Hallelujah David Conn - Is the Media finally interested?

[USMartin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... enke-board

It is the sensible way for football clubs to be run and what Uefa requires in its financial fair-play rules, but there are some serious problems with the fairness of the self-congratulatory Arsenal "model". Over almost 30 years not one director or shareholder of Arsenal has put a penny into the club itself, while they have made vast personal millions for themselves out of selling their Arsenal shares.

Hill-Wood last week said that as directors, "protecting the ethos and spirit" of the club was "a key responsibility", so they were selling to Kroenke because they are confident he will be a "safe custodian". Secure that they were doing their duty, Hill-Wood banked £4.7m for his shares, Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith £116m and Danny Fiszman, who was terminally ill by then and has since died, £117m for his family.

None of that money is going back into Arsenal, whether to buy and fund the wages of some senior experienced players Fábregas argues they desperately need – that would be contrary to the "self-sustaining model" – or to keep ticket prices the right side of extortionate. It is all for the custodians to keep.

Arsène Wenger's resistance to signing the kind of colonels Fábregas is calling for is said to be due to the manager's own philosophical insistence that he wants to win things with kids. Hill-Wood and his fellow board members, all senior citizens, appear to have left that to the manager over the years, using the club's money to pay down the stadium debt rather than buy players. While sensible, of course, to reduce the debt, that also made the trophy-less club, and the directors' shares, more attractive financially for Kroenke to buy.

Arsenal's status as the club whose way set an example to all does deserve to be challenged. It never was a "sustainable model", which other clubs could follow, if a 60,000-seat stadium, in the nation's richest catchment area – London and the south-east – is what football now requires to be competitive.

Now, though, the model appears to be to hit the fans with another 6.5% ticket-price rise, while the directors, who put no money into the club, pat themselves on the back as they put multiple millions into their own bank accounts.

Let's be clear - the Directors at Arsenal never paid more than 2000GBP for a share, and many cases never paid a penny out of their own pockets as their shares were inherited and bought at pennies on the pound by their ancestors, and they were all already multi-millionaires each some time now.

And I agree - Being rich is no crime. Being sharp businessmen and successful investors is no vice. Being greedy though as clearly appears the case here is no virtue. Least of all if either they acted themselves or allowed others to act to limit spending to help increase the share price.

[skipper]

That explains a lot.

[USMartin]

Not really, but it raises the questions in earnest in the media, and as that happens they will have to start answering questions from the supporters or from the media, and that wuill make advocating the positions we do that much easier.

[skipper]

Not really, but it raises the questions in earnest in the media, and as that happens they will have to start answering questions from the supporters or from the media, and that wuill make advocating the positions we do that much easier.

Oh it does. It explains where our hard earned money goes. To make rich bastards even richer.

[LDB]

Not really, but it raises the questions in earnest in the media, and as that happens they will have to start answering questions from the supporters or from the media, and that wuill make advocating the positions we do that much easier.

Oh it does. It explains where our hard earned money goes. To make rich bastards even richer.

Not a single penny of the money you pay into the club has ever gone into the pocket of a director.

[mrgnu1958]

Lady NINA has been in my taxi...i sniffed the seat.

FACT!

[Glitch33]

Fundamentally flawed IMO.

I own shares in a plc. Investing in shares is a gamble. Some you win, some you lose.

As an investor I don't give them additional money to spend. Equally I don't go asking for a refund if the share price goes down.

The company get income from their consumers to cover their costs and hopefully to make money to reinvest in the company, or take as profits/dividends.

I have to trust the directors and their employees to do their job, protect and hopefully increase the value of my investment.

We don't own the club, we are consumers of a product owned by a privileged few. It is irrelevant how they got their shares and how much they paid for them and what they do with their money.

They have to look after the product or the consumers will not stop paying for it. It is in the shareholders own interest to keep the company fit and well but they don't have to throw more of their own money in.

It is their club, they own it. We are merely consumers.

[QuartzGooner]

Poor article from Conn.

Anyone interested should scroll through the Guardian's comments section for a serious of comments condemning the article.

Conn attacks the directors for making money from share sales.
But all that has happened is shares have changed hands from one rich man to another.

That neither tales money out the club nor puts money into the club.

Only if it can be proved that directors blocked Wenger spending our cash reserves is there a scandal, otherwise the refrain remains the same for Wenger to spend.

[Henry Norris 1913]

how many threads do you need to make?

[TeeCee]

Enough to try to justify his 100% blinkered view of the issues at Arsenal.

Just for you Martin, here is our manager stating yet again that funds are available for a big transfer........
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... ws+Feed%29

[Glitch33]

Enough to try to justify his 100% blinkered view of the issues at Arsenal.

Just for you Martin, here is our manager stating yet again that funds are available for a big transfer........
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... ws+Feed%29

BS to get people to renew their ST's

[USMartin]

Not really, but it raises the questions in earnest in the media, and as that happens they will have to start answering questions from the supporters or from the media, and that wuill make advocating the positions we do that much easier.

Oh it does. It explains where our hard earned money goes. To make rich bastards even richer.

Not a single penny of the money you pay into the club has ever gone into the pocket of a director.

But that's sort of a false argument. It is irrelevant where that money goes itself if it can be used to manipulate the share price to the point that it clearly helped to do.

Say you start a computer product company, but instaed of making your products out of new equaipment you strip old computers you find in junkyards or used compters shops of working parts and sell them as brand new. As long as you get away with this the profits from those savings along will be sufficient to drive your company's value up significantly and to attract people interested in investing in it.

That appears to have happened here to some extent. We put out a relatively cheap product but charged the highest prices in club football to watch it and increased how many people are able to pay those prices to watch. After all in 2003 our share price hovered aroung 3K a share now its just under 12K

[GoonerJim]

Enough to try to justify his 100% blinkered view of the issues at Arsenal.

Just for you Martin, here is our manager stating yet again that funds are available for a big transfer........
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... ws+Feed%29

he says the same thing before every summer transfer window - simple fact is he wont spend.

I for one am really starting to get fed up with paying Champagne prices to watch the Arsenal and being presented with Bucks Fizz instead.

[USMartin]

Fundamentally flawed IMO.

I own shares in a plc. Investing in shares is a gamble. Some you win, some you lose.

As an investor I don't give them additional money to spend. Equally I don't go asking for a refund if the share price goes down.

The company get income from their consumers to cover their costs and hopefully to make money to reinvest in the company, or take as profits/dividends.

I have to trust the directors and their employees to do their job, protect and hopefully increase the value of my investment.

We don't own the club, we are consumers of a product owned by a privileged few. It is irrelevant how they got their shares and how much they paid for them and what they do with their money.

They have to look after the product or the consumers will not stop paying for it. It is in the shareholders own interest to keep the company fit and well but they don't have to throw more of their own money in.

It is their club, they own it. We are merely consumers.

Interesting post. Where I would disagree is this - like Simon Kuper states in Soccernomics football Clubs aren't conventional businesses because even more so than traditional corporations of companies because they entities representing their specific communities and populations. Can a football club be moved outside those communities like any other business? Yes. But as our own history shows, we can't be Woolwich Arsenal anymore from that day forward. As big and rich and world-renowned as manchester United is it will cease to be Manchester United if it leaves Manchester. It may survive and succeed even but try as it might iot will cease to be Manchester United.

Other than that huge caveat about the nature of football clubs as straight-up businesses I agree with you here. The problem at Arsenal is that too many supporters actually believe even now - or want to believe - Arsenal is not like that and its Directors were not like that, and it was in a way that denial of reality that made all this that much easier for them to do and get away with. Too many Gooners really convinced themselves that couldn't and wouldn't happen here, and once they saw that wasn't the case tried to rationalize too much to explain away that their own trust had not been betrayed when it was pretty clear really that was exactly what was happening.

The Board stated on the record as late as 2007 or 2008 they had no intention of selling out - period. That means not Just Mr. Fiszman , but mr Hill-Wood, the Carr Family, and Lady Bracewell-Smith because they weren't just investors they were supporters or perhaps tellingly fans of the club the implication being thery cared about Arsenal the same way we did. Clearly that simply is not and was not true.

I could understand Mr. Fiszman selling out in his circumstance but he could have come clean about that. His health is his personal business but he could have said"I am trying to consolidate my assets now and as none of my family has any interest in working at Arsenal football Club in the future I am selling my holdinjgs and everyone would have understood, if he sold his holdings to another Board member or to soemone interested in buying part of Arsenal but with a history of supporting Arsenal.

And he could have done for about 6K a share instead of holding out for 12K, yes his family would only have made what 87 million instead of 160 million but would that be so bad for them?

[USMartin]

Enough to try to justify his 100% blinkered view of the issues at Arsenal.

Just for you Martin, here is our manager stating yet again that funds are available for a big transfer........
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... ws+Feed%29

he says the same thing before every summer transfer window - simple fact is he wont spend.

I for one am really starting to get fed up with paying Champagne prices to watch the Arsenal and being presented with Bucks Fizz instead.

Very well said. I mean either he's lying and making the club look like liars as he does or he's refusing to spend it and making the club look like liars, and I know that if an employee of mine was making me look like a liar they'd only get the one chance to do it, not four or five or six...or more...

oh and top avater too