A very quiet Saturday morning due to all the internationals so there’s not a great deal to talk about.
If you haven’t already the transcripts of the interviews with Arsene Wenger and Chairman Peter Hill-Wood are worth reading. As I said yesterday I thought Arsene’s comments about the ‘heritage’ and ‘values’ were rather telling. These are things that in his mind must be upheld. No club the size of Arsenal is whiter than white but for the most part we’ve tried to do the right thing and to behave in a way that underlines the values that Arsene was talking about.
Arsene is an honest man, perhaps too honest for his own good sometimes. Journalists ask him about anything and they know he’ll give them an honest answer. Sometimes they use that to spin sensationalist stories but for the most part they respect his veracity. In Arsenal football club I think he found an organisation that shares his values, that allows him to operate with honest and integrity. It’s been very much a case of the right man in the right place at the right time. There isn’t another club in the world where he could work with such freedom, where he can choose not to spend the club’s money on new players and build a young squad. I’m delighted he’s staying on and I hope that what he brings to the club and what the club brings to him can continue unhindered for the duration of those three years.
Of course, his signing brings some stability in a time when the club’s future is as unclear as it ever has been. You’ll have heard Tim Payton from the AST on yesterday’s Arsecast and the man who has the most central role in all this is Danny Fiszman. From the AST’s press release after their meeting with Danny
Danny told us to ignore all the media speculation that he is about to sell his stake. In fact he said it was quite the contrary and that he was looking to spend more time on club issues as he gradually wound down his involvement in other companies.
We pressed Danny on this, saying surely he had a price at which he would sell. The response was emphatic – no ‘selling’ price has been set. The analogy he used was to compare moving into the Emirates with moving into a dream home; ‘you don’t think about the value because you don’t want to sell’.
With the shareholding of Stan Kroenke now vital with Red & White looming large it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens. There have been suggestions that Kroenke’s relationship with David Dein is poor and that he might side with the board. How true that is I don’t know. Anyway, let’s hope that we’re talking about football for the most part and not the boardroom battle which is now bordering on the unsavoury.
Fingers crossed our lads come through their games unscathed. More tomorrow.
