By Jonny Bravo
July 21 2023

The following article is from a post by Jonny Bravo in reply to a poll asking for views on Silent Stan now things have improved with CL qualiification.   I think with the London "franchise" the key for KSE was to have the right people in place to move the club forward, and have the confidence that if they did make substantial resources available, by loans or other financial instruments, that the money wouldn’t be pi$$ed away like it was on the Pepe deal.  

KSE like to hide behind the idea that they really only had control of the club since they bought out Usmanov in 2018, and that they were limited in the way they could invest in the club due to not owing it fully. The reality is they were happy enough to let Wenger run all aspects of the club so long as we stayed in the top4 and the price of the shares continued to rise.

Silent Stan poll

It was only when top4 status was lost and the need to plan for life after Wenger, that they had to take an interest in Arsenal’s affairs. Problem was they put their faith in the wrong person, Gazidis botched the succession and ran away to Milan before the fruits of his labours were realised. "Don" Raul got his hands on power and the rest is history. Only appointing Tim Lewis as their eyes and ears on the ground did KSE manage to shore up the instabiliy at governance level and try and put the pieces in place to reverse the slide on the footballing front as well.

With the appoinment of Edu and Arleta, despite some early trial and errors, they seem to have a combination on the football side of things, along with Vinai on the business side, that they now have enough faith in, to back financially to at the very least to be competitive on the domestic and European front.

The reality is they didn’t have an option unless they wanted the value of their investment to plateau. They had tried and failed with one approach already, tried the cheat sheet approach of joining a Super League and failed, so if they club was to remain as one of the big clubs on the pitch, rather than relying on its history to justify that mantle, they had to get the appointment right and give those people the resources to do their job effectively.

For me though, the jury is still out somewhat. There are no "good" billionaires. No billionaire or nation state is buying a PL club for truly altruistic or club loyality reasons, they all want something out of it, return on investment and/or washing their image.
KSE backed Arteta last summer probably with the view to get us into the top4, backed him again in January when an unexpected title push was in the offing, and now again this summer with a view towards being competitive again next season on two fronts, rather than one and a quarter.

The real litmus test for whether KSE are serious about doing what it takes to ensure we are challenging for the title and CL each season will be how they react to what other clubs are doing. If United are bought by Qatar, and Liverpool get further investment as well, not to mention Newcastle's growing power in the transfer market. Will they be happy enough to be back dining at the top table again, or will they push even further to ensure we will be fighting for the top chair every season, against a cast of opponents juiced up on oil money.

The signing of Rice would seem to indicate they are at this stage willing to pay the fees associated with the status of being a big club and going against our title rivals for a desired target. Whether that will be the norm now or more of a one off statement signing will be interesting, especially if competition for prized assets becomes even more fierce with new money in the game.

This summer we had somewhat of an advantage over our potential opponents to lure Rice. United are still in the process of being sold, and the Glazer's haven’t the appeitite to make major capital investments, Liverpool and FSG didnt get the outside investment they wanted so had to retool their targets away from big ticket signings like Bellingham and Rice, to more tactical cheaper signings like Mac Allister and Szoboszlai, Chelsea had to focus on getting rid of players early in the window to shore up their FFP position before July and Newcastle are still adapting their player recruitment to the realities of being at the top table probably slightly ahead of schedule.

Arsenal had the homework done on Rice, Arteta had done his sale pitch, but even with all of that, the process of a deal was drawn out and made more difficult and expensive when a half interested City poked their nose in to see if they could hijack the deal, more to deprive us of a player we really wanted, than somebody they had built their entire windows success around.
We won’t always have such an advantage when it comes to pursuing the top tier players, we made hay when we could and we should praise Arteta and Co for their work on and off the field for putting us in such a position. However the real test of KSE's mettle will be when we are going head to head with potentially 4 petro states and investment funds, will they have the appetite then, or will they have to chart a differnt course.