Arsenal Football club takeover

Long term Arsenal football (Soccer) club shareholder David Dean has quit Arsenal football club. Dean a long term member of the board of directors at Arsenal and a major shareholder.

Dean has been at Arsenal fc since the 1980's and is described by many as one of the most passionate members of the board and has been involved in all major decisions throughout the club in recent years such as bringing in Arsene Wenger and keeping Therry Henry at the club.

Deans departure has astonished many especially Arsenal fans who believed that he would never leave the club especially out of the blue as is the case. His love for Arsenal FC has been made apparent over the years.

With Deans departure it means that a large portion of the shares will become available potentially providing a majority share control to Stan Kroenke.

Stan Kroenke an American businessman (apparently the 16th richest person in the world) who has already purchased 9.99% of total Arsenal FC shares which were purchased from ITV Granada will no doubt be interested in the recent development and aquisition of Deans shares, it is known at this time if the shares will be enough to make Kroenke the majority shareholder at around 52%.

The rest of the major Arsenal shareholders have promised not to sell their shares for at least one year, suggesting opposition to the takeover.

The manner that this club takeover is occuring is strange as Deans departure could not be forcast. The manner that this American is taking control of Arsenal stinks of foul play however this is now common within the premier league as most of our Football teams are now owned by tycoons:

Manchester United - Glazier
Chelsea - Abromivich

And the rest including West Ham, Liverpool etc.

Is there foul play going on here at Arsenal FC?, something seems very wrong.

It is apperent that football is a money potent arena. But the takeover of the clubs by these foreign tycoons surely cant improve the game we love in the long run.

Is this the beginning of the end of football as we know it?

[edit on 18-4-2007 by Astras]

I also believe that those purchases reak of something really foul.

Take Abramovich for example. Got his billions by a take over of a former national corporation. He got the corporation by a very low price from Boris Yeltsin. Other insiders also got superb deals in the 90's and are now billionaires. All of these billionaires are allegedly involved or are in the Russian mafia.

That's just one premier league team majority shareholder.

Ahhh! A Plastic football club investor to go with a plastic football club supported by plastic fair weather fans... its so wonderfully fitting I could vomit...

COYS!!!