It’s a day that most Arsenal fans have secretly had recurring nightmares about. Stan Kroenke, the American popcorn king and razzmatazz specialist, is all set to purchase the shares of Alisher Usmanov’s for around £600 million.
This gives invisible Stan total control and enables him to remove Arsenal from the stock exchange and gives him the power to purchase any remaining shares.
It also allows him to pay himself management and consultancy fees and could mean that the club is saddled with astronomical debt.
Fans, including myself, fear that Arsenal will return to the days where they were known as a selling club because they were crippled by £360 million debt of building a new stadium.
It’s all a bit deja vu and concerns are growing that Arsenal’s decline will continue, with Unai Emery forced to recruit from the academy, under the instructions of the dark lord, Ivan Gazidis.
For all his faults, former manager Arsene Wenger opposed Gazidis at every opportunity and resisted any moves that he thought may harm the club but even the Frenchman would have been powerless to resist this latest twist in an ongoing power struggle.
Many fans, including myself, saw Usmanov as a guardian. The only one capable of preventing Kroenke from making Arsenal a financial commodity, instead of a much-loved football club.
It’s rumoured that Gazidis will also move on in due course when Kroenke’s son Josh, takes charge. So, it will be a family affair, with no accountability or transparency for the Americans to do what they wish with and the fear is that Arsenal will be used as collateral for other business ventures in the Kroenke empire.
