What a shame. A shame that our very encouraging start to the season, something that all Arsenal fans could share, has been completely overshadowed by the news that broke yesterday. News that is likely to bring about as divisive a situation as we’ve ever faced.
Arseblog broke the news yestererday that David Dein was holding a press conference. There were rumours that he’d sold his stake in Arsenal to a Russian for £75. The obvious name was Boris Berezovsky as he’s an Arsenal fan who has a box at the new ground. At 4.30 the press conference took place and news broke on Bloomberg that Dein had sold 14.58% of Arsenal Football Club, the club so dear to his heart, for £75m to Red and White Holdings Ltd, owned by the businessmen Alisher Usmanov (link makes interesting reading – Times profile here) and Farhad Moshiri. Dein is the chairman of the this holding company.
You can read their ever so friendly sounding press release here. Don’t be fooled though. This is no friendly company. This is a company that wants to buy up as many Arsenal shares as possible and takeover the club. At this point David Dein would the chairman of Arsenal. A life’s ambition realised at last. 14.58% of a company that doesn’t pay dividends to directors or salaries to non-club shareholders is pretty worthless, unless you sit and sell when the price goes higher. But David Dein has no intention of doing that. David Dein, who now has £75m in his back pocket – well, maybe a little less if he’s got a few bills to pay – wants this group to buy up as many shares as possible. He’s come on board at the right time too, when Arsene signs a new contract you can be sure he’ll give a little wink and try and claim all the credit for it. And what’s sad is some people will believe it.
What’s going to happen to his old pal Stan Kroenke? Will he sell his shares to Red and White? Perhaps he will, that’ll give them just under 30% and with the Arsenal Supporters Trust welcoming Dein back, according to the Times, that could push them over the mark when they are obliged to make an offer for the club. Of course it can still be rejected.
Now, what about the men who are involved with David Dein? Usmanov is an oligarch. Do I need to tell you how they made their money? Roman Abramovich is an oligarch. We all admire his work so much, don’t we? I’ve received emails which I cannot print but which express great uneasiness about the sort of people who are now significant shareholders in our football club. This is what The Times reported yesterday evening:
Within hours of Dein’s press conference, Schillings, the lawyers, issued a statement on behalf of Usmanov. It read: “Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear that our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records. Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.â€
Ok then. Yes, I was sentenced to time in prison but I was innocent. Innocent, I tell you. Regular readers will know my opposition to Kroenke’s takeover was based on how badly I thought David Dein behaved and the way that it would probably have been financed. My opposition to Red and White taking over Arsenal is entirely down to the type of people we’re dealing with. This is why I think it’s going to be a very divisive issue amongst Arsenal fans. Some see Dein in one light, some in another entirely. There’s this mad idea that David Dein will come back and because he’s friends with Arsene Wenger he’ll convince him to spend Uncle Alisher’s £30m on a striker. Yeah! Let’s go and get a Shevchenko of our own!!!
This summer both the board and Arsene have said there is money to spend on players if Arsene wants to spend it. He didn’t want to spend it. So are we better off having £25m of our own that we don’t spend and being The Arsenal or having £100m of Usmanov’s money and not spending it and being Arseski?
I can’t even begin to tell you how opposed I am to this. I’m never going to tell you what you should think. I’ve never done it in the past and I’m not starting now. I’m just telling you that if this group takes over Arsenal Football Club then we lose so much of what we are. Tradition, values, integrity, history – all these go by the wayside if we allow ourselves to become another Chelsea. All it means is that David Dein is our Peter Kenyon. Man, isn’t that something to think about? Dein might be the front man but money will still be Russian. Slag off Chelsea then, why don’t you?
‘But what about trophies and success?’, you say. But we’ve been over the money situation. Arsene will only spend what Arsene wants to spend and frankly a football club is about more than winning trophies. There’s a way of doing business, a way of conducting yourself, a way of setting an example – which Arsene illustrated so wonderfully in the article the other week about the players helping the Treehouse charity and how the club had a social responsibility. It made better men of the players doing things like that. What the fuck does a Russian oligarch know about social responsibility?
So, if you want to see David Dein as knight in shining shitey armour you go right ahead. That’s entirely your right and fair play to you. If you want to come on this site and leave comments about how you support David Dein then that’s perfectly fine too. After each blog the floor is handed over to you and keep it going all day. There’s no censorship (apart from idiot Sp*rs fans now and again). I’m just putting it in black and white right now, I hate the idea of them controlling Arsenal. Hate it. These people are not representative of what Arsenal is to me.
We can just hope that the idea of this takeover solidifies the current board’s stance against it. Keith Edelman speaks here about how investment is not needed and that the club’s financial results will prove it. He talked about the transfer budget (which appears to be the most important thing for some people), saying:
We have ample cash resources for the manager to invest in the team and the squad. The manager caught his targets this year well within his budgets, which means his budgets will be increased next year.
But Oligarch bring more money. Me want more money. Now we just have go through more ‘Arsenal at war’ and ‘Arsenal in crisis’ headlines when we should be talking about the football. Nice one, Mr Orange.
Further reaction
Henry Winter in the Telegraph,
Arsenal at War in the Mail,
First blow in a bloody battle – David Bond,
Goodplaya on Dein’s ego vs Arsenal ,
Hypocritical Dein cannot be trusted – Gunnerblog
Dein sells Arsenal down the river – Goonerboy
Speaking of football (at last, thank fuck) the draw of the Champions League group stages was made. It was a nice draw too as we got Sevilla or AEK Athens (they play on Monday in a game that was suspended due to the death of Antonio Puerta), Slavia Prague and Steau Bucharest. To be fair that really is quite handy and some nice trips there for the traveling Gooners.
Read about Robin van Persie’s tribute to QPR’s Arsenal supporting Ray Jones who was killed in a car accident last weekend.
Now, time for the Arsecast.
In this week’s Arsecast, brought to you by OleOle.com, there’s me waffling at length about the Dein business, the Man in the Bar has a player history, the Mugsmasher pops in for a bit of a football chat and there’s a bet of the week with thanks to Bluesq.com – Rosicky to score and Arsenal to win against Portsmout at 5-1. Click here to sign up for a Bluesq.com account if you don’t already have one.
To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (17mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here. And you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
[audio:http://arseblog.com/podcasts/arsecast_episode42.mp3]Ok then. Plenty to keep us going during the day. More tomorrow.
