The Arsenal board are blind idiots
Its the boards fault that Arsenal are stuck in a power struggle. They should have known that with all the foreign investors lining up that there would be interest in Arsenal. They screwed the Arsenal fans on 2 fronts and have nobody but themselves to blame for what’s happening right now.
1, They knew the ITV shares were up for grabs but never made a point of buying them. Why? What did they think would happen to them? If they are so united in their stance against foreign ownership then why did they not buy those shares?
2, Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer! The board are idiots for allowing one of the biggest share holders to flog his shares to anyone he chose. They should never have fired Dein. Hill-Wood said yesterday that the Arsenal board had always known that Dein was a seller. Ok? If that’s the case then what did the board do to ensure that he sold to the right people or even better to them? Nothing! Are the board consolidating their position? NO! Collectively they own less than 50% of the club. There are still a lot of shares out there and the Russian has the money to slowly increase his stake. What are the board going to do once he becomes the majority share holder? Continue to refuse him or his lackey DD access?
I am sorry to say this but the Arsenal board are losing control. And the likes of Arseblog and Gunnerblog and so many others out there can say all they want about how rosy our current board are but I blame them 100% for the situation we are currently in. There should NEVER have been an opportunity for the Russian or the American to buy so many shares. Dammit man, I understand the Dein situation was a little more complicated but the ITV shares to Kroenke?
I seriously do not want Arsenal owned by some scum bag Russian and the fact that he is such a big shareholder already has me worried. The board have a lock down agreement until April. What then?
All the latest football headlines.
Norman, don’t comment on things you know nothing about.
1. Fiszman was trying to find a suitable buyer for the ITV shares. Dein, sensing an opportunity to steal a march on the rest of the board, ally himself with a powerful stakeholder and provide himself a platform with which to seize power, encouraged Kroenke to purchase the shares.
2. If you knew anything about company law, you would realise that there’s nothing the Arsenal board could have down to have prevented Dein selling his shares. Given that they do not have 75% of the club’s shares, they couldn’t have forced through a change of the company’s article of association preventing Dein from selling his shares to whomsoever he chose.
They asked Dein to sign the lockdown agreement. He refused.
So as well as going behind the collective back of the board, he openly defied them. You can’t have a snake in the grass like Dein still working alongside you. They took the right action in showing the Orange Judas the door.
The lockdown agreement includes the board + friends, taking them over 50%.
Fizsman, Bracewell-Smith, the Carrs and PHW have all made it known that they will continue to hold onto their shares past the expiration of the lockdown.
Kudos to you Norman. You managed to write all that without knowing what you were talking aout.
I suppose this is the great thing about the internet. You still have a voice, even from a position of complete ignorance.
So this group of private individuals should have found £150m that they had sitting idling in a bank account and spent it on shares that they don’t need for a majority stake (and which provide NO return on investment) just so you can be just a little bit happier.
Alternatively the club could have bought the shares back with the £150m that was left over from building the new stadium.
I despair….
What a load of ill thought out rubbish.
1. How on earth could the board stop a third party sale (ITV to Kroenke)?
2. How on earth could the board know that the ego we know as David Dein was going to go behind the board’s back and try to get control of the club via a Kroenke take over?
3. How on earth could the board know that the self styled Mr Arsenal would sell to the first reprehensible billionaire that came along when Kroenke had managed to get a good smell of the coffee and find out what a duplicitous tosser Dein is?
4. Do you actually know anything at all about the board structure and rukes at Arsenal? Your comments about the 50% mark show that you don’t. Try finding out how the club operates and then you might see the truth that regardless of how many shares are available the board is a closed shop so long as they all stay together. Which begs the question why would DF buy back any shares when there is absolutely no need to?
You obviously don’t have a clue about the rules and regulations that Arsenal operate under from the tone of your abuse. Also why are you blaiming anyone other than Dein for the current situation? He went behind the back’s of the rest of the board to Kroenke and as for selling to someone as disgusting as he has…
Don’t blame the board, blame me. I too had the opportunity to buy the ITV shares. Once I had bought the shares, I would have never sold up and I would have supported the board in any hostile takeover scenario.
Sadly I was too lazy and never earned the millions needed to buy such a huge stake in a multi-million pound business.
So please don’t blame the board. Blame me.
You are of course correct. It is obvious that the Board are at fault for not realising that Agent Orange, presumably a trusted board member, was working behind their back.
Agent Orange orchestrated the sale of the ITV shares to Kroenke and then conned Fizman into selling a minor percentage unaware that these shares were also destined to Kroenke.
They are blind idiots, everyone else can see, apart from you,what sort of a conniving, self serving,egotistical, money grabbing megolomaniac Agent Orange really is!!
I think Norman’s taking one hell of a beating here.
Norman, do yourself a favour and delete this entry.
You can pretend it never happened.
Norman if you’re so concerned why didn’t you buy the ITV and Deins shares yourself? You must be an idiot too I think we can safely conlude…
Hope you at least know more about football that you do about money!
G10, you are too magnanimous, it is these sort of threads that keep the headless chikens running around. But you are right, delete the entry Norman and all is forgiven.
So this is what happens when reasonable people are faced with criticism?
Norman’s right, in fact. The Arsenal board could, and should, have made the moves to secure the ITV shares as well as play their cards better with David Dein.
Ralph - you obviously didn’t read the whole article.
G10 - in simple terms, you haven’t said anything that contradicts what Norman has said, except make a lot of noise. congratulations.
I dont know if the board can buy the shares of the so called Alisher Usmanov ,but if it is posible let them buy these shares back to them selves ,i my self am longer trusting Mr DD this guy is like a pain in the arsh of Arsenal board of directors and they should find a solution b4 it not yet late .I love arsenal for two reason ,
1 the history of the club
2 the foot ball they play ,i think it is the best football onn european continent, if any one doesn’t agree with me put a bet and we ask people.
I think what lot of people that including Arseblogger and Gunnerblogger are missing…. is that current board is not big enough or rich enough to own Arsenal for longer term. English football has become too big and they are not rich enough to controll it.
As pointed out above, the board couldn’t do anything when ITV stakes are up for sale. But, the truth is that they simply didn’t had money to buy it.
I agree that with Arsene we don’t need Russian sugar daddy. But, that’s not the point. With no single person that controls +50% of Arsenal, there is no way to block some rich Russian from buying Arsenal. That’s what happend to ManU and Liverpool and likely to happen to Arsenal. I guess that’s why Myles supported Kroneke.
To many gooners, Korenek seems better choice that Russians.
Sorry Ahmed, don’t understand the first sentence.
No matterhow much the board tries to hold on ,they seem to be lossing out the time for change has come and there is no way ,for what has the begeining must have an end. You English Arsenal fans will keep on making noise just like United fans did and in the end loss to this so called ‘Idiots’And in the end will see the light just like them I believe Dein has a vision and he is radical to cahnges in the changing world.
Norman’s right, in fact. The Arsenal board could, and should, have made the moves to secure the ITV shares as well as play their cards better with David Dein.
No, Norman is wrong as has been illustrated in the comments above. That makes you wrong. I’m sure the headline got you a nice few hits but like most of the stuff written about Arsenal on this site it’s ignorant bollocks.
G10 and all you others are too blind to see that Norman is Spot on. We will never get to the heights of man utd or liverpool if someone with big cash Doesnt invest or buy the club.
Calling DD a judas sounds as if you dont know what your talking about yourself, As the Guy has been an Arsenal fan all his life. He made us what we are now. And He found Wenger. What he is doing is in Arsenals Interest, Not his own, Otherwise he would be @ Newcastle right now.
FINAL WORD
I think you need to look at the big picture rather than right now. We wont have Wenger for ever, so we wont get the bargain buys he’s so good at getting. so eventually we will need the Money.
Cheers
Thank you very much for actually making my point for me Raplh, G10. You should go and read over what you wrote and you will see that you have actually put the board in a worse light and even answered Deins reasons for looking for outside investors. Your points highlight that this board has no money. Why was Fiszman looking for outsiders to buy the ITV shares if they were so opposed in the first place?
You are also saying that this board are toothless. Company Law does say that Dein can sell his shares to whom ever he chooses, however there is a small word called tact. My point was that this board had none in the dealings with Dein and they forced his hand. Perhaps with a little more thinking we wouldnt have had a dirty Russian owning a piece of the greatest football club in the world.
Arseblogger, I enjoy your blog very much, its very funny in an alcoholics annonymous kind of way, but we both know your abilities to see a perspective other than your own is zero.
Norman, what a load of crap. Dein is a cut-throat bastard who is trying to destabilise the Club. The Board has behaved throughout with dignity and a certain class. You … you just don’t get it.
Norman, full marks for persistence!
Where is the need for tact when you discover a fellow director cutting the legs from under you?
Regarding the other point, surely the wealth of any individual is irrelevant, it is the wealth of the corporate entity that is paramount?
Bollocksy article through and through.
One thing Dein is saying though that’s being ignored that could be a solution is a share issue. If Arsenal do a share issue they could get a lot more investors while locking in the current ownership structure.
All it would mean is more money coming into the company.
Norman, do you have a spare 60M pounds, why do you think the board has, the board does not put money in or take money out of the club, would you suggest they borrow 60-70M to give to doubleD instead of investing in the club players wise (as in the loan facility) or infra-structure wise( studium, property developement, to increase income streams for the developement of the club i.e nothing in nothing out). The growth of the club, increases the value of the shareholders stake, dead money unless you sell to realise your profits. Double wants to eat his cake and have it. Don’t put any money in besides his stake, cash in all his chips and still run the club on a big salary. Listen, We have the greatest manager and board in the history of the game, in terms of vision and drive. Which manager confronted with the problems we face will have the intelligence and guts to chart a course that AW has. And which board asked to increase its capacity will acquire a brown site and start a property developement business to create the wealth to do it. Real Madrid, Barca, Inter, and AC Milan sniffing around our players in the summer and the american,russian and local billionaires sniffing around our club are a testament to the success of the vision of the greatest club in the world.
This must be the crappiest article I read over the last 25 years. No knowlegde, wrong conclusions, ridiculous concept.
I am a bit surprised that this time around suddenly everyone seems to be contra-Dein - that read completely different during the ‘Kroenke Affair’. Not that they are wrong, but what took them so long to realize that? They should have called the white waggon when he suggested Wembley.
Although I don’t agree with everything Norman said, I DO believe the Board have not exactly helped themselves or the club. Hill-wood is too much of a hot-head to be a shrewd business man. He is always in too much of a hurry to look good to the fans and does not plan his actions. The way he insulted Kroenke was done so to make himself look good and tough to the fans, but now we have a far more dangeous enemy in this russian guy. Between the two i would choose Silent Stan any day.
However I don’t believe we need foreign money and I hope we do not ever sell out. One thing I do agree with is about the David Dein situation. He was the man responsible for bringing Wenger to our club, we cannot forget that. He also had a hand in signing almost every player who is at the club right now, as well as being a good friend of Arsene Wenger. The board did not think before they booted him out. Henry left citing that as one of the main reasons and Wenger “could” leave blaming that as the reason and people would have to accept it. I don;t think he will but the Board were rash and gave him a good reason to doubt what would have been a far simpler decision. Dein is far better to have as a friend than an enemy and the Board’s actioned have turned him into just that. He’s an enemy with means, friends and serious knowledge about the club. He does have a huge ego but so does Hill-wood!! Have we all forgotten how Hillwood almost forced Viera out of the club with his stupid rantings?
I don’t see a problem. Dein has cut off his nose to spite his face and alienated Kroenke in the process. Now it’s tailor made to bring on a friendly Kroenke to defend our position and make a few bob on his investment at the same time, whilst Dein now finds himself screwed out of the *real* profit he could have made sitting on his shares, had he waited a few years.
The Uzbek has robbed Dein blind, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kroenke and Fizzy have been laughing about this since it happened.
Meanwhile, your article is shit.
What a load of Cobblers!
I’m a little confused here. Provided all your statements are correct in the article (which i have no way of finding out conclusively), doesn’t all this ignore the basic fact that DD & the Board have a completely different view on the way Arsenal should be run? Doesn’t matter how much tact & reason you use, if someone disagrees with you on fundamental philosophy i can’t see how the board would have prevented DD from doing whatever he’s done.
The whole concept of ‘keeping friends close & enemies closer’ is irrelevant. You can’t generalise a cliche like that to fit any situation you want. Even the Corleone family suffered serious casualties using that policy.
What would have happened if the board went out of its way to accommodate DD? You’d have one guy holding the rest of the place hostage to his requirements. Asking him to leave & not be party to the board’s strategy is an obvious choice to me in such circumstances.
I think DD threw away the one bargaining chip he had though. What’s to prevent the Russky from backstabbing him now that he has control of the shares? Again i have no idea of the intricate legalese involved in such deals, but my guess is that DD has no power other than what the Russian gives him now.
Superficially, i feel that everything Dein has done uptil now tells me that he would like full control of Arsenal one day & remake the club in his own image for better or worse.
I also don’t want Arsenal to fall into the hands of any megalomaniac billionaire. The current system has worked well for the club so i agree with most of you on that. But to make the current situation out to be something that could have been prevented is unfair.
You cannot predict what’s going to happen & i’m sure the board had some idea that Dein wouldn’t rest just yet, but they’re not mindreaders & they don’t have a crystal ball & how much power do they really have anyway to prevent something like this?
The only realistic thing they can do is to convince the rest of the shareholders that they are doing a good job. Bring in the regular quarterly statments in the black, have a strong financial plan for the club for the next 5 years, chalk out the next steps to pay-off any remaining debt on the new stadium, reassure the fans that Wenger is staying & make sure that he signs another long-term contract (4 yrs would be nice), develop marketing plans to make the club a truly global megaforce in the coming years. In case you haven’t noticed they’ve been doing all of that.
If despite all this the rest of the shareholders want to cash in for big bucks & sell out to the oligarch then let the chips fall where they may. You cannot blame the board for that.
Good God so many idiots.
1) The Arsenal shareholders want to sell. Thats why the Fiszmans reduced their holdings by 1%. That way no one party could block a takeover.
2) The only dispute was to who and by how much.
3) The Fiszmans and Bracewell-smiths and afford to hold onto their shares to ride out a credit crunch. They can take the risk that their holdings will be worth more in the future. Dein could not. He doesn’t have the hundreds of millions the others do.
4) If the credit crunch in this country gets any worse Arsenal shares will be worth much less than they are worth now. Dein sold his holding for less than what ITV sold to Kroenke.
5) Kroenke cannot afford to take us over anymore. The market conditions don’t allow it. And neither do conditions allow a takeover from Usmanov. Thats why he said they are not going to take over.
6) The market would allow a graceful exit by Fiszmans, Nina next year and investment into the club without any takeover. Thats obviously whats going to happen.
Doesn’t matter what bullshit maybe said in the papers in the meantime. As soon as the Fiszmans get their tax exile sorted, they will sell.
Just to add -
I object to the title of this article too. Calling them ‘blind idiots’ seems to show to me that you have no appreciation for the good that they have done uptil now. Fair is fair & i think you should have shown at least a little more respect for them & tempered the tone in your article to suit your arguments instead of spewing invective needlessly.
If you REALLY don’t want to see Arsenal go the Chelski way, then i think grassroots constructive criticism is a good start as any to get people to stop it from happening.
Mark - oh dear. The ‘Danny’s a tax exile’ non-argument. If you check company law and the dates that he moved etc you’ll find that he could have sold his shares at any time in the last six months and not suffered because he’s already been in Switzerland long enough!!!!!
Jeez, what with ‘know nothing’ Norman thinking he’s got an argument (which basically and obviously boils down to Abo-envy and thinking a billionaire will be the answer to anything) and ‘wide of the’ Mark who makes Adebayor look clinical Dein’s fan base seems to have reached it’s natural level.
Norman, i hope you know that if Fiszman had bought those ITV shares, this would have given him a total of 34% of the shares in AFC. Then Fiszman would have been obligated to a takeover bid….The rest of the share holders, from what i know dont have enough money.
Decent article. While its true that the Board should have monitored the situation with Dein’s shares, the fact remains that they were powerless to prevent the sale to Mr. Usmanov. And Mr.Dein has been given a large position in Mr. Usmanov’s company. The villian here is not the board but Mr.Dein who has been trying just every trick to become the chairman of the club. To think that this greedy sob was called Mr. Arsenal…………
Danny the Norway person…Did you see the article in the daily mail about Fiszman holding out until he can get 11000 quid a share? With him as the majority share holder I am evn more worried. If ever there was a seller its Fiszman.
But any wayy, to finish this whole thing off I want to make 2 points.
1- I am an Arsenal fan and I have been for more than 25 years now. Arsenal always comes first in my mind. I am not with DD in any way and like all of you I do not want to see the club fall into the hands of the russians.
2- Since this whole thing started back when Kroenke bought the ITV shares, one thing has become increasingly clear. SOME Arsenal fans like so many that have posted above and some who claim to be many things through their blogs are actually stupid. I mean come on. What you are actually saying is that the board did know about Kroenke and Deins plans but actually chose to do nothing to prevent it. So what does that say. Either they dont care about who owns pieces of the club or they are the stupidest people on this planet.
You are all as stupid as they are if you believe a non-binding verbal agreement is going to stop a takeover. What will you be saying in a year from now when the russian owns everything arsenal. “Oh it wasnt the boards fault. Fiszman is cute and doesnt deserve to be spoken about in such a manner” Fuk that Arsenal. They should never have allowed this ownership to be in the first place. They are so secure in their own ego’s that they really dont care about Arsenal. They are more self absorbed than any other.
Norman: No i did not read that piece. People dont know what Fiszmans intentions are, we can only belive what he says. At least the guy has put in a big effort for the club. So if he sells, then he have helped the club build the Emirates and taken us a step closer to being one of the biggest clubs in Europe. If Kroenke or Usmanov buys the club they will probably be more interested in taking money out of the club and the fans.
And in the words of Fiszman, the board obviously have friends that takes us over 50%. Then it doesnt matter who owns the rest as long as they have the power….
So everyone except you is stupid, Norman?
Oh dear.
It doesnt matter how much “the russian” or kroenke own they cannot buy the club if the board refuse. once some1 owns 29% of the club they can legally offer to buy the rest of the shares BUT the board have NO obligation to accept that offer.
The current board are old fashioned but so is arsenal and its manager. They maybe old fashioned BUT they are not out of touch, these peple are millionaires for a reason, that reason is that they are always one step ahead of the rest.
Stop whinging about who owns the most shares and watch football at its best at the emirates. I genuinely believe Arsenal will win the Premier League and Champions League in 07/08.
Message To Norman: When someone tries to sell their ideas or their product they dont call their potential “customers” or in your case “readers” STUPID. The reason everyone is bollocking you is that you obviously ddnt think this through. This article doesnt come from the heart or the head, if truth be told it comes out ur arse. Next time do some research before you start writing your next article…if that is what i can call this heap of shit.
Premier league is good business. Especially with a club like Arsenal which spends almost nothing comared to other clubs and yet gets the occasional trophy. And this is the reason why we have the Glazers, Roman Abramovich, Peter Gillett, Mr. Thakshin et al. Mr. David also knows the situation with Arsenal and he just cant wait to get on the board. He has tried quite a lot already and the Arsenal board, if they have any foresight should be wary of this character for the next few years at least……