Dear Josh,
You don’t know me, and I certainly feel like I don’t know much about you at all. I’m an Arsenal fan – a supporter of the club you have sat on the board of since 2013.
Your father Stan recently became the sole and outright owner of the club, buying out a number or minority shareholders in the process. Among those were fans who considered themselves custodians of the club’s traditions and values. That responsibility has now passed on to your family, and I hope it is not one you’ll take lightly.
The timing is, admittedly, awkward. Arsenal are embarking upon a potentially treacherous period of transition. The departure of long-serving manager Arsene Wenger and chief executive Ivan Gazidis was always going to be difficult to deal with. Wenger left behind an ageing squad sapped of morale. For his part, Gazidis ran up an exorbitant wage bill, assembled a star-studded executive team with different agendas and then left them to fight it out while he jumped ship to Milan. He abandoned the process and sloped off to the continent. He is Arsenal’s own David Cameron.
Now, more than ever before, Arsenal require leadership and direction.
I won’t bother trying to coax Stan out of hiding. He has justifiably been awarded the epithet “Silent”, and it would be odd to expect him to change the habit of a lifetime. What’s more, at 71 he is hardly the future of the club. You, in all likelihood, are.
Last year, speaking on the Woj Pod NBA podcast, you said:
“We have a saying over at Arsenal, victory through harmony. I think that victory through harmony can take a lot of different meanings, but for me victory through harmony comes from communication.
You got to have open and honest dialogue about the reality that we are on because if we are sugar coating anything about ourselves, about our team, about our direction, we’re only kidding ourselves and we’re only going to be worse off for it in the long run.”
I couldn’t agree with you more, Josh. It is precisely that kind of communication that Arsenal are currently crying out for: “honest dialogue”.
Certainly, since Gazidis left, and arguably for some time before that, Arsenal have felt like a club with no-one at the tiller. There is a perception that all Arsenal fans are as pig-headedly impossible to please as those that garner the most attention. Not so: most reasonable supporters accept that it’s going to take time for the Gunners to compete for major honours again; that the arrival of a new manager alone will not in itself be enough to immediately transform their fortunes. Careful planning will be required to restore Arsenal to former glories. It is the absence of a coherent strategy for progress that is concerning.
If there is a plan in place, it is difficult to decipher. Arsenal currently have a manager whose press conferences the fans can barely understand, and a transfer policy (with seemingly no money to spend this January) that is almost as impossible to interpret. The departures of Wenger and Gazidis have left something of a leadership vacuum at the club. Both men, for all their flaws, were strong communicators. Someone at the club needs to step into the void.
Arsenal have confirmed that you spent a period of time in London at the end of last season, familiarising yourself with the inner workings of the club. Now is the moment to put that knowledge to use.
I know you’re busy with your commitments in Colorado, but it’ll be worth it. This is potentially a huge opportunity to transform the perception of the Kroenke ownership. Stan might well have been demonised by fans—you have not been, as yet. The supporters are eager for someone to step into the fray and demonstrate that there is some intelligence behind the instability.
Stan may be silent, but the son needn’t be like the father. Before long, this will be your club. It’s time to start acting like it.
