Football Insider columnist, Kieran Maguire has explained that selling Arsenal is entirely in the hands of Stan Kroenke and the American will accept an offer from Daniel Ek only if he truly wants to sell the club.
Arsenal fans have protested the ownership of Kroenke recently and have asked him to sell.
Ek, the co-founder of Spotify claims to be an Arsenal fan and wants to help the club return to its glory days by buying it.
He has been trying to make an offer for the club he loves, but Kroenke isn’t willing to sell.
He has enlisted the support of their fans through his Twitter account and has also made some former Arsenal players members of his bid to buy the club.
However, Maguire says the only time the club would be sold would be when Kroenke has decided to do so.
He says the American can conveniently keep ignoring Ek’s tweet and emails if he remains uninterested in selling.
“There is no obligation on behalf of Kroenke,” he told Football Insider.
“They can just ignore the emails or the tweets, which appear to be the vehicle through which this is taking place.
“As far as the deal is concerned, Daniel Ek has to put in a formal bid. What would then happen, if Kroenke was interested in selling, is they would be given access to what’s called the ‘data room’.
“This is not just a copy of the accounts but a far more detailed breakdown of the finances of Arsenal, the assets it owns, its potential liabilities.
“Given that there is a lot of nosey people in football, it tends to be a two-tiered process to stop anyone from getting access.
“You can enter the data room provided you pay a deposit, and that deposit would be non-refundable. This gets rid of timewasters.
“Alternatively, you might be able to pay more for a period of exclusivity in terms of putting together a bid and having access to the books.
“So if it’s £500,000 to access the data room, that’s one thing. But you might also put down, say, £2million and say you want exclusive access to the books for the next 30 days. That’s a sign you’re serious.”
