Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Arsenal’s second largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov has today expressed his frustration with the current state of the club. The Russian billionaire owns 30% of the club, and says that he feels although Wenger is an exceptional manager, he is having a hard time accepting his mistakes. Speaking to CNBC, he had this to say:
“Arsene Wenger is one of the greatest coaches, not just of European, but of world football. But we have a Russian proverb which goes, ‘Even an old lady can have a roof falling on her’.”
“Everybody makes mistakes. He can make mistakes and I know as you age it is more difficult, more challenging to accept one’s mistakes.”
“The potential of the team is there but there is no critical evaluation of mistakes and they need to acknowledge them, because no genius can retain the same level of genius if they do not acknowledge mistakes.”
“It’s only when you admit your mistakes that you can get rid of them. I wish this for my club.”
“Nothing bad is happening apart from repeating the same result – we keep being in the middle of the Champions League but we only lose the first play-off games. Some may be happy with that but as a share-holder, I am not.”
Usmanov went on to offer his views on the strength of the current Arsenal side, to which he feels must be strengthened significantly and that the boss must strengthen in every part of the pitch in order to challenge for major honors.
“Does (Wenger) have money or not? There is officially money in the club,” he said.
“My opinion – and I tell it openly – we need to strengthen every position to play on the level of such teams in [the] UK as Chelsea and Manchester City, in Europe like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Paris St Germain and other clubs.”
I have no problems or objections what so ever to Usmanov’s statements, in fact the only problem I have is that he didn’t come out and say something earlier. He is spot on to be fair, and we can only hope Wenger takes his comments into account.
Usmanov is 110% spot on. How I so WISH he was THE majority shareholder or BETTER still, like Abromovic to Chelsea, THE sole owner.
Have heard they DONT want him as one of the board of director members at the club. Reasons being, he speaks his mind about Arsenal and ALWAYS presses for major changes at the club which is opposed by those who are ONLY interested in milking dry the club, at our cost.
Wenger is a stubborn coach who still wants to play football of 1990s which does not apply todays game. Football has changed and Wenger should swallow his hopeless pride and stop frustrating fans. Specialist in failure.