Nero Fiddled Whilst Rome Burned!

In 40 years of following the Arsenal, I have never known the fans to be so divided. I intend to examine and discuss this divide with you, but I’m going to save that for another time. I don’t want to do it in the emotional aftermath of losing at home in the Cup to a Championship side! Instead, I am going to talk about something that should concern every single Arsenal fan regardless of which side of the fence they reside in the “Has Arsene Lost It” debate…the role of the current Board and the club’s direction!

 

Arsene’s extremely angry reaction to the stories that he is to be offered a new contract, to me suggests a real nerve has been hit and could in fact mean there is an underlying truth to a theory I have had for a while. It is my belief that Arsene intends to walk away from the club when his contract runs out in 2014. We know he will always honour a contract and we know the board won’t sack him, so for a while now we’ve been drifting on an undefined course!

For all his faults (and AKBs there ARE many), Wenger has been steering a ship for several seasons where the paymasters are refusing to advise him of the destination port and have hidden is compass! Wenger’s somewhat extreme reaction to the suggestion that he is about to be offered a contract could be explained in that it is not good for the team or the club as a whole for his intentions to be made public (even if the Board are aware of them) this far ahead! Being forced to answer questions on his contract intentions may just let the cat escape out of the bag!

Being the kind of man he is, will he spend the alleged £70m war chest in the summer if he is likely to not be there a year later? I think not, so I guess my theory will be proven or disproven this summer one way or the other! If of course he does intend to stay and he doesn’t spend big, he is cutting his own throat anyway! You see where I’m coming from?

So to the real point of my concern. There are two main reasons why Arsene Wenger would never be sacked. 1) He is financially astute i.e. he keeps the club extremely profitable to the delight of the non-football fan who has the majority shareholding and the Board of Directors who merely act in Kroenke’s interests (see below for justification of this sweeping statement)! 2) The current Board are effectively steered by Mr Gazidis who is probably still unaware that there are two clubs in Vienna, let alone who their managers might be! In other words the Board would have absolutely no clue as to who to appoint (unless Arsene tells them)!

You think I’m being harsh on this board? OK here are a few facts:

• All the current Board Members sold their shares to the same individual, yet kept their PAID places on the Board. So clearly no deal made there! (a Sandy Shaw song springs to mind….”Like a puppet on a string…”)!
• Representation on the Board is continually refused to the second largest shareholder [whether we like Usmanov or not] which most odd! Why? Because we wouldn’t want any difficult questions being asked at a Board meeting now would we?
• The Chairman of the Board said at the last shareholders AGM “Thank you for taking an interest in OUR affairs” when in fact every shareholder in the room had more “interest” (in share terms) then him! This suggests an ‘out of touch’ Chairman to me!

• Each of the Board Members (Gazidis aside) is at least 742 years old (OK this is patently untrue but the use of sarcasm to illustrate the point saves me Googling the age of each individual Board member – but you got the point right?)!
• The perennially absent Kroenke aside, Piers Morgan owns more share than the Arsenal Board of Directors!
• Mr Kroenke’s “sports franchises” all have one thing in common…they are all very profitably run and they all never win anything!

So, although Wenger walking next year is only a theory at this point, should a pro-active Board with a clear direction not already be making plans to line up Arsene’s successor? Formulating his achievement targets and providing the resources to achieve them? Rome is burning and the Board I fear are Nero! “Crisis? What crisis? Look at our financial results!”.

The Arsenal ship is drifting albeit slowly towards the rocks. We need to plot a new course and quickly. Arsene is the Captain and does share some of the blame…but far from all of it! We need direction and Arsene badly needs his right hand man back to lead a new, younger and more dynamic board. He needs, we need, the return of David Dein! Now if Mr Kroenke was to make that bold move, he would regain the faith of the faithful, give Arsene his mojo back and defeat his rival from Uzbekistan for the foreseeable future in one fell swoop! Arsenal would have direction and Wenger would have the little push he needs to rediscover his magic (I’m sure of it)!

But what do I know…I’ve invested my entire life in this club as have 2 generations of my family before me (and one after). By comparison, Mr Kroenke has invested his U.S. dollars, so clearly he understands the passion of the supporters and the game as a whole and he really knows what club stands for and has stood for (since Mr Chapman redefined us) more than me right? I want to see the Arsenal play and win in Rome and not burn like it, whilst those with the power to steer us to safety are fiddling and stare blankly at the computer screen trying to work out how they open that email that has just arrived in from a ranch in Colorado!

@lonewolf153