The ranks of Arsenal shareholders attending yesterday morning’s Arsenal Holdings plc annual general meeting were swelled by members of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) Arsenal Fanshare scheme launched at the start of this season. We tend to take such innovations for granted at Arsenal. Not so in the rest of the game. One senior figure at another major Premier League club has privately described Arsenal Fanshare as a “defining moment in English club ownership.” He’s right. It will be a game-changer.
The formal business of the meeting was disposed of in fairly short order with only a couple of questions on the annual accounts, both answered to the satisfaction of the questioners. One was around a big increase in the “cost of raising finance” line in the accounts. This reflected the cost of re-negotiating the bank loan associated with the building of flats at the old ground at a time when the investment didn’t look all that clever. This loan had now been completely re-paid and all future sales would provide income to the club. The second associated comment was on the commentary to the accounts which stated that the income from property sales would be non-recurring.
Hill-Wood replied that the chief executive had put an enhanced commercial team in place to broaden and improve our commercial partnerships. In the meanwhile the property income could be expected to flow for two-three years more.
Before questions Chairman Peter Hill-Wood, who had opened the meeting by welcoming the new Arsenal Fanshare members to their first meeting after the launch of the scheme, invited chief executive Ivan Gazidis to give a brief “state of Arsenal” address.
Gazidis is an urbane, intelligent and articulate man. His vision of the game and the club is far more wide-reaching than most administrators in the game. He too welcomed the new Arsenal Fanshare members and thanked supporters for their deep interest in the club. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that we’d have struggled to find a better off-field leader for the club than former Cambridge University football Varsity blue. There can’t be many club chief executives who’ve played at Wembley in a competitive fixture, albeit at amateur student level.
He told the meeting that Arsenal’s model of self-sustainability was working, comparing the state of Arsenal to events at other clubs in recent times. On that he couldn’t be more right. You simply couldn’t make up what’s happened at Portsmouth and Liverpool in recent times. Those two cases prove the value of relying on nobody else but us.
Net debt was massively down, the only long-term debts remaining being the “mortgage” loan on the Grove and the bonds issued to supporters in two tranches, one to help fund the re-building of our old ground at Highbury in the 1990s and the more recent issue to raise working capital when we were scraping the barrel in cash flow terms during the planning stage of the new stadium. These were stable and more than affordable.
Gazidis is clearly a man on a mission. I think we will look back on his period in office as a real game-changer in an elite football landscape in this country which has increasingly come to be dominated by hard-faced men on the make like Tom Hicks and George Gillett and the Glazer family at Liverpool and Manchester United respectively on the one hand, and money-bags sugar daddy owners who parade and lavish cash on their clubs like a trophy wife, such as Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (to give him his full name and title) at Manchester City.
With the new UEFA financial fair play regulations starting to bite, both the former two clubs will be hampered by their debt repayments having to be included in their profit and loss accounts in determining how much they can spend on player salaries and transfers. In the latter two cases Chelsea and Manchester City are really going to have to jam on the financial brakes if they want to retain a UEFA licence after 2016 when the regulations really start to bite with full effect.
In the case of Manchester United £476 million has flowed out of the club in debt repayments that have built neither the playing squad nor facilities at the ground and payments to the financial vampires that are the Glazer family. We’ve seen the problems this is starting to cause with the Wayne Rooney tantrum explosion over the last few days. Recent developments appear to indicate that Shrek may be undergoing a change of heart. We’ll see. What’s beyond doubt is that there’s something wrong at a club whose recent accounts show a £100 million plus trading profit being turned into an £80 million plus LOSS, all due to the club haemorrhaging cash to the financial “engineering” of the Glazers and their very well compensated running dog David Gill.
Gazidis on the other hand was all about the football. He said Arsenal existed to put a winning team on the park and to serve its supporters and community. How wonderfully simple and refreshing to hear. Gazidis also wants to consistently raise the bar on supporter service. Top. Well played mate.
With the accounts being approved and Peter Hill-Wood and Danny Fiszman being re-appointed to the board for three year terms, Deloitte being re-appointed as external auditors the meeting moved on to what most people were there for, Arsčne Wenger’s address and questions. He got one difficult question about the goalkeeping situation. He said it was impossible to talk about these situations publicly. I agree. Whatever we think about this we’re stuck with our current goalkeeping corps until at least January. It won’t do us any good at all if the current goalies know that they’re for the chop.
He also fielded a question about playing with two holding midfield players as is currently in vogue. He answered by saying, correctly, that we have done it a number of times. We’ve played 4-2-3-1 a fair bit in recent times, before the world started noticing this formation at the World Cup this past summer (or winter, in the southern hemisphere) in South Africa.
He also said that he expected Cesc Fàbregas to remain with us for two or three more seasons. On that I’ll wait and see personally. I hope that he’s right. I really do. We’ll certainly have his services as manager until at least the summer of 2014. One questioner had asked Peter Hill-Wood before Wenger’s address, “shouldn’t the board invite Mr Wenger to join them as a director?” Hill-Wood batted that one away saying he didn’t think Wenger could be bothered at the moment but that he did attend all board meetings (eight a year, plus various board committee meetings) where his counsel was sought and valued.
Wenger himself said that the manager’s job was very demanding physically and in terms of time but dropped a hint that he might not be adverse to a seat on the board after he gives up the manager’s job. This got a round of applause from the assembled shareholders. A cynic would say that it’s easy to be loyal when you’re trousering an annual salary that reports have as somewhere between £6 and £7 million a season. Whatever he’s paid – and it will be in that range – he’s certainly not struggling to pay the gas bill
He also admitted that we’re not going to be picking up too many trophies if we don’t improve defensively. He said that no team can concede more than 24-28 goals if it wants to win the League. I make him right. Here’s a list of the goals conceded by the champions and us since we last won the League in 2003/4:
2009/10
Chelsea 32
Arsenal 41
2008/09
Man Utd 24
Arsenal 37
2007/08
Man Utd 22
Arsenal 31
2006/07
Man Utd 27
Arsenal 35
2005/06
Chelsea 22
Arsenal 31
2004/05
Chelsea 15
Arsenal 36
2003/04
Arsenal 26
The largest goals against total was 32 by Chelsea last season. They scored a massive 103 however. We scored 73 in 2003/4. Arsčne is clearly right. The last time we conceded less than thirty League goals we were champions. The problem is we’ve already conceded ten goals in eight League games this season, putting us on course to concede more than the 41 we did last term. If we don’t sort that out lively we’re not going to get very far.
Wenger appeared more relaxed answering questions yesterday. A long way from his testy performance at the shareholders’ question and answer evening in May 2009. Perhaps it’s getting through to him that supporters can criticise whilst still supporting their club and team. At least he puts himself on offer twice a year which is a lot more than most managers at big Premier League clubs do. It really isn’t asking a lot I don’t think, that said.
The most interesting thing I thought was that the largest applause of the meeting was for Wenger’s statement that he and the team would go full out to win ALL four competitions we’re in. Over the past few seasons it’s become clearer and clearer that he’s focussed only on the Premier League and the Champions League, increasingly regarding the domestic cups as an unwelcome and unwanted distraction. This might just be more than words, certainly based on the team we fielded at White Hart Lane in the Carling Cup this season. Let’s hope for a repeat of that at St James’ Park next week and the strongest available team being fielded in the FA Cup.
All in all, satisfactory progress off the field. The big challenge is to return to regular, happy parades of trophies through the streets of Islington come each May. No reasonable Gooner expects trophies every single season. It has been a long time between drinks since the FA Cup in 2005 however. All the off the field progress and improvements are very welcome and to be encouraged. They’re no substitute long term for silverware though. That’s what we all crave. I think we should be ambitious to be the best, most innovative and supporter-centred club in the world on and off the pitch.
As our very first club motto had it – FORWARD.
Keep the faith!
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