Man City are close to signing Ferran Torres, 20 year old highly rated winger from Valencia. The price has always been said to be £40m for him, city have got him for around £21m as he only had 1 year left on his deal and prices have come down from covid. There are deals to be had.

This would be the perfect summer for Kroenke to put his hand in his pocket, bargains out there and FFP restrictions are lifted/eased this window

That doesn’t mean he’ll do it.

Hmm...I have Netflix so I guess I'll take a look when I'm bored.

Kroenke and 'money for Arsenal' will never be in the same sentence. We are on our own. Always have been. Lomekian was trying to make a case for him at the time, saying what he did for his American sides. Lomekian has forgotten more football than I would ever know, but he (and others) were wrong on Kroenke at the time. Very wrong. Crazy as it may sound but we'd have been better off with the G;azers over Stan (note, I dislike both of them).

And yes, I will also remind all that it was Dein who left the board between the Scylla and Charybdis situation with either Kroenke or Usmanov. One of the best things to happen to The Arsenal was David Dein and one of the worst things to happen to The Arsenal was David Dein. I just wish he would have put his love for the club (of which I have no doubt) over his personal ambitions for running the club.

We are stuck with Kroenke for the rest of his life and his son Josh's life. The only way to extricate ourselves from him possibly is....
1. He takes a beating in the next (and I believe it will happen) global financial crash and he is made "an offer he can't refuse"
2. The fans unite in earnest and hits him in the pockets.

I think Josh will be a better owner than his father after he father passes but he won't be an ideal owner.

American, it was Dein who introduced Kroenke to the club. It was a bad decision that presumably came from seeing what Abramovich was doing for Chelsea. I’ve always wondered if blindfolded he stuck a pin in the Forbes rich list of multi-billionaires and decided to go with whoever the pin landed on without doing any research on them. As I say, Dein was silly.

But, and it’s a huge but, it was Fiszman that handed the majority ownership of the club to Kroenke. It was not Dein, who had already seen the problem with Stan as he’d already linked with Usmanov. If you want a similar principle think of a goal that’s given away by a bad mistake. Is the main fault the biggest mistake by a defender, or the forward who lost possession up the other end of the pitch? By going on and on about Dein and never mentioning Fiszman’s central role in the KSE takeover, using this example you seem to want to blame the forward up the other end of the pitch. Not the defender who made the biggest error. I don’t know who the last player was who gave the ball away before Kolasinac at White Hart Lane, but you can bet your bottom someone had previously lost possession and if they hadn’t the game would have progressed differently in some sort of way. Yet surely the main fault has to be that of Kolasinac who stupidly gave the ball to Son to score Tottenham’s equaliser, not whoever it was before that.

The main fault has to lay with Fiszman by handing the majority control to Kroenke from his death bed. Before Fiszman did that, Stan was only a minority shareholder. Dein has much responsibility for that, but at least Kroenke’s power over Arsenal was very limited. It was Fiszman who turned Stan into the majority owner.

Absolutely, there's more chance of us going unbeaten in the league next season!

Exactly. Same principle but there’s more chance of winning the Euromillions jackpot three weeks running when you’ve never bought a ticket.

Speaking of unbeaten (hat tip to Rich), I wonder if it won't be easier for Liverpool to do it this upcoming season than it was last season? They will have known how to handle the pressure. Just thinking.

In any event, the winner of the EPL being from the top 3 the previous season is a still has an excellent record. It just is. No rhyme or reason. It may not happen next season but its amazing how it has held up for every season except one.

Chelsea and Man Utd have the same number of points at 3rd so I think it might be warranted to expand it to 4 clubs to see if that stat keeps going. There are some things that happen for whatever reason and there is no logical explanation such as the EPL stat. Another example of random coincidences, is that in America the 3 biggest crashes in the last 100 years has occurred in October and either a year before or after or during a presidential election year. Economists don't know why. Random coincidence or a pattern that has some merit we just haven't seen yet?

I'd love to break it. Imagine going from 8th to title winners? (as Leicester fans look upon with a smirk).

City just had a £40M bid for Nathan Ake accepted by Bournemouth.
Josh K to be present for FAC final Saturday maybe. Hmmm. Protocol reasons possibly or Stan there. Seems a few Chelsea & Arsenal players whether injured or out of favour, could be present at Wembley. Either way, the result on Saturday to propel the club into the EL, along with the monies gained, might just have an incentive, Kroenkes, to dig deep and fund some needed transfers. No guarantee naturally.

For AG

Arsenal Football Club
Fiszman bought into Arsenal Football Club and became a board member through his purchase of an 8% stake from his friend David Dein, starting with 10,000 shares in 1991. Fiszman slowly increased his stake to 24%, the largest shareholder as at 27 September 2007, at which point he led the building of the new Ashburton Grove stadium.[citation needed]

In March 2007 Fiszman sold a block of 659 shares for over £3.9m to Stan Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE).[4] This was a significant sale as reducing his stake to less than 25% resulted in a loss of veto rights over any future changes to the company statutes. Speculation linked this with a move abroad where he would substantially reduce any Capital Gains Tax liability that would come with a sale of his stake in the club.[5] Fiszman stated his desire not sell any more of his shares for the foreseeable future,[6] after the sale of 5,000 ordinary shares to Kroenke takes the American's stake in Arsenal Holdings plc to 12,756 Shares (representing 20.5%). On 27 March 2009 Fiszman sold 5,000 ordinary shares of £1 each in Arsenal Holdings plc to KSE, UK, Inc, at a price of £8,500 per share.[7] On 11 April 2011, two days before his death, he sold his Arsenal shares amounting to 16.11% of club's stake to KSE, due to his declining health.

There really isn't. But that aside would you say that you KNOW it won't happen?

I know you’re a pedant but have you never heard of saying things tongue in cheek? I’m quite sure there must be people, my guess would be quite a few, who always get their lottery tickets bought for them. I’ve had tickets bought for me, and I’ve bought tickets for others. So there probably is a chance of winning the Euromillions jackpot three weeks running when not buying the tickets themselves, even if it’s very unlikely.

What are you asking if I know something won’t happen? Anyway, at what point do you think it’s fair to say in everyday language that you know something won’t happen? When there’s a one in a billion, trillion chance maybe? Or not even then? Or less? Or a lot less? Any idea at what point you think it’s okay for people to say it in everyday language, or are you just being pedantic again?

Because I firmly got the impression that a poster from across the Atlantic seemed to think he knew Liverpool would win the title before football resumed, even to the point of him wanting them to be awarded the title had the season not resumed. Because the odds of them not winning it would have been astronomically less than one in a billion, trillion. Moreover, you didn’t feel the need to challenge him about it?

I do think it is harder to go unbeaten now than when we did it. Not because the best teams are any better, we still had a strong Man U, chelsea with their money, Liverpool still good and N.London derbies. More that with the extra money in the league even the weakest teams can have a game winner in their ranks. Those players might be inconsistent but they have the ability to turn it on for 1 game and be unplayable. See how Sarr played for Watford against Liverpool - they got him on his best day.

Expecting a back 3 for the final with Tierney in the 3. Tierney appears okay in this position but against Chelsea I would let Saka push forward as his crossing and ability to pick out players in the box is far superior to Tierney. Probably Holding will play but it should be Sokratis. And the rest basically pick themselves. Ceballos will play but I remain unconvinced by him. His inability to create chances suggest he is not anywhere near good enough but there is no other player available at the club who appears to be pressing him for a place. Would bring M-N to replace him very early if necessary.

See no reason why we can't win the final but it needs concentration from the defenders, a lot of pressing and every player to turn up from the first minute. Players like Pépé, Ceballos, Luiz, Xhaka cannot just go thru the motions. If I see Xhaka and Luiz making sideway passes or backwards passes early on I know Arteta will have failed to get them up for the game.

Thanks Zed,
Fiszman (and others) are not exonerated, however, as i recall it he had a choice of Kroenke or Usmanov. Two reasons Usmanov was not wanted as I recall was 1. His sketchy background and 2. Dein was part of it.

What choices did he have? The club was going to go either eventually. Who brought them (Usmanov and Kroenke) in?



Wikipedia, not the best source in the world but...

Usmanov moved into the football arena in August 2007 by acquiring a 14.58-percent stake in the English football team Arsenal. He and his business partner Farhad Moshiri bought the stake in the club owned by former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein for £75 million.[54] David Dein was appointed as head of their investment vehicle, Red and White Holdings, which became the largest shareholder in the club outside of members of the board of directors.

On 28 September 2007, it was announced that Red and White Holdings had increased its shareholding to 23 percent, making it the second largest shareholder in the club behind Danny Fiszman on 24 percent.[55] On 15 February 2008, he increased it further to over 24 percent, giving him a stake just short of Arsenal non-executive director and major shareholder Danny Fiszman's 24.11 percent.[56] However, there was speculation that Usmanov might already be the club's largest shareholder at 24.2 percent, which he later increased to 25 percent on 16 February 2009.[57]

Red and White Holdings confirmed on 28 February 2008 that it was the club's largest shareholder and the company said it "has the necessary funding to increase its stake further [but] it has no current intention to make a full takeover bid for Arsenal for six months."[58] If the stake were to reach 30 percent, Red and White Holdings would have to launch a formal takeover. Usmanov said he had been an Arsenal fan for seven years and he had a great love for Arsenal.[citation needed]

Usmanov's interest precipitated a "lock-down" agreement by the Gunners' board, whereby chairman Peter Hill-Wood announced that club directors could sell their stakes only to "permitted persons" before April 2009, and had to give fellow board members "first option" on shares until October 2012.[59] However, there was a termination clause in the agreement in October 2010.[clarification needed][59] "The lockdown...makes us bullet-proof," said the then Arsenal managing director Keith Edelman.[60]

American businessman Stanley Kroenke, already a major Arsenal shareholder, increased his stake in the club to just over 62 percent in April 2011 after buying out Fiszman and Lady Bracewell-Smith,[61] making him the majority shareholder. As Kroenke's stake had risen above 30 percent, he was obliged to make an offer to buy out the remainder of Arsenal shares. Usmanov refused to sell, however, and maintained his stake.[62]

(More Wiki)

Kroenke is the largest shareholder of Premier League association football club Arsenal. Arsenal already had a technical link-up with Kroenke's Colorado Rapids when in April 2007 Granada Ventures, a subsidiary of ITV plc, had sold its 9.9% stake in Arsenal Holdings plc to Kroenke's KSE UK inc.[34] Kroenke went on to buy further shares in the club, taking his total stake up to 12.19%.[35] The club's board initially expressed skepticism that a bid would be in its best interests,[36] but gradually warmed to him as part of counteracting Alisher Usmanov's rival bid for the club.

By June 2008, the board had prepared to let Kroenke take over the club,[37] and on September 19, 2008, it was officially announced that Kroenke had joined the Arsenal board of directors.[38] Kroenke had a beneficial interest in, and controlled voting rights, over 18,594 shares, representing 29.9% of the issued shares. Thus, he was nearing the maximum 29.99% threshold, beyond which he would be forced to make an offer for all remaining shares.[39]

On April 10, 2011, it was reported that Kroenke was in advanced talks to complete the takeover of Arsenal.[40][41] The following day, it was announced that he increased his shareholding in Arsenal to 62.89% by purchasing the stakes of Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, and agreed to make an offer for the rest of the club at £11,750 per share, valuing the club at £731M.

http://www.thearsenalhistory.com/?p=13265
2007

It’s well-known that Stan Kroenke was introduced to Arsenal by David Dein, whose thinking was that Kroenke’s money could help Arsenal compete with the newly rich Chelsea, who were benefitting from Roman Abramovich’s billions.


All roads lead to Dein.

...also, if you are saying Fiszman should share the blame (as I think you are insinuating), I will agree. If you are saying that Fiszman is wholly or primarily responsible and who I should focus my vitriol to, I'd respectfully disagree.

An interesting thought, if there were no Kroenke or Usmanov what is the likely disposition of Fiszman's shares? Who would it have gone to?

In addition, what would Arsenal's ownership look like today if there were no Kroenke? What if neither Kroenke or Usmanov were brought in? I suggest we'd be much better off, without knowing what would have happened. I say that because I would guess that whomever was left, they would have loved the club and the club's finances would reflect that.

American, I did accept in my earlier post that Dein can be seen as introducing Kroenke to Arsenal. I’m sure I did say that he presumably saw him as a way of Arsenal competing with Chelsea under Abramovich. As I also suggested this was a silly decision making me give that tongue in cheek observation that he must have stuck a pin in the Forbes’ Rich lList of multi-billionaires with him not doing adequate research on whose name the pin struck.

But, and as I also implied earlier it’s a very big but, it was not Dein who sold the club to Kroenke to give him majority control of the club. The major blame for that, I believe, should firmly be attached to Fiszman who apparently at the time basically dominated Bracewell-Smith who he also told (a word such as ‘convinced’ may be preferred by some) to sell, a decision she apparently now regrets.

So the main blame that Kroenke owns Arsenal in my view should be attached to Fiszman who basically drove the selling of the club to him, rather than Dein who introduced Stan to it. Think of the example I gave earlier. Do you blame a goal conceded on a defender who made an awful error to present an easy chance to an opposition forward, or do you blame a forward who initially lost possession up the other end of the pitch? The general principle looks fairly similar to me.

By blaming Dein, you seem to want to blame the forward up the other end of the pitch. I would suggest it’s more sensible to lay the primary blame on the defender. If in one sentence the choice for attaching blame is between Dein for introducing Kroenke to Arsenal, or Fiszman for driving the sale of it to him, for me the primary blame should definitely be attached to Fiszman.

American, I did my last post before having the chance to read your most recent one. I would suggest that by focusing your vitriol (as you call it) solely on Dein, which until very recently you’ve appeared to, I think you are misplacing where the main blame lies. Rather on the man who actually sold (and as part of that drove Bracewell-Smith’s sale) to Kroenke, who was Fiszman, you instead focus your vitriol on Dein, who it appears introduced Kroenke to Arsenal. I can only see that as misplacing your vitriol.

Regarding what would have happened to Arsenal’s ownership otherwise, who knows? But the logical conclusion probably has to be that Fiszman, who knew he was dying, would have sold his shares to a multi-billionaire interested in buying a Premier League team. What I doubt would have happened is him leaving his shares to other directors (who didn’t have the wealth to buy them). He was, after all, a very rich (in terms of millions) businessman who, by selling up to Kroenke, in my view wasn’t considering the health of the club after his death as his biggest priority. Surely he’d have sold up to get the money in for his relatives? That’s my guess anyway.

Would it have been Kroenke or Usmanov, if they were multi-billionaires looking to buy into English football? Perfectly feasible, I’d have thought. Could he have found an oil sheikh somewhere? Being Jewish, would Fiszman have entertained selling to one? Who knows as money talks. But I don’t discount the possibility the club would have ended up in the hands of Kroenke or Usmanov anyway, although that it pure guesswork.

I was quietly holding out hope Upamecano would come to us but I've just read that he's reported to have signed a contract extension. I'm very disappointed.

According to this article Brady went to the 'old lady' for 600k but he was worth 3 times that. Was the fee so low because he forced a move?

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer ... 11806.html

Classy. We are lucky to have him.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how- ... de1178b731

He's clearly hugely respected by the players already. I read a really good interview with Martinez where amongst all sorts of things he talked about how Arteta once went in to detail about which foot Martinez should control a backpass with (ie: not always his strongest right foot) because it would give him more time. Obviously it sounds simple but if players have always done what comes naturally and no one has explained the benefits of these very small changes then they'll just always do it.

I recall a similar thing with Sterling when Arteta was a coach, he basically did 1 on 1 training with Sterling's movement and finishing - which coincided with Sterling moving from a 10 goal a season player to a 20 goal a season player.

It is still very early days but I like what I'm hearing.

No worries, I've already alerted Edu.

I haven't been this excited about a young defender since we signed Upson.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/29/william- ... -13055932/

In all seriousness, a lot of expectations on his young shoulders.

Some serious rumblings that we're working on a loan deal for Coutinho where Barcelona will pay some of his wages. Have to say I'm all for it under those conditions, it seems like a good way to make us more competitive in the short term while making sure most of our budget is saved for signings that are a better fit for our long term plans. I know fans generally look down on loaning in players, but again we have to be pragmatic this summer.

Arsenal legend Cesc Fabregas
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... d-22447008

Sounds good to me, Coutinho has the quality we are lacking and he'd be a great signing on those terms imo.

It is all broken. People will delve in to emails and contract and football law and FFP intricacies but the reality is if we all take a step back and look at what has been done. You have the company owned by the owner of a football club sponsoring that football club for huge amounts of money, more than their status and more than pretty much any of the huge marketing machine football clubs in the world.

If Arsenal broke off their deal with Emirates and instead put KSE on the front of the shirt and named the stadium The KSE stadium and were paid 5 or 6 times whatever Emirates had been paying you'd just look at it and say 'well clearly the owner is just pumping in massive amounts of money in to the club and FFP was set up to stop that happening'

It is all so pointless

That 'needs it more' is an understatement in and of itself. Won't bother elaborating here.

Yes. And unfortunately the big clubs can bring out expensive heavyweight lawyers and the ruling bodies haven’t a chance against that

He has to be diplomatic.

Being impartial never hurts.

What ever it was that influenced Dein in the first place to collaborate with Kroenke, aside from money, is questionable. Possibly they found they each had a similar business model that would work together. Fiszman may have felt that being in ill health, he was persuaded to sell to Kroenke, possibly to protect his family upon his death. Fiszman was the final nail in the coffin. As indicated Lady Nina no doubt regrets selling up to Kroenke. How much research was done prior to sort of 'inviting' Kroenke to Hoover up more Arsenal shares, may never be known, aside from Peter Hill-Woods comment "We don't want his sort" back in 2007.

Regarding Cesc. Split loyalties on the EL final in 2019.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.expres ... -Final/amp

Arsenal apparently demanding £8m for Balogun. Brentford bid £5m for him in January

Have you ever seen him Rich? I haven’t. Is he any good, or at least as good as he’s supposed to be? He’s 19 and not played a single minute for the first team, even in the League Cup when he’d have been 18. Nketiah, AMN, Emile Smith Rowe and Nelson, who arguably fall short of top quality as some have suggested any or all should be sold, all made their debuts at 18. Saka, who is surely even better and nobody had suggested selling, made his debut at 17. Might that say something?

I admit I don’t know because I haven’t seen him. So I need advice about him.

No Guendouzi for FAC final. Özil is in Turkey.

Sorting out a transfer (hopefully) or some sort of break or holiday?