Arsenal haven’t lost a game since 28 August, so it’s a pretty decent time for Stan and Josh Kroenke to stick their head above the parapet to let everyone know that they’re doing a swell job.
We’ve not heard much from our owners since April when they sparked furious protests from Arsenal fans for signing the club up to the doomed European Super League.
Aside from publicly dismissing a £1.8 billion bid from Spotify owner Daniel Ek, father and son have been pretty sheepish on the media front, preferring instead to let their money do the talking in a bid to buy forgiveness via the transfer market.
It’s very difficult to determine whether this summer’s business, which saw us recruit six first team players, would have happened without spring’s unravelling of trust but that’s not going to stop our billionaire overlords from pretending otherwise.
Where we are now – feeling good because we’ve won a few games – is the fruit of their labour, the coming together of a grand plan, the result of years of experience owning sports franchises on the other side of the Atlantic.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Josh Kroenke explained: “We’ve only really owned the club since 2018. We have a young manager, we have a young squad and we’re charting our path to the future.
“In the United States we have a certain model and we’re implementing that here, and we have over the last three years, which is, young players, talented players with the right mentality, let them grow together while continuing to sprinkle in talent throughout the squad.
“Eventually it grows into something very special. The power of continuity behind the scenes and people working together and pulling in the same direction is an underrated aspect of pro sports. With the power of continuity and allowing this group to grow together, special times are ahead for this club.”
Given Stan Kroenke is on record as saying, “If you want to win championships then you would never get involved [with owning a club]” it’s also amusing to hear Josh talk about the need for a change in mentality. One wonders when the penny dropped.
“Arsenal fans should expect the best. That’s what they’ve expected throughout their history and that shouldn’t change at all,” he said.
“Do we have to rethink how we’re going to go about achieving those goals? Absolutely. This summer that really played out. We weren’t breaking any transfer records but the net spend was very high.
“We had many areas we needed to address on the pitch, those were addressed with players of a certain quality, of a certain age, and I think what gets left out quite a bit is, we needed to change a few mentalities around here. We needed to get mentally stronger.
“I think from the new signings to the kids that are coming through from Hale End to the senior players that are setting the tone in the dressing room on a daily basis, that mentality is to go out and compete and leave it all on the pitch. That is a quality that can make our fans proud, win, lose or draw.”
As for the Super League debacle, Josh hopes 48 hours in April won’t define how supporters view KSE in the long term. It’s quite a convenient way to position our involvement in the project, given it had been months, if not years, in the making.
“As someone that always tries to find the positives in things, when you’re at the bottom, there’s only one way to go and that’s back up,” he said.
“I said this to our fan advisory board who we met with last night, I don’t want a 48-hour period to define us.
“We were presented with an opportunity. We asked ourselves a question, which was what was worse, a Super League or Super League without Arsenal? And we answered that question that we should be included in that.
“Were we wrong? Obviously. We listened to our fans. We made a quick pivot, removed ourselves from the situation. We apologised, and now we move forward.”
He makes it sound very easy.
We’re not sure the supporters are ready to forgive and forget just yet.
What a load of kroenke
They are in a so called ‘superposition’.
No matter what they say, they own the media and the money, They can twist it and turn it unil it things back them up at last.
Timing of this interview was spot on, who remembers the shameful super league mission from spring, right?
Only hope we have as single arsenal fans that kroenkes are determined to follow the long-term prospects.
Lol. Stan was one of the ringleaders, meant to be Vice Chairman of the Super League. Was ruthless moving his NFL “franchise” when it was profitable for him. Arsenal fans aren’t stupid, so don’t feed us this “48 hours” bullshit. Win or lose, #kroenkeout
They are in a so called ‘superposition’.
No matter what they say, they own the media and the money, They can twist it and turn it unil it things back them up at last.
Timing of this interview was spot on, who remembers the shameful super league mission from spring, right?
Only hope we have as single arsenal fans that kroenkes are determined to follow the long-term prospects.
Yeah totally. But, if he moves us to say… Wiltshire, where I now reside, I’ll have no problems. And if you’re listening Stan, I think the Tetbury Arsenal really has a ring to it.
Never would the chant “There’s only one team in Wiltshire” be more true.
Swindon Town?
Okay Josh, okay.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of being objective with the Kronkes after this basic PR bullshit. So while I refuse to say anything positive about them, I do wonder what the alternative ownership model looks like. Daniel Ek might be interesting but look at all the other billionaires who have bought into prem teams. Each of them shady ethically corrupt fuckers to some degree. I’d be interested in others take, but changing our owners doesn’t solve a damn thing. What we need to mobilise towards is fan ownership and an equitable league where sportswashing is eliminated and… Read more »
Interesting take. I’m not an economist but the extent to which transfer fees have become so inflated and players’ wages so insanely high seems out of control.
Agree completely. The answer isn’t swapping 1 shady billionaire/sovereign state investment fund for another, it’s pushing through changes in the requirements for club ownership with a focus on protecting supporters & competition.
I think we all know the chances of a proper overhaul of the current set up is slim to none
We are 3 top players away from competing at the top, dont start leaving us short and spend well in the areas we need. Then improve the back up players to deal with European football
Let’s get European football before we talk about “competing at the top”.
Realistically, we’ve has three good games recently.
It might be reasonable to wait until we have a few more.
Having heard him talk their usual policy of silence makes sense.
Well, in fairness, the outside world is more cutthroat than we’d like to admit. The Super League is not as cut and dry as most of us try to make out. The most important thing is that we’ve moved on. Not sure how I’d have felt if it succeeded and we weren’t in it. The game is the game. All in all, glad that is behind us even if for the foreseeable future. I won’t care much about them if we can make keep this trajectory up. Come on you gunners! Top 4 is a real possibility this year. Let’s… Read more »
“I won’t care much about them…”. By that I mean the Kroenkes.
Fuck off josh kronke. You are not a football fan, you know fuck all about football. What a fraud get out of our club
“We needed to change quite a few mentalities around here…” – yeah, like your own.
Seriously :
“As someone that always tries to find the positives in things, ”
Entitled piece of shite born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Fucking leaches…
Entitled yes. Born with a silver spoon in the mouth, yes. But you can’t run a Premier League club without money, so it’s simply a fact of life these days.
And so we must live with it forever & ever and never question it and pretend as though there aren’t viable alternatives that are better than what we have in the prem atm.
Comments taken out of context. Stan Kroenke is right that you “don’t get involved”, in that you don’t waste millions on expensive mercenaries to win trophies. It’s too boom and bust. If we did that, like the other clubs, there would be no Saka or Smith Rowe . It’s tantamount to gambling the clubs future. Arsenal are self-sufficient and should remain so.
Except that is exactly what we tried to do under his watch with pepe, willian, Luiz, xhaka, mustafi, sokratis, lichtensteiner, even partey and white (both of whom I quite like). But we’ve had a massive negative net spend in transfers. That’s the last annoying thing about this discussion, is all double speak PR BS. Talk about youth being their tactic always… It wasn’t. Character being the focus always… It wasn’t. Arsenal and kroenke playing follow the leaders with super league… They weren’t. Its just like billionaires hiding behind the millions they spend on philanthropy to keep the focus on the… Read more »
surely self sustaining involves oversight over executives who waste/pocket money from shady third party payment companies for Pepe or allowing millions lost in agent fees or allowing international players in their prime 20’s to leave on free transfers
the kroenkes really don’t give a professional image.
Mealy mouthed ‘article’ You missed the bit about despite having debts in the 100’s if millions they funded 150m of transfers, and that we could well be 4th come sunday evening.
Why dont you go write kid’s stories . Disgrace of a blog
Hi-5 J-dog
And yet you read the blog and made the effort to moan about it.
It’s a fan blog written by fans of the club. There’s plenty of objective articles out there if you want them.
I suggest you go take your childlike tantrum elsewhere sportsfan.
Up the arsenal, long live arseblog
This was a kid’s story though.
The story of a kid whose daddy bought him a football club.
You act like Josh, Stan, or Stan’s wife the heiress had actually earned any of the money that’s been spent.
Oops! Wrong address
“Where we are now – feeling good because we’ve won a few games – is the fruit of their labour, the coming together of a grand plan, the result of years of experience owning sports franchises on the other side of the Atlantic.” AAllen’s summary really encapsulates what the junior Kroenke is saying. The nerve to think that it all stems from their ownership – which it seems like that’s what he’s implying by saying that they’ve focused on recruiting young players across all of their sport holdings. There is something to be said for finding some kind of middle… Read more »
Not all the US owners are bad. For instance, Liverpool’s owner has the interest of the club. As compare to Glazer, Kroenke is not that bad after all.
Do the K-dudes really deserve so many turbocharged negavibes? Aside from the ESL pooness, they’ve enabled AFC to blow an astronomical amount of cash on players. Would Ek be able to do much else?
I rolled my eyes as soon as I read “we’ve only really owned the club since 2018.” Fuck off.
Quite remarkable. It’s a fact that since “they own it” (2018), we had the worst league results in the last 25 years. Speaks for itself, I wouldn’t be proud of that.
I can’t say here that they didn’t spend, cause that’s factually wrong, but most of the spending seems to have flushed down the drain.
“We’ve only really owned the club since 2018.” Makes me cringe. They honestly thinking that they are doing an incredible job. Timeline: 2018 they take full ownership 2019 josh Kroenke says “be excited” 2019 Pepe signed double his market value And it turns out his payment schedule was done via a finance company. Also subsequent purchases were done spread over several seasons which were never done under Wenger because it costs more overall. So financially Josh allowed a lot of money to be wasted. I would think any employee of a ‘successful sporting franchise’ would be sacked by now. Does… Read more »
I’d love to ask where was this 150m fund only suddenly available when Wenger and Emery were hunting bargain basement loans? To go with misguided expensive marketing purchases.
Which lead to the lack of overall squad depth which has plagued the Kroenke ownership.
It’s taken 10 years for the penny to drop.
Not sure they should be asking for a pay on the back…
Based on the financial reports Swiss Ramble helps to consolidate which have been depicting doom and gloom the last couple of years coupled with the jobs made redundant last year (freaking even gunnersaurus), the fact that we still spent more this transfer window then any team points to the suggestion that there was some kind of owner investment, right?
Nope, it is far more likely that Arsenal has increased its debt.
Maybe, the Kroenke family put up guarantees so that the conditions were better but I would be very surprised if they actually put in equity or loans themselves.
You kinda get the feeling that they’re not really engaged and never have been, both of them, father and son, Stan simply focusing on his LA Rams project and his ranches and Josh really being a basketball fan, then when they do actually try to be engaged you then just wish that they hadn’t bothered.
Yes we spent a lot of dough in the summer, self financed as always, so what’s new Josh?
They run all their sports basically the same, no involvement and just let the team management handle itself, all KSE teams have young teams with young coaches so you can see what he’s talking about implementing their US model at Arsenal. I works out much better with US teams but doesn’t work quite as good with Arsenal because football needs constant actual investment where US sports have drafts and player exchanges rather than cash investment to acquire new players. If they can get the right management in and right balance of involvement they might not turn out to be too… Read more »
Because American sports have drafts where by the least successful teams get the option to select the best young college talent for cheap, tanking is even celebrated in their sports and in the EPL it gets you relegated
I guess when you’re born into billions, and your dad married into billions, it probably is quite possible to always see the positive side of things. 😀
I’ve sported a beard for a few years now, but I kind of feel like shaving my entire head now just so I have absolutely nothing in common with the self righteous piece of fucking refuse that is Josh Kroenke.
“People have the power….”
Lol…no, they don’t 🤣
The Kroenkes are not my favourite family, least of all because they’re Trump supporters. However, when an owner sits down and admits to making a mistake it’s never a bad thing.
Perhaps they really have become aware of the influence the fans can have.
Bottom line, they reversed their decision for multiple reasons, one of which was the fans outrage.
Oh man they are? I had no idea… Just makes the hatred feel even more earned and justified now.
I think they make themselves aware when it’s convenient for them…
Oh wow! Trumpers! Little wonder … they’re so exploitative + think thru their arses. Everything makes sense now!
Kroenkes:
Fans: why are they fucking silent? they don’t care.
Kroenkes:💬
Fans: Why are they talking? I don’t believe them. Why are they not spending to improve us?
Kroenkes: $$£££€
Fans: Why are they spending? they must be guilty or something. Thanks but no thanks, we don’t like you.
They didn’t spend lots because of the super league fiasco, how then do you explain the relatively heavy spending in the past windows? Partey, the window with Pepe, Tierney, Saliba? breaking the club transfer record with strikers two windows apart?
‘Presented with an opportunity…’ to cancel out lots of competition and make more money for them.
I’m glad fans told them we want a vibrant dynamic competitive league rather than the same old teams playing season after season as per the US.
At least we don’t have to watch rounders, netball and a ‘football’ where the ball rarely touches a foot.
Slightly over-emotional reporting today, IMHO.
They’ve made errors, some big, and historically been too frugal- and we’ve rightly roasted them for it.
They’ve now developed a strategy and put money behind it. Fair play.
No billionaires are our buddies but I’ll take the kroenkes over the glazers or Middle Eastern murdering autocrats…
It’s not much of a choice, but I agree.
What’s with the new look…..is he in Dune?
It is going to be the most awkward moment of the decade when he lifts the PL trophy at the Emirates …
It is sad we the fans are held hostage by this ownership. We are a captive market who will forever love what they own on paper. It is tough.
Interesting how the bloggers agenda has completely shaped the tone of the comments.
Not much independent opinion on this blog.
He talks about how their US teams amass young talent and let them grow to give the impression that the transfer strategy is more Kroenke than Edu and Arteta. Their NFL team, the LA Rams have traded away youth and draft picks (NFL gold) chasing Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey, Von Miller and others. It’s complete bullshit and an absolute insult to the intelligence of Arsenal fans. Glory hogging prick!
I’m not the most clever chap but I have eyes and can read a transcript and judge for myself what I see on a field of play. I follow the Rams in the US. They are mostly a young team but their football management have augmented those players with very talented individuals in key positions, just as Josh said above. Stafford, Ramsey, and Miller are older as you say, but they are significant upgrades – all of which were required for the Rams to continue progress – in three very key positions. You might not like what they had to… Read more »
I find it interesting that all of KSE US sports teams are doing well this season. The nuggets are a lot of people’s favorites to get to the play offs in the NBA, the Rams looking towards the Superbowl, the Colorado Avalanche are the bookies favorites for the Stanley Cup. The fact that KSE have now finished the SO-FI stadium in LA (the most expensive sports venue in history at $5bn) could be something to do with more investment into Arsenal this season. I really hope that Josh can continue to invest heavily in Arsenal and get us back into… Read more »
The Kroenkes are learning slowly via their very expensive mistakes up till now. Persisting with Arsene Wenger for too long, failing to scrutinise the mismanagement of Sanllehi, allowing silly money to be thrown at duds like Mustafi and Willian, and signing off Ozil’s eye-watering contract extension… the list goes on.
But from this summer onwards, I think we have to give credit where due for the direction of travel the club is on. A better, younger squad and a more realistic wage bill. They are getting better. What would we prefer; Mike Ashley, the Glazers, Abramovich, Sheikh Mansour, Saudi Arabia?