We are not going to be owned by an oligarch mobster accused of a spectrum of crimes including rape. Personally didn't enjoy validating Usmanov.
I assume this also means Sir Chips 'we don't answer to plebs like you' Keswick is gone?
Posted Aug 7, 2018, 7:58 AM UTC
Best case scenario is we follow the model that the Rams have...invest in young talent etc
Did someone say....
#Dembele?!?!?!
That is literally the model we're following with Sven, Raul and Ivan and which was presumably approved by Josh Kroenke and hence his father.
Yup, it's worked brilliantly with the Rams so I'm excited.
Shhhh you have to be super negative like everyone else!!!
Why would we be excited about Kroenke having the ability to take money out of the club and nobody knowing about it?
Or no longer having annual AST meetings?
Well, that was also down to a brilliant new head coach who were rotating around a lot but still showed a lot of discipline... wait a minute
It's also been proven by Chelsea and their army of loanees making them bank.
We've made like 3 signings which fit that mould.
Sven's only been here what, a window and a half?
Don't forget the replenishment of the academy stocks with Flores, Greenwood and Lopez and probably others we haven't heard about.
Also Kreonke didn't pump money into the club because he was only a majority shareholder (no shareholder in the world in any business does that) - as he will now own Arsenal outright, he might loosen the purse strings maybe?
He'll never put it into the warchest but he may add in property and hopefully sort out the commercial side
My thinking too. Now the family benefits
Fuck we really don't have a clue what we're on about, do we.
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Because Kroenke is a good person??? Just because American capitalism means being an oligarch is legal doesn't make it any worse than in former Soviet countries.
You don't need to love Kroenke to admit that apparently obtaining your wealth through a mixture of corruption, violence and more corruption, and then using that power and influence to get away with rape and further violence is probably not a "Soviet countries are bad" thing and more a "that's pretty bad, regardless of where you're from" thing.
Who knows, maybe Kroenke has done all that stuff to and just has a better publicist. And you can bet that if it turns out Kroenke has rape accusations that won't go away, I'll be even more against him than I currently am.
But please, this isn't a thing against Russia. It's not all about poor little Russia, and how none of the western boys want to play with Russia. It's about not wanting to legitimise some people who got incredibly rich, in incredibly shady ways, when the Soviet block collapsed, and who now feel they can do what they like wherever they like.
How is American wealth creation anything but corruption, violence, and more corruption? It's an entire grift. Everyone who got incredibly rich on this planet did so in incredibly shady ways. Why are we okay with the incredibly shady business practices of Walmart or what Kroenke did on his ranch?
Righto, I'm going to stop talking to you because either you don't see the difference between how Kroenke got wealthy and how Usmanov did it, and the nature of accusations that surround the latter, or are wilfully ignoring this because of prejudice towards America (and I'm not even American).
Lol I live in America and am naturalised as of 2015, I don't hate this country any more than James Baldwin did. I've just studied global capitalism and wealth creation at a higher academic level and I know it's always been enforced by corruption, violence, and more corruption. Read up on the history of labour pretty much anywhere, you don't even need to approach it from a Marxist perspective.
But pray tell me, since you're the expert and I'm just a terribly ignorant fool, what's the difference? I'd love to be educated on this.
Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Bezos? Soros? Became each one of those extremely rich in incredibly shady ways? Your claim is ridiculous.
Shall we go with Bezos? See what he's doing to his workers right now, how he's preventing them from organising by heavily influencing Seattle's city council. It's basically a war between the richest man in the world and people who can't take bathroom breaks or they'll get fired and starve. If you think that's not violence and corruption, what the fuck is wrong with you? Besides, just owning that much while people are starving is a profound violence. By definition you're hoarding resources, and reserving the right to violently - by means of police intervention - attack people who try and get their share. How's that any different than what Usmanov does? Because his gangsters don't have matching blue uniforms?
Why on earth would you use Soros as an example of a non shady billionaire? The guy has openly said he had “fantasies of being the messiah” and pumps billions of dollars into global politics (it doesn’t matter which side, one person should not have that much power in any democratic election). He’s basically banned from 5 countries, Russia, China, Canada, Hungary, and Macedonia. I know there’s a ton of “conspiracy theories” on what this guy does and I’m sure many of them are false but there’s no smoke without fire and there’s a ton of smoke...
Fuck off you socialist wanker
No one's saying Kroenke's nice but Usmanov is worse.
Maybe at a personal level, but I don't really think so in terms of the consequences of business practices. Disenfranchising the poor is disenfranchising the poor.
Are you one of these ones who believe that because his wife owns sic percent of Walmart he's responsible for everything they do?
Because that's severely reaching.
No, I think he's responsible for about 1.5% of what they do based on shares (1.5% of Walmart's crimes still put Usmanov to shame), and responsible for 100% of what happens on his properties in the USA.
LOL socialist BS.
You support Arsenal, highest ticket prices and a £200m payroll.
You want to support a socialist team go down to the pub
I get it.. Kroenke is American so everyone has to hate him. However, who do you want to own the club?
Some royal from a Middle Eastern hell hole where women have to where burkas and Jews have to hide their faith?
Stan Kroenke is 71, he's worth 8 billion.
Josh Kroenke himself is worth 2.6 Billion
Josh's mom is worth 4.6 Billion herself as of 2014. She's a Walton (Walmart) and her dad was brothers and partners with Sam Walton the founder.
Josh is going to inherit Arsenal and he seems pretty sharp.
So no, we don't have a Russian Oligarch or a backward country where you have to worry about our owner or family member funding terrorism. We just have one of the richest people in the world as a owner and will never have to worry about being a poor club.
I remember when United fans freaked out that the Glazer's financed the United purchase with debt...has United not spent money?
The Kroenke's are twice as rich as the Glazer's family and that's before the Walton money
Putting aside casual islamaphobia for a moment, nothing to do with him being American. Unsettling because we move from a model with some transparency to none at all. I would also prefer someone who's interests are more firmly on this side of the ocean. We know Stan doesn't have a large interest in actually turning up to see how his investment is performing.
I think we would all prefer a mixed ownership model with a significant fan stake. No, I'm not a believer that clubs should be democratic entiyies - they require much stronger leadership than that - but transparency and accountability are not by themselves bad things.
However, I have addressed elsewhere that this isn't the worst of all possibilities, and that it's all very well and good to dream of utopias, but fans could never afford to buy the club, and individuals have consistently sold out for the right price.
I also have addressed elsewhere, frequently, that the role of the owner is to ensure the long term competitive nature and survival of the club, not to bankrupt themselves in pursuit of glory by proxy.
You've got the wrong man, so to say.
Islamophobia, pointing out the Middle East has some terrible views on women, Gay rights, other religions and terrorism isn't exactly Islamophobic.
When my gay friends put on a conference for their company in Dubai they pretended they weren't married to each other and had two women come as their 'work wives'. They don't do that in rural Arkansas, Germany, Japan, Australia but felt it was safer in Dubai.
Pointing out that the Middle East has some shit they need to fix is not Islamophobic but reality.
I think it was the "some Middle Eastern hell hole."
No politics though please.
I'm definitely with you on an ethical perspective, but Kroenke has no track history of investing in a team's sporting prospects and that makes me worry. In American sports, the outlook is very different compared to Club Football. You see in the NBA you have tons of safety nets (ie; NBA Draft Lottery) to make sure that you don't fall behind the opposition and it's in the league's interest to actively ensure that everyone is competitive and hence they introduce wage caps to promote that.
In Football, the thing which keeps everything competitive isn't the league, no, it's the high stakes and the cutthroat nature of the format. Simply put the best get rewarded, and the worst get punished - if we drop out of the contention for the CL in the next 10 years - we're in a terrible position. Firstly we'll lose our international appeal, which will hit us hard on top of the CL money we miss out on. The damages compound and as our opponents continue getting better and better, we won't improve at the same pace because we can't improve. Our best players will leave for greener pastures and we'll be stuck there. The way from mid-table to the top 4 is far, far harder than from the top 4 to the champions. The self-sustaining model that we've been hearing from the club has potential to work, but developing youth products is largely dependent on luck, and we simply don't have the margin for error and falling to mid-table could be very detrimental to us. The one comfort I have is the management structure we've implemented have solid experience in football.
And it makes me absolutely sick to the stomach that Kroenke has the ability to take funds from us and use them on unrelated, personal sporting ventures without consent or even telling the supporters.
Sorry, I've blathered a bit but I'm fuming at this. I'll leave this block of writing in case some poor fool would like to experience convoluted ramblings of a lunatic, and I'll write a summary if anyone wants to keep their sanity.
TL;DR:
Jist of what I'm saying is that I hope Kroenke understands that European football is cutthroat and Arsenal won't have the securities, say the Nuggets have, so investing well in an able footballing squad would be wise to cement our position as a top club. Oh and I sincerely hope he doesn't go use Arsenal in any way to help his other sporting ventures in a way which detriments us.
Just read the statement from the Arsenal supporters thrust and you will see there's no silverlining, no light at the end off the tunel no hope at all.
That's a bit daft and over the top. It's like saying once you become an adult there's nothing to stop you jumping off a cliff. It is technically true, but turns out most people don't do it.
Leeching off the club to the degree it would hurt on field performances will be low return stuff in comparison to the trend asset value growth, which relies on us NOT being shit. If Kroenke ever wanted to realise a profit, he needs to make sure we stay relatively competitive.
Edit: in case I'm not clear, I don't expect much to change at all from this. Which is a shame in its own right. Losing accounts visibility will also suck. But again, oh well. It's not like anyone was ever accountable under the old system. They just sent Chips out to act like a dick until it was time to go home.
Totally agree, it's not the end of the world. The majority of growth was made up from the 1990-2005 period of winning trophies etc...I can't see them giving up this brand recognition to gut the club. None the less though it's shite for sure
Drama queens living in the past
Why would Chips be gone? I'd worship the ground Kroenke walks on if he got rid of the posh obese cunt tho
What function does Chairman of the board have if you don't have a board of non exec directors?
This takeover changes nothing at board level, Kroenke's been defacto the owner for years.
Chips is around for his insane contacts and peerless ability to sneer at the lower classes
I imagine there will still be a board to make decisions. They still serve a purpose.
The independent directors are going though. Isn't that what Chips is there for?
Have they actually made an announcement about restructuring the board?