This is not a knock the owner thread, I would really like to know what my fellow gooners think about Stan Kroenke and how he will effect our future. Firstly why did he buy the majority share in the first place? He isn't a supporter, he doesn't know much about "soccer" and he certainly has no affiliation to Arsenal. If he has simply made an investment he will want to maximise his profits. Obviously this will impact on the transfer budget. The last 6 years has generated an average transfer CREDIT of 3 million per year. Why will he not address the fans. Does he not realise that football is not just a sport, in the UK it is a National obsession. How does he judge success, maybe C/L qualification is enough My own view is that he is an American businessman and as such is fixated on money, that doesn't preclude him from spending money on good players, to ensure that we achieve minimum required success. However I think it unlikely that we will be competing for the very top players. For instance I am certain that RVP will be sold this year if he doesn't sign another contract, all this rubbish about holding him to his contract is drivel, we could have done that with Nasri and Fabregas last year. I'm not sure if it's just me who is concerned, I suspect not.
I'm not that concerned about Kroenke. He's a businesman, and is running a business. He's taken over a company that turns a profit, but is highly under-exploited in certain markets. The Football matchday income is maxed out, but the marketing, particularly overseas, shirt sales etc. has a whole lot left to exploit. That's why the team are starting to go overseas in pre-season. If Kroenke had come in, done nothing, and started taking profits, I'd be annoyed. As it is, he's come in, he'll improve the marketing, increase the income of the club, and might take a proportion of that for himself. If you see the accounts, and the income has gone up, and he's taken from the new income, then that's fine by me. He doesn't address the media, he's "Silent Stan," and that's pretty fine by me too. Better that than some of the idiots who come out and say stupid things. Yes I'd rather he came in and laid out what he was going to do, and kept us up to date. But at this point, I trust him, because I have no reason not to. Let's hope I don't regret that later!
He's only here to make as much money from th fans as he can, he's not interested in 'soccer', it's Gazidis's job to improve the marketing but all he's done is put up prices.
Yup - he is here to make money. A non football fan can't be all of a sudden interested in the well being of Arsenal FC. He's here to make money, nothing more, nothing less, and sod the fans who ARE the club !
How so BDM, this guy can affect how we feel come 5:00 on a Saturday, if he puts a silly limit on the transfer budget this year then nothing will change, and next season will be the same as this one i.e crap.
Personally, I'd like to hear what he's got to say about his vision for Arsenal. I'm not one to fall into the trap of filling in the blanks in the absence of information, I think that's a fruitless endeavour. But I think he should communicate with the fans.
he is a non-entity - because I know nothing about his view on club profits, share value gains, transfer investment, longterm intentions, willingness to embrace other major share holders ...... ain't that enough? When did you last read an interview with the media and him?
Arsegun, not really, the club are making lots of money as it is, he just needs to sit there and hope we maintain the status quo ... and money will fill his lap. Thats why he thinks Wenger is the right man for the job, Wenger doesn't spend money and makes the club shedloads.
Some people are really funny...defend Kroenke to the hilt despite the fact that he's rinsing the fans for what their worth in return for as little as possible by way of success. Yet criticise the owners of other clubs who are lavishing their fans with the world's best footballers for having "dirty" money (Man city, Chelsea)....what jealous, deluded, mugs they are.
As Nasri said, we can celebrate getting 3rd place and he will celebrate his championship winner's medal.
Yeesh it's like a lefty "occupy something something I don't understand" protest in here. This is all very funny to me. On the one hand you have an owner at Chelsea who gets involved so much that the manager almost has no control on who comes and goes from the club, and the fans slate him for it. On the other hand you have a business man with a long track record of long term investment in sports franchises who leaves all the control to people close to the club, at the position to make the best decisions. And what happens? The fans slate him for being apathetic and being in it only for the money.
Gent, would you agree that we need "investment" to be able to compete for trophies ? If you answer Yes then you can understand the view of those who want to know what his vision/intentions are for the club because doing and saying nothing is NOT helping us. If you answer No then you are happy for us to be sliding backwards and getting involved with battles for 3rd and 4th place .. and possibly worse without investment.
I want us to be a top team for years to come. And that can only be achieved by being self-sufficient and using non-artificial means to fund your campaigns. We are on a good track, and even now we probably could invest heavily in transfers for the next season if the case was really made that it would be imperative for our future. What people in this thread seem to be asking is for Kroenke to be our Sugar daddy and just inject money from elsewhere into the club in order to achieve short term success.
Can you tell us what investment Kroenke has made into the club? None that i can see. At least Abramovich has spent his own money on improving Chelski. Kroenke seems only interested in what he can bleed out of the fans without putting anything in.
The problem is we're not really all that financially prudent as we claim to be....we have amongst the highest wage bills...littered with players like Diaby, Almunia, Ramsey etc....ie decidedly average players. Players aren't really competing for places...just collecting pay cheques. As for Wenger, I absolutely love the guy but Mourinho was right when he said that Wenger isn't under the kind of pressure that the managers of most top clubs are...and Wenger is one of the best paid coaches in the world. All carrot and no stick.
I don't think he's good because he lacks the dynamism to take the club forward....I'd prefer R&W holdings to take over and for Dein to return.
