Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

by Richard Bedwell

When they are seeking to raise large sums of money on the financial markets businesses tend to take on experts to advise them on how to present themselves to those markets. What to say, how to say it and, of course, to whom that message needs to be relayed are all part of that advice.

Initially those message recipients are the analysts who specialise in certain areas (oil, retail, football etc.). Their word carries huge weight with the people who actually have the cash burning a hole in their pocket and who need to be persuaded to lend it.

When Arsenal went through that process around ten years ago they were able to present themselves as a long established and respected brand with long serving executives with a proven track record of success in running a profitable business in a highly competitive field.

Although some of those executives were fairly long in the tooth others were relatively young and could reasonably expect to be around for, what was at the time, the foreseeable future.

Other than the sad demise of Danny Fitzman and the departure (once Ashburton Grove was fully up and running) of Keith Edelman, all of the key people have indeed stayed in place and they have continued to keep a firm hand on the tiller.

Arsenal were able to place before those analysts, not just a long season ticket waiting list, but a great record of success on the pitch lead by a manager who was only 52 and who was seen to be everything that a modern, progressive, football manager should be. Highly qualified in both football and economics as well as being fluent in five languages.

The sponsorship opportunities of a brand new stadium were strong and money flowing from those opportunities available in significant chunks upfront – thus reducing the size of the loans required. Even the land associated with the old stadium had the look of being prime real estate. The analysts would have lapped it up.

And now there’s Tottenham seeking to do very much the same thing – except ten years later, in a very different financial climate, based in a very much less attractive area of London and with a very different manager.

Taking their shares off the market ‘to make it easier to raise money’ was just one card they decided to play. The managerial situation is another. Redknapp is thirteen years older than Wenger was when Arsenal approached the financial market, with no history of consistent success on the pitch, no obviously successful youth development scheme established to help fund the future and a declared (under oath, in the High Court) inability to satisfactorily read or write.

Even being up in said Court and needing to protest innocence of wrongdoing in a financially related matter was yet more muddying of yet more waters. The analysts, whose opinion is both expensively garnered and vital to investors, would not be at their most optimistic – especially when they came to compare the Tottenham offering to that which has become the template for all such deals.

‘You can’t change history’ you can hear them say over the second bottle of claret but you can at least attempt to change the future to make it look more like Arsenal’s. ‘Mr. Redknapp’, they might have said, will need to be replaced with someone of similar stature on and off the pitch. This manager will need to be instantly successful and be given a long term contract in order to reassure us that our investors will not be upset by the continuation of the Clubs’ revolving door policy of the past. Having a wealthy owner to ‘guarantee’ payment of the mortgage is not enough given both the new FFP regulations and his past record of never funding so much as tea and biscuits at half time.

In short, they might have said over the third bottle, Spurs have got to become as much like Arsenal as they can and the Spurs manager has got to be as much like Arsene Wenger as they can get.

Trust me on this, the City is very conservative in such matters. The people they are lending to have to be right and numbers have got to add up now and for the long term, otherwise there will be no loans – at least not at interest rates that anyone is going to be happy about committing to.

So we come back the question of who can replace Harry who meets the requirements of the City and its investors.

AVB certainly looked like the real deal before his man management skills were brought into question at Chelsea.  Tottenham could make an attempt at curing that problem by completely clearing out the old guard at Spurs so that there is a new, AVB created, squad with complete loyalty to him. But that costs money – lots of it – and it involves a great deal of change. As I’ve said, the City doesn’t like revolution even if it’s obviously needed.

So we wait with baited breath because, like it or not, the future of Tottenham has a major bearing on the future of Arsenal.

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