Tag Archives: stan kroenke

Just how broken and divided is Arsenal?

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The divisions with Arsenal are deep, very deep.

We saw a glimpse of it when many of Arsenal’s outfield players failed to celebrate Alexis Sanchez’s opener against Crystal Palace, prompting Thierry Henry to claim of a rift in the dressing room.

Leaks from the dressing room were that Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey did not see eye to eye, and that this was creating divisions within the squad.

Hector Bellerin hinted at further issues with Sanchez when he suggested that Sanchez often “demanded too much” from other players, even when they were already giving 100%.

With Sanchez gone, it seemed like the divisions on the pitch might disappear. But further leaks from the dressing room indicate more divisions within the squad.

Firstly on the leaks. Things are never good when a player (or member of coaching staff) is leaking arguments and disagreements to the media. It creates an atmosphere of mistrust, that the dressing room is not sacred, and can actually lead to further divisions as finger pointing begins.

The Arsenal dressing room seems to be split. There have been divisions before.

In Arsene Wenger’s early days, there was a French clique, due to the amount of French players at in the squad. There was even rumours that French was the official language within the dressing room. These were dismissed, and ultimately Arsenal being successful ensured any disagreements did not grow further.

As Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole showed at Manchester United, players hating each other does not really matter when the team are winning trophies.

The biggest clique at Arsenal seems to be the Bundesliga / German clique. It contains the likes of Mesut Ozil, Granit Xhaka, Shkdoran Mustafi and Sead Kolašinac.

New signings Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre Emerick Aubameyang have also reportedly joined this clique.

The issue seems to be is that this group of players contains the highest paid players in the club, those that cost the club the most. It also has some of the clubs biggest underperformers.

Granit Xhaka and Shkdoran Mustafi cost over £70m between them. They are arguably the two worst players in our starting XI. It is a struggle to name worse Arsenal signings, taking into account cost and that they were expected to come in and solve a lot of Arsenal’s problems.

Sead Kolašinac came to the club on a free transfer in the summer, immediately taking the place of the popular Nacho Monreal.

Due to it being a free transfer, he was amongst the highest earners at the club, reportedly on £120,000 a week. At the time, only Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil and Alexandre Lacazette were on more.

When you consider that he is on twice as much as Monreal, who is popular and hard working, and has out performed Kolašinac, it is not hard to see why an eye of jealousy has been cast.

And the you have Mesut Ozil. £300,000 a week. And yet seems to have a soft underbelly and a tendency to go missing when the going gets tough.

When players are rolling up their socks and digging deep, and look across at Ozil swaning around the park, it must be frustrating knowing that he is on 3 times your salary.

Salary is probably part of the issue.

With Jack Wilshere currently in negations with the club who are trying to reduce his salary, and Aaron Ramsey also set for a new contract, they must wonder why their decade of service is being disregarded for these new signings. Who are performing worse than them.

The fact that the underperformers are players that came in for big money and on high salaries are part of the same clique exabarates the situation further.

There also seems to be jealousy throughout the club.

Reports a few weeks ago were that Aaron Ramsey had become jealous of Jack Wilshere.

He was frustrated that the injury prone Englishman got so much praise from the fans, whilst he was often criticised. Even though he outperforms Wilshere.

Now whilst this is just rumours, I can see the situation being true, not just with Ramsey and Wilshere, but with a lot of other players and Wilshere.

No other player at the minute gets their song sung other than Wilshere. And he seems to be immune to criticism.

Despite poor performances, Arsenal fans demand the club pay him what he wants ands go above and beyond when defending him. I imagine Ramsey is not the only one who gets frustrated with constant criticise of themselves, whilst Wilshere gets praised.

Wilshere can also be petulant and arrogant. I imagine in an argument, he uses the fact that he is a fans favourite.

You then have Hector Bellerin.

He wanted away in the summer, and up until the Brighton game had played every single minute in the Premier League. He was told 2 hours before kick off that he would not be playing.

Before then, he was untouchable. Performing poorly, whilst speaking out against fans. The fans that Wilshere loves.

It was interesting to see Jack Wilshire completely contradict Bellerin in an interview a few days after the fall-out of Hector’s Oxford Q&A. Further proof that the dressing room is divided.

You have to wonder what affect some players who have left had.

The likes of Olivier Giroud, Theo Walcott and the injured Santi Cazorla. Big, popular characters within the squad. None of whom are around anymore.

Losing these big characters diminished the French and English cliques, as they were allegedly the “leaders” and most popular in those cliques. The alpha males, perhaps.

By losing such big characters, it created a power vacuum which, alongside Ozil’s new contract, made the Bundesliga / German clique the most powerful in the club. And it seems to be those players who are getting the blame for our poor performances.

It is not just on the pitch there are divisions, however. It is off the pitch as well.

This time last year, it is documented that Ivan Gazidis wanted change.

Arsene Wenger’s contract was coming to an end, and he wanted to explore other options. He also wanted to look at bringing in a Director of Football to reduce Wenger’s power on the club.

A Director of Football was logical.

As CEO, Gazidis runs the business side of the club. Arsene Wenger ran the football side, he was king maker. Bringing in a Director of Football would leave Wenger managing the team, whilst the new man would oversee the development of the entire club, from youth systems to scouting to contracts.

Wenger put his foot down and fell out with Gazidis over his desire to hire a Director of Football.

Ultimately it fell to the board to make a decision on the future of the club. The old boys Keswick and Harris could not be awoken from their slumber to make a decision, leaving it to majority share holder Stan Kroenke.

Eventually he sided with Wenger, giving the Frenchman a new 2 year deal.

With Wenger and Kroenke on one side and Gazidis on the other, the club was pulling in different directions. Then up stepped Josh Kroenke.

It is rumoured that the younger Kroenke agreed with Ivan Gazidis’ view on how the club should be run. And with him taking more of an interest in many of his fathers sports investments, was able to back up Gazidis in his catalyst of change.

Despite getting a new contract, in came Sven Mislintat, Raul Sanllehi and Huss Fahmy. These are Gazidis’ men.

So there are now clear divisions. Stan Kroenke, Wenger and his yes men on the training ground, then Gazidis and his employees who were bought in above and alongside the manager to work with him.

With so many disagreements off the training ground and in the boardroom, it is no surprise that on the pitch players are unable to show a united front.

The obvious step is to remove Wenger and his coaching set up.

Let Sanllehi and Gazidis bring in the man they want, and unit behind him as manager (or head coach). And then let that manager, with an iron fist, break the cliques that Wenger has allowed to form.

With Wenger still at the helm, Arsenal will remain a broken unit on and off the pitch.

Keenos

No noise, from the Arsenal Board

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It’s so quiet,
It’s so quiet,
It’s so quiet, over there.

Is this the Emirates?,
Is this the Emirates?.
Is this the Emirates?

The lack of noise that has come out of Arsenal since Sunday’s defeat to Brighton has been deafening.

On the South-Coast, not a single board member had the decency to turn up and support the team. They are not supporters, they are share holders, employees and leaches.

One director, Lord Harris of Peckham, has previously spoken about how football is not even his first love. Horse racing takes that mantle. And when I say horse racing, not the Ascot kind, but the gay kind where horses jump over pretty little fences.

Worth over £100m in his own right, having been the founder of Carpetright, Philip Charles Harris, Baron Harris of Peckham, has pumped millions into Equestrian and the Conservative Party, but does not even buy his own tickets for Arsenal.

I was not expecting much from this Arsenal board. I was expecting no vote of confidence, no statement. For too long, they have hidden behind Arsene Wenger. Allowed the Frenchman to take the blame – which has deserved – whilst sitting quietly.

The only time they were heard from was at the shareholders AGM. Like Peter Hill-Wood before him, Arsenal Chairman Sir Chips Keswick treats fans with disdain.

Back in 2007, Danny Fizsman declared that “the board…are the custodians of this club”. At the time, the likes of David Dein, Fizsman and others felt that they owned and operated the club on behalf of the wider Arsenal fan base.

The likes of the Hill-Wood and Bracewell Smith (and Carr) families had been custodians of the club since World War II. Their families were Arsenal through and through. Although as the generations went on, interest seemed to wane until Peter Hill-Wood and Nina Bracewell Smith decided to sell up completely. The Carr’s have also sold up most, if not all, of their shares.

In the early 1990’s, Arsenal were run by the Dein / Fizsman axis. There is no doubting either of their love for the club.

Dein and Fizsman bought success back to the club. Firstly alongside George Graham, and then with Arsene Wenger at the helm. They were key bringing the likes of Dennis Bergkamp to the club.

Both men were regulars over The Arsenal. Home and away. Reserves and ladies. It can not be a coincidence that Arsenal were successful when we had owners, board members and custodians that loved the fans like they were fans.

Fast forward to 2018…

The aforementioned Sir Chips Keswick was first appointed as an Arsenal director in November 2005. At the same time, his partner in crime Lord Harris of Peckham was also appointed to the Arsenal board.

For me these two are as culpable as anyone for the current situation of the club.

They are supposed to be the Arsenal men on the board, but clearly do not care. They drink their whiskey, smoke their cigars, and sit on their thousand pound oak chairs within the confides of the Arsenal stadium chuckling to themselves. Turning up to private members clubs in the city, for them being an Arsenal director is a status thing and nothing else.

Arsenal Football Club’s longest-serving director, Ken Friar OBE has been a mainstay of the Club for more than 60 years. His love for the club is 6 decades long but, at the age of 83, he clearly does not have the energy for it anymore.

Keswick, 78, Harris, 75 and Friar, 83, are simply not fit for purpose. They are not visionaries. They have no place in Arsenal’s future.

You then have the majority share holder, “Silent” Stan Kroenke.

It should not be a surprise that we have heard from him, we never do. He sees himself as a shareholder of the club, nothing more. No different to being a shareholder in Tesco or Toys R Us. He invests his money in successful companies, then allows the companies to keep operating the way they were.

On the pitch, Arsenal might not have been successful, but off the pitch the share price has trebled since Kroenke first bought his shares back in 2007. He will see his ownership as a success.

Ivan Gazidis’ silence is surprising. He is a man who has no Arsenal connections, but seems to understand the class and heritage of what comes with being involved in Arsenal. He has carried on many a tradition, and is seen at every game. His no-show against Brighton is a surprise.

He is not an investor, but just an employee. The club pay him over £2m to do his job. In the past, people have questioned what he does. Our commercial revenue is shocking, and even the resent “house deals” with shirt sponsorship seems below par.

We are nearly £200m down in yearly commercial income in comparison to Manchester United.

Compare Gazidis to Daniel Levy over at Spurs. One has raised a club up (although not won anything yet), whilst the other has taken others good work before him, and taken us backwards.

Lastly we have Josh Kroenke, the son of Silent Stan.

He joined the board of Arsenal Football Club in December 2013, and is rumoured to have recently moved to London on the long-term basis to oversee Arsenal. No one knows what he does, probably nothing. And he probably just fancied 6 months in London, see the Queen, etc.

It is no surprise that the board have gone missing, as they have been silent for over a decade. They are no longer the custodians of the club. They have let down the fans badly.

One person who has been surprisingly silent is Alisher Usmanov. He usually jumps on Arsenal’s troubles, writing letters to the board and the fans.

With his partner in crime Farhad Moshiri joining Everton, you have to wonder if Usmanov he has lost interest in Arsenal.

My bet is he wants out. He realises he will never own Arsenal, Kroenke will never let that happen. He now his eyes set on Everton. It perhaps shows he was more interested in owning a football club, than owning Arsenal. He often portrayed himself as a lifelong fan, but he was no more a fan than Roman was of Chelsea or the Sheik’s supported Manchester City.

Usmanov is between a rock and a hard place.

He knows that he will never own Arsenal. Kroenke will never sell to him. But he owns about 30% of the club, and they are pretty much meaningless.

At £30,000 a share, Usmanov’s holdings are worth over £600,000,000. No one is going to spend that much money to not have a say in affairs. Likewise, he is not going to find 20,000 individuals who are happy spending £30,000 on a single share.

The only possible buyer would be Stan Kroenke. But he has no need to buy anymore shares, as being majority share holder he can pretty much do what he wishes with the club.

Kroenke owns the club as an investment, he is not going to pay a premium on shares that could make him a loss.

This leaves Usmanov unable to sell his current shares, unable to invest properly in Everton. Unable to make Arsene Wenger Everton’s new manager.

His silence is because he just does not care anymore.

Even the journalists who are in Arsenal’s pocket have barely lifted their head over the parapet.

At times of crisis, the likes of John Cross and Matt Law have often been drip fed sound bites from the club, so that they can attempt to spin it back to pro-Arsenal; pro-Wenger. The club is under lockdown.

And a look over at the Twitter page sums it all up.

At the time of writing (15:20 on Monday afternoon), Arsenal have not tweeted for 20 hours.

Nothing from the board, nothing from the Arsenal journalists, nothing from Twitter. It is almost like everyone has been told say nothing.

There has been talk of an emergency meeting being held on Monday. But this is one of them “mates of a mate of a mate” things. Like the bloke who knows a security guard, or the geezer who works in insurance. It is all probably a load of ITK rubbish.

We have to hear from Arsenal by Wednesday, as that is when Arsene Wenger will hold his pre-game Europa League press conference.

Until then, maintain radio silence.

Keenos

 

10 reasons why going Arsenal is no longer fun

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  1. The club is rotten from the top – Against Brighton, not a single board member felt the need to turn up. We have a majority shareholder who does not see himself as a business owner, 2 directors who do not care, and an underperforming CEO.
  2. The manager can see no fault – Arsene Wenger does not want Arsenal to fail. But the fact is he can no longer come up with a solution to stop us failing. His comments are disrespectful to fans and his inability to shoulder any blame is becoming boring.
  3. The players do not care – Back in 1995, after the George Graham scandal, Arsenal’s senior players bashed each others heads together and drove us to the ECWC Final. They cared about the club. The current crop clearly do not care. They go home to their fortified mansions, lock themselves away and play FIFA.
  4. On the pitch – All of this leads to the situation that Arsenal currently face on the pitch. I love Arsenal, not just Arsenal with trophies, but it is becoming a struggle to turn up to games with a board, a manager and players who do not care.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

But it is not just on the pitch matters

  1. TV Companies – The likes of Sky TV and BT Sports only care about the fans who watch on TV. Of course they would, as that is their paid audience. But the Premier League allow them to dictate kick off times. Allow themselves to get bullied for a few billion pounds.
  2. Kick off times – This leads to kick off times really killing the game. We travel up to Newcastle on a Sunday for a 1.30pm kick off. We have not had a single Saturday 3pm away game this season. And just four 3pm home games on a Saturday. It is killing the day out that happens before and after the game.
  3. The police – The police really are turning into the fun police. Walking around pubs in Islington constantly on a game day with their body cam on, recording everything. My car got nicked a few weeks ago. The police have not even come around. Bet if I had an argument at a game, they would soon knock on my door.
  4. The pubs – Alongside the police wearing body cams, so do Wetherspoons staff. Both in the White Swan and the Angel. Why? Pubs are closing down left, right and centre on Holloway Road, and now the White Swan are banning people for having a sing son in the pub. Their policy now seems to be no fun, sit and drink quietly. I was informed during the League Cup Final that I was banned from the White Swan. The reason? Alex from the Angel did not feel comfortable serving you. I took a picture of him whilst he was filming me and my mates.
  5. Fellow fans – As if we did not have enough with the police and the bar staff recording us, fellow Arsenal fans are also constantly recording each other. All for a few hits on their YouTube channel, a little bit of attention on Social Media.
  6. Social Media – Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know I left \t the beginning of last year. I got bored of it. Attention seekers fighting for their 15 seconds of fame. The constant moaning and over analysis of everything. People living 24/7 on social media. It became depressing. It is depressing. What happened to a few beers with your mates in the pub, then get on with your working week? Now people spend every single day tweeting about Arsenal. And that just gets boring.

Keenos