In the wake of the #WeCareDoYou letter Josh Kroenke has gone on a charm offensive, writing an open letter to the fans and then granting an interview to several reporters. That interview mirrors what he said in the letter and there is a full transcript available on the Gooners Pod web site (link below).
The interviewer starts out asking about his passion and Josh replies, “I’m not sure how to address my passion, because anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about AFC. I’m over there as much as I can be, and when we’re not there we instill the work to be done with good people.”
I’m not sure how someone is supposed to answer that question. So, free pass there. He’s passionate.
He throws in a bit about the heavy lifting they have been doing over the last year, and again, I’ve got no problems with this. They did have to: retire the old manager, hire a new coach, let go of the head of recruitment, let go of the CEO, promote two guys from within to take over the duties vacated by CEO, moved Freddie Ljungberg into a senior coaching position, and hired Edu. So, no doubt, they have been busy reshuffling the senior staff. He also specifically mentions Edu and his Arsenal DNA.
This is a not-too-subtle response to the #WeCareDoYou campaign. We would like to see someone with Arsenal DNA appointed to the board to act as a check on Kroenke. Edu is a good person and by most accounts a good football director but I don’t know if it’s fair to say he has Arsenal DNA. He only played a few years at the club and if he has Arsenal DNA then he also has Valencia DNA.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but when I think of Arsenal DNA I think of Arsene Wenger, Ray Parlour, Tony Adams, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and folks like that. I don’t know if any of them would want a role on the board or if they would be any good but that’s who I think of.
They ask the passion question again and this time he steps into another of the well practiced lines he’s been using the last few days : “I’m not in this business to make friends, I’m in it to win. If anyone’s ever going to question anything about our ownership, which I view as a custodianship, even though one would say we’re owners of the club, the supporters trust us to be custodians of the values, and that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to win while also respecting the values and traditions of the club.”
This is a line that frustrates me as well. “Respecting the values and traditions of the club”. What does that mean? I suspect it means “we run Arsenal as a self-sustaining club and aren’t going to put any money in” but I’d really like for a reporter to ask him what he thinks the values of Arsenal football club are. This is really the defining question of their “custodianship”. If they aren’t owners and are custodians of our values, please tell me what the values of the club are.
Because I don’t see the values that I hold being upheld as much as I’d like. One of those values, for example, is a sense of community and place. The #WeCareDoYou letter asked about safe standing and improving the ticketing scheme. These are much bigger issues than people think. These initiatives are about improving access for supporters who are passionate about the club but who are priced out of every day tickets.
Increased access and safe standing is a value of the club that I would like to see these custodians address but they don’t. He instead mentions signings.
I have a bad feeling that for many disgruntled supporters this is the case: all they care about is signings. Give us a couple of shiny new players and whelp, that’s that then, what were the “We Care” people talking about again?
Josh is next asked specifically about whether they are only in it to make money. To that he replies that “we’re in it to win it. If you’re in sports to make money, if you’re in sports to make people happy, it’s a tough tough tough business.”
Uhhh.. hold on here. Arsenal football club have been extremely profitable since Kroenke became the majority shareholder over 10 years ago. The club have over £200m cash on hand as of the last accounting. If you’re “in it to win it” then why aren’t we investing that money?
He’s sort of asked that question, though not as direct as I would be (I would ask “why does Arsenal have £200m in cash and what is the plan to use that cash?”) and he answers: “I mean, if we’re going to go into the finer points, I’d have to defer to these guys who are on my right (Vinai) and my left (Raul). I’ve always told them we need to be as aggressive as possible.”
You have been telling them to be aggressive??? That doesn’t square with the bids we have seen for Zaha and Tierney. Bids that have been rejected multiple times because they are structured so strangely or are too low to attract the club’s interest. That is the opposite of aggressive bidding and if you are telling them to be aggressive and these are the bids we are seeing, it doesn’t square. An aggressive bid for Tierney would be a first bid of £25m cash, all up front. I have to think Celtic would have taken that.
Not only that but if we are truly being aggressive, maybe we would spend some of that cash on hand?
Kroenke then tries to explain, what I think they see as the direction of the club going forward: “it’s not who you buy, it’s not how you buy, there’s multiple statements to say how to skin that cat. While we’re not going to be in the market for some of the top players in the world at the moment, while they’re the top players, we’re actively scouting the globe trying to find the next big thing to try to become great at AFC, and not only will be keep them at the club, but we’ll be able to retain them and keep them in the fold going forward.”
Right, which explains why we are buying Saliba and loaning him back. This is a model, one that has been tried in England, with Arsenal. Arsene Wenger’s Fabregas side. We got close to the promised land, but I think the important thing to remember with that team is that it failed because the club didn’t actually build around those talented players.
Kroenke then comes out with his big guns, basically telling Arsenal supporters to be patient and that if we want to see what Kroenke run sports clubs are like, we need to look at the Rams, The Denver Nuggets, and The Colorado Avalanche.
They are good examples in one sense: all three teams are built on a young, exciting team, getting into the playoffs and nearly winning trophies. However, there is a major problem and major difference between those teams and Arsenal; those teams benefit from the franchise system in the USA and the draft.
Franchises means that the value of the club increases no matter what the owners do or don’t do. Franchises also means that the club can literally be ripped out of the heart of one city and move to another. There are massive business benefits to moving NFL and NBA teams out of cities.
The college draft system means that clubs like the Rams can intentionally tank for a few years and then start getting in great draft picks for free and pick up top quality players on almost no salary. There are also salary caps for the clubs and max salaries for the players and drafted players make tiny salaries compared to veterans.
None of that exists in Europe and for Arsenal. The closest analogy to what the Rams did would be when Arsene Wenger was able to sign Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona on nearly a free because of the way that Spain’s laws prevented him from signing an adult deal.
Furthermore, we are awfully late to this “hey we should shop for youths” party. Every top club is buying young. Everybody knows who the top young players are. And top young players are extremely expensive, more expensive than proven veterans in many cases.
If Arsenal are truly going to try to compete in the youth market, well I applaud them. But, yeah, it’s going to be 5 or 6 years before we will see any fruit from that labor. Which is exactly the time frame he says it took to build up the Nuggets and the Rams.
And that’s really his point. Throughout the interview he basically tells us that they have only just started, that this is a process, and that it’s going to take years. In other words, more of the same, but with maybe a slightly new, younger, flavor.
Source: https://www.goonersinusa.com/jk/
I think it’s a result that the letter got their attention so thoroughly. And we’ve got him on the record in response. Well done there.
Patience is an easy ask. Particularly frustrating for those us who were already over-stretched from patiently waiting out Wenger’s too long goodbye. Obviously we have no choice but to be patient. I feel incrementally better about what they’ve done this Summer versus last Summer. Generally, it’s just too hot on the Eastern US to spend the energy being frustrated right this minute.
And, whoo, boy. You wanna see a fanbase that hates its ownership, has no faith in the Manager and seems to be ready to collectively give up following football? Visit a Newcastle forum this morning.
Said it before. I’ll say it again. Josh Kroenke is a tool.
Arsenal have become the Dallas Cowboys of (world) football. Kroenke ownership will do the same thing to Arsenal as Jones’s ownership has done for the Cowboys.
The club valuation will go sky high. The club performance will be trapped in an “almost successful” purgatory. And the majority of the “fans” will be happily fed disingenuous platitudes about “challenging for titles” or somesuch other nonsense.
Only difference is Arsenal ain’t winning any league championships anytime soon.
It’s all my fault…I apologize.
Where is the statement about 200 million in cash coming from? I thought the evidence presented by Swiss Ramble indicated Adrenal did not have that kind of money available.
Aside from that, the widespread frustration with Kroenke over a lack of money and signings isn’t really justified. We spent lots of money over the last few years, problem was it was spent badly by Wenger and Gazidis, on average players (Xhaka, Mustafi, Perez) and terrible contracts (Ozil), while also letting players run down their deals and leave for free (Ramsey).
So, the only legitimate criticism of the Kroenkes is really that they have paid insufficient attention to seeing that the club is run properly. But it’s not quite an open and shut case. I mean, plenty of fans were still alibi-ing Wenger into his final season! So it’s understandable why they felt they needed to give him plenty of rope, even if they were still wrong to do so.
£231m cash on hand: https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1088799612322922496
Arsenal have been hoarding cash and paying taxes on profits rather than investing in the players and the club since Kroenke took over.
Yes, the lack of spending is completely justified: look at the team, 3 seasons in a row in the Spursday League.
This is especially galling because we have cash on hand just sitting around doing nothing.
Well, considering that we have the same amount in debt, it’s not quite as clear as you make it sound. It is also the case that over the past few seasons we have one of the highest net spends in Europe.
It’s exactly as clear as I make it sound. The service on our debt is payable at £20m a season, we aren’t allowed to pay it off early, and we are only required to keep £30m cash on hand for debt service. This club has an astonishing amount of cash lying around.
Didn’t this get revised in Ramble’s latest accounting of our finances? The cash is gone from what I understood. Where it’s gone, that is a great question.
That link is the latest from Swiss Ramble.
Ummm Jan 25, 2019. He had a thread last week that went over finances.
huh.. interesting, I thought I pulled that out of the thread from last week. anyhoo… it’s still £231m. Here’s the link from last week.
https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1145586521891921920
I find it incredibly strange how often people challenge me on this. It’s almost like people just don’t want to believe that the club is literally fucking them over by charging extraordinary ticket prices and then stashing the money away. I get everything from “but if we spent it, it would run afoul of FFP” to “that money doesn’t really exist”.
And it’s not like this is a one-time thing that the club suddenly has a bunch of money lying around. This treasure trove has been built slowly over the years – the club stashing profits every season and even paying taxes on those profits rather than reinvesting in the squad.
It’s weird behavior – both from the club and the fans.
I feel like us supporters are suffering some kind of Stockholm Syndrome or something.
Ok, I stand corrected, I read that last week and missed the message of his post, that the rest of the league had surpassed AFC, not that AFC had burned through its cash.
The austerity measures don’t make sense then. Ramble said last year that spending the cash does not constitute a violation of FFP.
And I guess we could afford Pepe.
Looks like we fought off Spurs on Saliba. That would not have gone down well, I can tell Josh Kroenke.
The guy looks like he hasa bit of Vincent Kompany about him. It’s wild to think that he wasnt born where Arsene strode into this club and transformed it.
Ornstein says he’s staying in France next year. So, if Kos wants out, that means we ain’t getting rid of Mustafi. Yay.
Long term we have to create saleable assets, the way Liverpool did with Coutinho. Instead, we have specialised in destroying asset value, simply through bad contract management. Increasing the value of current assets is as important as injecting money into transfers. Buy young or youngish, sell ruthlessly if you have to, but make the other guy pay.
With Ramsey, Alexis and Ozil, we left more than 100m on the table. Ozil is still here, but who’s gonna buy him? Gazidis should have been fired long before he left.
All that said, all of this occurred on Kroenke’s watch. Belatedly, with the likes of Martinelli, Torreira, Guendouzi and Saliba, theyre looking way down the road.
I agree with all of this.
Gazidis, yes. But a lot of this in on Wenger. I feel he was so intent on getting back into Europe, getting a European trophy, that he would not have sanctioned the sale of any of those three. There’s no disputing in my mind that Wenger had Kroenke’s ear and that was a big problem for Gazidis, so Ivan had to engineer Wenger’s “retirement” with a constructive dismissal essentially – bringing in stats people, Mislintat et al.
The club basically defines its values in its ‘The Arsenal Way’ web page. The question about cash reserves is the most relevant to the prominently stated value of ‘self financing’. The only way they can justify it is through net debt, but that’s dumb. Those cash reserves were supposed to help us in the times we were out of the CL. This has obviously not happened. I wish someone would ask them to explain.
I think you overstate the Edu has Arsenal DNA being in response to the statement. They’ve been pushing this in the media since Sven was let go. That any replacement would either have a personal connection with Emery, or be an Arsenal man. (They got both?)
I don’t mind the explanation of targeting younger players. It’s a plan at least. He also mentioned that not only do we get them before they make it big, but we’ll be able to retain them. Which, he’s saying, is why it’ll be different to the Cesc era.
Cash reserves aside, the other issues I’m concerned with are ‘ our style of play’ and ‘thinking about others’ in light of last season’s events.
On the bright side, we’ve now gone from Raul putting his neck out there to Josh Kroenke (speaking on behalf of his dad too!) doing so. This should mean we get some good transfer business done. What we do after will be the true test.
I really think we are going to struggle to retain young players. I don’t know how much truth there is but isn’t there a rumor that Torreira already wants to leave? And if we play Emeryball (which is awful) and players like Saliba have to play with guys like Mustafi (who will be ruining their careers) we sure won’t be able to retain players.
And his successes in this arena so far are basically giving a max contract to Jokic and someone from the Rams. I do find it interesting, however, that they are playing up the “success” of the Rams and the Nugs. This is a bit odd to me because I think the Rams have a good team now but that could evaporate as soon as Goff starts getting paid $20m. That’s what happened to the Seahawks. And this will be especially true if they stay a good team, good players will all want max deals.
In football, I think this is going to take the form of players trying to do what Ramsey and Ozil did. I bet Bellerin refuses a new deal. Then they will either have to sell (which knocks the price down) or let the player go.
Also, the Nuggets have had just 1 season of relative success in the last 10 years. It’s not like that’s been a model franchise constantly challenging for trophies and they honestly don’t look like a team that I would consider a title challenger.
In that sense, I think we are going to see the same from Arsenal: once in a while top four appearances, maybe a sort of title challenge once a decade, and some finals.
Naming the two franchises as models is weird and concerning. The Nuggets improved under Kroenke’s ownership, hired some good people, were playoff regulars. Then Josh Kroenke took control, made changes and they spent years out of the playoffs until last season.
We’ll sell Bellerin next year after Emeryball raises his value simply through high usage. We’re not making the top 4 this year. I’m expecting 8th, with another deep EL run. This will be Emery’s last season though. He might even get sacked during the brutal December-January schedule, with Freddie taking over.
That should help with a better brand of football, which in turn should make us attractive to youngsters (including our own). For a few years we’ll have to be a stepping stone, but hopefully making the CL will then help us spend the money to retain/build around them. That’s where the footballing challenge lies. Can we be a consistent UCL team again?
So we’re back to where we were before Wenger. No surprise that, considering we’re not using the resources we got from that incredible run.
“This will be Emery’s last season though. He might even get sacked during the brutal December-January schedule, with Freddie taking over.
That should help with a better brand of football, which in turn should make us attractive to youngsters…”
You’ve let your hate for this man over-run any form of reason and rationality on your part. It’s not his fault Arsene left FFS!
Man, can you see the future so as to make such predictions?
Funny thing is if Emery excels as against your negative critique/predictions next season, I suspect you wouldn’t be big enough to come on here and admit you were wrong. You’ll just keep justifying your outrageous claims. And there may not be anybody here to hold you accountable to your words. Anyways, talk is cheap, as they say.
Why are you still talking about Wenger? Is Emery so weak that he can’t be judged on his own work? This in itself is an admission of failure.
I defy you to say the football last year was good. Will it get better? It could. I hope it does. I just don’t believe it will. Interesting though that as outraged you are about me opining on Emery, you feel ok predicting what I’ll be ‘big enough’ to do. It’s cute that you’re so concerned about holding me to account.
Yeah, like we had a hard enough time retaining young players when we were in the Champion’s League every year and had a genuine chance at winning the league.
We don’t have too much to offer a player other than higher wages than they can get elsewhere, which is going to have a knock on effect of making to difficult to sell the players that aren’t a success.
So if we are going to invest heavily in youth, we’re still likely going to have to accept that we’re going to have numerous players earning more than they’re worth that we’re going to struggle to move on because teams they might improve can’t afford them.
It might not amount to an Ozil level problem but it could still lead to issues when it comes to squad quotas.
We had CL but the stadium debt payments were larger in proportion to our income. We need an identity of playing good attacking football. We just about still have some pull because of that reputation.
Every team has contracts they’d rather not have. It’s just how it is. Arsenal complain too much about this. No harm in going for youth and cutting down the wage bill. But the idea that we can’t retain players for fear of a couple of albatrosses is ridiculous for a club with our resources. (I mean from the club, not you)
PS. Only a friendly game with no consequences, but it was so good to see Ozil being allowed some freedom to do his thing against Bayern. Also, the youth can ball! I’m marking that for Freddie.
My beef is the lack of vision on display. Overall, I’m quite ready to concede that we are not going to win the title in the next 5-10 years; the Premier League is Man City’s for as long as they want it. I can tell you already without even getting to the end of the transfer window the top 4;
1 – City
2- Liverpool
3 – Spurs
4 – Chelsea
I should add the CL quarter finals will be at least six of the following eight; City, Juventus, Atletico, Barca, Real, Liverpool, PSG and Bayern.
I think there’s some weakness in the Chelsea/Man U/Arsenal triumverate. It’s possible we squeak past them this season: Chelse just got rid of a fantastic manager and the best player in the League to bring in a dinghole manager and one of the most overrated players ever. Meanwhile Man U are self destructing. It would take an epicly bad Unai emery season to miss out on top four this season.
Maybe.
My assessment of our placement is based on the opponents that we historically always seem to trip up on; Wolves, West Ham, Leicester, Everton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth… they are improving enough to make me cynical about our ability to get more than 20 pts out of a possible 36 against them. I still don’t see Emery transforming the team into road warriors this next season – he’s too conservative, the team mentally fragile.
If Frank Lampard is getting professional advice from his uncle Harry Redknapp, it’s good news for us and the rest of the league. Go Lamps, Go!
those are the wards of amissa,they wil never spent
Arsenal fans noticed you wore a LA Rams t-shirt to an Arsenal event.
Have you ever worn an Arsenal shirt to a LA Rams function?
Are Arsenal equally important as the Rams to you in your portfolio?
Are you now , or have you ever used Arsenal cash reserves, which are the highest in the world football, as collateral to finance other purchases?
These might be questions I’d like to hear him answer instead of the softballs lobbed in this bs interview.
Or, you say Arsenal are a EL club on the CL wages, are you saying then that you have mismanaged the club since most of those wages have been negotiated after Arsenal fell out of the top four?
Good questions!
There’s two things for me which should define your/our expectations. 1) This all happened during Kroenke ownership so for them to ask for patience for their mismanagement is beyond satire, 2) The fact Emery wasn’t replaced for the spectacular collapse demonstrates that true accountability and performance management of the execs is absent. Sadly nothing has changed from the top-down.
arsenal aren’t going to be able to retain their best young talent. if they’r good enough to be winning championships and arsenal aren’t even competing, why would any special young player in his right mind stay at arsenal?
with that, does it make kroenke delusional? nope. his response was calculating. he’s lowering expectations so when the club fails to perform, it’s justified already.
the fact that he’s acting like arsenal are broke is what’s most disturbing. arsenal competed for the championship every season, finishing in either first or second place when they were still working on the highbury budget. the only reason the club moved to the emirates was to create more revenue so that they could financially compete with the biggest clubs in the world in the transfer market. we didn’t forget that.
May I say that football club ownership isn’t very much profitable, so if the kroenke’s want to do profitable business just sell their shares and look elsewhere. Each season competition is sky high, all clubs are spending above their balance almost every season just so they can up one another. While Arsenal are speending meek amount of money they dared to say “we’re in it to win it”, who in bloody hell you’re tryin to fool huh?
hey, we beat bayern 2-1 last night.
don’t like to bring too much good news
good to see arsenal playing again. they looked sharp.