Stan Kroenke's No2 says the American billionaire will be a great influence on Arsenal.
Kroenke was in the news again earlier this month when he took his stake in Arsenal's parent holding company to 29.9%.
If he goes beyond 29.99%, he is legally obliged to launch a formal takeover bid for the club but, despite moving very close to that mark, he has remained silent on his intentions towards the Gunners. Click to continue reading...

My lover and I went to Reading today to visit two long standing friends of my lover.
Neither are football fans but both are two of the most delightful people you could wish to meet.
Anyway, prior to having a wonderful lunch and afternoon of laughter and music, my lover took the backroads to his old home town. Click to continue reading...

Stan Kroenke owns the NBA's Denver Nuggets and Colorado Rapids MLS team.
The latest 200 shares that he bought; 100 shares from Arsenal Chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, for 8,500 Pounds per share put him on a brink of the threshold mark set up by the Arsenal Board of Directors.
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Stan Kroenke has purchased even more shares in Arsenal today taking his holding to 29.9% of the club. With only another 0.09% required to reach the threshold to make an offer for the rest of the clubs shares, Kroenke has purchased 627 shares this week for the princely sum of £5.3 million.

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"It is difficult for us to qualify, but not impossible,We have to win our game and see what happens with Fiorentina and Lyon. Then we will approach the last game." Benitez has certainly fought his corner today after the galling last minute equaliser Liverpool conceded in the Stade Gerland last night.

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Stan Kroenke continues to edge closer to a takeover of Arsenal. He is now at a 29.6% shareholding, just shy of the 29.9% that by city rules would trigger a takeover bid. The Arsenal Supporters' Trust (AST) sent out a press release about the news today, which stated that they were opposed to a takeover by Kroenke (and also mentioned they did not believe one was imminent anyway).

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Clive Palmer, owner of Gold Coast United

Gold Coast United, an expansion team in Australia's premier A-League, have already generated negative headlines it takes some teams decades to generate: "A-League may hit rock bottom thanks to the Coast," says Adrian Musolino in today's Roar, which also features another piece titled "Gold Coast "United" – How to lose fans and alienate people".

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Clive Palmer, The owner of new Australian A-League club Gold Coast United, is sick and tired of people not coming (they have the smallest average attendance in the league at 4,500) to see his team play in the 27,400 seat Robina Stadium that he's overpaying to rent for home matches, so he's opted to go with perhaps the dumbest PR move a club owner has ever attempted by closing all but one side of the stadium and only allowing a maximum of 5,000 people in for each game.

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by CARL ELDRIDGE The stars and stripes will soon be flying over the Emirates Stadium. Well, maybe not but surely it can't be much longer before Yank billionaire Stan Kroenke launches a takeover bid for the Arsenal.

For the Denver Nugget has snapped up a further 10 shares in our holding company, at a cost of £85,000 and now the odd-haired moneybags owns 28.

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In terms of English clubs that are facing financial disasters we are used to discussing WHU, Liverpool Beachballs and Manchester U.� To that list we can now add Portsmouth. � Their new owner in September turned out not to be the billionaire Sheik Yermoney but a guy who borrowed £50 off a bookie's runner and [. Click to continue reading...

American billionaire Stan Kroenke faces a grilling at today's Arsenal AGM.
The Times says the American has increased his stake substantially in recent months to a level that is a little short of that which would trigger a mandatory takeover bid, but he has never spoken about the reasons for investing about £160 million in the stock. Click to continue reading...

Last night the Guardian published a damning article quoting Portsmouth's new owner, Ali Al Faraj, as saying that he had bought the club on borrowed money, that he wasn't a billionaire, that he knew nothing about football and that he planned to sell on the club in six months after he had stabilised it.

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Following their recent take-over by a Sudanese billionaire food additive magnate, Heart of Clackmanannshire is buzzing. However, Faisal Wally Camel has something of a maverick streak and, in this week's "Shit Shot Mungo", he decides that the "man in the street" could do better job than any of these so-called football "managers" and appoints, well, the first person that he comes up in the street.

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by CARL ELDRIDGE HOW close are we to a takeover bid from Stan Kroenke? Well this afternoon's AGM was always going to shed some light on the American billionaire's intentions wasn't it. Er, no. That doesn't appear to be the case, the latest reports from the meeting suggest.

For it seems Kroenke has maintained his silence at the AGM, when questions were directly raised as to his plans for further investment in the Gunners.

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Russian star highlights a potentially big problem.

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Arsenal midfielder Andriy Arshavin says he expects a large number of Premier League stars to abandon England in the near future, as the tax band is almost twice as big as in Spain.

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Newly promoted Premier League club Birmingham City will have £40m to spend in the upcoming winter transfer window 2010 ( January). The announcement was made by the new Blues president, Hongkong businessman Carson Yeung. The billionaire bought Birmingham City for £81.5m recently after failing in his attempt to take over the Midlands club two years [. Click to continue reading...

Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Bin Abdullah has confirmed that he would be interested in investing his money in a football club.
The Saudi billionaire is reportedly set to invest his considerable funds in Liverpool after being caught pictured sitting with co-owner George Gillett at the 6-1 win over Hull at Anfield last month.

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I remember reading in the FourFourTwo season preview that around half of fans wish for the season was that their club would be taken over by a foreign billionaire.

There are plenty of examples where clubs have improved greatly under new investment, whether from abroad or overseas.

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Rafael Benitez, Liverpool Manager with the weight of the World upon him.Losing playmaker Xabi Alonso in the summer was bad enough but having to replace him with Lucas Leiva was the kick in the goolies I even felt myself, Owwhh!Half his team not playing well so far including Skrtel, Jamie, Masch and Stevie G. Click to continue reading...

Big Story
Right now, Chelsea are hosting the Leaders in Football conference, billed as "the world's most exclusive football business event where 1,000 senior executives linked to International Clubs, Leagues, Federations and Brands come together over 3 nights and 2 days at Chelsea FC to learn, network and do business.

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Ever since the arrival of the Roman Abramovich era at Chelsea, the world of football seems to exist in two separate yet parallel universes.

There are clubs who teeter on the brink of bankruptcy despite brief flirts with glory (a la Leeds United and recently at Portsmouth). Then there are other clubs whose history has been blanketed by anonymity and mediocrity but now whose names, with the financial aid of the multi-billionaire, are dared uttered in the same sentence with title aspirations.

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It looks as if Arsenal may soon lose its status of being the only top four club controlled by an English board, while Liverpool continues its search for a purchaser. At Arsenal, American sports entrepreneur Stan Kroneke is close to winning the battle with Moscow-based billionaire Alisher Usmanov to control Arsenal.

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Big Story
New models in stadium ticketing don't come along too often, and when they do, they are rarely great for fans. Many in England will remember the massively unpopular bond schemes dreamed up by clubs such as Arsenal and West Ham in the 1990s when they were scrambling around for a new way to suck cash from fans to pay for needed stadium redevelopment.

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Thirteen years to the day a spectacled Frenchman signed a contract making him the manager of Arsenal Football Club, out went the old training methods and unhealthy foods and in came strict diets and training regimes. It was a day that not only started our ascent to one of Europe's elite clubs but it was also a day that started a revolution in English football.

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Speculation continues about the possibility of Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah al-Saud, a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, buying into Liverpool, after the English Premier League club admitted that it had appointed advisors to look at new investment opportunities.
Fahd bin Abdullah's F6 company has signed an agreement with Liverpool and co-owner George Gillett's Nascar franchise, Richard Petty MOtorsports, that will see two Liverpool-backed youth academies and a number of motor racing tracks built in Saudi Arabia. Click to continue reading...

Russian side want Andrey back, but they can't have him!

Zenit St Petersburg have announced their intentions to lure former star Andrey Arshavin away from Arsenal and back to Russia after a huge financial injection from billionaire gas giants, Gazprom.

Global fuel providers, Gazprom, have decided to substantially increase their investment in the 2008 UEFA Cup winners in an attempt to create a European super-force to compete with the like of Manchester United, Barcelona, and Real Madrid.

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The Russian billionaire Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has some James Bond technology in his yacht.
And no I don't mean the two helipads, two swimming pools, the movie screens in all the guest rooms, the mini-submarine or the missile-proof windows.
He's got a paparazzi shield:

Lasers sweep the surroundings and when they detect a CCD, they fire a bolt of light right at the camera to obliterate any photograph.

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Extra Time. We can end the debate about where the seven minutes of extra time came from in the Manchester derby. They were taken from the Bundesliga's three Sunday fixtures, where the refs decided to call it a day after pretty much exactly 90 minutes. It's not really a coincidence but rather an annoying habit.

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� A lot has been said about Serie A's� decline over the past couple of years. Critics have claimed the English Premiership and Spain's La Liga have become Europe's best leagues leaving Serie A to challenge the Bundesliga for third spot.� �

Sadly, Serie A has witnessed a sharp decline in the past few years that cannot be attributed to the lack of financial means alone.

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UEFA have approved plans to bar high-rolling Barclays Premier League clubs from the Champions League if they spend beyond their means.
Michel Platini has got his way on 'financial fair play' rules that in principle will ban clubs from spending more than they make from their revenues. Click to continue reading...

Plans are afoot to prevent clubs from spending more than they make from their revenues and aim to curb billionaire owners throwing cash around.
The new rules are going to be in place from the 2012/13 season and clubs could be thrown out of European competition if they do not abide by the regulations.

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A big story that broke late Friday was this one in The Times which stated the actual figure paid for Carlos Tevez was £47 million rather than the more widely reported (at the time of the transfer) £25 million:

Manchester City are paying an astonishing £47 million fee to Carlos Tévez's private "owners" in a move that obliterates the British transfer record.

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How much!

Manchester City are paying an astonishing £47 million fee to Carlos Tévez's private "owners" in a move that obliterates the British transfer record. The deal makes the Argentina striker the fifth most expensive footballer of all time.

City's billionaire Arab owners have agreed to pay almost twice the £25.

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Every club has one. That vital cog that keeps the team wheels turning. With the season in its infancy, supporters up and down the land are still harbouring dreams of glory (or at the very least over achievement, given that short of a billionaire Sheikh turning up on your doorstep, thoughts of the title are confined to a privileged few these days).

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Time for a Flashback...
Timeline: 27/07/07
When the Billionaire Barber was first considering a low flat-top for Birmingham City over two years ago, we took the clippers and gave the man a No 1 all over.
And now, the sequel.
Most of what we said about the Barber still stands and all that we stated regarding ScudamoreWorld remains a plague today. Click to continue reading...