Arsènal

At the end of January 2007, Arsenal entertained Tottenham in the second leg of a Carling Cup semi-final. In the light of Arsène Wenger’s policy of using the competition to blood young players and provide match practice for his second-stringers, the home club wanted to reduce prices as they had in previous rounds. However, their opponents were entitled to 45 per cent of the gate receipts and they insisted grade A fixture admission charges should be levied. The stand-off was only resolved with the intervention of the Football League, and a compromise reached whereby Arsenal agreed to apply their grade B rates, which ranged from £32 to £66 apart from the concessions in the family enclosure.

The Carling Cup was not included as one of the games which gave admittance to the 36,000 standard season tickets, so a huge number of upper and lower tier seats were available to see the reserves of a team who had failed to challenge in the Premier League. Surely it would be a tough sell. Remarkably, an attendance figure of 59,872 was posted. It was positive proof that Arsenal’s expensive new home could continue its phenomenal financial contribution even under extenuating circumstances.

Watching from the directors’ box, David Dein must have experienced some very mixed emotions. It was a triumph to get so many people through the doors and, moreover, the team qualified for yet another cup final trip to Cardiff by defeating the full-strength line-up of their neighbours after extra time. But how did he feel, in the light of his dispute with his fellow board members about the financial hazards of Ashburton Grove, now that it appeared set for a prosperous future? His friend down in the technical area was still being forced to buck the odds. In Dein’s view it was all well and good looking to the future when extravagant spending would be possible, but Arsène Wenger might not be around by then and he himself was certainly no spring chicken. He fervently believed that his colleagues were complacent. He felt strongly that the winning of trophies was too far down their list of priorities. He felt that they were concentrating too much on the building of apartments rather than the building of a football team.

Arsenal had their stadium, but not much money in the bank. They needed cash to compete and they needed it now. Unfortunately it didn’t appear that the board, four of whom featured on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated combined wealth of £500 million, were going to reach into their own pockets to buy a Ronaldo or a Kaka, so it was down to him to find someone who would. Keith Edelman’s emphasis on the balance sheets meant he was not the football man Arsenal needed at the helm as far as David Dein was concerned, and for him there was one far more suitable and obvious candidate for the role: the rather dapper character he sees on a daily basis in his bathroom mirror when shaving.

Less than a fortnight after the semi-final against Tottenham, the club announced a partnership with Major League Soccer team the Colorado Rapids, with the aim of “building the Arsenal brand in the US; helping to improve the quality of football at MLS team Colorado Rapids and supporting grassroots football in the US”. Really? There must have been other and better marketing opportunities available. Were there thousands of Arsenal fans in the States that a link-up with a team from Denver was going to exploit?

However, although he didn’t initiate the association, David Dein immediately saw how it might be better used back home. Stan Kroenke, the proprietor of Colorado Rapids, is a sports mogul who either owned outright or had signifi cant stakes in five other US sports franchises, including the St Louis Rams of the NFL and the Denver Nuggets of the NBA. He was well-heeled, and his wife even more so, being related to the founder of the Wal-Mart retail chain. With the new Sky, Setanta and overseas television deals coming on stream Dein, mindful that his club needed more financial muscle, encouraged Kroenke that investment in a top Premier League club, specifically Arsenal, would be a profit able exercise. Unwittingly, Arsenal’s biggest shareholder then gave Kroenke the chance to dip his toe in the water.

Recently moved to Switzerland, Danny Fiszman disposed of 659 shares in March 2007. It was subsequently assumed that he did this in order to test his tax status with the UK revenue. The sale took his portion below the 25 per cent which hitherto gave him a measure of control over any special resolutions the club might wish to propose. (He later admitted to a group of shareholders that he wouldn’t have sold the shares if he’d known what was to follow and advised one of them who had a single share, “Hang onto it. Every one is vital now.”) At the time, the board owned 60 per cent of the club so Fiszman’s falling below the 25 per cent mark was not regarded as a risk. The buyer of the shares, who acted through a third party, was Stan Kroenke. The entrepreneur’s next acquisition a month on was far more substantial. In 2004 two of the main ITV companies, Granada and Carlton, merged and the new company (confusingly now called ITV) was looking to unload its 9.99 per cent stake in Arsenal as part of its policy of selling off its non-core assets. 50 per cent of the ownership of Arsenal Broadband went with the deal. One of the conditions of the agreement was that ITV could dispose of its holding as and when it liked without any obligation to Arsenal. A total price of £65 million was agreed with Kroenke, the shares element being valued at £42.3 million, which was believed to be at the top end of the market. With other smaller purchases, Kroenke soon owned 12 per cent of Arsenal Holdings plc.

At about the same time, 152 shares belonging to Peter Hill-Wood that had been registered in Ken Friar’s name in the early 1980s were transferred back to the chairman. It was a tidying-up exercise, but the timing, together with Fiszman’s sale, fuelled speculation that the board was preparing for a takeover. Certainly, Dein and Kroenke’s holdings combined outweighed that of Fiszman’s and if Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith’s 16 per cent could be added to the pot then the 43 per cent stake they would then control could precipitate a change of ownership.

To this end, Lady Nina must have seemed a likely ally to the vice-chairman. If that was the case, Dein was mistaken. The daughter of an Indian diplomat, she met her future husband Sir Charles Bracewell-Smith while working at the Park Lane Hotel, which her husband part-owned with his cousins, the Carrs, also Arsenal directors. After marrying him in 1996, she was invited onto the board of the hotel. Over the next eight years, due to the gradual decline of her husband’s health, the Arsenal shares registered in his name and others held in trust for him by the Carrs were gradually transferred into her name, eventually giving her sole ownership of 16 per cent of the club by 2004.

Geoff Klass is a mutual friend of Lady Nina and David Dein. In 2005, he was considering whether to dispose of his four per cent shareholding in Arsenal (he subsequently sold half of it) and suggested to Lady Nina that if she was ever of like mind, as a businessman he could get a better deal for both of them if they acted in concert. Chinese whispers then spun the proposal into a tale that Klass wanted to acquire her stake and in so doing was acting as a proxy for Dein. Putting two and two together and maybe making a lot more than four, it struck the board that having such a large shareholder on the inside could only be an asset to them. In April 2005 she was invited to become a non-executive director.

Lady Nina’s loyalty to her family’s 80-year history with Arsenal and her fellow directors was tested when Dein suggested, in the interests of the club’s future, that there might be a better home for her shares. Dein certainly underestimated the pleasure Lady Nina got from her new role and her empathy with the direction the board felt the club should be going in. Talking about the episode in February 2008 she said, “He [Dein] spoke to Kroenke on his own initiative and Kroenke is a businessman with a different agenda. The board are fans.” In her view, by trying to get Kroenke on board, David Dein was going against his own repeated response to the suggestion that there should be a fan’s representative on its board – “An Arsenal fan, who do you think we [the Directors] are then?”. Now, in Lady Nina’s view, he was attempting to bring in a stranger “who might use the club for profit”. She relayed her discussion with Dein to her colleagues who felt that his manoeuvring could no longer be tolerated. A special board meeting was convened and a decision reached to give David Dein his cards. Peter Hill-Wood confirmed that “the vote was 100 per cent unanimous”. A letter informing Dein that he was no longer a director of Arsenal Football Club, signed by all of the other board members, was handed to him at the club’s Highbury House offices by the chairman on Wednesday 18th April 2007, the morning after Arsenal had beaten Manchester City at home as the season wound down. “Chips Keswick was with me,” Hill-Wood explained. “If you have a potential confrontation it’s better to have two people present than one.” Sir Chips Keswick was one of two non-executive directors appointed to the board in November 2005, Lord Harris of Peckham being the other.

Dein’s fate had been determined by a sequence of events no one could have predicted when he was instrumental in bringing Arsène Wenger to the club in 1996. The on-field success enabled the board to contemplate moving way upmarket, and in doing so the specialist financial acumen required saw Dein shunted aside. If he had still been in charge, the Emirates would probably never have come about. Now, as the board could envisage 60,000 filing in at least 20 times a season, they justifiably felt their bold choice had been fully vindicated. But in Dein’s eyes, investment was needed to complete the picture. What price a wonderful new stadium if there wasn’t a wonderful new team playing in it who could send all their rivals packing? No prophet in his own land, he had felt compelled to take tremendous personal gambles to try to achieve his objective. And the prospect of returning to a greater position of influence than he had enjoyed since Keith Edelman’s arrival would have been no disincentive.

Dein was not helped in his relationship with his fellow directors by the involvement of his son Darren in club-related business. Initially working for agent Jerome Anderson, Darren went on to represent several Arsenal players, including Thierry Henry. The other directors warned his father about the potential conflict of interest, a notion denied by the vice-chairman. Yet their fears would not have been allayed when the chairman spotted Darren Dein at the hotel when the board struck their agreement with Emirates in early 2004. “I was surprised that he was hovering about the hotel when we had this secret meeting,” recalls Peter Hill-Wood, “which obviously wasn’t as secret as we thought it was. I had no idea that he was anywhere near it [the naming rights negotiation]. But I think he must have had some involvement.” It probably didn’t help his father’s cause.

David Dein’s exit was unceremonious. Choosing not to sign a contractual letter of dismissal, the vice-chairman was forced to clear his desk and leave behind the company perks such as his mobile phone and any monetary settlement. As far as the board were concerned, he was now persona non grata. Dein said his dismissal felt “like a family bereavement. Initially there is shock, then the grieving.” By the time Arsenal played at home again on 29th April, the nameplate below Dein’s seat in the directors’ box had been removed, and the seats he and wife Barbara had traditionally occupied were filled by others. For a few days he lay low until the paparazzi gave up camping outside his Totteridge home for pictures or comments, deluding them into believing that he had gone abroad when in reality he simply hadn’t left the house.

In negotiating with Kroenke, David Dein would have felt he was acting in Arsenal’s best interests but he was certainly acting on his own initiative. Chairman Peter Hill-Wood justified his dismissive rejection of the American (“We don’t want his sort and we don’t want his money”) by saying “I didn’t know what he wanted to do. I had absolutely no idea. I defend the integrity of Arsenal Football Club. We’re going to have some unknown American buying control? I didn’t think that was good and I still don’t think it’s good.”

To put it mildly, Arsène Wenger was not happy at losing his pal and closest ally on the board. However, by the time Hill-Wood went to see him at the training ground the next morning, he had – after discussing the situation with Dein – decided to stay. Nevetheless, asked how Wenger took the news of his friend’s sacking, Hill-Wood recalls, “Not very well. I didn’t expect him to. I know perfectly well he’s friendly with David and still is.” (Indeed, the two remain in constant touch and have occasionally been spotted together with their wives enjoying a meal in a local restaurant.) The chairman believes the manager wanted to stay because “he enjoys what he’s doing”. Ken Friar was detailed to take over Dein’s work on contract and transfer negotiations and prepared himself for a busy summer ahead.

Some months after his departure, Dein was “still feeling the pain”. Anger had replaced grief as the predominant emotion. He felt that he was the victim of a personal vendetta. “They [the board] were jealous of my profile.” And he could have added influence at the top tables. When he was replaced by Keith Edelman as Arsenal’s representative on G14, the members were disappointed to lose such a knowledgeable administrator. The Arsenal board, Dein felt, were out of touch and not acting in the club’s best interests. He cited a regional Premier League meeting at which no Arsenal representative had bothered to attend. Additionally, no-one took the plane to Switzerland for UEFA Club Forum meetings at which a number of other English clubs were present. Even Peter Kenyon of Chelsea, his long-time adversary, expressed astonishment at what he took to be Arsenal’s new non-interventionist policy.

Admitting sorely missing “the buzz of being in the inner circle” (with club, country, UEFA and FIFA) Dein began to carve out a new role for himself as a speaker on the football conference circuit, his opinions on the state of the game still carrying enough gravitas for him to be much in demand. He was also sought after by his former competitors who, having enjoyed jousting with him across boardrooms and Premier League meetings, felt his experience would be an invaluable asset to their clubs. However as a one-club man, whilst flattered by the offers, he rejected top management roles at Newcastle, Everton and Barcelona.

He was determined to keep his own counsel. He recalled the dignified way the actress Koo Stark back in the 1980s refused all temptation and pressure to kiss and tell about her escapade with Prince Andrew. He was going to keep his powder dry until the opportunity arose to respond to what he called his “brutal sacking”. In the meantime, he contented himself with justifying what Stan Kroenke could have brought to the party. “All the very wealthy football investors I’ve met are in it for the sport,” he claims. “They want some fun out of it. They’re not looking for a return on their investment. OK, they don’t want to lose anything, they have put in good money, but, invariably, it represents only a very small part of their overall wealth. It is a passion investment. They could put the money in the bank but that would be boring.” It was a view that wouldn’t be shared by everyone at Old Trafford.

Despite Dein’s exit, the Kroenke story wouldn’t go away and the furore was such that Peter Hill-Wood wrote to all shareholders reassuring them about the board’s resolve to resist any takeover. And, exceptionally, the reclusive Danny Fiszman went public for the first time anyone could remember, agreeing to an interview for Sky Sports News. He was adamant that the club was not for sale. “We are open to anything that will improve the club but it’s going to be very, very difficult to explain to me and to the rest of board how you can actually make substantial investment – which would be another £400 million, £500 million, £600 million – and not expect a return for that. If it’s just an eight to 10 per cent return, you’re talking about £50 million or so. That’s got to come out of the club, otherwise there’s no point making a purchase. I don’t know how they’re going to be able to improve the finances of the club at that sort of amount.” And anyway as long as the directors remained united, a takeover would be impossible. “The board has 45.5 per cent of the shares. We also obviously have friends which takes us over 50 per cent. They [Kroenke/Dein] can mount a hostile bid but they’re never going to gain control. The future of the club is in the hands of the board.” To prevent further speculation, this stance was confirmed by the entire board signing a lockdown agreement for 12 months, which meant they could not sell any shares until April 2008 at the earliest.

Around this time the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) emerged as a key opinion-former on the ownership issue. Formed in 2003 to bring together the smaller shareholders under one umbrella, the AST’s board represented its members in discussions with the Arsenal board and other significant shareholders. Comprising a number of highly qualified professionals from the banking, legal and PR industries, they could talk to the directors on equal terms about the minutiae of Arsenal’s business and quickly won the respect of all those who dealt with them. They discovered that following the share issue to Granada in 2005, one authorised share was left unissued due to a mathematical error. Dubbed the ‘orphan share’, the AST ran a successful campaign to persuade the club to donate the share to them for safekeeping. They also secured the club’s backing (and promised financial assistance) to start up a sharesave scheme to allow supporters to contribute towards the eventual purchase of shares in the club. When the AST launched its own website, they contacted the club to have a link posted on arsenal.com. The result was an immediate placing at the very top of the list of Fanzone entries on the site’s homepage, even above links to the club’s own pages for its recognised roster of supporters’ clubs and the Junior Gunners. There was no doubt they were the board’s favoured sons in the fan fraternity (which included the Arsenal Independent Supporters’ Association (AISA) and REDaction). Further, the media recognised them as a reliable source on how the rank and file viewed proceedings. Prepared to talk to all parties, the AST kept in touch with David Dein, cognizant of his con siderable stake, and kept an open mind as to the benefits of greater involvement from Stan Kroenke (but were always consistent in saying they would not support a debt-laden or hostile takeover).

Publicly, Kroenke never commented on his association with Dein. He had probably expected him to obtain Lady Nina’s shareholding in the light of paying top dollar for ITV’s 9.99 per cent. After that failed, short of selling up himself, all he could do was to bide his time and ensure his investment was in safe hands. Visiting the UK in October 2007 on the occasion of an NFL match at Wembley between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins, ‘Silent Stan’ (as he is known due to his public reticence) was asked about his relationship with the Arsenal board. “It’s a partnership at the moment,” he responded. “Everybody has a tendency to speed up but actually these things take a lot of time and a lot of effort and many years to develop. We tend to look in the long term. If you are an investor in a sports team and you don’t look long term you are probably not a good investor. This is a strategic investment for us.” He sounded a lot more cautious than the type of big spender David Dein had in mind.

Presumably Dein had also come to this conclusion and on 30th August 2007 he emerged from his Totteridge bunker and announced, at a specially convened press conference, that he had sold his shares to Red and White Holdings Ltd, a company specifically formed to acquire shares in Arsenal by Moscow-based billionaire Alisher Usmanov and his right-hand man Farhad Moshiri. Part of the deal, which paid Dein the handsome sum of £75 million for his shares, was that he was installed as the new company’s chairman. Presumably if Usmanov was ultimately successful in securing control of Arsenal, Dein would be back in the saddle again.

A statement issued at the press conference to announce the purchase of the former vice-chairman’s shares indicated that Red and White Holdings intended “to approach the board of Arsenal in the near future to discuss its ideas, to understand the future direction of Arsenal and to explore areas of potential cooperation.” It followed up with the assertion (reiterating Dein’s long-held conviction) that “Red and White believes that in order to remain competitive at the top level of the game, Arsenal will require access to significant funding.” The speculation that Red and White were interested in a takeover was supported by Farhad Moshiri commenting that “we look forward to increasing our stake”. And there was no hanging about as, within a month, they had raised their stake from Dein’s 14 per cent to 23 per cent, putting themselves well on the way to overtaking Danny Fiszman as the largest shareholder. Immediately the share price rocketed to £10,000 as Red and White bought out some prominent smaller shareholders such as the hedge fund Lansdowne Holdings and Birol Nadir, son of the Polly Peck tycoon Asil Nadir.

Dein now felt able to return to watch his team from the comfort of Usmanov’s box. He had retained his paid-for season tickets in the Club and upper levels and made them available to friends and family but for the first time in years there was no reserved parking space. He had to leave his car in a school car park and walk the few hundred yards to the ground, rather than use the parking space under the stadium reserved for the boxholder.

However, mixing with the hoi polloi showed Dein he had a lot of personal support. Walking from his parked car to the stadium for the Saturday afternoon game against Birmingham in January 2008 he passed the Tollington pub on the Hornsey Road, which had fans packed outside in a pavement terrace area. A friend who was accompanying him, anticipating potential ill feeling, dropped back a couple of paces. Over his shoulder Dein shouted to him, “You think they’re going to throw their beer over me, don’t you?” “Yep,” replied his friend who was dumbfounded to find that they greeted him like a long lost son. Lads leaned over the railing to shake his hand. “When are you coming back?” they asked. “I’m here, aren’t I?” he responded. Outside the stadium he was stopped for photos and autographs, asked the same question and gave the same answer. In spite of some negative press in internet blogs and fanzines and a large banner created by the REDaction group to relay the message that Usmanov was not wanted, there were no catcalls and abuse for Dein, nothing in fact to warrant him needing the kind of minders a Russian magnate wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without.

Arsène Wenger was circumspect about the predatory share-buying of the company that had installed his friend as chairman, adamant that he had no intention of getting involved in the boardroom politics of the ownership issue. However, he did admit, “I’m concerned with the intent of people coming in”, although he distanced himself by stating, “What is happening up there [in the boardroom] is nothing to do with me. I’m not a shareholder and I don’t want to be involved in a strategic struggle for shares because, basically, it’s not my problem. Self-sufficiency should be any club’s target. You cannot have a policy at the club that, every year, somebody puts £50 million or £100 million in. Prices are rising but will people continue to pump in £40 million, £50 million or £100 million every year without any natural resources or dividends paid back? I’m not convinced. You have to work with a club’s natural resources.”

The manager with the degree in economics had previously expressed a distaste for the exorbitant spending that other clubs practised, and Dein’s reasoning behind bringing Usmanov to the party was not going to change that view. “Am I concerned that major foreign investment might affect the way we work here?” said Wenger. “Yes. There are many ways to work in the game. You can say you don’t want any youth development at all and I’ll respect that. If there are good players on the market, you go for them. But we’ve gone for a different solution and that’s what we want to continue to do. We go this way. I feel we are strong enough to compete and that’s what I want to show.” Defiantly, he emphasised, “If I wanted to buy a player today I have money available, it’s not a problem.” The company books, however, suggested that in fact he didn’t quite have a blank chequebook.

Wenger’s transfer and wages budget was later described by Ken Friar as being a case not so much of the manager saying “I need this much” but more asking “How much have I got?” Was it significant that Theo Walcott did not appear for the first team between joining from Southampton in January 2006 and the end of that season, before being selected for England’s World Cup squad? Although he made the bench on occasion, the suspicion was that if he’d actually trod the turf in Arsenal colours, an immediate further instalment on his transfer fee to his former club would have been activated. At a time when every penny was being counted, perhaps the decision was taken to give him first-team experience purely from the perspective of a non-playing substitute.

Now Wenger was in a situation where he could concentrate on developing younger players without any internal pressure to buy more established names. There was simply no choice. So he accepted it willingly, and got on with the job he loved. It was certainly a different position to the one Dein had taken up on his behalf. However, Wenger had been content to work without any cash and then when given some, he didn’t necessarily spend it. Nevertheless, Dein’s position was that he needed “bags more”, and quickly. Not so long ago Dein and Wenger were, in Dein’s words, “a team”. Peter Hill-Wood had been asked “Have you ever known David Dein to disagree with Arsène Wenger?” “Never”, he shot back. Perhaps Dein felt he had been given the licence to act as Wenger’s agent provocateur. More likely, as with so many self-made millionaire businessmen, Dein trusted his own judgment implicitly and found it difficult to veer away from his predetermined course of action.

If the situation regarding Stan Kroenke a few short months earlier had been unnerving, then the new threat to their position had the board reaching for their tin hats as shares were being hoovered up by Red and White at a rate of knots. Contrary to the view of many who regarded David Dein as no longer having any influence, the former vice-chairman believed he held an even stronger hand than hitherto. He could now wield Red and White’s shareholding which was much larger than his former stake. There were even mischievous rumours that, to demonstrate his resurrection, he might turn up at the club’s AGM in October 2007, although they proved inaccurate. It was just as well, as he would not have enjoyed hearing the board give the strongest indication yet that they would be around for the long haul with the announcement of an extension to their ‘lockdown agreement’, which was greeted by spontaneous applause from the large gathering of several hundred shareholders (more than anyone can ever remember seeing at an AGM). Under the new agreement, none of the directors’ shares could be sold until 2009, and even then, only to family members or fellow directors. In 2010, if there is unanimous agreement, then shares can be disposed of, but failing this, no one can sell until 2012. Keith Edelman later triumphantly claimed the pact made the board “bulletproof”. The edict sent a message out that the status quo would remain. (By 2010, the Highbury Square residential development is due to be complete, a decent chunk of the outstanding debt should have been paid off and the future should look much rosier. The value of the club might actually be greatly enhanced and the board members might be able to cash in if there is any inclination to sell.)

Despite the backslapping, there were still unresolved issues regarding the future. The Hill-Wood and Bracewell-Smith families may have had three generations on the board over the years but none of the offspring of the current directors are being groomed for succession. Despite Danny Fiszman, the board’s major shareholder, having five grown-up children, there is currently no sign that any of them are ever likely to be involved in establishing a third Arsenal family dynasty. Further, with the majority of the board in their seventies, their ownership of the club could soon be subject to last wills and testaments, worth tens of millions of pounds in the cases of Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina. Peter Hill-Wood revealed that discussions had taken place about the years ahead. Asked whether the board might bring in someone who would be around in 20 years’ time, Hill-Wood replied, “When you say the board is not youthful, they are very experienced.” When put to him that this was not necessarily true in terms of marketing or television rights, he responded, “But do we realise that the world is changing? Indeed we do. If the perfect answer is a 40-year-old from Google or something, we’d be very happy. We’re not ex cluding them but we certainly look at it and we all know that we’re unfortunately getting older.” Equally unfortunately, inaction was speaking so much louder than wishful thinking. However, the growing relationship with the AST indicated that the directors were beginning to widen their horizons.

The board donated use of the Diamond Club suite for the AST’s annual Christmas drinks do, held in conjunction with AISA. Four of the directors – Danny Fiszman, Keith Edelman, Ken Friar and Sir Chips Keswick – attended. Obviously there was no compulsion to do so, but a board meeting had been held at Highbury House earlier, so it was convenient for some of those attending to pop along and show their faces. The first drinks were on the AST, but Danny Fiszman appeared somewhat taken aback at being asked for £3 when he subsequently ordered a Coke at the bar. Possibly never having had to buy a drink at the stadium before, his grasp on the club’s finances may not have extended to the mundane matters that affect the rank-and-file. When questioned about the events of recent months off the field, Fiszman responded, pointing towards the pitch, “I haven’t given up six years of my life to make this happen only to walk away from it now.”

Fiszman spoke of the stress of being responsible for the well-being of the club, in that so many people cared so deeply about it and thus were reliant on him “to get the stadium right without endangering the club. It’s one thing if by failing you suffer yourself,” he explained, “but it’s different when there are so many people relying on you.” If the remarks were reassuring, the motive may not have been entirely without self-interest, but it suited all concerned to take it at face value for the time being. Fiszman told senior members of the AST he would in future be spending more time on club matters, having understandably taken something of a back seat after the extraordinary commitment he had displayed in getting the stadium up and running. Despite the message, some observers still believe he might contemplate selling up when the time is right as long as it does not entail the Red and White Holdings chairman replacing him.

There was no danger of that happening in the short term as financially the club looked to have turned a corner, the Emirates effect having been responsible for catapaulting it into the top strata of the football money league. After the first season in the new stadium, the club announced a 34 per cent increase in their football turnover, up to £177 million, over half from matchday revenue (season tickets, corporate hospitality, through the turnstiles, catering and dining and programmes) – twice that of Highbury. They were now the fifth largest club in the world in terms of footballing revenue, although when their property activities were included, their turnover exceeded £200 million and saw them climb above Barcelona and Chelsea, with only Manchester United and Real Madrid ahead of them in June 2007. The US business magazine Forbes rated the club as the third most valuable in world football, worth £600 million albeit with debts of 43 per cent of this valuation.

Arsenal are now indisputably a mega-club. And this status was attained in spite of Wenger funding much of his buying by selling first, the very situation that David Dein could not live with. Not only that, but he has been such a shrewd seller (with Dein’s assistance) that he actually contributed handsomely to the bottom line. A profit of £18.5 million was made on player sales in 2006/07, excluding the Thierry Henry transfer fee which fell into the following year’s accounts. Peter Hill-Wood revealed that in the summer of 2007 Wenger had told him, when transfer matters were discussed, “You’re going to have to be brave this year. I’ve got every confidence in our young players. There’s nobody I want and I’m not going to buy just to impress everybody.”

If the chairman’s thoughts on Stan Kroenke were initially unwelcoming, by early 2008 the American had been superseded in the suspicion stakes by Usmanov. “He is certainly not an open book,” said Peter Hill-Wood. “I would not want him to be the owner of the club.” Taking heed of the message, Usmanov responded, “What we heard about David Dein and the board at the outset of our Arsenal adventure and what we can see now are two different pictures. But we won’t be hostage to any hostility that exists between him and the board.” So, taking Peter Hill-Wood at his word (“I will avoid it [getting involved with Dein] if I can help it”) the conclusion must be that the only way Red and White will gain a presence in the Highbury House boardroom is by jettisoning its chairman or as a consequence of a hostile takeover. As far as Peter Hill-Wood and the rest of the board are concerned, David Dein had long since been airbrushed out of the picture. At the AGM, it took an unexpected interjection from the floor to remind the board that “without David Dein there would have been no Arsène Wenger”, and that it was a shame, despite the acrimonious divorce, that they couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge his contribution. To his credit, the chairman concurred and apologised for the omission.

Peter Hill-Wood and Keith Edelman did meet with Farhad Moshiri, but the ties with Kroenke were the ones the board chose to strengthen. How ironic, Dein must have thought when he found out. His overtures to Kroenke contributing to his own downfall, now Hill-Wood and Kroenke are breaking bread together. In April 2008, Kroenke was in London and spent time meeting directors, sitting next to Keith Edelman for the duration of a rather uninspiring Premier League home draw with Liverpool. Edelman chatted sporadically during the game to his guest. ‘Silent Stan’ lived up to his nickname and for the most part patiently listened. It was the penultimate match that Edelman would view from the directors’ box.

Just as suddenly as David Dein’s departure just over a year earlier, on 1st May 2008, Edelman was gone. The man who had replaced the former vice-chairman as the day-to-day decision-maker at the club joined him in having his nameplate removed from under his seat in the directors’ box, despite leaving with a 12-month ‘consultancy’ agreement. The abrupt nature of his parting, hinting at a dramatic turn of events, was evidenced by people turning up for appointments with him on the day of his dismissal. The exact reasons for the decision remain a secret, although speculation circulated that the Highbury Square development may have been a particular problem. There were newspaper stories stating that the board had already been actively seeking to install a more football-orientated managing director. Certainly, it was an unusual state of affairs that saw “the number cruncher” go just a month before the financial year end. Edelman’s final sighting at Arsenal came the following week when spotted by a couple of shareholders who had just attended a question-and-answer session with the manager. They saw him on the way from Arsenal Underground station heading for Highbury House, presumably to collect his effects, uncharacteristically dressed in jeans and a casual shirt. He was almost unrecognisable without his usual working attire of suit and tie. For once he had the appearance of a football man, which he never really was. That he should suffer the same fate as Dein – unquestionably a football man through and through – was a rich irony as the two men never hit it off from day one.

A petty incident symbolises their mutual distaste for one another. There was a particular parking space that was best placed to enter the Clock End reception area at the old Highbury Stadium. It was commandeered by Dein before Edelman’s appointment by the club. Edelman, who used to arrive for work earlier than Dein, took to parking in his spot. The vice-chairman did not take kindly to being trumped in the car park as well as marginalised in the boardroom. One evening, on leaving later than Edelman, he placed a traffic cone across the empty place to reserve it for himself the following day. When Edelman arrived, without a moment’s hesitation he drove straight over the cone, indifferent to any possible damage to the undercarriage of his expensive vehicle and went upstairs to his office. One can only wonder if anyone ever put Dein fully in the picture.

Edelman tried to get onside with the supporters by talking the talk, citing Robert Pires as his favourite Arsenal player. (Surely it was just a happy coincidence that Pires had reserved an apartment at Highbury Square.) But he never convinced. When the club made moves to trademark the word ‘Gooner’ – a term adopted by the fans themselves in the mid-1970s after being labelled as such by Tottenham supporters – the managing director explained that as far as he was concerned “we [Arsenal] own it [the word]”. His reasoning presumably was that without the club, the term wouldn’t exist. It indicated how, despite his efforts, his sentiments were different to those of the supporters. Following David Dein, Edelman was named as his successor as the president of the Arsenal Ladies football team. But unlike his predecessor, he didn’t attend many of their matches. One of his final moves was to tell Vic Akers he might be replaced as the coach of the Ladies, bewildering after they had won 29 major trophies in 17 seasons under his stewardship, peaking with a victorious UEFA Cup campaign in 2007. According to Dein, still keeping tabs on his former charges, Akers was heartbroken, but Edelman thought it would be better to have a female coach. On the Managing Director’s departure Akers, a popular figure at the club, was informed that he would be allowed to continue in the role after all.

Edelman would not have come top of a popularity poll amongst the staff, but the tough decisions required to keep the club running smoothly within a tight budget at a time of huge change weren’t going to win him that particular contest. More importantly though, he was able to extend the 14-year, £260 million, loan on the stadium at a cheaper fixed-interest rate over 25 years. Under the terms of the deal, the club had to make a one-off payment of £21 million to buy out the original commitment but the annual interest repayments fell from £32 million to £20 million (less than half that of Manchester United). With £3 million-plus coming into the coffers with every home matchday, it was a far more manageable amount. The restructuring proved to be a smart piece of business as, a year on, a crisis in the US sub-prime market made borrowing a far more difficult and expensive business. In fairness to Edelman, he was ultimately a beneficiary and then a victim of the changing economic environment that first facilitated the successful refinancing of the new stadium debt but then led to concerns that for the club to develop Highbury Square themselves might not have made such sound economic sense in the light of the credit crunch that came along. By perhaps second guessing fiscal trends he might have made himself a hostage to fortune and, although his departure left the club with a short-term vacancy, he had fundamentally achieved what he had been brought in to do: secure the financing of the stadium and thereby underwrite the future of the club.

So, barely two years after the opening of the Emirates, two nameplates had already been removed from the spanking new directors’ box. Ken Friar, who was doing David Dein’s job, now had to step into Edelman’s shoes pro tem as acting managing director. Friar had become the boardroom equivalent of a reliable utility player, an Arsenal man to the core. But he was no replacement for Dein. Four weeks after Edelman had been given his cards, Danny Fiszman announced that the club were searching for a chief financial officer and a chief executive officer to replace the position of managing director. “The CEO will work with the manager, negotiate player purchases, sales and wage contracts,” he explained. Until the appointment was made, Wenger resumed his travels to procure new talent when time permitted now that Dein was no longer available to make such sorties. But perhaps the club had already paid the price: the Brazilian wonderkid Alexandre Pato and France’s Frank Ribery might have ended up in north London instead of Milan and Munich in the summer of 2007 if Dein had still been around. There can be little doubt he would have been dutifully scouring the globe on Wenger’s behalf.

By the conclusion of the 2007/08 season, Red and White Holdings Ltd was still in the market for Arsenal shares. There weren’t many available, but at a reduced going rate of £7,500 each due to the lockdown agreement it was not surprising there wasn’t much buying and selling going on. It was a slow journey towards the cherished 25 per cent that would allow Usmanov to block any special resolutions the board might require an EGM for. But without one of the significant shareholders selling up or Usmanov offering ever-spiralling amounts to those with smaller holdings, he will find it difficult to reach the 30 per cent that would oblige him to make a compulsory bid for the company, a bid that would not succeed anyway, as long as the directors stayed true to their extended lockdown agreement.

However, the fear that a good number of the prospective purchasers who had put 10 per cent down on Highbury Square apartments might cut and run in the light of plummeting property prices means Arsenal’s garden is suddenly far from rosy. The board know they are treading financial water until the Highbury Square revenue starts coming in. It is a tortuous wait, but they’ve made it most of the way, albeit with some casualties. Crucially, Wenger is still at the helm, the team are contenders again and the stadium continues to put up sold out notices. Now, the directors look forward to a new era when they can concentrate on being a football club once again.