Why are people surprised that Stan Kroenke said nothing at the Thursday’s hate-filled AGM?
Kroenke is an accumulator, not a communicator.
Land, rents, merchandise,TV money, gate money, season tickets where get gets your cash nine months in advance, lots of income streams.
Americans love to leverage off their assets and Arsenal is a huge asset. He has 20 ways of making money without spending it.
So why would be be a risk-taker?
The idea for Stan Kroenke to issue a statement before the AGM must have come from Wenger
The wording probably came from him as well.
If you employ the greatest spin-doctor in football, why not use his knowledge of how to control the narrative? And why miss a chance to get your retaliation in first?
The statement Kroenke put out through The Daily Telegraph carried Wenger’s message very clearly and simply.
The owner explained why he extended AW’s contract: “When you make decisions like that you are weighing lots of different factors but you hope that you weigh them correctly and come out with the right decision. I think we did… we have dealt with this a lot and we believe Arsene is doing a great job and is the right guy. It’s easy to change coaches and people do it all the time… an easy answer is to do something. It’s harder not to do something. We have dealt with this a lot in different organisations and we just think that Arsene is doing a great job and he’s the right guy.”
Kroenke added that Wenger is “more focused than ever, focused on winning. I really think I do see that”.
You may not know what Mark Lawrenson said on Radio 5 Live three weeks ago.
Lawrenson revealed that after the FA Cup Final , Kroenke and Wenger had a two-hour meeting at the owner’s hotel in London.
Kroenke told Wenger to report to only to him, and not the board.
Wenger now reports to Stan and nobody else.
When Sir Alex Ferguson was working he had less power than Wenger, his biggest rival, because Man United had a serious board who made plans and decisions.
Corporate lawyer Ivan Gazidis is a technocrat like Wenger
The lawyer and the economist have that in common: both are modern data scientists.
Amazingly, the Arsenal CEO told the AGM, “There is one very accurate and objective way to assess how well and how consistently clubs perform in this area of transfers over time,” Gazidis said. “This method is accurate enough to be the industry standard way to analyse.
“It is very simply to compare team performance by a series of objective metrics, usually league position or points, against expenditure on transfers. No club has a perfect record every year under this scrutiny but Arsenal has probably been, of the big clubs certainly, the most consistently over-performing team over time.
“That is, despite the criticism we get and the emotion here in the room, and despite some very loud subjective narratives and a great deal of inaccurate information.
“On an objective basis, we perform very well and have over a long period of time. However, I agree completely that we have to find ways to perform better.”
But since Ivan Gazidis works under King Wenger, he can’t replace “the manager” until the Frenchman dies in the job 20 years from now.