This post originally appeared on our Arsenal blog, but I thought it was worth covering here. There are some mind blowing quotes from Arsene Wenger in Tuesday's Daily Mirror.

Arsene Wenger is quoted as talking about how much he likes Lille's £30m-rated Eden Hazard, but he basically says that Hazard is too expensive for Arsenal.

Well, I guess we were wrong and Ajax is going with nuclear option #3. In a move to end the bickering and feuding that has gone on at Ajax in recent years between Ajax board members and former player legends, Ajax's governing council has asked all 5 board members, including Cruyff, to resign. Any board member that refuses to resign will be voted out, most likely, by shareholders.

The club has revealed plans to delist from the AIM stock market to help raise funds to increase stadium capacity. The intention to take the club private is the clearest indication yet that Spurs are going ahead with the £400M Northumberland Park development following the defeat in the Olympic Stadium bid.

The club has revealed plans to delist from the AIM stock market to help raise funds to increase stadium capacity. The intention to take the club private is the clearest indication yet that Spurs are going ahead with the £400M Northumberland Park development following the defeat in the Olympic Stadium bid.

Arsène Wenger says his words at Thursday's Annual General Meeting came from the heart.

The Arsenal manager delivered a rousing speech to the Club's shareholders and onlooking media to conclude the event at Emirates Stadium.

"I just spoke with my heart and of course," said Wenger.

Morning all, I woke up a bit late this morning so I'm going to have to fly through this.

I guess the main talking point this morning is yesterday's AGM. There's a fairly in-depth report over on Arseblog News, but even that tells you that a lot was said but not much of it was of great interest.

London club Chelsea lost their bid to buy back the freehold of their Stamford Bridge Stadium after an extraordinary meeting between the club and the Chelsea Pitch Owners Association (CPO) failed to convince 75% of the shareholders on the club's plans for the piece of land.

The proposal would have ultimately led to the Blues erecting a 60,000 seater stadium on the piece of land.

Today wasn't exactly the end-all day of days for Chelsea to buy back Stamford Bridge. Nevertheless, it will be seen as a roadblock in the club's attempt to move forward with a new stadium. For those unaware, the club did receive the required 75 percent of votes from shareholders at Thursday's general meeting of Chelsea Pitch Owners that would have allowed the club to purchase back the freehold and thus move it to a new stadium in the very near future.

By Alan Duffy

Bruce Buck gives poor old John Terry a big hug

According to the Guardian, Blues bigwig Bruce Buck, in speaking about the club's failure in their bid to buy back the freehold of Stamford Bridge, went slightly off script in relation to the weekend's big London derby.

By Alan Duffy

Peter Hill-Wood, Stan Kroenke and Stan Kroenke's hair take their seats at the Emirates

Silent Stan Kroenke finally spoke to Arsenal's shareholders at the club's annual AGM in London today. The US billionaire said: "(Arsenal) has tremendous management at the top, a wonderful manager on the pitch who makes great decisions in regard to personnel, and a tremendous following with the supporters.

As usual the yearly Arsenal shareholders meeting comes around, and there have talks of mass protests after Arsenal's disastrous start to the season, but now the Gunners have started to string some wins together, Arsene Wenger is not worried about facing the (usually) tough audience on Thursday. He said: "I do not meet with the [.

In the week that will have shareholders debating the future and with twitchers spotting the rare appearance of Silent Stan, we must have some good news to report. Well we have to believe that we will make the top four after making it 5 wins out of 6 apparently. The fact that there was a Carling Cup and two Champions league fixtures in there seems to have escaped everyone's attention.

TGIF-thank Gooner it's Friday, returns after the International break, and with the amount of tension in the air that befits a real crisis at Arsenal. Crisis on the field through injuries, crisis in the stands with fans divided, and crisis in the Boardroom as the prospect of a Boardroom struggle becomes more possible than probable.

Racing Santander's administrators have announced that the club has a total debt of almost €48m, a figure over €10m in excess of the one presented when the Cantabrians applied to enter bankruptcy in July.

The difference was explained by the fact that investment company Western Gulf Advisory (WGA), owned by Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed who purchased the club in January, 2011, is shown amongst the list of creditors as being owed €8.

This is highly interesting. Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, according to an insightful piece in today's Independent, purchased 100 Chelsea Pitch Owners shares at £100 each in April 2011. This entitles him to the maximum 100 votes in the upcoming apparent make-or-break meeting on 27 October.

Chelsea's offer to purchase the Stamford Bridge land freehold from CPO shareholders is a topic that has understandably fractured the club's support over the past few days. In this video, Jason Cundy offers his thoughts on the subject to Chelsea TV.

I'm still up in the air on the issue, if you were wondering.

Chelsea has called Stamford Bridge home since 1905, but it could be looking to secure a new place to play after recent actions by the club's executives.

The club does not own the pitch and stands at the stadium, which are instead have been owned by the Chelsea Pitch Owners since 1993 in an effort to make sure that the grounds wouldn't be bought by property developers, according to the BBC.

Yeah, this is pretty big news. Chelsea announced today that the club has extended a proposal to Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO) shareholders to buy back the freehold land on which the football stadium at Stamford Bridge sits.

So the plan to move to a new stadium is further along than we anticipated.

Having been a proud shelfside season ticket holder from the tender age of six, dating back to the somewhat successful (for the Gerry Francis era) 1994-95 season, my first Spurs game must have been a 2-0 home win against Everton off the back of 'that' game away at Sheffield Wednesday.

'That' game saw the introduction of perhaps Spurs' greatest ever player, and in turn the introduction of a goal celebration that had mum's all over the country fuming and 'Vanish' and 'Daz' shareholders laughing all the way to the bank.

The news that the annual shareholder Q&A has been postponed is a disastrous PR move by the club, and just confirms to me that those who are running the club have double standards. Last time I looked, the annual Q&A was a vehicle which prevented the AGM from descending into farce with shareholder's questions from the floor heaping embarrassment upon the Board members present.

Arsene Wenger is said to be set to go back in to take Fiorentina's Juan Manuel Vargas to Arsenal in the January window.

The Mirror reports that AW was interested in versatile Vargas in the summer, but decided he wanted to continue to scout him this season.

Peruvian hardman Vargas, 27, can play left back, left midfield or central midfield and the Gunners face competition from Juventus for his signature, which would cost in the region of £10million.

Which probably raises the question what the Lex Leverkusen was in the first place? It has to do with the 50+1 rule, which again probably raises the question what that rule is as well. And then, what has it all to do with the Bundesliga?

The 50+1 rule means you can't buy more than 49% of a Bundesliga club.

The Arsenalsphere is a divided space these days. Has been for a while now and it is getting worse. While different opinions have always existed, we now see more than a degree of animosity amongst fans who are divided into two broad groups – those supporting the manager and those desperate to see him out.

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Mike Ashley bought Newcastle United to much fanfare in 2007 via St. James Holdings. Opting against doing the sensible thing and lodging a formal bid, he just went out and bought the stocks, forcing the then hospitalised Freddy Shepherd into advising shareholders to sell, sell, sell! Thus came an end to Shepherd's reign of terror [.

Managing director Recently returned Port Vale manager Micky Adams is planning to plough £50,000 of his own money into the club and become a director so he can sign players. Boardroom unrest at Vale Park has plunged the club into crisis. At an Extraordinary General Meeting last week, shareholders cast a vote of no confidence [.

The New York Times Company has been confirmed as the second largest shareholder in Liverpool Football Club.
The club's owners Fenway Sports Group released the information as required by Premier League rules which state that any ownership of more than 10 per cent must be declared.
FSG chief John Henry revealed that he and the Times group are the two biggest shareholders in the company, which owns Liverpool and the Boston Red Sox.

"We are either on the launch pad for success, or we can hover on the brink of disaster," wrote popular Coventry City ex-chairman Joe Elliott. And as a summary of the Sky Blues' current plight, it works. The problem is Elliott wrote those words in December 2007. And they now work as an exposure of the failings of Coventry's owners in the subsequent years, as ‘hovering on the brink of disaster' has been the club's default position ever since.

A couple of stories today:

First, the Arsenal Supporters Trust met last night and voted unanimously to reject chairman of the board Peter Hill-Wood's suggestion that Arsenal shareholders sell their shares to Kroenke. The AST, which I believe holds 3 shares in its own name and manages dozens more under the fanshare scheme, is not a major shareholder in terms of percentage of the club owned, but has been a very active and passionate voice for Arsenal fans.

The dust is yet to settle after yesterday's big news. There's a lot of speculation, a lot of rumour, but the bottom line is nobody knows anything for certain.

In my interview with the AST yesterday we hear that Kroenke will not saddle the club with the debt of the purchase, the Guardian says he 'could'.

The Stan Kroenke 'takeover' news is obviously a massively important issue for Arsenal Football Club, but also for the fans.

I spoke to Tim Payton from the Arsenal Supporter's Trust about these developments, what they might mean for the club in the here and now and the future, and what might happen to the other shareholders including Red and White Holdings as well as those who hold a much smaller stake in the club.

I've waited until now to discuss the takeover story to give myself a little time to digest the news, and analyse what it realistically means for Arsenal Football Club. It is very easy to jump to snap judgements on whether it is a positive or negative thing, and as usual there are many shades of grey.

So the big news this morning is that Stan Kroenke is now the majority shareholder in Arsenal Football Club having agreed deals to buy Bracewell-Smith's and Fiszman's, this now means that Kroenke is obliged to make an offer to buy out the rest of the club's shareholders which is at 11,750 pounds per share.

Morning all, it seems odd that football should play second fiddle in today's blog considering we just won our first game since 1875, but events at boardroom mean that's very much the case.

It is a hugely significant day in the history of Arsenal Football Club. Stan Kroenke has agreed to purchase the shares of Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith for £11,750 per share, bringing his overall share holding to 62.

Stan Kroenke is poised to launch a full takeover of Arsenal after agreeing deals to buy shares owned by Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith.

Kroenke, who already owns 29.9% of Arsenal will acquire the 16.1% owned by Fiszman and Lady Bracewell-Smith's 15.9% stake for about £11,000 a share, or £225m according to BBC Sport.

Stan Kroenke is poised to launch a full takeover of Arsenal after agreeing deals to buy shares owned by Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith.

Kroenke, who already owns 29.9% of Arsenal will acquire the 16.1% owned by Fiszman and Lady Bracewell-Smith's 15.9% stake for about £11,000 a share, or £225m according to BBC Sport.

The Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has always resisted making gruelling long distance pre-season tours (in favour of low-key European tours like Austria) to help prepare his team to get a flying start at the beginning of the Premiership season. But the Mirror reports today that he has been persuaded by the shareholders to consider a [.

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Charlie Adam was 'desperate' for a move to Liverpool during the January transfer window, his agent has claimed, suggesting the Blackpool captain feels he was 'seriously mucked about' by the club.
Liverpool was continually linked with Adam throughout last month and had two offers for the midfielder turned down by the Seasiders.

The one piece of confirmed news from yesterday's transfer deadline tells us that Spurs failed in a late bid to sign Charlie Adam from Blackpool.

While many Spurs fans were praying for the arrival of a world class striker, the club made a last ditch attempt to sign the Blackpool captain, who has been the subject of transfer rumours all month.