Back from France and instead of links with much needed experience we see The Independent saying that Arsène Wenger does not intend to splash out on transfers this summer. “I would be happy to go into next season with the same squad because we’re in a growing process.”
And in The Mirror: “The temptation is always there to spend but I’m more concerned with developing the young players. I don’t think we need a big investment.”
And true to the word, The Independent says Arsenal are reportedly keeping an eye on 21-year-old midfielder and youth international Loic Perrin, of the French club St-Etienne.
Meanwhile, The Spanish second division side Salamanca want to extend the loan of 18-year-old Arsenal striker Carlos Vela into next season.
The Mirror in its whispers column has someone saying he saw Lille midfield playmaker Jean Makoun at Eurodisney in Paris last week and he said he will be Arsenal’s first signing of the summer.
The Telegraph says Stan Kroenke IS widely expected to launch a takeover bid for Arsenal in the coming weeks. He is said to be worth $1.8 billion (£900 million). As more than one ANR reader has pointed out – that’s chicken feed compared to Abramovich, and if we are going to taken over why not go on the grand scale?
The paper points out, in addition to the 9.9% for £6,800 per share, Kroenke used American bank JP Morgan Chase to buy another 791 shares – just over one per cent of the club’s parent company, Arsenal Holdings plc. It is believed that the vast majority were bought from Arsenal director and major shareholder Danny Fiszman, on March 15.
Chirman Hill-Wood told the Inside Sport section that he would have expected Kroenke to inform them of his plans before he went ahead and bought ITV’s stake.
“We are in the dark and I certainly have no idea of what his intentions are,” he said. “It was no secret that ITV were looking to sell their stake but you would have thought that they [KSE] would have contacted us before they bought it. But they didn’t and that’s their business. So I am none the wiser.”
Some shareholders are so concerned about the transaction that they are considering making a complaint to the Takeover Panel.
They argue that if Kroenke paid ITV much more per share – perhaps between pounds 8,000 and pounds 8,800 – then under City takeover rules he would be obliged to pay that price if he went on to make a full bid for the company in the next 12 months and that would value Arsenal at almost £500 million and with pounds £250m of debt to cover on top of that it might price him and anyone else out of making a bid.
The Guardian says David Dein and Wenger are working on a five-year plan and the next few weeks could determine if he is in a position to implement it.
The paper has a good backgrounder on Kroenke, summarised below:
* While an undergraduate at the University of Missouri in Columbia in the late 60s, Stan Kroenke and his partner Bob Roper opened a men’s clothing store. To cash in on the mania for all things English, they called it “Ladigo of London” and flogged flowered shirts and bell-bottom pants
* nicknamed “Silent Stanley” for his reticence in the media, Kroenke tends to make noise with extravagant spending on players like Allen Iverson of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche team had one of the largest pay-rolls in the sport
* Born in Mora, Missouri (population: 30) on July 29, 1947, Enos Stanley was the third of Alvin and Evelyn P Kroenke’s four children. His father, the son of German immigrants, still spoke the mother tongue in the house but named his son after two St Louis baseball legends, Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial
* His wife Ann is part of the WalMart empire and worth more than Stan
* in the nineties Kroenke paid $450m for the Avalanche, the Nuggets and the Pepsi Center, the arena they both use. Since then he has added a lacrosse team, an Arena Football League club (indoor gridiron and Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids.
* He also owns Canada’s largest working cattle ranch with a seat on the board of the St Louis chapter of the Boy Scouts of America
* In 2004 he established Altitude Sports and Entertainment, a TV channel with the rights to show the games of all his Denver-based teams. Most recently, he has set up tickethorse.com as a local rival to Ticketmaster. This is supposed to save fans money. Since ushers at the Pepsi Center address Avalanche season-ticket holders by name and do not charge for food if it takes more than 15 minutes to be delivered to their seats
* Kroenke Sports Entertainment has built the Rapids a new 18,000-seat stadium, surrounded by 24 full-size pitches, part of which will be home to a new Arsenal centre of excellence. He recouped $40m of the $130m cost by selling the naming rights to Dick’s Sporting Goods for the next 20 years. The drawback is that rival fans have christened the facility “Penis Park“.
* Sporting Success? – Colorado Rapids. Kroenke took over the club, along with the lacrosse team Colorado Mammoth, in 2004 and since then they have reached the play-off semi-finals two years in a row; Denver Nuggets have been in the play-offs three times; Colorado Avalanche – won three titles and a Cup; and the St Louis Rams are known for scintillating passing
Meanwhile, back down to earth with a rude bump, and Allardyce is spouting pre-match: “We haven’t beaten them at their place in the six years we have been in the Premiership, although we came within a couple of minutes last season. There is a terrific incentive to get our first win at Arsenal. We’ve not got the best of run-ins. After this we are playing Reading, West Ham and Aston Villa.
“I was worried when we were going through a bad patch recently but we’ve shown a great improvement in the last few games. We know how to play against Arsenal and we are good at working them out. There is no pressure on us whatsoever because we are not expected to challenge or even get into the Champions League.”
Interesting analysis from the Bolton-Arsenal game at the Reebok. Bolton made 204 passes and completed 153. While Arsenal made 389 and completed 325 (and lost). The Arsenal midfield made 184 passes – just 20 fewer than the entire Bolton team. Bolton’s passes on average are longer with Campo averaging 31m.
Never wondered why the Standard allows David Mellor a self indulgent Chelsea column. It degrades a good paper.
In his latest, on the three Premiership clubs in the CL semis, he takes the oppportunity to rub salt into the wounds: “But there’s a skeleton at this feast, Arsenal. Don’t mock the afflicted, the late Frankie Howerd used to advise, but it’s hard not to. Twenty two points behind United, and 19 behind Chelsea, and out of every other competition, Arsenal might as well have their end-of-season dinner tonight.
“It’s not often I feel sorry for Gooners but I did in that first leg, as Liverpool, flawed though they are, showed what a properly motivated team can do with a second-rate outfit like PSV.
“If one thing has shone through this week in the Champions League, it’s guts. These teams may have a motley pedigree, but managers like Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho succeed most of the time in inculcating a do-or-die attitude. When did Arsene Wenger last do that? Don’t ask.”
Hang it in the Arsenal dressing room?