‘One man and his club.’
The acid asset strip.
“Blackpool football club has been put into receivership by the High Court. The club has been put into receivership so it can be sold and the proceeds used to pay off some of the £22m owed by the owners, the Oyston family, to the Latvian banker Valeri Belokon. Owen Oyston, the 85-year-old owner of the club, was ordered to buy Mr Velokon out for £31.27m.”
If you put this in a search engine: ‘Blackpool football club has been put into receivership’ You will get the full details giving the history of the owner helping himself to the club’s wealth. This is what can happen when the club owner has full control of all that the club owns.
Blackpool are not the first to experience this. To my knowledge Portsmouth, Brighton, Leeds, Glasgow Rangers and I think two others clubs have been asset stripped, that is to say everything it owns, from the first blade of grass to the last blade of grass, has been squirrelled away into the owner’s piggybank and the clubs have had to start again with very little.
When Arsenal was a public company it had to publish its accounts and we saw that Mr Kroenke was helping himself to the Arsenal golden eggs.
Now he owns the club outright, he can just help himself as a night time burglar would when discovering someone had forgotten to lock the back door of the bank.
Mr Kroenke likes the shadows of invisibility not for him the lights of fame and glory. In other words our ‘Arsenal Hero’ doesn’t have a Donald Trump ‘Look at me. I greatest.’ Personality – He is shy!
Instead of a big plunder hitting the headlines, we will read something like this. The centre at High Ham Hill is to close. There will be a good excuse for this. The savings will slip unknown to us into Kroenke’s piggy pocket.
At the moment Boreham Wood FC ground is used for games. That could end. Money saved – drip, drip you know where!
In the course of time Arsenal will be the same as his American operations, with costs cut to the bone and a low placed league filler-occupier, position. (Yes I know the Rams got to the final but that is the only one time.)
What happens when our ‘Money Man of the shadows’ needs a billion or two? Where will he turn? To one of his American cash cow clubs that he owns? Don’t think so. In this case not ‘America first.’ No. It’s Arsenal he will sell, especially if there are no more Arsenal golden Eggs to supply his incubator.
He will sell to anyone. If the buyer thinks there is more asset stripping to be done that is exactly what will happen.
The heartache that the Blackpool supporters now share with each other at the way their club has been and is being treated, is slowly becoming our experience.
We no longer have a ‘football’ manager who controls the football we play.
We have an owner who pulls the strings of the ‘puppet’ manager and everybody else at the club including us who love the club and have loved it since we were kids. It hurts,
Colario.
Great article for my knowledge
I wonder why most top English clubs have to rely on overseas conglomerates or wealthy foreigners? Is there no rich Londoner that wants to buy Arsenal?
I’m sure there are plenty of very rich people in England, but how come the clubs have to sell to people like Sheikh Mansour, Abramovich, Moshiri, Usmanov, Kroenke, Glazer, etc
Simple really, the government has sold out the entire country. Made the entire country’s economy depend on the financial services of the capital, and dumbed down the populace so much so that they would vote to leave the EU instead of forcing politicians to take responsibility for problems not caused by the EU but rather… the government.
Yours is a purely political post and as such should not be allowed on an Arsenal site. It fails to reference Arsenal in ANY way, and that is WHY it should not be allowed.
Simple they are some of the richest men in the world!the only ones who could put an offer big enough to be accepted,also you can,t compare the 2 clubs,bad article man!
Unfortuatly the word is greed
All our former share holders who took the money and ran when selling out to SK must look at there self in shame.
What a shambles is all I can say
Were we better off staying at Highbury and competing at the top level then rather moving to a new bigger fancier stadium and just ending up a has been team..
I know which one I would prefer
Shame on all you past and present stake holders running and draining our beloved arsenal in to the ground.
I repect many people’s opinon on here even though I don’t always agree but we should never forget we all strieve for the same thing.. We want our club back and we want our club challenging for top honours again
I started with it and will end with it…greed…Don’t let them devide us with it
The scenario outlined could happen.The
US owner is using Arsenal as his atm.
The gunners in time to come would have to
be satisfied with just being another epl team
with no interest in the epl title ,etc.
When that happens sponsor will dry up.
One day we will wonder what ever happen
to good old Arsenal.
Then the fans shd know who to blame.
What a sad sorry state of affairs, my beloved club coming to this. Is there nothing we supporters can do. Boycott the matches and not replace season tickets, but that would take a huge lot of togetherness and hard work to put together, all the while we would be making it harder for the team. Dare I say it arsenal need to be relegated to get rid of him. Nightmare, owner and a nightmare all round at the moment to be an arsenal ssupporer. The older generation of supporters will always stand by the club, but the younger ones will say bollocks to this I’m supporting another team. What can be done, riot ?
I agree that the only way to rid our club of this snake is for its value to shrink dramatically. Mass and regular boycotts would also achieve this BUT they wont be happening, sadly, so then relegation is the only thing left . That could eventually happen if Kroenke stays long enough. It would take some years of our slow death first though which would naturally involve a large loss of regular attendeees,; just NOT ENOUGH to work, without accompanying relegation. THIS would achieve the vast devaluing of our club and force his sale. Weep! Though I am not allowed to state what I really wish would happen to him, TODAY preferably, I am sure that most of those reading between the lines of that comment will , privately, agree with me!
ITs like Groundhog Day
We could actually regurgitate the same articles over the last few years the only thing has changed is our ambition
I’m a Blackpool supporter and like many others, not been to a game for 5 years. It takes an awful lot of resolve and determination to starve the owner of the one thing he covets above all else, your money. If you could get a 75% drop in attendances, don’t visit the official website, encourage away supportes to not buy food and drink, don’t buy the official merchandise then the sponsorships and advertisers will dry up. At a small club like Blackpool we forced Oyston into losing £2m a year. The danger is, who would line up to buy a big brand like Arsenal? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Until there is proper governance in the game from top to bottom, your club is always in danger from asset strippers from overseas.
Don’t worry! The merchant of Venice Kroenke will sell away Arsenal when there is no profit to be made. No title, no Champion League, no kits money, cannot attract new young fans, poor tickets sales, passing of old fans, etc will slowly eaten into the profit. The money grabber Kroenke will then say goodbye!
AGREED BUT ONLY EVENTUALLY. IT IS THE “IN THE MEANTIME BIT” THAT IS OUR CONTINUED AGONY.
I knew from the start that this inconsiderate american would lead us that way given his very low donations to charity. Now availing only £40m for the transfer market is a hint at blackpool’s fate
Sorry but this is a bollox article by someone who knows nothing and just using prejudice to create an effect. This is nothing like Blackpool and whilst I am not a Kroenke supporter, just the paragraph “When Arsenal was a public company it had to publish its accounts and we saw that Mr Kroenke was helping himself to the Arsenal golden eggs.” Says it all. He has only ever taken £3 million out of the club and you are saying he helped himself to our golden eggs! You’re just making stuff up. What happens in the future is a different matter but don’t tell lies about the present and the past.
Declan, Have you never reflected that ignoring and understating the PRESENT danger is also telling lies? To yourself! People who are openly and insistently afraid to face the clear truth are in effect, liars too. Lying to themselves. I believe you are in grave danger of doing this. That is what I believe , in life, every bit as much as in football too. Wise and prescient folk see the PRESENT AND FUTURE danger in Kroenke.