This is a question people have asked me when I’m cautious about accepting Mr Usmanov as owner of Arsenal. Stan is useless, they say. Usmanov is bound to be better. Look what Abramovich has done for Chelsea.

Yes. The problem here is that we don’t know what Usmanov would do until he is put in a position where he can do it. Until then it’s all talk. As I highlighted a few blog posts ago, Usmanov has talked about his vision, but not actually promised anything. Bear in mind also that at the moment there is a certain balance because Kroenke is restricted in what he can do by virtue of the fact he has less than 75 per cent of the total number of shares. If he sells to Usmanov, the Uzbek will have about 97 per cent of the shares; he will be able to do exactly what he wants.

So here’s a very brief random list off the top of my head of how Usmanov could be worse as an owner than Kroenke. Stan has not done (and in some cases can’t do) any of these:

1. Usmanov could start taking money out of the club by way of dividends or management fees (as at Man Utd)
2. He could sack the manager and install any idiot – Harry Redknapp, Mark Hughes (other clubs have seen fit to employ these no-hopers) – or he could just pick the team himself (Abramovich sometimes seems to be halfway to this).
3. He could sack the Board and install any bunch of idiots – Dennis Wise, Ken Bates – both of whom have had boardroom jobs – Piers Morgan . . .
4. He could pile debt onto the club (also as the Glazers did at Man U).
5. He could sell the freehold to the stadium to one of his own companies and rent it back (other clubs have done the same).
6. Ditto the training ground.
7. He could raise ticket prices 20 per cent a year, or any amount he likes (Man City have raised prices a lot, to try and boost the balance sheet ahead of FFP).
8. He could force the remaining small shareholders, including Fanshare, to sell their shares to him, take the club private and reduce accountability to fans from minimal to absolute zero (Abramovich again, and others).
9. He could change the home kit to white shirts and blue shorts and the away kit to blue shirts and white shorts, or whatever combination he likes (Cardiff’s owners have changed the colours).

Some of these, or variations of them, are far less likely than others, but they are all perfectly possible.
You may say, “Why should he do any of these? He’s a fan.” Well he says he is, and from information I have he has certainly attended more matches this season than Stan Kroenke, both home and away. But so what? Everyone on the Board, and the ex-members like David Dein, claims to be a fan, but it hasn’t stopped them selling their shares for profit to themselves and no benefit to Arsenal, even Peter Hill-Wood, whose family have led Arsenal from the Boardroom for about half its existence.

I take any claims of fandom with a large pinch of salt, particularly as Red & White have put out communications saying ‘we’ are Arsenal supporters, while Usmanov’s 50-50 partner in Red & White, Farhad Moshiri, is known to be a Man Utd fan. So I don’t know who they’re talking about with this ‘we’.

The fact is we don’t know how Usmanov would behave as Arsenal owner. Maybe he’d be fantastic; maybe we’d win trophies every year and pay peanuts for season tickets. Maybe. But could he be worse than Stan Kroenke? Oh yes.

Follow me on Twitter: @AngryOfN5

Every couple of weeks the Arsenal website gives an update on how many shares the major shareholders in the club have. They’re required to do this under Premier League rules. The rules are actually a bit vague, as they don’t say under what circumstances exactly changes must be reported, but Arsenal seem to take it upon themselves to put an update out approximately every two weeks.

Today they reported that Red & White Holdings have moved from a total of 18,663 shares to 18,665. They also forgot to change the date from May 3 to May 16, but that’s a side issue.

Now an increase of two shares for R&W may seem irrelevant, but what it means is that with one more single share R&W will have achieved their target of 30% of the total equity of Arsenal Holdings PLC (they now have precisely 29.9998392722246%). Why do they want 30%? Well, their reasons may have changed since they set that target, as on the face of it there is no more benefit from having 30% that having 29%, or indeed 25.01% or 49.99%.

Once R&W breached 25% they could block any change that required 75% of the vote, but without getting to 50%+1 they’ll get no more power unless Stan Kroenke chooses to give it to them. So far there is no sign of that.

Prior to last summer, when the Premier League re-wrote their rules governing this, it may have been possible for R&W to insist on full access to all Arsenal’s finances once they reached 30%, but that no longer applies. There is no compulsion for Usmanov to make a full bid for Arsenal at 30% because there is already a majority shareholder in place, and 30% does not entitle anyone to a seat on the Board.

So why bother? Well, that’s what we wait to find out. I think R&W have deliberately held off going over 30% during the season so as not to be accused of distracting anyone from the job in hand. I think as soon as the season is over, we’ll see that Mr Usmanov will rustle up an extra share or two and perhaps become a bit more vocal about the whole situation.

Of course he may already be in dialogue with Kroenke anyway – if Kroenke is even the slightest bit interested in dialogue – and I have heard from one source that a deal for Kroenke to sell this summer has been agreed for some months. However, that would seem to make it a bit pointless for R&W to keep buying odd shares in the meantime, so I have my doubts.

It looks certain there will be changes behind the scenes at Arsenal this summer anyway, as Peter Hill-Wood is rumoured to be standing down due to deteriorating health. Stan Kroenke may feel it’s time to put more of his people closer to the running of the club. Unless he’s selling it. I could tie myself in knots with different theories about who is likely to do what, but I think it will be an interesting summer.

We know now how Kroenke likes to operate his clubs: minimal interference and let them pay for themselves as long as they are in some measure competitive, or at least not losing money. We don’t know how Usmanov would operate as sole owner of Arsenal. Personally I have my doubts that everything would be as rosy as some seem to think.

Twitter: @AngryOfN5

Managers like to be beside the pitch because they can then be seen to be ‘managing’. Which translates in most cases as stalking the touchline – or as close as the technical area will let them get – and haranguing the fourth official, with perhaps some anguished gestures when one of their players, say Gervinho, misses another open goal. I often wonder how they manage to get so close to the fourth official to harangue him, actually, given that he isn’t in the technical area with them, and they’re not supposed to come out. Maybe it’s like a shot putt circle – you’re allowed out of the back without breaking the rules.

“I believe I definitely did see the incident!”

Either way, the side of the pitch is not the best place to watch a match from, so it’s a mystery to me why all managers insist on watching from there. The place where managers sit is called ‘the dugout’, and for many years it was literally dug out, being slightly below ground level. This idea was thought up in the 1930s by a mad Scotsman called Donald Colman, a coach at Aberdeen. He wanted to study how his players used their feet, so built a place where he could watch the match at feet height. Amazingly, other people seemed to think this was a good idea, and within a few years virtually every club had a dugout. It wasn’t until the new wave of stadium building in the 1990s that the manager’s seat largely returned to ground level, and at the same time managers were allowed to stand up and patrol their newfangled technical area.

“The dugout I believe is little bit down there”

Actually, by the strict wording of the poorly written Premier League rules, managers are not allowed to stand in the middle of their technical area, only at the edge. But either way, although this gives a better view of the game than the subterranean dugout, it’s still a useless way to watch. Pitch level is the best place for judging offside, but that’s about it. If it was really good for watching then lower tier seats would be more expensive than upper tier, TV cameras would all be at ground level (and not just the ones Wayne Rooney uses to swear into), and the press box would also be much lower down.

“The lower tier is right there . . .”

The reason the press box and the cameras are high up is because PEOPLE WANT TO SEE WHAT’S GOING ON, and the TV audience would soon be switching off in droves if the main cameras were four feet off the ground instead of 40. You really can’t get a good view from pitchside, so managers should stop embarrassing themselves by leaping around and shouting at the fourth official and just go and sit upstairs. They’ll get a far better idea of how the game is really going.

“And the best view is up there”

I recall that George Graham actually had a period where he used to spend the first half in the Directors’ Box at Highbury, occasionally phoning down instructions to Theo Foley, then come down to the dugout after half time. Which is at least half sensible. Also, since Steve McLaren became the ‘wally with the brolly’, no manager dares carry an umbrella, and only Tony Pulis tries the baseball cap look, so sitting upstairs would prevent a lot of managerial coughs and colds over a season.

Follow me on Twitter:@AngryOfN5

Like me, you may have been under the impression that Arsenal could lose a fair bit off the wage bill this summer, but looking at it I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s a list of the current contract end dates I’m aware of for the first teamers. Those I would consider surplus to requirements – ie we could lose them and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the team – are marked in grey.

You could argue that Gervinho is not surplus to requirements as he sometimes plays, but I’d argue that if you watch him play he’s generally surplus to requirements. There are others I would lose quite happily if they were replaced, because I think they could be improved on without too much trouble, but I was just looking at where we could save without affecting anything else.

Diaby is a good player, who if fully fit would be useful. However, I’ve given up on him. It ain’t going to happen.

A proportion of the loanees’ wages will be being paid, but the problem is that no one wants to buy them until the contract actually runs out, as that would mean matching their ridiculous current wages. So despite the likes of Bendtner being laughably valued at about £7m on transfermarkt, we won’t get a penny for him. Ditto all other surplus players, and as happened with Almunia. He just hung around like a bad smell until his contract expired, then found his true level in the Championship.

Lucky we’re getting all that extra sponsorship and TV money coming in soon, because the wage bill is still only going in one direction, and our habit of raking in £25m each year to sell a star player seems to have reached a natural end.

Twitter: @AngryOfN5

Well, the previous (guest) post about Stan Kroenke stirred up some debate, leading among other things to me being accused on Twitter (not for the first time) of ‘having an agenda’ – whatever that actually means. I was told it means I’m anti-Kroenke. For the record, I have opinions on different things, and also some principles. The opinions sometimes change in the light of new information. I like to think the principles stay largely the same. I don’t have an ‘agenda’ regarding Arsenal, nor anything else as far as I’m aware, but I do have opinions about how I would like to see Arsenal run by its owners, hence I have opinions about Mr ES Kroenke, not all of which are favourable. He’s a long way from the worst owner Arsenal  could have, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement.

However, today’s subject is the other major Arsenal shareholder, Mr AB Usmanov. Alisher Usmanov is seen by many fans as Arsenal’s potential saviour. There is a view that if he took control we’d be back in the big time because he would make almost unlimited funds available to be spent on the team.

In truth there might be some problems with this – unlimited spending is going to become more difficult under FFP anyway, and you also need a manager who is prepared to splash cash around like Madonna in an orphanage. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Arsenal’s manager – who Red & White and Usmanov wholeheartedly and repeatedly support – doesn’t spend all the money available now, never mind if he was given a billion to spend.

But that’s not my point today. My point is this: What has Alisher Usmanov promised to spend? And actually the answer is, as far as I can make out, bugger all. I wouldn’t necessarily believe him anyway, but the fact is he talks a lot without making concrete promises. I posed this question on Twitter the other day and was sent a link to his open letter from last year as ‘evidence’ of his promises.

The closest thing to a promise of spending in the whole letter is this:

“So what is Red & White’s vision for the club? It is simple. A debt free club with a big enough war chest to buy top talent players who can hit the ground running and who can complement the club’s long tradition of developing young players and homegrown talent.”

Well what a coincidence! This is exactly my vision too. In the words of Keggy Keegle, I would love it – love it! But I’m not promising to pay for it, and if you read it carefully neither is Mr Usmanov. It’s just his vision. That’s all it is.

So I throw the challenge out again: What is Alisher Usmanov actually promising to pay for at Arsenal? Answers on a blog comment or tweet to @AngryOfN5.

As you’ll have gathered at the top, I’m no big fan of Stan Kroenke either, and I do support Red & White having some Board representation at Arsenal just to shake things up a bit. But I’d like to see actual promises in legally binding language too. I’m like that.

A guest post today from @SeanMarland, who has looked at the success – or otherwise – of Stan Kroenke’s American sports franchises. Sport-loving success junkie or highway robber – which is Stan closer to?

(A very similar version of this article appeared in Issue 235 of The Gooner, and is reproduced here with Sean’s permission.) 

We’re three years into Stan’s austerity project and it’s become clear that no one is going to save us. Forget Usmanov, forget FFP and forget about that Middle Eastern consortium whose wondrous manifesto might as well have included unlimited free booze for all season ticket holders. Silent Stan has never sold a single share in any of his sport franchises, so we can assume that he and his parasitic stooge will be running things for many years to come. Even amongst the most optimistic Gooners he’s pretty unpopular (George Osborne would probably get a warmer welcome at his local Job Centre than Kroenke would get in an N5 tavern), but we’re not the only fans who’ve become collateral in his quest to build a sporting empire, so what do our American counterparts think of him? Armed with a modest understanding of US sport and a sudden urge to find my old copy of EA Hockey, I fired up my computer and engaged our transatlantic brethren.

Stan Kroenke: A Beginner’s Guide

Stan made his fortune from real estate, increased that fortune significantly by marrying an heir to American retail behemoth Wal-Mart and then decided to buy up a host of sports teams. There are also unconfirmed reports that he’s in the process of building his own Death Star. Future projects aside, Kroenke currently owns NFL franchise the St Louis Rams, NBA side the Denver Nuggets, NHL outfit Colorado Avalanche and MLS team the Colorado Rapids. He also owns a lacrosse side and an ‘arena football’ club (whatever that is) – neither of which I’ve bothered with in this article, because let’s face it, who cares? Due to American ownership rules, some of the aforementioned franchises are technically owned by his son Josh, but it’s all the same really. To write this article I contacted supporters who contribute to their team’s respective independent fansites in a bid to gauge fan opinion.

Meet me in St Louis: A Love Affair

As a semi-ethical writer, I felt honour-bound to write this article as impartially as possible and report all sides equally. However with my Arsenal hat on, I was desperate for the American fans I contacted to corroborate my own opinions and allow me to denounce Stan as the antichrist he almost certainly is. Unfortunately for me, the first person to respond to my email was a man who may have a framed picture of Kroenke on his bedside table. Eric Nagel edits Turf Show Times – a leading St Louis Rams fansite – and he told me the team’s owner has been nothing but a positive influence since he became majority owner in 2010. “He’s hired one of the top coaches, an excellent general manager and shown no aversion to spending money on talented players. Kroenke wants to win and has done everything in his power to do so. You can’t ask for more than that in an owner!”

However before we go any further with this love-in, I should point out that the Rams were hardly a force in the NFL when he took over and have only ever won one Super Bowl (1999) in their whole history, making them one of the most unsuccessful franchises in top-level gridiron. What’s more, bean counters at Forbes recently rated them the 30th most valuable of the NFL’s 32 elite franchises. Once you consider the fact that there’s more money to be made in American Football than any other US sport, you start to see the attraction of taking an under-performing but well-established side and pumping in some capital. Relatively speaking, you don’t need to put much in to get something out, yet the spending curve required to actually win something is far more severe. In financial terms, the Rams are probably more similar to Arsenal than any of his other sides.

Eric threw a little more light on the situation when I asked him how highly he believed Stan valued the team’s success. “Very highly,” he said. “No success, no money and that doesn’t fit at all with Kroenke’s business plan. He certainly cares about having a winning product on the pitch, but make no mistake – he’s in it to make money.” Now I for one wouldn’t be against Stan making a bit of cash, as long as he was delivering a winning team on the pitch (as the Glazers are at Man Utd) but our definition of a winning team and Stan’s seems to differ greatly, as I’ll demonstrate.

“The Rams haven’t been successful by any stretch for the last decade, normally ranking bottom of the league,” Eric continues. “But last year they constantly competed against some of the best teams in the NFL.” Rome wasn’t built in a day, but ‘competed against’ sounds suspiciously like ‘lost to’ to me. Eric is understandably delighted by the prospect of his side dragging themselves off the foot of the league for the first time in a decade, but will Stan stop pushing once they’ve won another Super Bowl or once he’s secured a regular profit? The fact is, none of his teams have won much under his business model, but not just because he’s a shabby owner with short arms and deep pockets, it’s also because they’re all eternal also-rans within their respective sports and Stan seems happy enough with that state of affairs providing the cash rolls in. Apart from Arsenal, the only exception to this rule is his NHL team. So let’s see how they’ve fared since he snapped them up in 2000.

“Can someone take this big silver thing away from me? It’s making me nervous.”

Puck you Stan: An Avalanche of Criticism

In terms of stature and history, the Avalanche are more similar to Arsenal than any of Stan’s other sides and as such, their fans dislike him about as much as we do. “When he first purchased the team in 2000, it was a wildly successful franchise,” says Cheryl Bradley, the Assistant Editor of Mile High Hockey. “The team had won the Stanley Cup in its first year in Colorado (1995-96) and had been riding a sell-out streak that set league records which still stand.” Sound familiar? So Stan inherited a good side which then won another title in his first year (2001) and stayed competitive until 2004, when there was an NHL ‘lockout’ (a labour dispute which caused a whole season to be cancelled) before play resumed in 2005 with a firm salary cap. Which is where Cheryl picks up the story.

“The Avalanche roster had been gutted of some of its top players because of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement which forced cutbacks in contracts. Subsequently, the team dropped into mediocrity for the next few years, bottoming out in 2008-09. The management essentially blew up the team and went with young players who were on entry-level contracts and journeymen who didn’t command high salaries. At that time, ‘Kroenke is cheap and that’s why the team is losing’ became a common theme among fans.” I’m a novice when it comes to the finer points of the NHL’s structure, but Cheryl goes on to explain that Kroenke played safe by not paying big wages after the lockout and the team hasn’t really recovered since. Next I asked her whether she thought he put the team before his own business interests. “No I don’t,” she scoffed. “He took over the team to make money and build his sports business portfolio. He is not, nor ever has been a hockey guy.”

So where did it all go wrong? “One of the franchise’s biggest weaknesses is in renegotiating contracts. They do little of it. Instead they say, ‘This is our offer. Take it or leave it.’ If players push for more money they are either not re-signed or traded. There was a time when the Avalanche didn’t need to negotiate with players; the team was so successful that players vied for an opportunity to play in Colorado. Despite the allure of the Avalanche wearing off, management still approach contracts in the same way. It’s hurting the team, even if some of the choices they’ve made may have been the right ones.”

We all took Samir Nasri’s recent comments with a pinch of salt, but these comments certainly don’t contradict him. The Avalanche fans I spoke to also urged me to look up the situation with Ryan O’Reilly, the team’s star player who was effectively sent out on loan for a year while management stalled over his new contract. You don’t need to be much of an analyst to draw comparisons because it’s a story we’ve all heard before, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the way Cheryl described our much-vilified overlord as having a penchant for media totalitarianism that would bring a tear to Kim Il-Sung’s eye.

“There appears to be a mandate with all media associated with the Kroenke Sports Group that limits criticism of the team,” she explained. “Since KSE owns the media venues that cover the team, there’s nowhere to turn to get an honest assessment of the operations at the Avalanche – which even extends to the Denver Post!” And you thought the Arsenal website was a bit one-sided! No wonder she says Stan sees bloggers as ‘the Devil’s Spawn’.

The titles may have dried up, but Stan is getting his money’s worth. Cheryl’s colleague at MHH David Driscoll-Carignan agreed with her and when I asked him how highly Stan valued the team’s success and he told me that his hockey side have basically been turned into a giant cash machine. “Frankly, I haven’t got a clue if he cares about the team’s success. He’s so secretive about everything it’s hard to see what motivates him. The fact that he bought all the ancillary business surrounding the Avalanche makes me assume he’s motivated by profit more than winning championships. The franchise has a safe future. They aren’t in danger of failing, like some other NHL teams, but without money to bring in star players – or retain current players – it’s hard to picture the team thriving either.”

“Seriously, even I have no idea if my hair is real.”

Which Way Are We Shooting?

Having bought every other sports organisation within a 500 mile radius of Denver, Kroenke decided to press on with his quest to achieve a statewide monopoly and purchased the Colorado Rapids in 2004. Chris White, editor of the soccer side’s fansite Burgundy Wave, explained how Stan has done ‘fantastic’ things since he took over, paying for a new stadium and even constructing a standing terrace for ‘ultras’ (how good would that be?). In a rare interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2011 (well worth Googling) Kroenke said the team was in trouble when he stepped in and he simply wanted to ‘help out’, but, as Chris explains, he was also helping himself like a Northerner at a Greggs lock-in.

“Kroenke bought the team when the league was just starting an incredible growth spurt, in terms of attendance, team numbers and overall quality. In addition, MLS teams are rather cheap to maintain compared to EPL, NHL, NFL or NBA sides so it was very little risk and potentially lots of reward.”

Make no mistake, the Rapids have come a long way since Stan bought them, but he hasn’t gone any further than most other MLS owners. In business terms he’s also got in early on what is a rapidly expanding market. The Rapids may be currently losing cash, but Kroenke knows his investment will eventually come good because the MLS is on a fast upward trajectory, whereas all the other sports he’s involved in are generally plateauing. 

Yet Colorado have won some silverware since he took over – not that Stan knew much about it, as Chris explains in a story which illustrates the pitfalls of having an owner who’s following more teams than Robbie Keane.

“In 2010 on our way to the MLS Cup, the confusing playoff seedings in MLS that year had the Rapids – a Western conference team – playing in the Eastern Conference final. In a famous moment, Kroenke, making a rare appearance at a Rapids match, turned to the league’s commissioner and said something to the tune of, “Why is my team playing in the Eastern Conference finals, again?” Not much confidence is instilled when it seems like he isn’t watching what’s going on.”

Nugget!

Silent Stan may not be a ‘hockey guy’ but everyone I spoke to agreed that he’s certainly a ‘basketball guy’ – or as Nate Timmons of basketball fansite Denver Stiffs puts it, a ‘basketball junkie’. Stan had to hand the Denver Nuggets over to his son Josh (who apparently has a slightly more hands-on approach) when he bought the Rams in 2010 due to rules of NFL ownership rules, but he remains the de facto owner and Josh is just as enthusiastic about basketball as his old man. Indeed the two things that everyone I spoke to agreed upon were: 1. Stan is hyper-secretive, and 2. He prefers basketball to all other sports. As such it’s no surprise to hear that Nate’s pretty satisfied with Kroenke’s ownership, although he did also raise some interesting questions about his operating procedures.

“Had Stan not purchased the Nuggets in 2000, there was a small chance that the team could’ve left Colorado. The Nuggets have also made the play-offs for the past nine seasons and the stability he brought has caused that. Before Kroenke took over, the Nuggets had not made the play-offs since 1995.” However, just as with the St Louis Rams, if we look a little further we see that historically the Nuggets are archetypal also-rans. Indeed a quick Wikipedia search reveals that they’ve never appeared in an NBA Final, let alone actually won a title. Essentially, this lot are the Aston Villa of the NBA and that’s probably being generous. “The Nuggets aren’t an elite team, but they’re getting there,” explains Nate. “It’ll be interesting to see if Kroenke will go ‘all in’ to try and bring a title to Denver.”

Apparently there are plenty of fans who hold a more skeptical view than he does, but being the level-headed sports fan he is, Nate still has a few gripes. “I wish Kroenke & Co. wouldn’t wait until contracts are up to renegotiate deals!” he says. Tell us about it mate!

Carmelo Anthony’s Dream

One player the Denver Stiffs writer singled out for my attention was Carmelo Anthony, the Nuggets’ star 6 foot 8 inch ‘small forward’, who decided to leave for the New York Knicks after several successful seasons in Colorado. Reading around the subject led me to believe that the situation was quite similar to our own Fabregas debacle (Anthony had persevered with the Nuggets but he’s from New York originally), yet it’s also clear that Kroenke’s cronies hardly tried to break the bank to keep him and Anthony’s comments following his departure could have been spoken by a host of former Arsenal players. “To have so many memories and being at the pinnacle, going to the conference finals here, having a team that we thought could win here, to see that break up. That’s where it all started,” he told the press.

“Are you sure this is me? I think it’s just some guy who looks like me.”

He Who Shall Not Be Named

Nate wasn’t the only Nuggets fan I approached for an opinion. I also spoke to another prominent member of their blogging community who said he was happy to talk to me, but that our conversation should be strictly off the record. Obviously I was intrigued by this and assured him that his identity would not be revealed. This was it – I’d landed a scoop! It would be like Watergate and the Phone-Hacking Scandal all rolled into one! I’d sell the story and finally be able to afford a season ticket AND central heating! But even though my dreams of a Pulitzer had evaporated faster than Arsenal’s annual title charge, my paranoid contact did have a few interesting insights.

“In the States, we’re well aware of what’s happening with Arsenal in the UK,” he said. “One of the things you need to know about Stan is as much as he wants to win in sports, his desire to win in ‘business’ sometimes supersedes it. While I’m not familiar with the way the Premier League conducts business, his habits in American sports are to play hardball in Collective Bargaining negotiations with the players union, get the best deal he can, then adjust player salaries to fit the new business model.”

Essentially, Stan’s ethos does not allow for managers to pay special wages for special players. Back in September 2011 when The Telegraph asked him if he was confident that Van Persie would stay at the club in light of that summer’s exodus, he replied: “Yes. Fabregas and Nasri were unique situations. Arsenal is a great club. London is a great place to live. Why would you want to throw that away?” His advocates might point out to this winter’s Walcott fiasco as evidence that he is shifting his stance, but you can be sure that his attitude towards wages is a good indicator of his attitude towards transfer fees. The Glazers do not throw money around like many other foreign owners but Ferguson is allowed to break the rules by paying over the odds for a striker or upping another striker’s wages to prevent him leaving for a rival, because they understand the subtle difference between Premier League football and US sport.

Meanwhile Stan seems to be risk-averse and stuck in small-club mode. As such, when the Telegraph asked him about the slump Arsenal found themselves in two years ago he said: “That’s just part of the game. Everyone thinks it’s always going to be like that (pointing upwards to indicate success) but it’s not.” Rousing stuff.

For more of Sean, follow @SeanMarland

And follow me – @AngryOfN5. I practically insist.

I often see arguments like this on Twitter:

“Arsene Wenger has done brilliantly to keep up with clubs who spend much more than Arsenal.”

“What are you talking about? Our wage bill is massive. It’s nearly as big as Man Utd’s.”

“Yes, but not quite as big, so obviously they’re ahead of us.”

“They’re 20 points ahead of us, but their wage bill is only a few million higher.”

“Well it’s still bigger. And we are always ahead of the teams who have wage bills smaller than ours.”

“Our wage bill is double Everton’s and £50m a year more than Tottenham’s, but they’re right up with us.”

“Let’s see where we finish at the end of the season.”

Well the end of the season is nearly upon us. And at the moment we are struggling to achieve the top four position that we have come to know and love. Others have come and gone, but Arsenal have remained top four for a solid 16 years, something that has never before happened in Arsenal history. (Herbert Chapman might have done it of course, had he not inconveniently died; we’ll never know.)

One thing is sure: we are certainly nearer to a couple of teams with much smaller wage bills than ours than we are to Man Utd. But then neither Chelsea or Man City are very close to Man Utd either, and their wage bills are bigger. What does that tell us? Clearly that some managers perform better than others, and in the absence of a spending cap or the implementation of my brilliant idea to get all the managers randomly swapped around to different teams in the Premier League the day before the season starts, we can only measure manager performance on how many points they should be expected to get for their budget.

So here it is, helpfully presented by Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, in his most recent ‘Fink Tank’ column. Well looky-here, that nice Mr Ferguson is top of the list, with a massive 16.8 points more than he should expect from his wage bill. I don’t like him, but you have to recognise and respect his level of success over so many years. (Remember when he said he was retiring about ten years ago? The lying toad.)

David Moyes and Andre Villas-Boas also do rather well, on relatively modest budgets, which shows that we should be a lot further ahead of them than we are.

The funniest statistic here is of course dear ‘Arry, bumbling along at the foot of the table, when on the wages he forks out his team should be 20 points better off. What’s that ‘Arry? It’s all nuffin to do with you? Of course not, you’re still available for that England job, aintcha? Heh heh.

Alan ‘eight-year contract’ Pardew is also failing miserably, while Brendan Rodgers isn’t doing too well either. Though he’s rebuilding, see? It’ll all work out for Liverpool soon, back to former glories. So they tell me. Though I’m not putting my house on it.

And of course right in the middle, with (prior to last weekend) 0.6 of a point fewer than you would expect given our wage bill, is Arsene Wenger. Currently he is not great, nor is he terrible. He has turned himself into an average manager.

Well I say that, but of course there are a few caveats: firstly this is wages only and takes no account of transfer spend, which in some clubs is massive. Very few spend a net figure smaller than Arsenal on transfers. Arsene supporters obviously point this out in his defence, and it’s valid – though transfers are never as good a guide to performance as wages.

Another point is that even the most die-hard Arsene fan has to admit that a fair proportion of Arsenal’s wage spend is on dross who don’t deserve it. If we could get rid of all the players who don’t actually play, then we could easily cut £20m a year off the wage bill. So on players actually playing Arsene is doing better. (Having said that: who bought the duds in the first place, and don’t all squads have some dead wood?)

Thirdly, with Arsene there is amazing consistency. And this really is amazing. You would expect at some point that Arsenal would have a really great season or a really terrible one, but we’ve had eight average ones in a row. Before that we were in a duopoly with Man Utd since the start of Wenger’s reign – we were second biggest spenders then, so sometimes outperformed by beating Man U, and sometimes stayed on par by being second. So you could say we were ‘average’ then as well, in a way, though average on a higher scale.

Since 2005 the story is much the same: Arsene has managed to remain on par or sometimes one place better, but as there are now more big spending teams than there used to be we’ve dropped a bit in the table. But other teams have a great season now and again, outperform expectations and wage bills, then the next year drop much lower. Since 2005 I think Liverpool have been as high as second and as low as seventh; so have Chelsea. Man City have risen in that time. Arsenal have let others rise and fall around them.

Sometimes one terrible season turns into several – Leeds were Champions League semi-finalists in Arsene’s reign; Newcaste played in the CL too. So it’s very easy to understate what Arsene has actually achieved with his consistency, it really isn’t as easy as some people make out, which is why I don’t bash AW as some do.

Having said that: can we have a trophy soon, please?

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