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Daniel Ek

Is The KroenkeOut 🛩️ going to work?

  • Yes

    Votes: 44 25.0%
  • No

    Votes: 69 39.2%
  • Don’t know Jeff

    Votes: 63 35.8%

  • Total voters
    176

SingmeasongSong

Right Sometimes
Ek and Tierney celebrating the CL in 2023

VANGERWEN_ANDERSON.jpg

AM guys obsessed with hairlines must be absolutely livid
 

Camus

Active Member
Trusted ⭐
Alisher Usmanov has double the wealth of Kroenke and EK COMBINED and still couldn't persuade Kroneke to sell after years of trying. If a big dog like that couldn't manage it then a small fry like Ek isn't going to.

Massive mistake by David Dein brining this leech to the club that we've been unable to get rid of for a decade and a half.
 

A_G

Rice Rice Baby 🎼🎵
A-M CL Draft Campeón 🏆
Daniel Ek was 21 years old when Arsenal created modern football history by winning the Premier League title while going through the entire 2003/04 season unbeaten. And like all Arsenal fans of that generation, he grew up idolising Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira, and the Invincibles team they played for and everything it represented.

So it stands to reason that when Ek decided he was serious about trying to buy Arsenal and restore the club’s former glory, that he would tap into the knowledge of some of the club’s greatest-ever players.
But, other than being legends of the club and heroes of the Arsenal supporters, who are fed-up with Stan Kroenke’s ownership, Henry, Bergkamp and Vieira all bring a unique skill-set and knowledge to the table for Ek to tap into.

Here, Telegraph Sport profiles the three Invincibles who are part of Ek’s bid to save Arsenal.

Thierry Henry​

On the same day Telegraph Sport exclusively reported the news of the Invincibles’ involvement in Ek’s interest in buying Arsenal, the former striker, along with Alan Shearer, became the first man to be inducted into the newly-formed Premier League Hall of Fame.

Not only is Henry Arsenal’s record goalscorer, he is also the best Premier League player of all-time and won every international and club honour during his 20-year career.
He counts himself as a Gunners fan and knows the fabric of the club as well as anyone, admitting to Telegraph Sport last weekend that he no longer recognises the Arsenal he fell in love with thanks to Kroenke’s running of the club.

But Henry, now aged 43, is much more than a figurehead for Ek, as he has played under three of the most influential managers of the past three decades, Arsène Wenger, Pep Guardiola and Gerard Houllier, and has an inner-knowledge of the workings of Arsenal and Barcelona, a club where he played for three years and which has embraced and used the knowledge of its ex-players to great effect.
Henry also worked as a player within the hugely successful Red Bull franchise in New York and has already amassed a wealth of coaching experience in his three jobs with the Belgium national team, at Monaco and, most recently, at Montreal Impact.

Despite the fact he is no longer a player and left Montreal earlier this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Frenchman has once again demonstrated his reach and gravitas by taking a stand against online racism and abuse by quitting social media.

A month after Henry announced his own boycott, English football followed his lead by announcing a social media blackout that will start on Friday and last until next Monday.

Henry last week broke his silence on Kroenke’s Arsenal ownership and the protests against the American, exclusively telling Telegraph Sport: “This club belongs to the fans, I love the club and I will support the club until I die, but I do not recognise my club and what happened just now, with them trying to join a league that would have been closed, makes no sense to me.

“They have been running the club like a company, not a football club, and they showed their hand. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding of the core football values and maybe the money was too big of a temptation. But whatever it was, they got it wrong. Badly wrong.”

Asked whether or not the Kroenkes should bow to fan pressure and sell Arsenal, Henry added: “Fans always decide, as you saw with the ESL. You have to listen to the fans and I can understand why they protested.”

Dennis Bergkamp​

Rewind 10 years and Bergkamp was part of Johan Cruyff’s reinvention of Ajax that involved the return and promotion of a number of club legends, including the non-flying Dutchman.

Much like Henry told Telegraph Sport that he no longer recognises the Arsenal he played for, Cruyff had claimed “this isn’t Ajax anymore” and believed the club had become stagnant and settled for mediocrity.

Cruyff’s revolution included the return and promotion of former players such as Bergkamp, Frank de Boer, Marc Overmars, Edwin Van der Sar, Jaap Stam and Ronald de Boer.

It did not take long for the plan to succeed, as, having gone seven years without winning the Eredivisie title, Ajax won four successive titles and again started to produce players that all the top clubs in Europe wanted.

Bergkamp worked in a variety of roles before leaving Ajax four years ago, starting with the youth team, becoming assistant to Frank de Boer, following his promotion to manager in 2010, and working alongside Peter Bosz, who succeeded de Boer.

Last year, Bergkamp, now aged 51, confirmed his desire to return to Arsenal and hinted that he sees his future working in a club’s academy, saying: “When the time is right, I’d love to go back and get a role somewhere.

“I must admit, I have the urge to go on the pitch again and help, whether it’s with the technical or coaching staff. Of course it would be ideal at Arsenal – I spent 11 years there and have a good feeling with the club.

“What I have in mind is a role that worked for me at Ajax, which was a lot like the one I had as a player - a little bit in between the lines. I wasn't really a striker or a midfielder, but in between.

“That's how I see myself as a coach as well. I like to be involved with the first team but I think my power, my strength, is to bring players from the youth to the first team.

“Sometimes the youth team and first team can be like two islands. What I am talking about doing is like a bridging role between them, but I realise I'd have to have results as well. I wouldn't be working for the sake of it; just to go to work and come home again. I'd like a challenge and to be really responsible for developing players and bringing them through.”

Patrick Vieira​

Other than becoming Arsenal Invincibles together, Henry and Vieira won the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championships together with France and have remained close.

Like Henry and Bergkamp, Vieira, who also played for AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus, has a wealth of playing experience to call on and has played for some of the game’s top managers, including Wenger, Fabio Capello and Roberto Mancini.

Mancini was Vieira’s manager at both Inter and his last club Manchester City, and it is the 44-year-old’s time in Manchester and working for the City Football Group that may be of most use to Ek as the Swede plots how he would make Arsenal great again.

Signed by Mancini in 2010, Vieira joined City at the start of their journey, following the 2008 Abu Dhabi takeover, to become one of football’s most powerful and successful clubs.

Following his single season as a player at City, Vieira remained at the club after his retirement to take the job of Football Development Executive, initially in charge of youth development.

The fact Vieira, a player with such a rich Gunners history, had been allowed to remain at one of Arsenal’s rivals did not go down well with the club’s fans and he went on to forge a close working relationship with Brian Marwood, who was a football administrator at City at the time and has gone on to be managing director of global football at the City Football Group.

Having managed City’s Elite Development Squad, Vieira remained within the City Group to take his first senior coaching job with New York City in the MLS before leaving in 2018 to take charge of Ligue 1 club Nice.

During two years at Nice, where he was manager when Britain’s richest man Jim Ratcliffe, took over the club, Vieira guided the club to a seventh-placed finish and Europa League qualification before he was sacked in December last year.

Like Henry, Vieira was linked with a return to Arsenal as head coach and was interviewed for the post before the appointment of Unai Emery and was again linked with the job before Mikel Arteta replaced Emery.

Since leaving Nice, Vieira has been interviewed by Bournemouth and, most recently, has been linked with a return to management at Crystal Palace.

Vieira has also received the backing of his old Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, saying: “When I interact with Arsène and he tells me he has observed me and that I can be successful – these are the things that comfort me.

“And one of the first sentences he said was: ‘You’re never a real coach until you get fired.”
 

MutableEarth

Reiss' Dad
Trusted ⭐
Not sure fella has enough money but the word is that he can get the resources so not sure what to make of all this. I'm ambivalent to an extent because we don't know if it can get worse than the Kroenkes or not.
 

MikelHadADream

Established Member
Trusted ⭐
This guy is worth 4bn, and Arsenal are valued at 2bn. This guy has no chance of buying the club, let's all just move on.
 

Papa Wonga

Established Member
Can't believe you all think he's going to put $2bn of his own Wonga in this lmao.

It's obvious he's going in with a Consortium. Guardian Article mentions it infact.

Cmon lads, read.
 

Gunners1616

Well-Known Member
Let's be real fellow fans. If we were Kroenke we would never sell Arsenal. The Kroenke's are long-term investors. They are filthy rich (especially the family of his wife). They own tons of sports teams and they don't sell anything even if things get tough. One could argue that's how they stay rich.

I know everyone wants Kroenke out but is he really such a bad owner ? Let's be careful because many of us were Wenger out (and sure of it at the time) before realising how things can go terribly wrong after him. So is everything that bad with kroenke ?

1- We manage to build the Emirates that generates huge revenues (in normal times)
2- He paid off our debt entirely last year by retructuring the loan used for the stadium so technically, AFC is about debt-free.
3-Even though Kroenke doesn't inject big money from his pocket like Abramovic use to, the money that AFC generates is enough to make VERY good team. We spent 70M on Pépé, 50M on Partey, 50M or so on each of Auba/Laca'/Özil/Xhaka/Mustati etc... so we do spend money and the club is growing in value overall.

The Kroenke's ONLY problem is that they don't know sh*t about football (the sport) and Wenger was hiding that. When he left we had a circus with Raul / Mislintat / Emery / Arteta / Edu / Kia (mafioso) etc... One bad desision after another.

All we needed (and we still do) to remain relevant on the pitch while keeping the self-sustainable model was an EXCELLENT director of football when Arsène left. A guy like Rangnick with a recrutors like Luis Campos would have made better football decisions for us. We probably wouldn't have Arteta now and we would have spent the money wisely.

Basically all that is to say i would take Kroenke + a new and competent football management team (say Rangnick/Campos and a new coaching staff) over a new investor who would just sell us dreams for now.

I really think that a new good management can turn this around. The basis is good: Huge stadium, decent budget for transfers, load of good young players (saliba, ESR, saka, Balogun).

So if Kroenke refuses to sell (99,99% chance), we sould focus on getting rid of Arteta/Edu/Kia and push the board to hire the righ people.
 

kofigunner

Established Member
Trusted ⭐
Colour me intrigued. Not sure how much money those ex players have, but at least in terms of the sporting side of running things, they would be quite influential In looking for us to be in the upper echelon.
 

MikelHadADream

Established Member
Trusted ⭐
If that logic worked out nobody would ever buy a house.

The Kroenke's will want to sell at a premium, unless this guy is in with a consortium of other big hitters it's a no go. I don't think many other billionaires around the world are looking to buy a football club at the minute either, but who knows.
 

Jack badmon

Active Member
Let's be real fellow fans. If we were Kroenke we would never sell Arsenal. The Kroenke's are long-term investors. They are filthy rich (especially the family of his wife). They own tons of sports teams and they don't sell anything even if things get tough. One could argue that's how they stay rich.

I know everyone wants Kroenke out but is he really such a bad owner ? Let's be careful because many of us were Wenger out (and sure of it at the time) before realising how things can go terribly wrong after him. So is everything that bad with kroenke ?

1- We manage to build the Emirates that generates huge revenues (in normal times)
2- He paid off our debt entirely last year by retructuring the loan used for the stadium so technically, AFC is about debt-free.
3-Even though Kroenke doesn't inject big money from his pocket like Abramovic use to, the money that AFC generates is enough to make VERY good team. We spent 70M on Pépé, 50M on Partey, 50M or so on each of Auba/Laca'/Özil/Xhaka/Mustati etc... so we do spend money and the club is growing in value overall.

The Kroenke's ONLY problem is that they don't know sh*t about football (the sport) and Wenger was hiding that. When he left we had a circus with Raul / Mislintat / Emery / Arteta / Edu / Kia (mafioso) etc... One bad desision after another.

All we needed (and we still do) to remain relevant on the pitch while keeping the self-sustainable model was an EXCELLENT director of football when Arsène left. A guy like Rangnick with a recrutors like Luis Campos would have made better football decisions for us. We probably wouldn't have Arteta now and we would have spent the money wisely.

Basically all that is to say i would take Kroenke + a new and competent football management team (say Rangnick/Campos and a new coaching staff) over a new investor who would just sell us dreams for now.

I really think that a new good management can turn this around. The basis is good: Huge stadium, decent budget for transfers, load of good young players (saliba, ESR, saka, Balogun).

So if Kroenke refuses to sell (99,99% chance), we sould focus on getting rid of Arteta/Edu/Kia and push the board to hire the righ people.
Exactly they are not football people making consistently poor decisions that’s why they are bad owners therefore unfit to run our club.
 
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