COPS in Highbury (BADDD BOYS! Whatcha Gon' DO?)

[USMartin]

Why would the Board back a dividend when they no longer own any shares?

As a thank you to Kroenke? Don't think so. They've just fucked him over by withholding transfer funds for years, which has lead to us becoming uncompetitive. If they've fucked him over once, wouldn't they do so again?

I can give you 5.7 million reasons Mr. Hill-Wood and the Board would do that. But I know no one at Arsenal ever thinks that way right

In all seriousness if that is necessaruy and the Board were to as you suggest fines he sells to usmanov and David Dein returns and humilaites peter HillWood by kicking out of his father and grandhather's seat on the Board. Then Mr Kroenke splills the secrets of went on inside the club and possiblyhow the previous Board chose torsell to someone who couldn't afford the club and risk endangering its survival out of spite( not wanting to sell ito Usmanov and Dein) and greed (initially deciding to sell at all) and anything but Arsenall's best interests, destroying the legacy and reputation of anyone associated with this set of events (though I can imagine a few people willing to understand what they did and why somehow).

Besides as you remember when it suits you my bad

Mr Kroenke owns the club and can just give them the boot anytime and appoint a board who will vots as he wish. Yes people we will know what he wants to do then but they will also know hwat the Board was actually doing all this time and they won't risk that.

[USMartin]

USM I don't think you want a definitive answer about the board. Whatever we say you will twist and turn like a twisty turnny thing and come out with some long paragraph that is so long that we lose track of your actual point.

Actually this is kind of correct.

All I ever wanted to was for us to make sure that we didn’t just let this sort of thing happen, especially once there became real reason to question the Board’s honesty about what it it was doing and why, which was when the Board sacked David Dein for his involvement with Stan Kroenke but then welcomed Stan Kroenke into the club instead of rebuffing him altogether. It just raised serious questions about what they were doing and why and whether it was in the Club and the Team’s best interests.

Initially I simply thought the main problem was that our Board frankly was out-of-step with the modern business of football and dealing with the modern footballer and that some on the Board frankly displayed a genuine contempt for players. I think you know what and who I am talking about here, but this peaked in the Ashley Cole fiasco in my mind.

As I say this all changed with the entire sequence of events surrounding David Dein’s departure and Stan Kroenke’s simultaneous arrival at Arsenal.

I think the problem is that even then too many Arsenal supporters (and would confine this to Arsenal supporters because I haven’t seen this really at any other club)are uniquely conditioned to trust the Club and specifically the Board without exception and show a loyalty to the Board unseen at just about any other club. This loyalty often makes objectively analyzing the Board’s actions and any potential motives behind them impossible for many Gooners.

That is not to say simply it’s impossible for these individuals to conclude the Board have acted inappropriately (if that is the case) but I think certain mutual associates have demonstrated this here in this thread, even considering the possibility or raising questions of it to themselves never mind the club is just about impossible for them to do.

The problem is compounded on my part by my own frustration at something I find frankly impossible to understand (this reluctance to look after the club’s interests as I see it, and my resentment of constantly having my credentials as a supporter questioned and facing torrents of insults obscenities and threats for simply worrying about things that the facts suggest have or may have happened and are not in Arsenal;s best interests because people don’t want to think the Board could act contrary to Arsenal’s best interests.

I won’t just let people attack my character or abuse me like that as you have probably figured out

But clearly emotions on both sides of this debate are preventing us from doing what should have all been doing all long, simply showing a protective interest in what was happening and how it affected Arsenal, if only because that might have made sure enough money was invested into the team to avoid what in fact has happened to the team. Look at United - even though anti-Glazer sentiment was so overwhelming that a whole new football club was formed, now the fact the Glazers made sure United had the resources to win silverware regularly resistance to their ownership has diminished over time. Would they have made those resources to win those trophies available if the United supporters trusted them without any question? I mean what if United supporters decided to truat the Glazers over Ferguson back in 2005?

[redstevo]

You still haven't answered


who's on first base?

[redstevo]

You still haven't answered


who's on first base?

[USMartin]

1)Yes the old board members made money out of selling their shares.

Nothing at all wrong with that. We are not Marxist-Leninists here (I went through a phase, but that is for another day…). However given that we are dealing with people who already comfortably well-off and often millionaires and that none of them ever paid more than 2.5 K a share, and many of whom never paid a penny for their shares and none of whom put a penny back into the club and team itself to anyone’s confirmed knowledge was pushing the share price in the manner they quite apparently did (any way you look at it) really necessary? Was it essential to their own or their family’s financial security or survival? Especially if to do it they withdraw investment in the football team because of the Highbury re-development and then acted to withhold investment after its completion?

2)Yes perhaps in hindsight it wasn't such a good idea to rebuild highbury themselves.

As you’ll find out later if you haven’t already I can’t think like a traditional investor – though this really has nothing to do with Arsenal actually. But I think anyone who does would not share that conclusion at all. From a shareholder perspective Highbury Square was an almost unqualified success. The project made over 100 million GBP in profits for Arsenal Holdings and over 30 million more than selling the property to developers.

Even the one qualification the concerns over meeting the scheduled loan repayments which saw the share price decline steeply in 2009 was offset in 2010 whern the loan was paid off in full on time which saw shares again increase in value all the way from 6500 GBP in 2009 to 11700 GBP during the take-over by Mr., Kroenke. I seriously doubt any Board member regretted this decision for one second because even in 2009 their paper loss was still such that they were making huge profits if they sold at 6500 and would even have dome quite well selling as low as 4000. Would Gooners regret their decision? To the last man or woman just about. Would the Board? Frankly I can’t see it at all thinking purely as an investor.

[USMartin]

3)Yes perhaps the board did withhold monies from Wenger

It is certainly possible perhaps even probable that this happened. And maybe just maybe if we had simply shown the slightest bit of skepticism when it became apparent that their claims did not mach to the facts as we could see them maybe they would not have done this or would not have done it as much . If we had simply not trusted them blindly initially and then ignored our misgivings as they arose, maybe they would not have felt they could do so with impunity.

But the worrying thing now is while most people want to dismiss this niow as abncient history – it simply isn’t not with Stan Kroenke refusing to rule taking dividends which would help pay for his takeover of the club, it isn’t ancient history by a long way especially not when he ignores the concerns of those willing to raise them and makes mis-leading comments about his intentions very similar to those the Board that sold him made to supporters throughout the period leading up to the club’s sale.

And the scary thing is I sense many Gooners may actually realize they made a serious error by not standing up earlier and raising reasonable questions about all of this, and some would rather make the same mistake again that admit they actually made it in the first place. Is absolving themselves or easing their bruised egos and embarrassment worth another 5 years or 10 years or more of the pain and hurt of the last 5 years?

[USMartin]

]4)They had every right to sell out when they wanted.

This is the best, most objective, and soundest defence of the Board there is period. There is no real argument against it. It is (was) their company and they can do with it whatever they wish.

However, just because you have there right to do something that does not automatically make it the right thing to do. Earlier I pointed out my issues with how they pushed the share price as possible when in fact this was in no way essential to their or their family’s financial or personal well-being. I would say the issue was not what they did but how they did it and how much they did it for, and how little regard they had for people who respected trusted and even loved them for what they had done and been doing for Arsenal they showed in simply wanting even more than they really ever needed for themselves. For simply wanting even more period.

Also just as they have every right to do what they did when they wanted, and some might argue how they wanted they also had every right to be held accountable for the consequences of this for the club and specifically the team at Arsenal and not to have people lying and obfuscating at every opportunity in their defence out of some warped sense of loyalty, when they repaid by cheating those supporters and lying to their faces at every opportunity about what was going, no matter why it was going on. They could have behaved with the genuine honour, decency, integrity and class as they did this that most supporters dubiously still insist they were. And whatever the reason ultimately clearly they were not on numerous occasions.

We don’t have to like what our Board did or why they did or may have done it just because they are our Board and are somehow infallible as such just as they didn’t have to do the way they did for as much as they did.

[USMartin]

5)They have made a profit from the property side of the company

Yes, and the issue is whether they withdrew funding from the football team to do this, and again was that essential, was the extra money they made essential and justified not only letting the team decline and causing so much pain and hurt and ultimately frustration and anger and frankly misleading us about this as they did it all along? Was it really worth it, and if it wasn’t why not just say we made mistake and invest some more money to fix it.

6)Wenger must be a willing partner in this.

Agreed but I think people deliberately mis-read what that means here to try and make him equally or primarily at fault with the original decisions and the motives behind them that brought all this originate solely inside the Arsenal Boardroom. Does that absolve the manager of his complicity? Absolutely not.

But too many Gooners read his complicity as absolving the Board of theirs and that is not simply equally inaccurate but is completely wrong unfair and frankly dishonest to conclude.. And just as we wanted to trust the people to run the club in the right fair and honest way we ourselves. should want to behave the same way even if its not the easy thing to do.

I don’t think that is happening at all in how many people not simply unfairly or inaccurately try to portray this simply as the manager ignoring the Board’s wish to spend more year after year but how people try to ignore the Board’s behavior entirely as the innacurately or disingenuously portray the manager’s. I do think the truth should matter and matter to us, after all.

[USMartin]

When push comes to shove and you look at it from a basic level what have the board done wrong. Failed to ensure that Wenger and his team have the right equipment(players etc) to win a trophy, that is what it cones down too. As far as I see it you can look at that two ways sheer stupidity in not investing in the short term sucsess of the team or investing in the long term sucsess of the club.

I think the whole long-term short term issue is far cloudier with the Baord selling the club as they have especially if they sold it to buyer who could not afford to pay for the club out of his own pocket . I think if the Board were to vote paying out dividends so Mr. Kroenke could repay the creditors in Germany who financed this takeover I think it could be argued quite rightly the Board had no regard whatsoever about the Club’s long-term future in how it had acted through out this

At the moment Arsenal have a manageable debt. Future revenue increases from shirt deals. A manager who seems happy to work with the board within it plans. If and I know it's a big if back in 1997ish when they first started thinking of moving, they knew of the change in the financial structure of clubs in the PL would they have moved? I think not If DF had not become so ill would he of sold his shares? I think not but these things happend. If we had won the PL in the past 6 years would you be making such a fuss about the board? I think not

On your first question I think we still would have moved and should have moved as deeply as I regret having to leave Highbury ever even now thinking about it. But I also think that many of the issues we al are so affected by never would have concerned us at all had we simply sold Highbury as was originally planned or at least that was what everyonbe including the media was led to believe.

The second question is more curious maybe, and harder to answer. I think though we should consider this. Whether we know that answer or not, that doesn’t explain or justify the rest of the Board selling out and waiting to push the share price as they did whether they sold earlier or later. They weren’t buying groceries at Tesco with this money. Were they? Also Mr. Fiszman did sell a third of his shares back in 2008, beforer anyone was aware of his unfortunate circumstances> Was he aware of then ? Who knows?

But had he simply announced he had to resign resign or simply had chosen to and because he had no heir in place ready to take his seat on the Board he had to sell on no one would have objected at all I don’t think. But I think its clear this was an arranged series of sales and Mr. Fismzan’s deteriorating health may have sped the timing of the sale up but I doubt at all that if he was alive he and the rest of the Board do not sell

On the third question you are absolutely correct – if we win some trophies and don’t feel as though the team was broken up and inadequately for no clear good reason (I’ll be polite here)I could care less what the Board do or how much they make doing it.

The problem we haven’t won anything and in fact if you take out 2008 have been on a slowish and subtle but steady decline all the way back to 2006 and if anything the decline since 2008 has been sharper and steeper and the worrying thing now is we look further from winning the Premier League or Champions League now than in 2008 and maybe than at any time back to after 2000., and unlike then we look more like weakening than strengthening too often. And still Peter Hill-Wood says the Board do not care whether we win silverware or not almost every year.

But like I said, if they just did like the Glazers did and put some money in the team simply to win things or just sincerely try to win silverware I think no one care to question anything at all whether about how the Manager or the Board are doing the job or why.

[USMartin]

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[stg]

So to you the Arsenal board are in a no win situation unless they basically did it or do it your way.

I am now wondering if the Arsenal board got themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in all this.
Back in the late 90's when they first wanted to move they had a plan move to a new bigger stadium. The plan was put together and work on finding a position for the ground started, this was found initial costings looked good and the progress was started. Then came problems with planning, the council, TFL etc putting the price up by 100 million. At around the same time Chelsea started thier spending spree the goal posts had moved.

DD seeing this happening started his involvment with SK, the rest of the board either stuck thier heads in the sand or thought that RA at Chlesea would be off in a few years and things would just go back to they way thing were before.

Now this is where I think they we caught in no mans land, would they a) stay they way they were b) all sell out to one man or c) hedge their bets on a bit of A & B

I think that with what has happend with the board over the past 10 years it seems to me that their was a divide within the board and probably a 3 way splin between A, B & C and with a lot of internal fighting we have landed up with C.

It depends on your own personal thinking on which way you thought it was best for the club to go down. The problem now is with the money Man city have, Man U's spending spree aparently underwriten by the Qataries, Chelseas continued investment and L'poos new found wealth Arsenal are again caught in no mans land.

Do we a) sell out totaly to one man in the hope he bank rolls us or b) stay as we are and hope that we can build a team on what to the other big teams is a limited budjet and hope that the money drops out or the big money men get fed up and move on to the next big thing

[Henry Norris 1913]

marty posted 6 times in a row

I think your schizophrenic

[LDB]

Seriously. Go and take a lie down.

I would bet my life that not a single person read all of that. Heck, i would wager a fair amount that nobody got to the end of the first post.

[frankbutcher]

Verbal diarrhoea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[I Hate Hleb]

Seriously. Go and take a lie down.

I would bet my life that not a single person read all of that. Heck, i would wager a fair amount that nobody got to the end of the first post.

Good thing that there were no takers because, alas, I did!! The sacrifices I make for this forum, eh?