The Kroenke and Usmanov battle has been lingering over the club for nearly five years now.
While both billionaires introduced by former kingmaker David Dein are doing their version of the cold war at the club, the impact on transfer budget and club policy should not be understated.
The fact remains that the club is not enjoying the huge transfer windfall that a good foreign ownership normally brings. Except for the Americans at Old Trafford, Chelsea , Manchester City
The Board sacked Dein in 2007 as they were so furious that he wanted Kroenke to purchase the club. Humiliated, Dein vowed to become Chairman of a club owned by Uzbekh billionaire Usmanov, who is the world´s 35th richest man.
Feeling threatened, the Board decided to side with Kroenke and appointed his man Gazidis as chief executive officer. This has infuriated Usmanov who has not been invited on the board despite owning a whopping 27% of the shareholding. Usmanov is by the way richer than Abrahamovic.
As a corporate lawyer, I have been involved in many shareholding disputes over the years. In a nutshell, a company cannot achieve long term success if major shareholders are not seeing eye-to eye. Boards of conflicting companies often do not know what to do, with the likely victims being the management and ultimately the company.
I am not trying to defend Arsene here but he may be aware of things that we aren´t. He may try to put on brave face and accept the blame for not spending.
It is certainly not the interests of the Board to say that we do not have money to spend. Saying that you have money to spend is the best way to sell season tickets and you will normally hear about our so-called unlimited budget right around the time renewals are due.
It is certainly not the interests of the Board to say that we do not have money to spend. Saying that you have money to spend is the best way to sell season tickets and you will normally hear about our so-called unlimited budget right around the time renewals are due.
The issue needs a solution as you cannot have two billionaires owning your club but no increased transfer budget. Okay, Wenger might be stubborn enough to reject a huge transfer budget anyway but who is to say he will be offered a choice if one of the billionaires had full control of the club?
My preference would be Usmanov as I think he would invest massively in the club while Kroenke would take a more business-like approach. But in the meantime, the club has been in limbo ever since 2007.
