It’s the AGM today and with the yanks in attendance and the AST set to go through with their symbolic gesture of no confidence by voting against Sir Chips and the Kroenke’s, it’s just to be a slightly more cagey atmosphere, even if that’s the best that fan groups can do to suggest change at the club.

Ordinarily I don’t usually bother talking about that sort of stuff on my blog; I write this blog because I like talking about on-field stuff but occasionally things happen that make me want to say something. 

Today it is about the Kroenke’s and specifically the interview that they did that the Telegraph released last night at 10.30pm from Jeremy Wilson. Unsurprisingly it was chocked full of more quotes to spin an Arsenal fan into fits of rage and I’m sure the people at the Telegraph are more than happy with that. There’s no news like bad news, that’s for sure, and I’m sure Wilson will have known that from the second it was signed off by the sports editor for release.

In this PR spin of an article Kroenke and his son talk about:

  • Building a legacy at Arsenal
  • That Arsène is clearly a man for the job
  • That ‘soccer’ is Josh Kroenke’s first love
  • That they have already done so much to improve the club – bringing in analytics, more coaching staff, etc, etc
  • That the fans are the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ part of the club – and that they worry for the impact that fan negativity has on the players.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to choke on my Cheerios this morning, because the PR blister that came out of that collective of prose on the Telegraph website is the biggest load of tosh I’ve ever heard.

The Kroenke’s have driven the club forward? Really? Well that is quite impressive that they can have such an influence despite only turning up to the countrybthree times a year. They must be working so hard on those Skype calls. 

Or, it is those that run the club that have been driving and pushing forward that change and those two pathetic excuses for owners have decided it’s a good opportunity to ride the wave.

Then there’s the accusation that it’s the fans that have caused issues with the players. Do me a f*cking favour. It wasn’t the fans that didn’t bother showing up for Palace away. It wasn’t the fans that turned on the players within the first 20 minutes of the Watford home game last season. It was the players and the managers that didn’t deliver. Arsène himself has said that the team needs to show the fans that they are up for games and in this instance I agree with him. Think about every time you’ve watched a football match with any team. If they start the game we’ll on the opening skirmishes then the crowd are always whipped up as a result. If the team performs then the crowd reacts and if Kroenke bothered to turn up for more matches he’d know that. 

Apparently though, most fans are ‘in the middle’ when it comes to them, which is one of the more bizarre quotes I’ve heard. I’d say they clearly didn’t hear the collective chanting last season at The Emirates but we all know they didn’t because they wouldn’t have even been on the continent. I haven’t met one Arsenal fan who truly believes that the Kroenke’s are good for Arsenal.

It’s because they are not. They can spin and spin stories like this all they want but the reality is that they are here for their investment portfolio and nothing more. They want to know how they can squeeze more money out of Arsenal without putting it in and they want to do it regardless of whether the club is successful or not. 

If you gave Stan Kroenke a magic wand and asked him to make one wish for Arsenal do you know what it would be? It wouldn’t be a Premier League and Champions League double. It’d be for there to be new rules passed so there could be no relegation in the Premier League because that protects his investment. He’d take that all day long and there is nothing we could do about it.

What we could do is to voice our frustration and that starts this weekend because he’ll be in the ground and if they heard a collective barrage of abuse towards the end of the game aimed at them and not the players on the pitch (hopefully after we’re 3-0 up) then they’d be under no illusion as to where the fans frustrations and anger lies.

But that probably won’t happen and it looks like we’re stuck with the Kroenke’s for the foreseeable future.

Happy days.