Guardian and the AAA on high alert in talking up Glazer inspired finance deal for dysfunctional Arsenal « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

“Arsenal’s prudence is an open invitation to be gazumped on players” read the headline in the Guardian newspaper in the UK.

It was not a balanced piece – it was opinion.  Nothing wrong with that for newspapers print “news” (occasionally) and “opinion”.   But the Guardian seems to be doing a lot of this just now and indeed just the day before we had “Amy Lawrence: Arsenal are dysfunctional”

Just to make sure we all got the message we had a “City on Alert” headline in which the story opened with: “Robin van Persie has dealt Arsenal a devastating blow”

Now again that might not be too much a deviation for some of the more obvious pro-AAA newspapers in Britain, but it was a bit of a swing for the Guardian, which now seems to be bidding to become the house paper of the AAA.  It is quite a turn around.

According to the opening article, van Persie’s statement, “threw Arsène Wenger’s pre-season plans into turmoil”, although the power of that piece was somewhat undermined by the subsequent  Arsenal have Robin van Persie exit plan, admits scout Gilles Grimandi.

Even the rather confused Guardian have to admit, I hope, that you can’t be thrown into turmoil if you already have a well-executed contingency plan for dealing with the issue.

But notice “admit” – as if somehow it was a secret, a nasty plan no one wanted to reveal, which the Guardian has teased out of the man who effectively runs Arsenal in France.  However I suppose “Grimandi points out that if we had done our homework properly we would have seen that Arsenal were already prepared for a possible RVP move, but we didn’t and got a bit too excited” doesn’t really have the right ring for a headline.

Sadly the desire to knock Arsenal has meant that the really interesting story (embedded in the quote, “it has again become clear to me that we in many aspects disagree on the way Arsenal should move forward,”) was missed.   The notion that players should have the dominant input on their club’s management policy is indeed an interesting and challenging one and one that ought to be fully explored.  Power is moving away from the club owners, managers and directors, and across to the players and their agents.  Now there’s a thought.

Such a story has been around for a while of course (which makes it slightly more odd that no one is getting excited by it) as with the Guardian on 3 March 2010 when they said, “Nani orders Manchester United to buy Miguel Veloso” – a story that ” has put City on “high alert”.

Which leads us to “City on Alert”.

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What does this mean?  Does it suggest that the rest of the time City are sleeping?  Are the top dogs there sitting around smoking dope and drinking booze, until a buzzer sounds in their den with the word “ALERT” flashing on and off, in an attempt to wake them up?  And “High Alert”.  Move them to the top of the Ethiad Tower I suppose.

Not all alerts are high however, for on 5 March 2009 we had “Manchester City alerted as Valencia admit David Silva and David Villa for sale.

Sometimes lots of clubs get the alerts as when “Hangeland has had scouts salivating, with Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City alerted”   Sometimes the City is not the City but The City as with  City on alert for United takeover bid  (17 Feb 2004) when Manchester United have been officially placed in an “offer period” by the Takeover Panel.  Confusing isn’t it.

As for the Dysfunctional story, this one tried out the notion that

a) Arsenal are owned by two billionaires who won’t talk to each other

b) They are therefore dysfunctional

c) “It is hard to see how Arsenal can ever make serious progress while they are so dysfunctional from an ownership point of view.”

So, let’s see where this one goes…

“These days, as far as the Arsenal fans are concerned, you either back Kroenke and the status quo”.   Not really.  The fact that Usmanov is there coming up with ideas that have just been used by the Glazers at Man U as a way of raising finance is neither here nor there since he has no power.  What’s more if he does buy those last dozen shares and go for a full scale bid he knows that Kronke won’t sell.   So he snipes from the wings – a bit like the Guardian really – which is probably why the Guardian has declared itself pro-AAA and thus pro-Usmanov.

And it is here we see the Guardian writers earning their crust – and they speak of “The ownership struggle”  when there is no struggle.   George Orwell, where are you when we need you?

The Guardian continues that the issue “would certainly be a less divisive issue if Kroenke at least sat round a table with Usmanov” – which then would of course give them another City on High Alert story in which imaginary people would have imaginary red lights buzzing.

But Kronke doesn’t want to talk to Usmanov, any more than Arsenal used to consult with Rangers when Rangers owned shares in the club.   No more than Woolwich Arsenal went scuttling off to Tottenham Hotspur when Tottenham owned a share in the club.  No more than Sir Samuel Hill-Wood consulted majority shareholder Sir Henry Norris Sir Samuel had taken over the chairmanship.

And that is no boring old history – that is during the Chapman era.

History in this sense is informative.  Henry Norris bought Arsenal and cleared the debts in 1910.  Then  he offered shares in the club so that the people of Plumstead could buy their local team.  Few responded, so he retained power and moved the club to Highbury where it had a much greater chance of financial sustainability – and his actions were a roaring success.  He built the most amazing ground in the country, and brought in the best manager.  That’s what you do with power.  You use it.  (If you want to know more, read “Woolwich Arsenal: The Club that Changed Football”)

Now here’s another Guardian AAA comment.  “Few teams win without people pulling in roughly the same direction. This unhealthy situation only increases the pressure on Arsène Wenger and the players to perform well. The minute they don’t, the daggers will be drawn.”  Ah, I see, that would explain our failure under Chapman then.

Predicting disaster is an AAA ploy.  But the fact is that Wenger has stability that managers at Chelsea and Tottenham can only dream about.  Wenger has the financial propriety that Sir Alex Ferguson has to manage without.  Wenger has a 15 year history that Man City can’t even imagine.

The fact is that the Guardian runs the story backwards.  It doesn’t matter what noise Usmanov and his supporters on the Guardian and in the AAA make, Arsenal has a majority shareholder, and a financially sustainable model, that is about to get better and better as the new marketing deals come on line as the front-loaded arrangements that took us to the Ems come to an end.   If you want to see Arsenal’s finances grow, just watch the new shirt deal arrive!

Here’s another one.  “The board has a very different atmosphere to the old days, when the monthly meetings at Highbury saw a group of directors who were all lifelong fanatics discuss everything with the aim of trying to pass any motion unanimously.”

Clearly the writer has never read the book by Arsenal manager Leslie Knighton in “Behind the scenes in big football” written in 1946.   Clearly the Guardian writer has never looked at reports of the Arsenal AGMs during the Chapman era when the chair regularly had to stop the meetings because of disorder, and where the police were in attendance to eject shareholders who got too excited.

The Guardian continues: “The current board feels less democratic in that most of the old school directors no longer wield any real power, having sold out to Kroenke. In the office buildings around the Emirates Stadium, the place is increasingly run like a big American corporation.”

So what is the evidence of this?  Would one of these big American corporations of which they speak actually arrange a situation in which the CEO – the top man in the whole show – gives up 90 minutes in the working day to talk to a regular supporter like me about how we can celebrate the club’s history?  Oh come on!

“Arsenal’s intention is to sit tight and hope the debate fuelled by Red and White blows over,” says the Guardian, fuelling the excitement of the AAA.

Again it is said with no evidence, it is merely said on the basis that if said enough it must be true and Arsenal are acting stupidly.   The reality is Arsenal have a model which of course allows Mr Usmanov buy shares and allows him to put his Glazer inspired no-dividend share model on the table, but which keeps the power in the hands of the man who actually owns the club.

It is called the capitalist model of running businesses and it is doing one thing brilliantly.  It is keeping the Glazer inspired no-dividend share deal at bay.

Personally I think that’s a rather good thing.

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