Arsenal Supporters Trust, Usmanov to Keep Shares?; Djourou and Song Return to Training

A couple of stories today:

First, the Arsenal Supporters Trust met last night and voted unanimously to reject chairman of the board Peter Hill-Wood’s suggestion that Arsenal shareholders sell their shares to Kroenke. The AST, which I believe holds 3 shares in its own name and manages dozens more under the fanshare scheme, is not a major shareholder in terms of percentage of the club owned, but has been a very active and passionate voice for Arsenal fans. AST’s statement can be read in full here.

I think this is a very good thing for fans. AST has always been a passionate, sensible voice for the fan interest. And to the previous ownership/management regime’s credit, they were very, very supporting of AST and other fan ownership/involvement. Kroenke was on the board which was so encouraging of AST and the Fanshare scheme, and Ivan Gazidis was very outspoken in his support of the AST, so there is every reason to think this will continue. While the AST’s statement may read as a bit on the defensive side, I think they were just being firm in their stance that they had no plans of giving up their shares — it was Hill-Wood after all, who does not speak for Kroenke, that recommended that all shareholders sell their shares, and their is no indication that Kroenke expects or even wants that to happen. I hope and expect that Kroenke will meet with representatives from AST and other fan groups and reassure them that dramatic change is not underfoot, and that the parties can continue to work together harmoniously.

Even more interesting to me was that AST said that they understood that Red & White Holdings, Alisher Usmanov’s company, had no interest or intention of selling its shares to Kroenke. That’s pretty important somehow in the scheme of things — Usmanov owns over 25% of the club’s shares, so if he accepted Kroenke’s mandatory takeover offer, that would force Kroenke to come up with another roughly $250 million. It would also almost certainly take Kroenke over the magical 90% threshold, which would allow him to force the remaining holdouts to sell him their shares, giving him complete ownership in and control over the club. As I said in the comments section yesterday, though, it’s unclear why Usmanov would even want to hang on to his shares. He’s been marginalized by the current management group, which does not appear to be changing, and there’s no indication that this move means he will get a seat on the board of directors or any input at all into the way the club is run. It will be interesting to see how that situation develops.

It’s also interesting because of the effect this might have on the Arsenal Fanshare scheme. Last time I talked about this in any depth I got blasted by a number of people because I was skeptical that the scheme would have any real impact on the club or its governance, but my concern today is a bit more concrete. With Kroenke upping his stake to around 63%, and probably buying up some more through his takeover offer, and Usmanov owning more than 25%, that means that when the dust settles, more than 90% of the shares of the club will be in the hands of 2 people, neither of whom would appear to have any intention of selling any of them. The Fanshare program still has a lot of people donating money, but it seems like it’s going to start getting awfully tough to find anyone willing to sell shares at this point. We shall see.

Anyway, I’m so glad the AST is standing tall on selling their shares, I think it’s very valuable for a group that represents fan interests to have a seat at shareholder meetings, have access to Arsenal’s financial information, and be able to offer the fan viewpoint from a perspective that management feels compelled to listen to.

In other news involving, you know, actual football, some of our injured guys are starting to trickle back into training. Johan Djourou is apparently back in training, and if all goes well for him this week, could be in contention to return to the lineup against Liverpool. And Wojo had a scan on his finger recently, which was apparently positive, and he is pushing to be back between the sticks against Liverpool as well.

I don’t think it can be understated how big having those guys back would be. Even accounting for the fact that they’ve been out of match action for a while and will undoubtedly be a bit rusty, the confidence the fans and players would get from having Wojo in goal with Djourou and Koscielny in front of him, as compared to Lehmann in goal with Squillaci and Koscielny in front of him, cannot be overstated. It’s just a massive difference, especially when facing the resurgent, suddenly very potent Liverpool attack — guys like Carroll, Suarez, Maxi, and Meireles can really pop up and hurt us, so we’ll need all hands on deck to slow them down. Hopefully we’ll get those two guys back and use that big boost to get 3 points.

And that’s about it for today. Back tomorrow or Thursday with mid-week news round-up stuff, and then some special Liverpool preview stuff in the next few days. Until then.

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Category: Arsenal News, Backroom, Injury Report