So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (22 page)

Neill, like Mee before him, had inherited some remarkable young talent, and once again good timing presented him with David O’Leary, Liam Brady, and Frank Stapleton, all approaching their peak years. Slowly, the old heads were moved on, and a vibrant side took shape around the talented Irish trio. Macdonald survived the cuts, but sadly not a dodgy knee. With Howe at his side, Neill turned things around to such an extent that Arsenal reached three consecutive FA Cup Finals, and their second European Final, in the Cup Winners Cup. That only one of those was won remains a mystery to this day. That Arsenal side should have achieved more, and probably would have done had two of the leading lights not have been lured away. Like the double side a decade earlier, the keystones of the side were lost. Liam Brady had been open about his desire to test himself at the highest level: in those days that meant Italy. In the wake of our double Final defeats in 1980, Liam joined Juventus, where he would win back-to-back Serie A titles. More controversially Stapleton departed for a huge pay rise at Old Trafford a year later. Within eighteen months Neill was also heading for the exit door, having failed to adequately replace the two Irishmen and Macdonald’s goals. Don Howe finally moved up to the big job, but later reflected that this was the time he stayed at Arsenal when perhaps he should have left. He lasted slightly over two years and left when it became known that Arsenal had offered his job to Terry Venables. That was the closest that the club came to bringing in another ‘outsider’ until the appointment of Bruce Rioch in 1995.

When Venables turned the club down, George Graham, a double-winner under Bertie Mee, returned to Highbury as manager in May 1986. Like his old boss before him, he cleared out what was perceived to be the old guard and promoted a fine crop of youngsters, added some quality and experience from elsewhere, and instilled a degree of discipline and spirit that brought the club another spell of success. That blueprint yielded almost immediate rewards. Graham became the first Arsenal manager to land the previously cursed League Cup in 1987 when an Ian Rush strike was overturned by two goals from Charlie Nicholas. Although Luton would heap more misery on Arsenal supporters in the Final a year later, Graham was slowly bringing together possibly the most talented group of young players the club has known, and supplementing them from shrewd signings from clubs large and small. League championships were secured in 1989 and 1991 with a side famed for defensive impregnability, but like the side in 1971 it didn’t really get the credit it deserved as an exhilarating attacking force on occasion. Like their illustrious predecessors, Graham’s Gunners too developed a strong team bond. That ‘us against the world’ mentality meant the side could overcome the deduction of two points in their second title-winning season. Only Chelsea at Stamford Bridge prevented Arsenal from going an entire League season unbeaten that term.

The arrival of Ian Wright heralded an era where the club once again impressed predominantly in cup competitions. In 1993 Arsenal became the first club to land the domestic cup double, defeating Sheffield Wednesday at Wembley in both. A year later European glory was tasted for the second time when a much-weakened Gunners side ground out a single goal triumph against Cup-Winners Cup holders Parma. If you had mentioned to those of us who enjoyed the intoxicating atmosphere of Copenhagen that George would be gone within a year we would have laughed at the suggestion. In truth though his powers were already on the wane, and his transfer dealings would provide the ammunition to fire him so controversially.

As with Bertie Mee, it could be argued that George struggled to rebuild his best side. When you consider his first five signings were Groves, Smith, Winterburn, Richardson, and Dixon, whilst his last five were McGoldrick, Schwartz, Hartson, Kiwomya, and Helder, perhaps that viewpoint is easy to appreciate. That doesn’t detract from the pleasure and success both brought to supporters who had been deprived of silverware for a long time. The Mee blueprint was cast aside with George’s departure. Bruce Rioch was recruited from Bolton, and lasted but a year before Arsene Wenger was handed the reins. In these days of huge television contracts, huge wages, and massive commercialism, it is doubtful anybody would take the risk of appointing from within. Big clubs these days demand big name managers, rightly or wrongly. However it is hard to deny that having a degree of continuity, and trusting the management of the club to men who understood what it was all about from the inside, was a demonstrably successful approach for almost sixty years.

***

David Faber, otherwise known as Goonerholic, was born eleven months after Liam Brady, and therefore arrived at a time when all the footballing genius for the era had been exhausted. He has quietly followed Arsenal home and away ever since.

20 – STAN KROENKE : INVESTOR TO OWNER IN 5 YEARS - Tim Payton

My first sight of Stan Kroenke wasn’t what I was expecting. Having been chaperoned through Claridge’s by a porter up to one of the hotel’s premium suites, I was ushered into the office area of a large apartment. And there was Stan, resplendent from head-to-toe in his Arsenal tracksuit. Sitting alongside him was his son, Josh, now President of their basketball team, The Denver Nuggets, also decked out in Arsenal gear. As a representative of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) calling by to find out more about what Stan thought about Arsenal, I felt underdressed in my business suit devoid of any cannons, red or white. 

It was Spring 2007 and the meeting had a certain clandestine element to it. For this was the time when the Arsenal Board still weren’t talking to Stan Kroenke. He might by then have owned 12% of Arsenal Holdings PLC but the club’s Chairman and board had at that stage decided that they didn’t wish to engage. The AST took a different view. We had written to Stan as soon as his purchase of ITV’s 9.99% stake in the club was announced. We were ready because his decision to buy a stake in Arsenal hadn’t exactly come as a surprise. Arsenal had entered into a business partnership with his MLS club, the Colorado Rapids. Initially, this was presented as a tie-up based on sharing best practice on marketing know-how, football development and stadia expertise (the Rapids were finalising their own plans for what is now Dick’s Sporting Goods Park).  But to all seasoned watchers it made sense that there was more to it than this. 

This was the period when the first wave of American businessmen were looking to invest in Premier League clubs recognising, that while the US might lead the world in sports business expertise, and it was English football that possessed the must watch content the world wanted to see. The Glazers, Randy Lerner, and Hicks & Gillette were all already settling into their ownership of other major Premier League clubs.

Nick Harris, a leading British sports journalist with strong contacts in the States, had initially brought Kroenke’s interest in Arsenal to the attention of the public. He broke the story of the tie-up between Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE) and Arsenal in the Independent newspaper on 7th of February 2007 and suggested that the relationship might soon develop as ITV were actively seeking to sell their holding. So the AST was not surprised when it was announced on 7th of April 2007 that ITV had sold their 9.99 per cent stake in Arsenal for £42m together with a further £23m for their 50 per cent holding in Arsenal Broadband Limited, a separate arm of Arsenal that controls the club’s media rights and internet business.

The AST wrote to Stan Kroenke welcoming him to Arsenal and expressing a wish to work together for the good of the club. It has been a philosophy of the AST since our foundation that all major shareholders and supporter groups should work together to take Arsenal forward. It is proven in football that stability off the pitch creates an environment for success on it. In this period we met regularly not only with Arsenal board members but also with ITV and other shareholders – including the hedge fund Lansdowne Partners.  Our initial assessment was that Stan Kroenke’s experience in property development, sports marketing and TV rights, would be a positive addition to the skillsets at the club at that time.

We received a swift response which was the first ever public statement made by Stan Kroenke on his involvement in Arsenal, recorded in full below for the first time:

Dear Tim, thank you very much for your thoughtful letter and constructive support for our investment in the Club. Everyone at Kroenke Sports Enterprises is proud to be associated with Arsenal both through this investment and the marketing and commercial agreement between Arsenal and the Colorado Rapids.

We have made a significant investment in football in the US both in stadium facilities for the expanded MLS (major soccer league) as well as player, training and coaching facilities to support the general development of the sport nationally at all levels.  I see major long-term potential for football and have made a strong commitment to its development.

Incidentally Keith Edelman, Adrian Ford and Amanda Docherty kindly joined us in Denver this past Saturday for the very successful opening of our new MLS stadium and 24 adjacent youth fields.

I recognise and appreciate the AST role and contribution to the Club and the valuable perspective which you provide to the shareholders, board and management. Over the next months I look forward to learning more about the club through a dialogue with you all. This will inform a view about how our investment can support Arsenal. In closing, we are extremely happy with our relationship and investment in Arsenal. We much admire the values and culture of the Club.

I look forward to meeting you and the other members of the Arsenal family over the next months.   

Kindest regards,

Stan Kroenke

The dialogue continued and a few weeks later came a call from one of his advisers. “Stan would like to meet,” they said. So it was off to Claridge’s where he had just returned from incognito tour of the club’s Armoury shop – which explained why one of the richest men in American greeted me in an Arsenal tracksuit. We spoke for more than an hour, about Arsenal, about KSE, and mainly about the ownership structure at Arsenal and boardroom politics at Arsenal where Stan was on the beginning of a steep learning curve. He had more questions for me than I was able to put to him. It felt like being a part of the due diligence he was undertaking and he was naturally keen to learn more about the Supporters’ Trust and our observations on the how the club was run. Including why David Dein, who had courted his involvement in the club once his initial interest had been known, had subsequently been dismissed from the Board and marched out of the club when the sale of ITV’s shares to Kroenke was announced.

It was the first of several warm and friendly meetings with Stan. Since then, and over the years, many people have asked me what Stan is like. The answer is ‘not like you’d expect’, and not reflective of the ‘Silent Stan’ moniker he have been given as a result of avoiding both the media and public platforms. Far from being silent, he is a warm, gregarious host, who enjoys conversation and telling stories.  Yes he owns lots of sports teams and can relate the recent scores and performances of all of them, but it doesn’t take long to discern that the Denver Nuggets are to him what the Arsenal is to me – his true sporting love. I soon learnt to look up the latest news on the likely trade of Allen Iverson or how the Nuggets were faring in their battle to make the play-offs to really bring the conversation to life.

On Arsenal he was refreshingly honest. He didn’t claim to have been a fan for life and wasn’t going to pretend he had; all the better in my view for not attempting to reel off a list of badly pronounced members of the Cup winning team from Copenhagen 1994 to try and prove some undying bond. Instead he spoke of his strategic interest in English football and explained that he had been approached with several offers and opportunities to get involved with many teams from England but that once he saw Arsenal he felt the club had values and attributes that struck a chord with his own. He also stressed his wider commitment to ‘soccer’ through the investment he was making into the Colorado Rapids.

In reality this means that he saw the potential of a club that had recently moved into a brand new 60,000 stadium in the centre of London. He said had become a fan after a process of observation and involvement including watching games at the newly-built Emirates, incognito with the paying punters. The team then was garnering world-wide acclaim for the football being played under Arsene Wenger, whom Stan spoke of with the complete respect and reverence – even joking that he wished he could borrow his services to help out some of his other teams.

Over time as he got to know the club’s set-up, finances and playing personnel better our occasional conversations turned to us asking him questions and what I’d term football fan lingo. I recall some banter with him where he readily agreed that watching Manuel Almunia keep goal was a nerve-wracking experience and it was clear that he followed the team’s matches closely albeit from long distance. Our prompting that he should come to Arsenal on match-days themselves, so he could get a feel for the club and its fans, was met with an explanation of how difficult it was to be everywhere at once given the size of business interests he was running. It was a relationship that myself and AST colleagues were to develop over the next couple years, including a visit later that summer to Colorado, to sharing a beer at the Diamond Club bar during the AST Christmas drinks.

The visit to Denver was invaluable for giving us a far greater insight into Stan and the sports business empire he was constructing. Fellow AST board member Nigel Phillips and I were given a whirlwind tour of meetings and discussions led by then KSE Chief Operating Officer Paul Andrews and Colorado Rapids Chief executive Jeff Plush – with the highlight being a visit to see Colorado Rapids beat FC Dallas by two goals to one. It was a match with Arsenal interest on both sides. Steve Morrow was managing Dallas that day and Gary Smith had joined the Rapids from Arsenal, becoming their first team coach (later to become manager and lead them to the MLS Cup in 2010).