What if Alisher Usmanov had put £100m into Arsenal rather than Apple? - originally posted on Soccerlens.com
Arsenal are currently smack-bang in the middle of a civil war. In one corner is Stan Kroenke, the Gunners' majority shareholder and the subject of much fan criticism for his passive ownership of the club.
Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov has once again launched an attack on the way the club is run. The Uzbekistan tycoon has claimed majority shareholder Stan Kroenke "doesn't show any wish" to create a winning team at the Emirates.
"The team has no superstars now," said Usmanov who also claimed that should the team finish fourth then Kroenke "would probably be happy".
Barely a day passes in the comments section without mention of our owner, Stan Kroenke.
Arsenal began life as a Mutually Owned Club under the name of Royal Arsenal. Our first sole owner was Henry Norris who engineered the move to Highbury in 1913. As we know, the poor fella had to quit to "spend more time with his family" as a result of some minor financial irregularities.
Barely a day passes in the comments section without mention of our owner, Stan Kroenke.
Arsenal began life as a Mutually Owned Club under the name of Royal Arsenal. Our first sole owner was Henry Norris who engineered the move to Highbury in 1913. As we know, the poor fella had to quit to "spend more time with his family" as a result of some minor financial irregularities.
Manchester City midfielder Samir Nasri is stirring up some controversy today, saying that Arsenal majority shareholder Stan Kroenke forced Gunners manager Arsene Wenger to sell Nasri to City in 2011.
In an interview with beIN SPORT, Nasri said "Wenger told me that, if Cesc [Fbregas] left, I would stay but Kroenke wanted the money.
Arsenal's majority owner Stan Kroenke may rub many Arsenal supporters the wrong way due to his alleged penny-pinching and thrifty ways, but he must be doing something right. The 65-year-old was just recently named as the sixth most powerful person in the world of sports by the renowned Sports Illustrated magazine.
According to The Telegraph, a Middle Eastern consortium is lining up a world record bid of £1.5bn bid for Arsenal.
The cash offer, which is more than twice the amount at which Arsenal were valued two years ago, will be for 100% of the club, and if successful would wipe out debts that stand at around £250 million according to the last full year's financial results.
Arsene Wenger's contract at Arsenal runs out next summer and although people are saying it may be time to replace him I think that would be the wrong move.
He's been with Arsenal for a zillion years and sometimes change can be good to freshen things up but I genuinely believe that Arsene has it in him to end his days here on a high.
Arsenal fans are up in arms these days as another disappointing season ends without a trophy. But if you a fan of any other side that Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke owns, not winning anything is a commin feeling.
I took a look at the other teams that Stan Kroenke' owns and the picture is not a good one for Arsenal fans who are hoping that the Gunners get back to challenging for trophies anytime soon
Besides owing Arsenal, Kroenke owns five US sports franchises: the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer, Colorado Avalanche of the NHL and St.
Various newspapers are reporting that Arsene Wenger will be assured he is the man to revive Arsenal's fortunes at a board meeting with the club's American owner Stan Kroenke today.
The club have confirmed the manager will meet Kroenke, who arrived in London to watch Arsenal's 3-1 defeat by Bayern Munich in the Champions League, after training.
Hope to find you well this Friday. Just another day to go before the next game for Arsenal. The past week has been very trying, what with the consecutive defeats. First to a team that, to be fair, we should be beating if we were to improve on our finish in the league this season compared to last.
Thomas Vermaelen expressed his disappointment at Arsenal's lack of creativity after his side suffered a shock 2-0 defeat at home in their Champions League game against Schalke on Wednesday.
The second biggest Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov has made an interview which seems to be a peace offering to Stan Kroenke in which he declares that he has never petitioned for a place on the Arsenal Board, but just wants the club to stop selling their best players and so increase their chances of winning a trophy.
Pimping the players? Its money to Stan the Man and the Arsenal septuagenarians
Is Arsenal breeding a particular type of player mercenary? Those without any loyalty to the
club, constantly on the lookout for the big payoff from the next big club? It's so easy to trash
them when it appears so black and white.
I think it's probably fair to say that most Gooners are approaching Saturday's season opener
with a mix of anticipation and expectation.
Or, to put it another way, excitement tempered by a nagging concern (like the way you might feel
if your most reckless friend invited you for a spin on the back of his new motorbike).
I think it's probably fair to say that most Gooners are approaching Saturday's season opener
with a mix of anticipation and expectation.
Or, to put it another way, excitement tempered by a nagging concern (like the way you might feel
if your most reckless friend invited you for a spin on the back of his new motorbike).
It now seems clear that Robin van Persie has played his last game for Arsenal.
News that the Dutchman will not be involved in the club's pre-season tour of the Far East leaves
little room for doubt that he is on his way out of The Emirates.
It is being reported that Arsenal have turned down an offer from Manchester United and will only
entertain bids in excess of £20 million although, they are hoping to hold out for between £25 and
£30 million.
A little bit of background info on "silent" Stan Kroenke. By SC Stan Kroenke is an American
real-estate and sports-mogul businessman from Missouri, US. There has been demand from the fans for
some history on silent Stan. It is no surprise that we know relatively little about him, as he
takes the same role in [.
Arsenal: Self sustaining model or vulture capitalism?
The response in the wake of RVP refusing to renew a new contract from those who run Arsenal or
have a stake in the club reveals an unholy mess. Alisher Usmanov threw a bombshell in his letter
and as odious a piece of PR opportunism as it was, it did contain some allegations that will be
hard to disprove.
Good morning to you, a quick Saturday round-up after what has been a turbulent week.
It'd be nice if we could get away from the RVP/Usmanov stuff but that's rather fanciful, to be
honest. There have been some whispers that Robin is somewhat taken aback by the reaction to the
statement, as if there was no expectation of a backlash, but I'm not sure how much I believe
that.
There are a lot of Arsenal supporters upset over Robin van Persie's statement, which revealed he
wasn't going to sign a contract extension with the club. There were a few shareholders who weren't
very happy either, especially Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri.
Usmanov and Moshiri, who are the club's second-largest shareholders with a combined 30 per cent,
said they have deep reservations about Stan Kroenke, the majority shareholder, and the direction
the club is going.
The Robin van Persie story took another twist today as Arsenal's second largest shareholders,
Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, accused Arsenal's board and owner Stan Kroenke of selling
the club's best players and replacing them with cheaper ones.
Usmanov and Moshiri own just under 30% of Arsenal through the investment company Red & White,
but they have not been allowed by Kroenke to join the board.
The Robin van Persie story took another twist today as Arsenal's second largest shareholders,
Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, accused Arsenal's board and owner Stan Kroenke of selling
the club's best players and replacing them with cheaper ones.
Usmanov and Moshiri own just under 30% of Arsenal through the investment company Red & White,
but they have not been allowed by Kroenke to join the board.
Two odious characters: The pugilistic Usmanov and the insipid, colourless Kroenke
Normally anything that Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbeki oligarch would have to say about Arsenal
could be dispatched with a flick of the head. But what he said about Van Persie sums up the state
of affairs in the Arsenal boardroom which is there is no state of affairs under the majority
ownership of Stan Kroenke, who remains a cipher, a zombie wheeled out at various points of the year
to parrot out a boilerplate script.
It has been quite an eventful 24 hours for Arsenal Football Club. First, Robin van Persie
announced on his personal website that he would not be signing another contract. That alone is
perfectly reasonable a man approaching 29 who has one big contract left in him is entitled not to
sign a new one with his current employer.
"What's got two thumbs, three chins and don't give a crap?"
Arsenal's second biggest shareholders (the jokes write themselves), Russian billionaire Alisher
Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, have written an open letter - obtained by the AP to openly criticise
owner Stan Kroenke's running of the club after it was made public yesterday that Robin van Persie
is to effectively be released back into the wild this summer.
Stan Kroenke vs Alisher Usmanov: The battle of the Billionaire giants by KJ So recently, we
discovered that the Premier League has made a new rule that prevents any owners of a football club
with less than 50% shares to look at the financial details of the club (balance sheets, transfers
etc.). This has really [.
With international football hogging the headlines at the moment, the Premier League has been
rather quiet over the last couple of weeks. Sure enough, there was the emergence of Richard
Scudamore from a meeting last week wiping drool from the corner of his mouth and carrying a bin bag
full of television over his shoulder, but on the whole the Premier League, which is ordinarily a
publicity-hungry black hole which sucks all before it in with its gravitational pull, has been
almost eerily quiet of late.
Football moves fast. No doubt about it. One day you're the king of the hill, the next you're David Bentley. And nobody needs to be David Bentley. Not even David Bentley (I'm told he'd prefer to be David Lee Roth).
Yesterday, we had the Wenger to PSG thing, a story which the journalist in question admitted was being 'reported from the PSG end.
I woke up this morning to terrible news. My application to do a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama was unsuccessful. Although they admire my work, I didn't make the very short list. However, should one of the other students drop out, I will be reconsidered.
Then I remembered that I didn't make any such application and it turns out there's a bloke with the exact same name as me who has, rather carelessly, used my personal Gmail address as his own.
Right then, a North London derby to contend with today.
As we know, Bacary Sagna is missing and the manager has to make a decision about Abou Diaby's fitness. I suspect that despite saying he'd pay no special attention to Gareth Bale that our line-up today does consider the threat of the Welshman.
If you thought that yesterday the dust might settle a bit in the wake of Robin van Persie's
statement you couldn't have been more wrong.
There were whispers of a forthcoming statement from Red and White (Alisher Usmanov and that
other bloke nobody really cares about) and when it emerged it was really quite extraordinary.
Good morning to you as the rains return. Yesterday was nice, somewhat warm, and occasionally
sunny. This morning it's lashing down, grey and miserable. And it's the longest day of the year
too. Oh well.
It was a Euro 2012 free zone last night and I have to admit I kinda missed it. Although I'm not
the biggest fan of the international game, it's nice to watch football without the tension and
nervousness there is with every Arsenal fixture.
So, it's 1 point from 9 in January as a dismal first half, coupled with some dodgy refereeing and a bit of Chelsea cheating, cost us yesterday's game.
The fact that the level of Arsenal's performance can fluctuate so wildly from game to game has long been a worry, that it can go from one extreme to the other in the space of 90 minutes even more so.
23,980 lucky folks witnessed last night's 5-7 Capital One Cup chaos between Reading and Arsenal, but a few Gooners apparently left the Madejskiearly as the Royals had raced into a four-goal lead on 37 minutes. I imagine those poor souls trudging miserably down the hill over autumn leaves, accompanied by the mournful roar of the M4 motorway, cursing Ivan Gazidis, Stan Kroenke et al while their
I hate days like today. Absolutely nothing whatsoever to talk about after what must have been one of the quietest days anyone can ever remember yesterday. But hey-ho, that's the way it goes. We'll just struggle on.
Arsene Wenger's press conference took place yesterday for some reason, no idea why, and there's not much in the way of team news.
