A veritable glut of stuff to get through this morning.
I suppose the biggest story is that of Stan Kroenke being appointed to the board as a non-executive director. It’s long been rumoured this was going to happen so it’s no suprise but given Kroenke’s first involvement with the club it’s quite a turn-around.
I think we all know what happened at this stage. Dein brought Kroenke in to buy the ITV shares, offered him his own shares and was attempting to orchestrate a takeover which would see him (Dein) in charge of the football side of the club under the new owners. The current board found out and turfed Dein out on his ear. I’m told Kroenke and his people were under the impression Dein was working with the blessing of the club and never intended to be hostile in any way. I’m also told that Dein gave Kroenke another chance to buy his shares before he sold them to Usmanov.
Fat & Orange also made offers for Kroenke’s shares, which the American turned down. So since then the relationship between Arsenal and Kroenke has become a lot better, perhaps more quickly than it might have due to the lurking presence of the Uzbeki cunt, and now he’s a member of our board with a 12.4% stake in the club. It does make the board more stable and it does make life much more difficult for Usmanov who not only finds himself with 25% of something it now appears impossible to takeover, he’s got another billionaire to contend with, not just the Arsenal board.
I’m quite sure Kroenke will try and increase his stake in the club, how far I don’t know, but this kind of ‘investment’ was always going to happen. I think we’ve tried to make the best of it and I’m hopeful that rather than going down the new road of being fully taken over by someone with a fat wallet we can combine the traditional ownership model with the billionaire bit. Let’s remember this current board aren’t speculators or investors, they’re Arsenal fans. None of them have any need to sell their shares so if a happy medium can be found between the board and Kroenke regarding the future of the Arsenal then that would be fantastic. We’ll have to wait and see how it pans out though.
The appointment came on the back of the release of our financial results which were very good. There’s no point me going into all the details of them, you can read them yourself, but profits are up, turnover is up, the property stuff is going well, so it’s all very positive and, I suppose, a good indication that we have a club that is well run, self-sustaining and in good hands. The only weird thing I thought was the large increase in our wage bill (from £89.7m in 2007 to £101.3m). That includes players, staff and management but when you lose big earners like Henry and Ljungberg you would expect that figure to go down, wouldn’t you? Anyway, it gives lie to the reports that Arsenal don’t pay good wages.
Chairman PHW talks to the official website about the financial results.
Ok, moving away from all that boring money and boardroom stuff the boss has been explaining the injury to Tomas Rosicky and why we still haven’t seen sight or sound of him this season. He says:
He is not close to playing again and he has not had any real setback, but the evolution [of his injury] is very slow. The recovery process is slower than we expected at the start. It doesn’t look worrying but the delay is longer than expected.
As I said a few days ago the injury was extremely rare so it’s been hard to put any kind of timeframe on his recovery. It’s not your day to day muscle strain by any means. Hopefully he can get himself fit again, he would definitely add something to our squad this season, but I don’t think it’s realistic to count on him being fit. If and when he does make it then we should look at it like a little bonus, sort of like finding a tenner in a pair of jeans when you go chuck them in the laundry.
The manager has also been talking up two young players who have got a great opportunity this season to make their mark on the team. Both Denilson and Sideshow Song will benefit from our lack of central midfielders and will certainly play more football than they might have hoped. I’m sure there’s an element of talking them up to boost their confidence but both of them have done pretty well so far this season and if they can keep improving then it’ll be good for us. I’d still be looking to sign someone in January but they have between now and then to convince the manager he doesn’t need to.
The boss also wants more protection for Theo Walcott, saying that players who deliberately go out to kick him should be more severely punished. That’s fair enough, I suppose, but for as long as football has been football good players get kicked. Maradona used to get the most outrageous treatment from defenders in Italy and while I’m not comparing Theo with Maradona in any way, he’s going to have to learn to deal with it. He’ll get better at taking kicks but if he’s a really clever player, I think he has the potential to be just that, he’ll get better at not being kicked. I fancy him to score today as well.
It’s Bolton later, of course, and it’s going to be a tough game. Sure, Bolton aren’t the Bolton they used to be under Walrus-looking Cunt but they still have enough of that side to give us a decent test. I wonder if we might see Bendtner start this one to give us a bit more of a physical presence up front. Anyway, fingers crossed for a good result.
Right, that’s rather enough for a Saturday morning, so enjoy your day. The sun is shining here in Dublin so I might have to cut the grass and things like that. Till tomorrow.
