London’s biggest club is stuck.
It can’t move forward while 70% of its shares are owned by Stan Kroenke.
Why not? Because Silent Stan knows nothing about football and lets your French dictator front his big soccer franchise.
While Wenger is visible, omnipresent and all-powerful, Kroenke is invisible, inaudible and lives in Columbus, Missouri.
So Wenger is the only executive at Arsenal.
The timid board has done nothing for years, except veto Benzema’s proposed wages twice.
In the USA, moving the Rams back to Los Angeles is massive news.
A REALLY BIG DEAL IN U.S. SPORTS
The NFL is very successful, very Amerikan. It’s a cartel run by billionaires, some of them quite eccentric, apparently. With no promotion or relegation they can do what they like and make long-term plans for a certain future.
Arsenal? The club has been stagnating since Director of Football David Dein was kicked out in 2007.
But Kroenke, an indefatigable number-cruncher, knows that Wenger will keep within the budget he’s been given.
The club has big money in the bank. Some say about £200m.
But Arsenal do not pay the minimum wage to their matchday staff.
How Walmart is that?
As we all know by now, Stan Kroenke’s policy is to keep Wenger in his £11.5m job for as long as possible.
And Wenger’s priority is exactly that too : to keep his job and enjoy happy mornings watching his squad play five-a-side phootball with a stopwatch in one hand and a whistle in the other.
CONCLUSION: the owner and the tracksuit chief executive are on the same page.
Sting would call that Synchronicity.
But I wouldn’t…..and neither would you.