Yes - we are the 7th richest club in the world, and the richest in London, yet we are firmly behind Chelsea and the Spuds in our ability to buy and attract decent players - what is that down to?
Healthy competition.
Shit manager
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It has been litigated to death around here… AW is at the helm and makes all the decisions. We have spent more in the last 5 years in terms of transfers and wages by FAR than our history. If you want to bash Kroenke, it is for acting too slowly to replace AW. Otherwise, he really has done nothing different than before in terms of our “self-sustaining” model. If you want us to be a loss-making entity like City, fine… just say it.
In addition, City has been added to the mega-wealthy club with Chelsea and ManU. Spurs and Pool haven’t outspent us to get closer or vault over us (nor certainly did LC)… think about it for a sec… it wasn’t money… hmmm… let me think…
If you bothered to research a little bit or search a bit through all the threads, this is a rotting corpse of a dead horse that is barely shattered bones any more.
Come on, Kroenke went against the board to keep Wenger in place, Gazidis even said that. Why would he do that?
Again, if you think about it objectively, there are plenty of rationale… if you wanted to be cynical and think about it purely from a financial perspective, he could have saved a few million on wages for our high-paid manager and continued to not let the new guy spend… also, there was a split on the board from what I understand… it wasn’t like it was unanimous against AW. Either way, Kroenke does have a FINANCIAL incentive not to see us slip too much - read the SwissRamble stuff.
Having an owner who says he didn’t buy the club to win trophies, is like watching a team who are making no effort to win a match. That is not an alternative fact, that is the truth. That is why whatever light you like to paint him in, he is bad for the club.
Yeah because that is what he has said. You clearly have an agenda and this is just silly.
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As I said before, I have no agenda - I have supported and been a season ticket holder of this club for many years, and it pains me to see what is happening. With the old board, I used to feel the club was in safe hands, and although we have a lot of knowledgeable people who have a deep attachment for the club, with the ability to progress us, under the current regime, these people are being shut out. The infrastructure in the club is crazy at the moment, and Kroenke is going against people who are more knowledgeable and closer to the problems.
Look for Bellerin and Kroenke - you will find plenty there, maybe it was that I was thinking of. As for collateral - everyone knows that player values and wages seem to almost double every year, so it makes little financial sense to hold the money, rather than invest it in players, agreed, without having access to accounts, its difficult to prove, but clubs like Chelsea etc. buy players and loan them out, rather than hold onto cash.
It’s going to be very interesting to see where Arsenal goes under his ownership after Wenger. The first step to that future has been appointing Mertesacker as Head of Youth…
I’m afraid we will end up like the Denver Nuggets in the NBA (for who follows NBA and who are ownd by Kroenke too); a club in anonymity because he simply doesn’t care enough to win. Unless Gazidis appoints a manager who can truelly put the club on his back and carry Arsenal to a League title. But I don’t know if a manager can be succesful if the organisation around him is ‘weak’.
One thing I really hate about the whole Kroenke situation is comparisons between NFL/NHL/NBA/MLS franchise system and English football.
There’s simply no correlation nor solid basis for comparison between Kroenke’s other American teams and Arsenal.
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Care to expand on that?
The way they go about managing their assets could be/is comparable. Appointing Mike Malone as Denver Nuggets head coach and extending Wenger for another two years are both low-risk, decent reward moves without showing ambition to do something to genuinely move forward or force (positive) change.
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The claims of Kroenke phoning Bellerin come from some random Spanish radio station. I have a hard time buying it. Even if true though how does not cashing in on assets like him back up your assertions on Kroenke?
And yea, fees and wages have gone up and the club has moved with that so I honestly can’t see the issue there either.
http://onlinegooner.com/article.php?section=editorial&id=689#.WdIu7fOGPcs
Sorry if this has been posted already. Makes for a scary read
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A quote I took from the Standard-article linked in that piece. Are there a lot of examples of other rich owners, who put a lot of money in, losing interest rather than them just not having deep enough pockets? The owner of Malaga comes too mind, but I can’t think of any other examples.
Abramovich invested heavily whilst building a world class brand. These billionaires have the means to do both. Question is do they want too.
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What assertions? Like it took us five years of dithering to find a striker, like we go and buy someone like Ozil, and expect him to run back and defend, rather than replacing our shielding midfielder we we sold off years ago, all while for some unfathomable reason, which couldn’t possibly be for collateral, we hold masses of cash in reserve, which we don’t sensibly spend on players, which we could loan out like other clubs, either to sell later on, or to integrate into the team . This all started with the arrival of Kroenke. Pre Kroenke, if we were deficient in any areas, we just went out and filled them. If we were paying less than other clubs for our season tickets, this penny pinching may be acceptable, but as we are paying the highest in the world, it certainly isn’t, and as we are supposed to be running a self sustaining model, and not providing collateral for any external interests, I don’t see any reason for it.
“Only a select few know details about the bidders, and if they were to go public, then fans would understand that the club would be in better hands were they to succeed.“
This is a quote from that artical, Is the author saying that he is one of the select few that do know and saying “trust me we would Be in better hands”?
I’m hoping this mystery bidder/s isn’t that mad Nigerian Bloke that was rumoured to be trying To buy shares recently as he seemed just as bad as the 2 we already have
I just don’t get why the FA is so lax about who it allows to become owners of clubs. To my knowledge, there are at least two owners with criminal records, maybe more, and with the billions washing about in football, and the massive scope for money laundering, completely ignoring the demise of our beloved historic clubs, surely this should be taken more seriously?
The one where you said that when Kroenke came in it was between us and Man U and that he has taken us from top two to mid level mediocrity?