Danny Fiszman died on Monday and Stan Kroenke now owns Arsenal.
Stan lives 4,000 miles away and does not love football.
Respected as a strategic investor, Stan owns several teams who don\’t win much. And now he owns another team that doesn’t win much.
When Stan looked at Arsenal, what did he see?
A sleeping giant which could wake up and deliver?
A London club which could build a great team that wins trophies and employs superstars to sell replica shirts on five continents?
I don’t think so. I reckon Stan saw a Sector. Companies are divided into Sectors : Pharma, Energy, Retail and so on.
Arsenal is a business that operates in a Sector some call Travel & Leisure.
Not Sport, not football, not passion, not a community supporting its footballers.
Leisure. Leisure in a wealthy city. The money is mainly in west London, central London, and north London, so you need to be central, so that you do not inconvenience the wealthy, the tourists and the corporates.
Arsenal is ideal for that because it has the huge advantage of location, location, location. Very important if you get most of your cash from corporates and wealthy punters.
What are Silent Stan’s intentions?
Probably to keep his head down and let Wenger carry on as he has done for the last six years. Why? Because, as he says, he likes the way Arsenal do business.
At Arsenal, Wenger is God. And I’m not saying Wenger thinks he’s God. I’m saying : it’s his training ground, his family of staff and players, his ideas, his club. God designed the Colney Creche, the players are his sons, and God does all the contracts, decides how much each of his sons earns, and how he trains, so he owns his 56 sons mentally as well as financially.
Naive Gooners imagine that there is some dialogue between God and the board. But God vetoed one Arsenal chief exec and scared off another applicant. God wants to hear no voice but his own.
I thought Ivan Gazidis became CEO on that basis. But apparently not, since Ivan once remarked that he was surprised by how much power Wenger had at the club. Charles de Gaulle Louis XV was more up front than Wenger. He said, “L\’etat c\’est moi.†By contrast, Wenger is far too cunning to say, “I am the club.â€
God’s agenda is (1) to finish fourth or third or second and (2) to improve young French players, toughening them up to wear the blue shirt of France. And (3) the most important aim of all, to keep his job.
It’s fun being God, even if you have to slave 24/7 to do the work of five men.
On the Friday after the Blackburn game, just before the team went up to play Blackpool, Wenger did an interview that alarmed journalists and fans. He made the type of comments that have caused his reservoir of goodwill to be drained, week by week, match by match.
Having spent 20 years with football managers, I know it’s always a bad sign when they answer a question with a question. Keith Burkinshaw was the first to do that to me and George Graham did it too, when he got rattled, which was rarely.
That was what I thought when I saw the intransigent, argumentative Wenger asking reporters, “What is success in your job?” He said that he measures success by whether you work 100% every day, rather than winning trophies.
Have you renewed to watch this 23-year old Arsenal team? Would you dare to challenge a famous multi-millionaire who has managed 1,500 games? A French dictator who says your opinion is worth nothing because you have never worked half a day in football?
The shares backstory will be familiar to most ANR readers.
David Dein found Stan and sold the vision to him. Kroenke bought the ITV shares and soon had 11.2%
In April 2007, David Dein was kicked out by Danny Fiszman , allegedly for suggesting , behind his back, that Lady Nina sold her shares to Kroenke.
In August 2007, Dein sold his 14.58% to Usmanov for £75 million.
A year later, in September 2008, Kroenke joined the board.
In December 2009, Danny kicked Lady Nina off the board.
She bitterly said: Now Danny\’s got Stan, he doesn\’t need me.
In March 2009, Danny sold a big chunk of shares to Stan.
That sale, just over two years ago, signalled that Stan Kroenke was going to be the next owner of Arsenal.
There was an executive vacuum at Arsenal for decades before 1983, after which David Dein dragged them kicking and screaming in to the 20th century.
But he got no thanks from Peter Hill-Wood, an old Etonian who has never paid for a ticket in his life and loathed arriviste hustlers.
When Dein took Tony Woodcock, Charlie Nicholas and Kenny Sansom to a Frank Sinatra concert, Hill-Wood was appalled. Arsenal directors do not socialise with players. Old money employs proles but would never dream of taking staff for a night out at the Albert Hall.
As George Graham said when he was given an hour to clear his desk, Arsenal has always been like Upstairs, Downstairs.
What do Americans do for English clubs?
At Man United, the Glazers can legally take £25-40 million a year out of the business.
At Liverpool, two cowboys were forced to sell the club to John W. Henry of the Boston Red Sox, a professional sports tycoon like Kroenke. Except that John W. Henry is visible and audible.
Two weeks ago, after that feeble 0-0 against Blackburn, I thought : Wenger can\’t get away with three more years of this !
When Kroenke got 62%, I thought : At last! Somebody with the balls to replace Wenger !
Hill-Wood admitted he had no Plan B. With Hill-Wood it was : Arsene\’s got a job for life, we hope he stays with us forever.
I hoped that Stan Kroenke would have a Plan A and a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D because Americans embrace change. They don\’t like to stand still and let the grass grow under their feet.
If Kroenke wants the 39th game to be in Denver or Los Angeles or Beijing, he will support Scudamore\’s ghastly initiative.
Right now, Kroenke is over here and Liverpool is his first game as Arsenal’s majority shareholder. He needs to be at that game and I really hope he will be.
He doesn’t feel football or understand football, so he delegates and leaves it to the professionals. He doesn’t know or care that Arsenal have a goalkeeping crisis, a centreback crisis, a striker crisis, and a ridiculous 18 players out on loan.
My biggest fear is that Wenger and Kroenke are made for each other.
I worry that owner and coach are on the same wavelength, the same page. They’re both play-off guys, not winners.
My second biggest fear is that Wenger may have signed his contract extension knowing this takeover would happen.
For all we know, Kroenke insisted that Danny extended the manager\’s contract as a condition of his takeover.
Last August, on the day before the season kicked off, Wenger produced a masterstroke of news management. Thousands of Arsenal fans had been saying: Win a trophy or go! And on the Friday before the big Saturday, with tons of hot, topical stories around, we suddenly heard that the manager who had won nothing for five years would have four more chances to win nothing.
I was concussed by that news, even as I admired the cleverness of its timing.
So I\’m beginning to wonder : If Arsene Wenger didn\’t exist, would Stan Kroenke have to invent him ?