Is Kroenke Holding Us Back?

[LordBump]

It's Wenger holding us back !

 

[Rex Stone]

@Rex Banner haven't you made a fortune as a billionaire off of Wall Street?

No I snorted it all up my nose and then my fat best friend got me sent to prison.

 

[Rimaal]

What can you expect from an owner and manager who see this football club as nothing but a bottom line focused company and all the fans as mere customers? Of course they're holding us back.

 

[Aevi]

No I snorted it all up my nose and then my fat best friend got me sent to prison.

Damn, tough luck. Crazy how you can lose it all so fast...

At least your girl was hella fine

 

[Gooner416]

It would be good to be a club that genuinely wants to realise it's vast potential and not just run as a hugely profitable organisation. I think that whoever you have leading from the top, it filters down throughout the club.

I believe we lost a massive asset when David Dein left Arsenal. For all his faults, he was first and foremost absolutely an Arsenal man. I felt he was the missing link between the business side of things and the actual football side. He was a visionary bringing Wenger in at the time, the rest of the board didn't want him - and I always felt that with Dein he understood it was equally important to be delivering not just as a corporate enterprise but on the pitch. He also knew the importance of not staying still but to keep moving with the fast changing times in order to keep us competitive and most importantly winning things. Shouldn't it ultimately be about the glory? When you're coming to the end of your days do you want to have seen Arsenal win a Champions League and titles or just be happy that we've managed to at least be consistent enough to maintain an annual Champions League campaign and continue making huge financial gains.

Dein was extremely well respected at the FA and for me we stopped being quite as dynamic as a club when he left. I'm not saying we would have delivered the above success, in truth I don't think we would (though we could definitely have sneaked a few titles), but when it comes to Wenger leaving, do you have faith that anyone on the upper echelons of the club know's what to do to replace him, or even worse still, genuinely cares that much that they have a burning desire to see Arsenal reach the elite of european football?

Excellent post. Sums up my feelings towards the whole saga. There was talk of a Dein return about 4-5 years ago but it never picked up steam I guess... Doesn't help when his son helped engineer the moves of Cesc, Jvp etc.

Also, @Godwin1 Stan could easily sell the club now for upwards of $2B. The Emirates is easily worth between $750M-$1B. Add up the commercial and merchandise, ticketing revenue and the club is a cash cow. We post profits every year. It's hard to find a tangible asset that continues to accumulate value.

Lastly, Stan is creeping up to a portfolio of close to $10B in sports enterprises. It'd be nice to see some of that re-invested into the Arsenal. One can dream....

 

[Rex Stone]

Lastly, Stan is creeping up to a portfolio of close to $10B in sports enterprises. It'd be nice to see some of that re-invested into the Arsenal. One can dream....

I was going to post the laughing emoji but it made me sad.

 

[BBF]

**** this naughty moustache wearing, * looking, cowboy ****. **** off back to the country you LeAnn Rimes loving cockroach.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

YEEEEEEHAWWW!!!!

 

[Gervais]

He doesn't do anything, so I'm not completely convinced he's holding us back. Considering Wenger has full control over transfers and every single footballing aspect at the club, I'd say we should probably be looking in that direction instead...

Don't get me wrong, I strongly dislike Kroenke and it's clear he's only here for status and the occasional cheeky 3m asset strip, but he's pretty harmless from a footballing point of view.

 

[Rex Stone]

**** this naughty moustache wearing, * looking, cowboy ****. **** off back to the country you LeAnn Rimes loving cockroach.

I had a really, really weird crush on her in school. No reason for it, her music is dreadful.

 

[TheSage]

Days of owners who are in it for 'love' they're gone, it's big, HUGE, business now ... the EPL's turnover is bigger than most countries entire healthcare budget, that's fairly staggering ...

Kronke, Glaziers, Mansour, Joe Lewis, Henry ... these are just the names at the top of massive corporations ... they employ whole teams of managers, financiers, HR, PR, hospitality guys, etc., to run their football clubs in the same way you would run Ford, Hilton or British Airways ... they look for the lowest cost to gain the maximum return, their job is the bottom line ... 'fans' are indeed just customers ... and by fans it's less and less the 60,000 who turn up at the stadium, more and more the millions who watch on TV, buy the merchandise, and subscribe to apps, that's where future revenue lies ... that and massive corporate sponsorship.

Does Kronke hold us back? not really he has diligently been employing the best people he can to do all the things described above ... during his tenure our income, profitability and value have increased enormously, ergo he's been a great success.

How does that reflect on the pitch? ... as long as we're hitting the numbers he won't care, after all football is just a business ...

We are not alone in this, the same applies to all clubs, sure the Chairman can be a 'fan' but that won't make any difference, he's answerable to shareholders and investors so at the end of the day it's all about the bottom line ...

 

[BobP]

As I understand, we count as one of Kroenke's assets, the club doesn't pay dividends so to extract some sort of value from the club It seems he demands that we need to have a ludicrous amount in the bank at all times so that he can make other investments off the back of having the club as an asset.

So essentially, the investment fans make to go and watch their beloved club in the hope of success is being used in such a way which doesn't ensure success at all but as a way for Kroenke to get rich.

Not sure how Wenger can be blamed here, we can only guess at the inner workings of the club and Wenger has never been one to leak information to the press. For all we know, Kroenke's has set explicit instructions to horde cash, making life difficult for Wenger in the transfer market.

 

[Sweggeh]

Abramovich and the Sheikhs who run City and PSG certainly don't view it as a business. They have regularly lost way more than they have earned. The Sheikhs especially.

I would say the Glazers and Henry are more similar to Kroenke, although they both are very comfortable spending a lot more than we currently are on players.

 

[Gooner Zig]

but when it comes to Wenger leaving, do you have faith that anyone on the upper echelons of the club know's what to do to replace him, or even worse still, genuinely cares that much that they have a burning desire to see Arsenal reach the elite of european football?

This is the bit I fear most - Aside from Ivan, the board are an obsolete bunch of old fools who don't have a clue. Arsène does EVERYTHING at this club. I wouldn't be surprised to see Wenger given carte blanche to name his successor, would have a bet that they don't really have much of a succession plan.

 

[TheSage]

Abramovich and the Sheikhs who run City and PSG certainly don't view it as a business. They have regularly lost way more than they have earned. The Sheikhs especially.

I would say the Glazers and Henry are more similar to Kroenke, although they both are very comfortable spending a lot more than we currently are on players.

Chelski, Utd and City have to abide by FFP same as everyone else ... Mansour has invested an estimated 1,300m in City ... his investment is now worth 3,000m ... that's business not pleasure ...

FYI Chelski made 16m more profit than us in the last reported figures, and City only lost 18m, they are expected to make record profits this year ....

Club Finances 2015

 

[TheSage]

Abramovich and the Sheikhs who run City and PSG certainly don't view it as a business. They have regularly lost way more than they have earned. The Sheikhs especially.

I would say the Glazers and Henry are more similar to Kroenke, although they both are very comfortable spending a lot more than we currently are on players.

A lot more? That's just not true and we've handed out some big pay rises since these figures were issued .... Utd 203m - City 193.8m - Arsenal 192m

Full EPL Wages 2016

Don't believe the hype ... the top four spend about the same ... it's the upstarts like Spuds and feckin' Leicester who are doing it on the cheap ....

 

[law90026]

I'm not convinced with this cash pile theory. KSE has ownership of Arsenal as a whole which includes cash and other assets. For Eg: If Arsenal were to invest the cash in a new facility or a player, that would still be classified as an asset on Arsenal's books and should give him the same leverage he would get by maintaining a cash pile. Unless of course, his borrowing has a convenant which requires a minimum level of liquid(cash) assets. But from experience, such a convenant is rarely applied to a subsidiary when the holding co. is doing the borrowing.
And even if we put all of this aside, the actual cash that he takes out of the club is 3m for consultancy fees, so it isn't as if he's servicing his debt out of Arsenal's cash reserves which should still be there for spending.
Back on topic, I don't really think that Kroenke is holding us back. Its just that he isn't pushing us forward. Arsenal would probably have been same without him. I've seen 10 years of unenthusiastic results, I can wait to see another two years if Wenger can't win the title with the resources available to him before I pass judgement on Kroenke.

That's actually not true. A covenant can be applied to the key subsidiaries in a group and Arsenal would be one of the key subsidiaries in this case. There's little point in applying a covenant to a holding company if it doesn't take out cash or hold real assets.

The point is not about whether he is servicing his debt by taking money out. The point is that he may be handcuffing the club because of such restrictive covenants where certain debt ratios or cash amounts need to be maintained so as not to trigger a massive default across the entire KSE group. It's highly believable because most rich people do not keep cash in their banks.

 

[law90026]

I can't really work out why Kroenke bought Arsenal in the first place, he doesn't fall into the categorie of an owner who loves football and wants his team to succeed and on the other hand football doesn't seem to be an ideal money maker.

If you believe that football clubs are assets which appreciate (as opposed to being pure profit generating), it makes complete sense. Remember that this was at the time when crazy money was being bandied around to buy clubs and it's also not dissimilar to how NBA or NFL franchises are valued.

 

[law90026]

We will never know why exactly we didnt spent more money into players last years. Im sure Wenger plays a big part in it. I dont demant to pay 100m for a player. We got Özil or Sanchez for some money and im happy with that. This shows that we spend some money if we want to. We did not buy big last transfer windows - but this is because Wenger thought our squad is well filled.
Kroenke is not the reason we dont buy players. And i also dont want to spend money like ManCity, ManU or Chelsea did over last years. I would be happy about some more investments but not that exscessive.

That's the part I don't understand. Why are some Arsenal fans so worried about spending? It does not in any way cheapen your success if you're spending your own money. We don't get a special prize for not spending money.

 

[StoppageTime]

Every Arsenal fan puts up a tenner, we buy majority shares, then sell them off, preferably at a profit, to a new owner who agrees in writing to reinvest for success. C'mon lets do this ****!