Well, plenty going on this morning so we’ll delve right into it.
The main news is obviously the share sale. Yesterday, Danny Fiszman sold 5,000 of his shares to Stan Kroenke. That leaves Fiszman with a 16.1% holding and Kroenke with 20.5%.
You can read the story on the official site here, with the kind of quotes you would expect from Kroenke and from Chairman PHW. There’s also a Q&A with Fiszman in which he says:
I have no current intention to sell any more of my shares in the Club. This sale to Stan was a one-off sale. I certainly intend to continue as a long-term substantial shareholder. While I thought long and hard about selling any shares, I believe that Stan’s increased holding is a positive development for Arsenal Football Club.
It’s certainly hard to see what difference the sale makes in the short term. A number of shares have gone from one ‘friendly’ director to another but of course the minute share sales happen the name Usmanov crops up.
There were reports in recent days that Lady Nina was actively trying to sell her holding in the club. Whether Fiszman’s sale to Kroenke has anything to do with that I don’t know. What I do know is that Usmanov’s wealth is not what it once was.
Forbes magazine estimates his wealth has fallen from $9.3 billion just one year ago to ‘just’ $1.6 billion now. He’s lost a packet on various investments and even the value of his Arsenal shares is down £10m on what he paid for them, bearing in mind he was hoovering them up at inflated prices a lot of the time. So it seems unlikely that Usmanov is in any position to launch a bid for the club.
On the other hand Kroenke’s wealth has increased in the same period by $300m, from $2.7 billion to $3 billion so he seems to be in a much stronger position. You wonder, perhaps, does his increased holding and his obvious wealth add some stability to the club’s finances at a time when the property market has had an effect on the income we thought we were going to get from the Highbury Square development.
I suppose while the issue of Lady Nina’s shares is still up in the air a lot of questions and uncertainty will remain. The Arsenal Trust released a statement, saying:
If a sale had to take place we are reassured that it is to Stan. The fact that Stan Kroenke is already a member of the Board at Arsenal should ensure that this change does not create any instability. The AST have asked to meet with Danny Fiszman to discuss with him how he envisages the club moving forward.
So in the very short term nothing much has changed, only for another chunk of the club to move from the old guard to the newcomers. The prospect of ‘foreign’ ownership draws ever closer, with close to 50% of the club now in the hands of non-English, non-Arsenal fans. Maybe this is the way forward, a mix of the two, and I do hope that remains the case, but you just get the sense that a total buy-out is more or less inevitable.
Moving from the boardroom and shares to the pitch and there’s bad news on the injury front as Robin van Persie has picked up a groin injury in training for Holland and will return to Arsenal for treatment. Hopefully it’s nothing too serious but even a tweak in that area means a couple of weeks out.
Meanwhile, Arsene Wenger won’t be best pleased to hear Denmark more or less saying they’re willing to risk Nicklas Bendtner who has a knee problem. If he suffers a setback on top of a van Persie injury it certainly reduces our striking options, although Eduardo should be fit, Arshavin is available domestically and Adebayor could return after his spell out with injury.
Speaking of Adebayor he says he’s glad he stayed at Arsenal in the summer but has displayed an awareness of time more akin to that of a small child than a grown man. You know the way with kids something happened yesterday when in reality it was sometime last year? He’s the same. Talking about injuries to our squad he said:
We’ve missed Eduardo for several months (real time: a year) Tomas Rosicky for about a year (real time: over a year), Theo Walcott for three or four months (real time: more or less correct), Cesc Fabregas for almost six months (real time: 4 months) and I’ve also been injured for two or three weeks (real time: 2 months).
I suppose when you’re being paid £80,000 a week abstract concepts like time aren’t really relevant.
Hull City have submitted their ‘dossier’ to the FA over Fabregate. It’s interesting to hear the Hull Chairman say they’d be happy with an apology from Cesc who has insisted all along that nothing happened.
Obviously the ball is now in the FA’s court and we’ll wait and see what they make of the ‘evidence’ that Hull have submitted. Further comment on this can wait until then.
One thing that does need to be made public again though is the Ballack thing. I’ve seen a few newspaper pieces in which they bring that up again. Let’s be clear, Fabregas did NOT spit at Ballack, Ballack made no accusation that he did, Bayern Munich have confirmed that no such incident took place, yet the papers still phrase it as if there’s some doubt about it.
Right, that’s enough to keep you going. We’ll await injury news on van Persie with bated breath. More tomorrow.
