Just came across this Evening Standard cutting from 29 February 2008. Much has changed behind the scenes at Arsenal since. Even by this time David Dein had been ostracised and sold his shares to Usmanov, making Usmanov at the time the largest shareholder. But some of the other comments are telling.
The AST five years ago – pre-Kroenke takeover, obviously – was still praising the club for being well-run! Those were the days.
Early 2008 was also the time of the Eduardo injury, so Arsenal’s season was soon derailed with no assistance required from billionaire eastern Europeans.
In many ways it is amazing to think that Usmanov has taken five years to get from a 24 per cent holding to his current 29.99 per cent. Is he serious about this, or what? Per moves at a faster rate. Fabianski shows more decisiveness at corners. 
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Time for Usmanov to take over!
Was the club well run at the time?
It was run more as a football club rather than apparently just for profit. However, commercially it was falling behind by then when it should have been catching up, and the in-fighting of the Board wasn’t helping anything.
Usmanov was screwed by the carved-up sale to Kroenke, engineered by Danny. Why did he choose Kroenke? The suspicion is that it was more about keeping DD out than bringing SKE in. Even so Lady N had the power to stop the deal by selling her shares to Red & White. From what she has said since, she regrets that she didn[t. Five years on, and Usmanov is still in the hunt. The outcome is anybody’s guess – but my hope is that he becomes majority owner by June.
Lady Nina’s shares wouldn’t have stopped Kroenke having a majority ownership. Kroenke ended up with 66.83%, she had 15.9%. Without her shares he would have 50.93%.