the club also sold Gabriel Martinelli to Al Hilal for a club-record fee this month.

Should the review lead to job losses, it would land awkwardly against the backdrop of a title win and record commercial income — the kind of contrast that tends to sharpen resentment inside a building rather than settle it.