It's called closing the barn before the horse bolts! You want it both ways. One minute you'll argue it's black and when the argument goes against you, you just shift to saying it was white all along! Then in your dishonesty you try to shift on to me, and suggest I'm the one dissembling? Shame on you!
No, I never shifted. I said I didn't want the board to sell out complete ownership. I haven't changed that stance. I do think if they are going to do it, better Kroenke than Fat & Orange. Plus, as I've stated before, inviting Kroenke onto the board doesn't mean that every other board member is now going to sell out. I don't think they will. I think this was a tactical move. You can spin it, mock, whatever you like but I haven't changed a bit.
Kroenke is coming? http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...nke-in-position-to-take-over-club-850928.html is Stan kroenke coming to us?? I don't see the point really. Wasn't the reasoning for building the new ground that we would be self-sustaining, like Man U? A lack of money is not the reason we haven't won the Champions League yet (it's tactics IMO but that's another argument). Wenger has achieved success without spending as much money as the likes of Chelsea.
As an accompanying article to the one above. Dein talks about the debts on the Highbury flats and how the downturn in the the property market may have implications for Arsenal. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2008/06/28/sfnwin128.xml
It's in his interests to paint as bleak a picture as possible for us, or else he would look pretty stupid telling the world how bright our future may be while he sold his stock to Usmanov waiting to take over a club that doesn't need either of them.
I find it facsinating that the only thing David Dein and Peter Hill-Wood each agree on is how dangerous the other leading the club could be...
Dein's past contributions are much appreciated, but he lost the plot the moment he sold shares to the likes of Usmanov.
I really don't know what to think about David Dein! He bought Arsenal shares for under £300,000 and sold em for £75mill, he single handedly brought AW to the club and then was the deal maker for everyone that was brought in. All excellent judgement and then he walks away? He has £75mill is his pocket, an address book that very few in football can match and there are loads of clubs that he could walk back into the game with and yet he doesn't. Instead he sells, before the optimum time, to a Russian billionaire and earns the scorn of most fans. Yet again, he is still in close contact with AW and appears to be just as interested in Arsenal's future as ever? Surely there must be easier ways to make money, is this his only motivation? Is this all a vendetta against Danny Fiszman? Having a Russian billionaire behind him really blurs the picture but it's hard to believe that he has no care for AFC at all? Whether or not it is bad judgment, is basically what this thread, and the previous one, have been all about. If people are willing to see him as nothing but a schemeing, self-interested bad guy why is it so impossible to imagine that any of the remaining members of the board are not any different, or even worse? The fact he seems to genuinely care has to be worth something, or maybe not, I don't know?
This is even more pessimistic than me and Martin! I really hope your wrong... unless we've brought in even better players in the meantime!
I think the money angle is a bit overrated. The problem with most of our transfer activity is that it is _not_ smart business. Among other things, I'd like to see us get some kind of exclusivity before we commit to a deal. Did you ever notice that a deal never gets better for us as it progesses. Eg Nasri, before the Euros we supposedly had a deal in place for 12M GBP. Now afterward it's supposedly 16M GBP (and it's not like anything happened there that caused his value to go up). The selling team knows they've got us on the hook for 12 already, then use that as a starting point to jerk us around even where it doesn't look like any other buyer is out there (as is the case here). We should negotiate binding agreements where, eg, the fee is 12M and if we can't consummate the deal for some reason the selling club can't transfer him to anybody else for more than 12. Combined with being involved for lots more players than we apparently are will keep costs down while still getting us access to the same high quality players as the fans expect.
This Nasri saga is making me wonder how much we're missing a wheeler dealer like Dein to take care of transfers and contracts. The stuff he said in that interview about not leaving the room until the deal is done made alot of sense. That style of dealmaking explains why in the past we never heard about transfers til they were a done deal. I don't know who is doing that job now, but i'm not impressed.
That's the only thing I miss about Dein. He was the best in the business at what he did, and I would have tried to bring him back to reassume that role, but he seems to have allegiances to Usmanov ahead of us. Now that we have Ken Friar or whoever else working on it, I'm not nearly as confident in our ability to get the job done as cheaply and as efficiently as possible. Apparently the board is planning to have our new CEO take over Dein's duties in negotiating transfers, and this sounds like a stupid idea. You need someone familiar with the business, well respected by other clubs and is something of a shark. Not some newbie from the corporate world, who keeps their 101 things you learn in Business School book on their desk for lunch time reading.
I think Dein does love Arsenal he just loves Dein a bit more. Like a Presidential candidate, there is a certain arrogance implicit in believing that you and only you can run the club as it needs to be run. And that arrogance is a necessary component of the make-up of a chief executive. In Dein's case, I think it has blinded him a bit to the bed he has been willing to make for himself. The term "front man" seems to apply here as Dein likely will hold no vote in how the club is run in the end. As far as Kroenke, isn't this just a case of the "devil you know rather than the devil you don't know"? It seems like the board are just presenting a unified front and if money was really their objective, the failure to sell to the Russkie and the vote in favor of selling restrictions seem to be moves against interest.
The most important word there is seem...trust me this Board - or more accurately I suspect Mr. Fiszman and maybe Lady Bracewell-Smith - won't cheat themselves out of anything uinless absolutely necessary
Interesting article. I can't help but feel Dein is speaking out of his own interests, though. It benefits Red and White Holdings to claim that the club's finances are questionable. Face it - the people who can afford the Highbury flats are probably not of the sort who would get turned down for a loan. If you put down £50,000, I can't imagine anyone turning their back on that kind of investment.
I see your poinrt on Mr. Dein - he clearly is advocating for Red-and_white, although there is genuine concern about people pulling out on their apartments too. I think the thing is that David Dein has 75 million pounds or so, and despite family connections to Tottenham Hotspur is still the head of Red-And-White. And that to me says a lot. I Think he genuinely believes some inside the club now may not have its best interests solely at heart - I think we can be sure hewould be talking of Mr. Fiszman. And the reports the Board are seriously considering taking dividends - almost certainly something Mr. Fiszman is behind, may explain the rift that opoened between the two while Mr. Dein was still on the Board.
Family connections at Sperz? Is he gonna ask his daughter in law to get him a job over there? Pull your head out of your ass.
I would think s***s would recruit him - and his 75 million GBP - because of that family connection, and he might actually do it because of that connection. After all he has 75 million GBP - he doesn't need to work another day in his life, even with the English taxation rates he deals with unless he wants to.
Although he is a self-centered greedy ex-director of football, he is still a gunner at the end of the day, and will not go over to sp*rs no matter what. The only thing he puts above Arsenal is him taking over Arsenal with Usmanov.
Basically my point. I do believe(assuming again this is wasn't all some diversion to make Stan Kroenke more acceptable to Arsenal Supporters)though that Mr. Dein may truly believe he is fighting the good fight for Arsenal as opposed to Mr. Fiszman and others whose motives seem driven by personal profit more with each passing day...
So the guy who brought in Kroenke and sold out to the Russian is "fighting the good fight", while the members of the board are the villains? Your bizarre conspiracy theory makes more sense than that.
i dont know why we have this thread. hopefully if we win some trophies this year, we can all stop the talk about the gold mines under the Emirates that arent being used, and that we have to splash cash in order to win. AW has our back. he just needs to implement a new 1 on 1 interview for possible transfer candidates to see if winning trophies is more important than money, that way we dont have to waste time in a dead end conversation about our wage structure.