Are Arsenal About To Be Taken Over?

With the North London derby tomorrow night there still isn't an awful lot of football related Arsenal news about today. The reason for that is that Lady Nina Bracewell Smith has decided to do all she can to sell her 16 percent share in the club.

Recently Stan Kroenke had increased his stake in the club to the point where he was within 10 shares of being compelled to make a bid for all the other shareholders' stakes. With Usmanov also within 4 percent of that magical total, the sale of Lady Nina's shares could lead to either of them taking control of the club and the potential for massive change.

Kroenke has very little to say for himself and at first the board were hostile to him, but they changed when Usmanov came on the scene. If memory serves me correctly, David Dein was fired for trying to bring Kroenke on board and he then went to work for Kroenke. He didn't last long with him though as Kroenke realised the board wouldn't do business with Dein and he quickly broke off their association.

That led to Dein selling his 10 percent stake to Usmanov and the setting up of Red and White holdings by Usmanov with Dein running it for him. Their intention was to buy up any shares in the club that they could and suddenly it led to Kroenke being the lesser of two evils.

Kroenke has plenty of other interests in American sports franchises and he seems to run them on a sound financial basis, which is how Arsenal is run. In the long term, that is obviously the ideal method.

On the other hand, Usmanov wants to raise capital to invest in the team, and I don't think he would be too bothered how he did it. I can't see either of them being a Chelsea or Man City style sugar daddy, which means that any debts run up in any plans they might have would ultimately have to be paid for from the club's income.

All in all I think we would be better served if nobody took complete control of the club and we continued with the current model.

I wonder, if Usmanov took over, if it might mark the end of Arsene Wenger as I would imagine the interference from him in the buying and selling of players would be too much for the boss to take.

As for Kroenke, it would seem that he doesn't want to take control of the club until next month when the cost of buying the remaining shares would be considerably less for him due to stock market rules.

If that is the case it would mean the door is wide open for Usmanov to buy up Lady Nina's shares and increase his stake to over 40 percent of the club. I imagine that she is trying to sell them now to get a higher price before any compulsory offer next month.

There's one thing us Arsenal fans can be sure of, and that's the fact that every one of them has their own financial interests as their main priority, and as is the case with anybody with their resources, the most important thing to them is money and how to make even more of it.

On the footballing front, Bendtner spoke of the goals he has being scoring recently and he said that it is down to him playing in a central role rather than on the right where he was playing before RVP's injury. He also said that if it wasn't for the series of misses against Burnley that he would have a lot more goals too.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that my biggest gripe with Bendtner is that he gets involved in the build-up play too often and in my opinion he should spend a lot more time in our opponents' box. He has welcomed the imminent return of RVP and he says that you have to expect competition at a big club like Arsenal and that the competition is a good thing.

Apparently Sagna has been linked with Inter Milan if they sell Maicon, and if they sell Maicon to us I'll be happy to let them have Sagna. I can't see us being able to afford Maicon or his wages, as from what I've seen I don't think there's a better right back around in world football.

There are also reports of Eduardo leaving the club this summer if and/or when Chamakh comes in. It would be a shame to lose a player who looked to be such a natural goalscorer, but his horrific injury is something that he still hasn't recovered from more than two years later.

There have been other factors too, such as Eduardogate and Croatia missing out on the World Cup, but to be honest maybe it's the best thing for club and player and he deserves a chance to rebuild his career whether it's at Arsenal or elsewhere.

Finally for today I said a few weeks ago that I thought that we might see RVP on the bench for the Spuds game but the more I think of it the less likely it seems. I think we will see his comeback at home to Man City on Saturday April 24 as we resume our "relationship" with he-who-shall-remain-nameless. That's it for today, but I'll have a full preview of tomorrow night's match in tomorrow's blog.

Here's a cracker from Liam Brady at the Spuds ground in a great 5-0 win a few years ago.

See you tomorrow.