Arsenal doomed if Kroenke takes total control

Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s plan to sell his minority stake in Arsenal, handing more control to Stan Kroenke, is bad news for the club.

“Love the team. Hate the regime.”

So read one of the banners, among the many on parade, at the Emirates this past season. The club have been stuck in a malaise since they last won the Premier League title in 2004.

The situation has grown worse over the past decade, starting in 2008, when Stan Kroenke won a seat on the club’s board, paving the way for him to buy a majority stake within a few short years. The Kroenke era, in which manager Arsene Wenger was given near-total control over how to shape the team, has been highlighted by mismanagement and poor results.

Wenger left the club at the end of last season after 22 years, replaced by Unai Emery. Upset fans have taken out their frustrations on both the U.S. owner and Wenger. With Wenger out, the pressure is squarely on Kroenke to deliver this club a title.

A new report that Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov is actively exploring a sale of his 30 percent stake in Arsenal means things may be set to get even worse. Usmanov has decided to sell after Kroenke refused to sell control of the club over to him. While the impending sale means the long-running and toxic tug-of-war between Kroenke and Usmanov will come to an end, it also spells trouble overall. Usmanov’s pullout means Kroenke is here to stay, and Arsenal fans can expect many more years of ineptitude and mediocre results.

Kroenke is a sports and entertainment magnate who owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, NBA’s Denver Nuggets and NHL’s Colorado Avalanche. He also owns the Colorado Rapids of MLS. Despite his interest in so many sports properties, Kroenke never really seemed to care about Arsenal.

Usmanov represented the club’s best hope at future success. He could have made investments that would have rivaled Manchester City and Chelsea, teams that have found success in recent years thanks to owners interested in winning.

David Conn, writing in The Guardian this past May, sounded the alarm: “The U.S. always had a commercialized system of sports, in which rich owners buy franchises in closed leagues, aiming in the modern era to see the values of their initial investments inflated by TV and broadcasting dollars, and the tickets, merchandising and food bought by the fans in the stadiums. Arsenal supporters who look over the Atlantic at their owners’ franchises will not see much inspiration on the field, with middling or struggling performances in the most recent seasons for the L.A. Rams in the NFL, Colorado Rapids in the MLS, Colorado Avalanche in the NHL and Denver Nuggets in the NBA.”

The real fear now is that Kroneke buys Usmanov’s shares and takes over a 100 percent stake in the team. A spokesman for the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust said on Tuesday they are “very concerned at any outcome that saw the club wholly owned by Stan Kroenke. If he bought Alisher Usmanov’s shares, the likelihood is he would take the club private, forcing out the remaining custodian shareholders. This would reduce scrutiny in how Arsenal operate and allow its corporate structure to be moved to the United States. It would not be good for those who care about Arsenal being run the right way.”

For Kroenke, Arsenal remain an ATM machine. Fans have branded him a “leech” for the way he has run the club. Arsenal make money. It doesn’t matter to him if the team wins or not. Kroenke has broken the old rule of English soccer where owners do control shares, but aren’t in it just for the money. These men are (were?) involved in the game because they love it. Kroenke has no such emotional attachment — and it has showed.

The fans, as thy have learned over the past decade, can do nothing to change the possible outcome here. They can only wait and hope for the best. They’ve been doing that for the past 10 seasons. In that time, the club has consistently finished third or fourth, qualifying for the Champions League and then crashing out of that tournament early. It has been soccer’s version of banging one’s head against the wall and expecting a different outcome.

Kroenke has largely been an absentee owner. His interest in Arsenal has been purely financial. He wants to be a player across the Atlantic, but has little interest in what takes place on the field. Giving him even more control would spell doom for Arsenal as they try to rebuild this season under a new manager.

Fearing the worst, Arsenal fans have already started to implore Kroenke to sell his 60 percent stake. Indeed, Arsenal fans may love the team and hate the regime, but things could really get much worse over the next few months. It may be time to dust off those banners once again now another Premier League season is upon us.

As other big teams in the Premier League get better, expect those third- and fourth-place finishes to become rarer. This is a team headed into irrelevance under the current ownership structure. This past season, Wenger’s last at the helm, the team finished sixth. It’s a precursor of things to come should Kroneke be given more control.