Kroenke and Arsenal - Will It Ever End?

By: Clint | April 20th, 2007

…hopefully not! Because this “story” is exposing (as if it needed exposure) the heart of the xenophobic, wealthy English. What is disappointing is how their lust for money and authority gets communicated down to the fans, and ACCEPTED for some bizarre reason, as “pride in country” or other nationalist feelings. It’s quite simple, football is a sport which has become entertainment - and from the fans’ point of view, Arsenal (along with any other professional team in any other sport on the planet) is not providing a chance to PLAY a sport, then are providing a way to VIEW others playing a sport. They are providing entertainment. The talent (aka the entertainers themselves) are the players on the field and the person in charge of maintaining an acceptable level of entertainment is the manager. These are the people fans pay to see. Not the chairman of the business that takes care of the officework for the club. Not the CEO. Not the executive administrative assistant. Would the same folks who are buying what Hill-Wood is selling raise the same uproar if an English movie production company was to be be purchased by an American?

When the players are all, ALL, foreign born, and when the coach is foreign born, THAT is the time to make your racist, nationalistic bitching public. Of course, seeing Arsenal become a mainstay at the top of the table since the influx of this non-English talent has shut the mouths of most bigots. For now. And since the team isn’t bobbing around 16th place, who will the next target be? Let’s see, the office workers (albeit, highly, highly paid ones) will tell us what we want to hear!

“Call me old-fashioned, but we don’t need his money and we don’t want his sort,” Hill-Wood, a former director of Hambros Bank Plc, told BBC radio today. “They know absolutely sweet F.A. about our football and we don’t want these type of people involved.”

Now I expect these scumbags to say this sort of thing - it’s the same garbage American CEOs and majority shareholders said throughout the 80s and early 90s when they felt they would lose a couple million out of their multi-million dollar fortunes. And it worked here too! Every Chevy and Ford truck seemed to be smothered in pro-American business stickers. And many of those trucks now find themselves parked at Nissan plants in the south, or Sony office buildings in California. Like the rubes they are, Americans were suckered by millionaires and their filthy lies - terrified that who owned a business dictated how it affected them or the quality of the product itself.

And now we have English (and teams in Scotland, for that matter) club owners attempting to stoke the flames of hatred not by “buying British” but by paying foreign players and managers to lead their team to success; not by spending some of the money they make on helping improve the communities that support them, but by whoring out their brand, team, and history to other continents in the attempt to make even more money through merchandising, TV contracts, and sponsorships with products and companies that have nothing to do with football; and not by being honest and stating their real fears (that they will lose their cash cow and their celebrity) but by spewing ignorance and incendiary remarks such as Hill-Wood’s.

“Americans are buying up chunks of the Premiership not because of their love of football but because they see an opportunity to make money,” Hill-Wood said. “Our objective is to keep Arsenal English, but with a lot of foreign players.”

Meanwhile, other reports are that Dein leaving the club has/may cause friction between the players and ownership.

His departure appears to have created a power vacuum and left Arsenal, which boasts the most conservative boardroom in the country, on shaky ground and with doubts over the future of manager Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal face Tottenham on Saturday in the hope that events do not spill over on to the pitch.

But former Gunner Ian Wright suggested Dein’s departure has hit the players, especially French striker Thierry Henry, hard.

“I know the players aren’t happy, I know Thierry’s not happy,” Wright told talk-SPORT.

“We’re talking about a man (Dein) who goes into the dressing room after every single game, shakes every player by the hand and who knows all the youth team players.

“I know this for a fact that the manager and the players are 100 percent behind David Dein, and I can see real repercussions coming off the back of this.

“David Dein was not going to try and make moves to bring in a foreign investor from America without Arsene Wenger knowing about it.”

Wenger on Thursday attended an Arsenal board meeting where he is understood to have asked the directors about their future plans.

He later said: “It is a sad day for Arsenal Football Club.

“It is a huge disappointment because we worked very closely together. David has contributed highly to the success of the club in the last 10 years and even before that as well. Red and white are the colours of his heart.”

He added: “My position is that I am linked with the club very strongly. The relationship with the rest (of the board) has always been very good and we try always to have a good understanding.”

And if you still think American ownership will be horrible and somehow affect you or the team or the quality of play, take a look at who is pushing these lies on the public: I give you Peter Hill-Wood, the man who wants to keep “these type of people” out of Arsenal’s boardroom (oh, but PLEASE keep them on the field! they run and jump so much better than our boys!).