Several years ago we had a lengthy discussion on the Goonerholic blog about Stan Kroenke. It would be fair to say that it was a concerned and slightly acrimonious discussion because we were speculating on whether it would be better if Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov was the owner of Arsenal Football Club. That was not the extent of the discussion because it was framed by the knowledge that a club that we had traditionally considered ourselves superior to were dining at Europe’s top table because of the patronage of a Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, who had purchased Chelsea in 2003 and built them into a highly successful operation.
As Chelsea regularly won trophies and challenged for major honours, boosted by regular and oligarch-funded largesse the natives of N5 were restless and frustrated. Recent events cast those discussions in a different light. The sanctioning of Abramovich and Usmanov by the UK government has emphasised the concern that the source of the funding for Chelsea’s success was highly dubious, possibly criminal and certainly sprang from a relationship with one of the most ghastly leaders in post-war history.
I thought it would be interesting to look at the way in which Arsenal fans have reacted to the changing appreciation of their owner, Stan Kroenke In the light of the revelations concerning the Soviet oligarchs and their connections with the Kremlin. Given the very clear change in the fortunes and direction of Arsenal could we consider whether Kroenke is someone who could potentially lead Arsenal to much happier and more successful times in the future ?
The American connection
Stan Kroenke first became involved with Arsenal in 2007. He was introduced to the club by David Dein, who perturbed by Abramovich ‘parking his tanks on the lawn and firing £50 notes at us’ felt that Arsenal needed shareholders who could enable the club to compete with Chelsea and other ‘financially doped’ clubs ( to use a Wengerism ) who would follow, searched around for big hitters who would take Arsenal to the next level.
Kroenke made his initial fortune in real estate but then considerably boosted his financial prospects by marrying an heiress to the WalMart fortune. His emergence as an Arsenal shareholder came when he purchased Granada’s 9.9% stake in the club and increased this over time to 12.9%. Peter Hill-Wood the Arsenal Chairman was publicly dismissive of Kroenke suggesting that the club did not welcome ‘his sort’. It was a delightfully typical remark from our patrician chairman who regularly thanked the shareholders at the AGM for their ‘interest in our business!’
The Arsenal board changed its attitude to Kroenke when Dein subsequently introduced Usmanov. He became the more acceptable alternative and had experience in running a variety of sporting organisations. His current sporting empire includes the current Super Bowl holders, the LA Rams, a franchise that he moved from St.Louis amid great controversy, the Colorado Avalanche, the NHL team, Colorado Rapids who play in the MLS, Denver Nuggets in the NBA and the Colorado Mammoth National Lacrosse team. When I was seeking to diminish the reputation of Kroenke’s oversight I used the term ‘a mediocre sports entrepreneur’. That may need revision after the Rams’ success, but it should also be noted that the Avalanche have lifted the Stanley Cup and the Rapids were early winners of the Major League Soccer.
Kroenke joined the Arsenal board in 2008 and after increasing his holding beyond 29.9% he acquired the shares of the late Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith in April 2011. In August 2018 after a bitter battle with Usmanov he bought out the Uzbeki billionaire and forced a compulsory purchase of all other shares with a bid that valued the club at £1.8 billion.
The American’s increasing influence extended to appointing his son Josh to take a particular interest in Arsenal. Stan is known to the media as ‘Silent Stan’ because of his reluctance to make public pronouncements. Josh has proved a little more inclined to engage with the Arsenal supporters associations but one senses this was through public pressure rather than natural inclination.
The early years
It was hard to discern much of a strategy in the early years of Kroenke’s ownership. Kroenke was clearly in thrall to Wenger and frankly, why would he not be? Wenger had built enormous financial reserves purely through success on the field and inspired trading, had enabled Arsenal to contemplate and achieve the construction of a new super-stadium and kept the club consistently in the Champions League. One of Kroenke’s rare public pronouncements was to hail Wenger as a genius. The reality was that without Dein and with new mega-rich clubs appearing on the horizon Wenger was declining as a force and Kroenke failed to spot it. He might be forgiven. Arsenal won the FA Cup in 2014, 2015 and 2017 and after the last of these triumphs Wenger slipped into a private meeting with Kroenke on the Sunday and agreed a new two year contract. It was a contract that he never completed. Around Wenger Arsenal was changing. Ivan Gazidis, bullshitter extraordinaire, assembled a team which included Raul Sanllehi, formerly a senior executive at Barcelona, ‘Diamond Eye’ Sven Mislintat who was tasked with spotting exciting new talent for Sanllehi to sign and Huss Fahmy to tighten up the contractual operation at the club.
Self-sustainability
One of the key tenets of a Kroenke operation was ‘self-sustainability’. Arsenal were allowed to spend what they generated. The club whose fans had implored the board to ‘spend some f…ing money’ started to splash the cash. In the summer of 2016 £85 million was spent on Mustafi, Xhaka and Perez. Has Arsenal ever wasted money so blatantly? In 2018 Aubameyang was purchased for £50 million and Mesut Ozil given a contract worth over £300 thousand a week. In 2019 Nicolas Pepe was purchased for a club record fee of £72 million. This was hardly the action of a club whose owners wished to starve the club of funds. In the meantime after Wenger was released, Unai Emery was introduced as his successor but after initially promising signs the team started to fail badly in his second season. Mislintat fell out with Emery and left. Edu joined as director of football and Mikel Arteta was brought in to coach and then manage the team. Covid struck, another FA Cup was won and Sanllehi departed in suspicious circumstances, apparently after scrutiny by Tim Lewis, a corporate lawyer and partner at Clifford Chance who appeared to be becoming the eyes and ears of Kroenke and his KSE organisation.
That moment might be seen as an inflection point, a change in thinking. Yet shortly afterwards we embarked on the disastrous signing of Willian from Chelsea and one started to be confused again. Arsenal struggled badly at the start of the 2020/21 season and had fans been in the stadium we might have experienced the toxic atmosphere that prevailed in the last few years of Wenger’s tenure. That negativity came to a head anyway when the European Super League plans were announced. Arsenal recanted after two days of increasing criticism from fans and media. The apology on the website was unusually frank and admitted to a gross error in judgement. Why did it happen?
It is said that when he acquired Arsenal Stan Kroenke had no idea that a system of relegation was in place in the Premier League. It underlines his lack of understanding of the way in which English football works. He had a steep learning curve to negotiate and hidden in Colorado or wherever he placed himself it was difficult to give Arsenal the attention their fans demanded that the club should be given. But KSE do understand how to run sporting organisations and the success of a Rams team coached by a young, highly impressive coach in Sean McVay might be a template for Arsenal Football Club.
Arsenal have shown faith in Arteta, through that bad period last season and after three games of this season when we’d lost all our matches and were marooned at the bottom of the table. Since that time and that show of faith, the atmosphere has become as positive and exciting as we have seen for years and the team have blossomed into one that has sent belief coursing through the club again.
So are KSE good owners?
Morale among fans at the Grove is as positive as it has ever been. The recent travails of Chelsea and the revelations about their owner’s strong links with Putin have thrown into relief the suitability of the Kroenkes as custodians. The period since they assumed full control of the club has been a turbulent one. They have made many mistakes. In the early years of their involvement Stan Kroenke seemed happy to delegate full control of team affairs to Arsene Wenger. He allowed Gazidis to put in place a structure that was far from fit for purpose and haemorrhaged money. Oversight of transfers was woefully inadequate. He offered a waning Wenger a deal that prolonged the agony for the club. There was a feeling among supporters that in the collection of sporting teams that KSE owned, Arsenal had no primacy. It was just a highly attractive sporting brand situated in one of the great cities of the world that has a global fanbase and huge profit potential. Premier League football is a growing and exciting business, a financial powerhouse but one in which Arsenal had lost their way. Arsenal fans expect their club to be much more than another sporting franchise.
I spoke of inflection points before. The moment when conditions change and a new direction is taken. It would seem that through 2021 a new strategy emerged, predicated on a longer-term rebuild. In a business where managers are sacked after a run of defeats or often even after winning trophies, Arsenal have shown patience and intelligence. They have reset the club and reimagined it with a young team playing a form of football in which Arteta is fully invested. Their net spend in the transfer window last summer was the highest in Europe and the quality and profile of purchases has been excellent, consistent and forward thinking. It seems to me that through Tim Lewis they have proper oversight of the way in which the club is run, in Arteta a visionary and developing coach and they have the faith in their key people which allowed them to release their star player because of the negative effect on team morale, just over a year after awarding him a mega contract.
This season may yet implode but it is hard to escape the feeling that for the first time since Kroenke assumed control the club has robust governance and a philosophy that has galvanised players and supporters. It has taken a long time, an unnecessarily long time, but perhaps we are moving into one of the more exciting eras in Arsenal’s recent history.
