Arsenal Day, and the vultures are circling.

Arsenal Day, and the vultures are circling

By Tony Attwood

It is extraordinary how things come around all at once.  Today there are a lot of people asking for Mr Wenger to go, claiming that although he did well at the start, he is not doing well enough now.

And yet no matter how you analyse the figures, he is our best ever manager.  He has achieved more than Chapman, and even if we break the two managers achievements into two groups – the “failure” years and the “success” years, Mr Wenger has achieved far far more in his “failure years” by keeping us near the top, than Mr Chapman did during his “failure” years.

So the argument is that our best ever manager is not good enough.  It is an argument – but it seems to put an awful strain on the manager.  It seems to be argued that to survive at Arsenal you now have to do better than all the 25 managers before him.

Meanwhile we have the Telegraph story which suggests that Stan Kroenke is guilty of weak stewardship of the club and that he might accept a bid for the club.  To sweeten the deal, the Telegraph reported that “there would be substantial transfer funds made available to transform the club into a major force in European and world football. There would also be a pledge to reduce ticket prices at the Emirates Stadium”.

Oh and there would be an “attempt to recreate ‘some of the feel of the old North Bank’ at Highbury.  Although they don’t say how they could do this (bearing in mind that the all seater situation at the ground is due to government legislation and nothing else.

So the people involved would buy up all the shares – which would mean I would lose my chance to attend AGMs but would make a nice little profit on my Fanshare holding.   Mr Kronke would make £400 million give or take a few million.

What is interesting is that this all comes on what the Arsenal History Society calls Arsenal Day.

That day is 4th March, and is named because it was the day that it was officially confirmed that Arsenal were going to move to Highbury.  All of Tottenham’s objections had been heard, voted upon and rejected by the League, and Arsenal were clear to move.

Had Arsenal not moved 100 years ago, the club would have died.  Bottom of the league and with crowds that could never generate a profit, the club would have gone bust for a second time in three years had the move to Highbury not happened, and this time there would be no coming back.

The reason it survived was because at that time Arsenal had a man in charge who loved and valued the club – Henry Norris.  He risked his entire personal fortune firstly to take the club out of administration (paying every creditor in full as he went) and then to build a new stadium.

Such largesse may not be commonplace today, and I have no idea what the current owner’s intentions are other than what I heard him sat at the AGM, to the effect that he would be here for the long haul.

But what is interesting, given the debate on this and other sites about Mr Wenger’s future, is that the Telegraph article on the takeover actually says, (and I quote in full)…

Any takeover would inevitably raise questions over the future of manager Arsène Wenger, although the Frenchman is understood to be highly-regarded by the consortium They do not want to lose his football knowledge and want him to remain at the club.

The article goes on to say that these new potential buyers are “well aware that the last trophy won was the 2005 FA Cup and that Arsenal have become less of a rival to the Premier League’s top clubs. They believe that the club have settled for relative mediocrity.”

What is not in the article is how the New Arsenal would cope with FFP – whether they would simply sail ahead like Man City and Chelsea, and presumably ultimately sue Uefa for refusing them entry to the Champions League, or whether they have some other scheme in mind.  It would have been nice to know.  All we get is, “Given the nature and structure of the funding, the bidders say they are confident they will still be able to comply with FFP.”

So its, “trust me, I’m a banker.”   Or perhaps, “Trust me, this isn’t Liverpool.”  And of course each can make up his/her own mind.

A bid source told Telegraph Sport: “Arsenal is at a pivotal position at the moment. The fear is that the club is facing a cycle of decline like Liverpool. From our point of view it is the perfect moment to make this bid because at this moment in time you can still genuinely justify this extraordinary valuation on the club.

“We will not bid for Arsenal if they go into decline. Kroenke and Usmanov will not get this kind of valuation if Arsenal do not succeed and will not get this kind of valuation ever again.

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So just as those of us who have an interest in Arsenal’s history celebrate the day on which Arsenal proved the world wrong by coming up with a new survival strategy that worked, so we find another group telling us to trust them with the club’s future, because they have it worked out.   They don’t quite want to tell us how, but hey – trust me. I know.

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Of course there are many people who believe that FFP will never happen, and that Arsenal should join Manchester City, Chelsea, PSG and the Russian clubs with building a club on Russian or Middle Eastern money.   But in the end it is a matter of belief.

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And I guess that is why having debates on the subject are so difficult.

The books…

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
• Royal Arsenal: from the Common to the Manor.  Coming next.

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