Up For Grabs Now

Sooner or later, all good businesses get bought. Arsenal, as we all love, is one of the best businesses around. It was bound to happen. We held out for longer than most. Our sensible financing, our division of shares between a few already-wealthy and interested people, our genuine long-term planning – all of these are reasons that Arsenal took longer than Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs and any number of other clubs to fall into the hands of a billionaire owner.  Arsenal are a profitable and glamorous business.

Once you accept the inevitable, you see that Stan Kroenke is just about as good an option as there is. He has not borrowed to purchase the club, not plundered the equity of the Emirates to reinvest elsewhere in his empire. He has sat on the board for four years, gradually winning over those – such as Peter Hill-Wood – who were initially hostile. He is a fan of Arsene Wenger, like all of us, but like all of us also craves trophies. Like some of us (this blogger included), though, he is not willing to mortgage the future and ethos of the club for some short term silver. He is not Alisher Usmanov, an industrialist of dubious provenance seemingly on a quest to be just like Roman Abramovich.

He is not an industrialist looking for a glamorous plaything. He is a professional sports franchise investor, with as much experience as anyone in the world at making them work. He knows football – our sort of football, not just the American format.

I think these last points are the most crucial. British football, in the past twenty years , has been hurtling towards the American model of sport as entertainment. The purists will hate me for saying so – and I think football does have an egalitarianism and tradition which lift it – but it’s true. Fans do not pay £2,000 a season just for love of the club. They pay to watch world-class entertainment. They pay to watch 22 of the finest athletes on Earth (with due exception for Titus Bramble and Ashley Cole) do battle.  Champions League TV rights go for millions not because your granddad took you to your first game and you grew up near the ground. They go because great football is great football, and is entertaining wherever you’re from.

America has understood this for years. The NFL is the most successful sports tournament on the planet: the Champions League is second. Stan Kroenke understands where football has come from, and where it is going. Arsenal FC is perfectly positioned to carry on being a great club for the imaginable future. If someone has to have their hand on the tiller, I’m glad it’s him.

It’s also worth noting how well our board has done to get us here. The main sources of his new shares, Danny Fiszman and Nina Bracewell-Smith, were both motivated to sell (he by cancer, she by personal animosities), but have still had the wherewithal to negotiate with Kroenke, play a long game and present a united front behind him. Peter Hill-Wood has realised the game is up and planned a smooth compromise. The board has behaved like rational adults, with the long-term interests of Arsenal at heart and in mind. In the context of the modern game, this is nothing short of miraculous. Thanks, gang. UFGN salutes you.

Welcome aboard, Mr Kroenke. You can start by buying some defenders and, y’know, a goalie.

Just a super-speedy shifty at what’s going down today:

Bendtner is injured, and could miss the City match. But we could have Cesc back, Theo and Eduardo shouldn’t be far away, and both Robin and Ade (touch wood) will be good to go. Not too big a blow, you’d think?

Cesc feels we can still win the league. I really really like Cesc, in fact I might go so far as to say that I love him. But that’s absolute cobblers.

Adebayor, who scored an outrageous goal against Cameroon (outrageous because before he scored he appeared to give Reading’s gargantuan defender Andre Bikey a sound thrashing,) disagrees with Tony Cascarino (see rant in previous post) and instead wants to stay at Arsenal. Sorry Tony. 

On balance, I reckon that’s probably a good thing. This season hasn’t been his best, but at his age and with his ability, he’s certainly worth hanging onto  as a player who could turn into something very special. Plus, while it’s extremely tempting to fantasise about what you’d do with £30 million and a hole in our strike-force (Villa, Aguero, Benzema, Bent etc), you know in your heart of hearts that if we got that money Wenger would spend £2 million on a 17 year old Austro-Hungarian full-back of Burkinabean extraction, extend Nicky Bendtner’s contract to 2034 and trouser the remaining £28 million.

Financial climate, young team, complete faith in Jay Simpson, etc.

Yet more rumblings and sudden, shifty goings on in The Boardroom. Danny Fiszman has sold about 5% of the club to Stan Kroenke (marvellously photographed here), who now has roughly 20%. Not that sure what to make of it, except that it’s probably a good thing that Usmanov isn’t having things all his own way as he tries to buy the club, and at least our Boardroom doesn’t contain a snarling Suralun Sugar, the man who sold all his shares in Sp*rs in 2007, describing his 16 year involvement with the club as “a waste of my life”.

The Sun, whose (very ugly) sister paper News of the World incensed the Arsenal community yesterday with a story about Cesc which used Barcelona’s rumour-mongering in the Spanish press as evidence for Cesc’s actual unhappiness at Arsenal, pulled out a belter of a headline on the share deal, a headline which achieved that rare fusion of top-notch punnery and bare-faced xenophobia: KROENKE BUYS MEATY STAKE!

Superb, I think we’ll all agree. If only the tabloids could stick to what they do best – idiotic witticism and the harmless libelling of celebrity chefs – rather than feeling the need to dabble in racism, nationalism, war-mongering and the general effort to terrify and intimidate their unfortunate readership into a violent, howling rage of misguided hatred and confusion. Everything would be much more chilled out, wouldn’t it?

Finally, former professional footballer Alex Hleb has been whingeing to anyone who’ll listen about his lack of playing time, being as he is in a competition for places with the best player in the world (’lil Lionel Messi), the guy who used to be the best player in the world (big Thierry Henry), and the guy who keeps Fabregas on the Spanish bench (’lil Andres Iniesta).

UpForGrabsNow would like to extend our condolences to Mr Hleb, adding that he is a complete moron. Honestly, you thought you could rock up in Catalunya and oust those 3 with your pernicious brand of Islington Ubershuffling?

Nonsense, I tell you.

Don’t forget to enter our Herbert Chapman t-shirt competition. According to the Sun newspaper, they are this summer’s “must-have” item and you can get your mitts on one really easily. See www.upforgrabsnow.com/competition for full details.