Josh Kroenke says he understands that the relationship between KSE and Arsenal fans has been strained over the years, but that they are working to build trust.
Since the #wecaredoyou campaign launched during the summer, there has been a marked increase in communication from the owners, and that’s definitely a positive outcome. One that hopefully will continue on an ongoing basis.
In his lengthy interview with David Ornstein – full transcript here – Kroenke says that he’s determined to demonstrate the ambitions of KSE can be realised and that their ownership of the club can bring back the kind of success fans crave.
Referring to building a relationship with supporters, he said, “That’s important. They need to understand who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish.
“It’s important for them to try to understand our personalities as people, because at the end of the day we’re fans – we want to win and it makes our job a lot easier when we win. It’s important for them to know how passionate we are.
“When I met with some of the fan groups last season, I didn’t ask them for their trust but I told them that trust is earned over time and I would love for you to trust me now but unfortunately that trust has to play out over the next several years.
“We’re just getting started and hopefully we’ll start to earn more and more trust with the more and more work we put in.”
Obviously there’s a way to go, but opening lines of communication with fans is very welcome, and keeping those lines open will certainly help build the kind of trust he’s talking about.
Reactive or proactive, always nice to hear. Whether it all works out in the end or not, feels good that work is being put in. Right on lads, good day to be a gooner
It’s fair to say #WeCareDoYou has been one of the most effective yet non-violent campaigns I’ve recently seen.
Ok Scott Parker, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open.
This is all we wanted. Some sign of intent from the owners.
Out of interest Blogs, have you ever made an approach to KSE about appearing on one of the arsecasts? Don’t know if it would be possible at all but could be really interesting.
Get Josh down the pub for the next Arseblog live!!
I will give him and this current footballing operations team my full backing. I’ve had enough of hatred and despair these last 10+ years.
They delivered this Summer and seeing how the LA Rams made it to the Superbowl, I have a deep feeling that our 20’s will be the rebirth of The Arsenal as a force again.
Call me wishful but I’d rather be excited than be angry again. Trust in the process.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m treating Josh LANS, because I’m pretty sure he’s only been given the reigns since the full buyout. Josh is a very young director, how much influence did he have 5-10 years ago? Not much I expect.
The family own the club in full now, Josh has clearly been put in charge. He seems to be energetic and keen to be involved on a regular basis. They’re not going anywhere so let’s give him and the whole club full backing and see where this stage of the club takes us.
No. We should not blindly support. I agree he sounds good and this summer window has been good. But there is more to do.
I do not blindly support. This window, despite being out of CL for a third season, the club has managed to address most of our demands.
LB? Checked. CB? Checked? Exciting Winger? Checked. CM? Checked.
Sucess is not like making instant noodles, so to see this kinda transfer window this past Summer is kinda enough reason for me to back them up. Like I said, trust the process. I’m done being angry.
I fully agree, we all know it’s been largely miserable barring the cup wins, but ever since we moved the attitude has been so negative on many occasions. The club have done well this year, now we have to unite behind the team COYG!
If this is the new arsenal , of course I’m happy. Who wouldn’t be in terms of spending. But Why does it take 10 years to understand.
Let’s not sugarcoat this. NA sports is totally different. Since the leagues are set up to reward bad management you eventually should find some success in a cycle. How long you have that success depends on how good the management team is and of course some luck. Vice versa for how long you stay down depending on how good or bad management is.
There ownership of sports teams isn’t impressive.
In theory you may be right. But the Rams went out and aggressively signed free agents in addition to their draft talent.
“We’re just getting started…” he says. Interesting, because they’ve been around for 13 years. Every 5 years of failing to compete the Kroenkes just press restart and pretend they’ve only just come through the door at Arsenal.
They have only been owners since 2011, mate. That’s 8 years.
Kroenke began acquiring Arsenal shares in 2007. Look it up.
Being around and being incharge is different though is it not?
And they only took 100% control last year. Plus Josh has only been taking a more prominent role since last year as well. Add to that needing to move out the old guard, whether you like that or not, now is the time for them to really show their ambition. They have my support until such a time that it proves they were talking shit.
I read the the whole transcript and it is very telling the pre and post Wenger meetings. Before you had Wenger deciding of the strategy and recruiting policy and he has been replaced by four people plus Josh Kroenke. One man for five now. Josh reminds me of Jean Michel Aulas. He seems very invested and willing to take responsibility.
Possibly ,to be fair ,it could just be josh is picking up the peices from the failed exercise of his old man trusting in The ditherer & snake oil salesman for a decade & realising what a monumental disaster that’s been.lets see where we are progress wise by end of this season.Actions as always speak louder than words….
One of the things from that interview is Josh said, he is not going to clarify if the money for this transfer window came from the owners and said it was upto people to read between the lines.
Swiss Rambler and others had made a good job of accessing our financial status. Funds were limited. Despite the structured payments for the incoming transfers this window, we would still be making payments for transfers like Auba still. Similarly our sales also would have been structured. So my guess is there is atleast some level of investment by KSE.
And you’ve had to “guess” what is actually going on financially because Kroenke took the club completely private, having stripped fans of their shares. To me, that is enough in itself to never trust this guy, his son or whoever else he picks to run our club. And make no mistake: it is OUR club.
It is our club. Without the supporters the club is worthless. I.m a supporter and i.m hoping for a good season and more to come
They had to get rid of Piers Morgan somehow…………
Possibly, but not necessarily. As you say almost all the transfers in during the Summer window were on extended instalments so the limited money often quoted in the press would just about cover most of it, depending upon how repayments are structured. There is also some money in the reserve, but this has been depleted over recent years and much is already allocated (stadium repayments etc.) I believe the club already has various bond issues, in addition to the stadium loan, but I don’t think these are linked to KSE. You rightly mentioned us still making payments for Auba. I’d… Read more »
If they had put their own money in they’d be trumpeting it to the high heavens for the PR benefits it would bring.
One day we’ll find out that KSE loaned Arsenal £30m this season for transfers and they’re charging 40% interest. I’m kidding, obviously, but it’s going to take time for them to earn our trust.
For the same reason I dont get it when our fans pressurize the owners to invest their money to the club. Arsenal has always run under its own income and I feel proud when I get to point it out to fans of other clubs in top 6. This has created a sense of respect for our club and should rightly be the core policy of every sporting clubs.
This interview could be in one article instead of two.
#content
Have to give him credit for the way he’s responded to the summer fan #wecaredoyou campaign. He didn’t have to, he could’ve completely ignored it and there’s not much we could’ve really done about it. The fact it happened in front of his fellow billionaire cronies in the USA during the team tour almost certainly played a part, it must’ve been cringeworthy for the Kroenkes. He may also have cast envious eyes at the success of Liverpool’s US owners with their astute player contract management, transfers, youth promotion and team re-investment. He seems to be fully onboard for now, we… Read more »
Ok. But I find it hard to applaud a billionaire protecting his investment. On field is all that matters. And yes they have done well this summer.
No sour grapes
So we have actually someone in the boardroom who understands the Arsenal fanbase is a potentially monstrous sleeping giant. Very important that we’re aggressive with future commercial deals as it all factors into persuading players to come and play for us whether we have CL or not. Their global profiles instantly go through the roof. He also picked up on the way our rivals and their fanbases were genuinely shook by what we did this summer. Also very important. For too long we’ve acted like we can be self-sustaining and ignorant of what our competition is doing and we’ve allowed… Read more »
The point about the CL is that you won’t attract as many top players without CL football, and those that you do attract won’t stay around indefinitely without it.
This “sleeping giant” stuff sounds good but the truth is we simply can’t compete financially with the “usual suspects” without CL income. Even with it, the likes of City, Chelsea and Utd can/will outspend us. That’s not being negative, that’s just a fact. We have to be smarter and do more with less, if we can.
You’re missing the reality of where we are and how we got here. All those years we spent trying to maintain CL qualification and what happened in the end? Our rivals caught up and overtook us because they all started serious, ambitious projects. The club has realised that the competition is so strong now that we have no choice but to focus on building a title-challenging team. As Kroenke said “if we’re challenging for the title, that means we’re challenging for everything else too”. We didn’t smash our transfer record just to make top four, we did it for something… Read more »
Nonsense. Don’t take my word for it, look at the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust report into Arsenal’s financial position (it’s on their website, and there’s an article on this site as well). 1) We do not have “huge cash reserves”. There’s money in the bank but most of it is already allocated. The report sets out the position in detail. 2) Yes, we do have a big wage bill – and that’s exactly the problem. It’s out of balance with the income that we have. Kroenke Snr. is known to look at Spu*s, who have a lot lower wage bill, as… Read more »
You’re welcome to pore over the AST’s figures but the guy who basically owns the club just told us we can spend without having to sell, so I don’t give a f*ck. We’ve been hoarding cash for years – what exactly is it we’re “allocating” to pay our obligations with, hot air? Fans have been banging the drum about how Ozil’s wages would hold us back in the transfer market, but the club spent this summer demonstrating that actually it wasn’t that big a deal and we still had plenty of leeway. All that fretting over Ozil’s salary, for nothing.… Read more »
Laca and AUB have made Arsenal cool again…Men about their games, Elite snipers on the field, Got the swag for the youth and the toys in the life style, Great happy fun dudes who are always smiling and positive. Love it!
Win me the Europa first, then you earn my trust.
Big and little Enos do what they have always done, nothing. They would have agreed the budget with Vinai and Raul for the summer ages ago and all the signings came through coincidentely just after the fans group co-op letter. All this new found good will towards Josh is premature. The window was all down to Raul, Vinai and Huss plus Edu regarding Martinelli and Luiz wheeling and dealing. Josh shows incredible bravery to conduct an interview with the club’s BBC yes man Ornstein after their employees have seemingly pulled a few rabbits from out of their collective hats over… Read more »
The Kroenke family has had the majority or complete ownership of Arsenal since 2007 and they are only now, it appears, making an effort to “earn the trust of the fans”.
Kroenke Snr. (and he still runs things, don’t have any doubt about that) has been content to do nothing for the club in the past 12 years
Although earning the trust of the fans is always welcome, some would say it’s a priority, it’s certainly late. About 12 years late.
Actually they’ve only owned the club for just over a year. You want Kroenke to pay 100% of Pepe’s fee when he only owned 60% of the asset? i mean …what?
To be fair..the other 40% was wanting to buy better players too. I.m happy with this window but credit is yet to be decided
No, it doesn’t work like that. The Kroenke family has had the majority or complete ownership of Arsenal since 2007. Being “only” the majority shareholder certainly didn’t prevent them putting money in. They were in no danger at all of losing control to Alisher Usmanov (the only other major shareholder) whose shareholding didn’t even allow him a seat on the board without the Kroenke’s OK – which is why he didn’t get one. Sorry, but your argument is a smokescreen for many years of inactivity.
Oh, and by the way – what’s Pepe’s transfer got to do with anything? You’re not suggesting the Kroenke’s financed that, are you? Sources for that assertion?
Just for the record the official shareholding, prior to Kroenke’s buyout was:
Kroenke 67%
Usmanov 30%
Others 3% *
* these were obliged, under the Companies Act, to sell their shares to Kroenke when he bought Usmanov’s holding.
I.ll trust them when they put on field success first. This summer is a good start..but we need more
I won’t trust this fellow with a ten foot pole. They’ve delivered on some ends but also failed to address other issues. BUT generally we are at least going in a good direction. Worry would be all this back loading with Pepe and Saliba (21m a summer already spent) may impact us if we should fail to qualify for CL. BUT at least in defense of them, we have showed some risk taking. The other issue of course is defensive side, we failed to fully address Cback. Luiz is a panic buy/band aid by any other means other than some… Read more »
why don’t you want josh to have a ten foot pole?
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/49401513 This is a good article. Again important to understand how the market works. Its not fixed price by any means. Fekir for example touted at 52m to Liverpool eventually went for 24m when Lyon overplayed their hand and price dropped. Another thing is some fans prefer to imagine they have more a voice than they really do. Fan protest has got NOTHING to do with the transfers this season many of which likely were already in contingency plan by Raul way in advance. It simply doesn’t work that way. BUT also interesting to see a candid admission of short… Read more »
I think the major mistake that the Kronkes made was to accommodate Arsene Wenger for too long. They were clearly uncomfortable about disrespecting an Arsenal legend and unfortunately Arsene still insisted that he could do the job. Gazidis was well known in the MLS before he came to Arsenal, so they probably thought everything was in good hands. I personally think the breakthrough came when Josh spent time in the UK investigating everything at Arsenal, they’ve been pretty ruthless since then, and I’m feeling more positive than I have for many years. There are far worse owners out there, these… Read more »
Boy he likes that trust word.
Probably has several of them in some Caribbean island.
I trust you Joshy to MAGA.