Category Archives: Arsenal

Alisher-Usmanov-001

Usmanov takes a £250m dividend

Alisher Usmanov is soon to add £250m to his holdings when the communications company he owns, MegaFon, pays out a massive £855m dividend this next quarter. MegaFon just raised £1.1bn with their IPO  last year.

When Alisher Usmanov was introduced to Arsenal one of the first big mistakes he made was to ask that the board pay dividends to shareholders. It was a shocking demand because unlike an average business, sports shares don’t normally pay dividends. The value of the share of a club or team is in the real holdings of the club like real estate and players or in some intangibles like “growth potential”.

However, in the normal course of business most shareholders will want dividends if a company is making money. Usmanov routinely takes dividends from his companies, like the massive payouts he received from Mail.ru when they sold shares in Facebook. Arsenal is making money and in that case your average investor, who sees Arsenal as a business and not so much as a sports team, would normally ask that some dividend be paid.

Not all companies pay dividends and not all investors ask for or receive payouts. Warren Buffet, the most astute businessman the world has ever seen, owns Berkshire Hathaway and their stocks have only ever paid dividends once, when he famously said “I must have been in the bathroom when that vote was taken”.

Buffett believes, and with good reason, that shareholders will benefit more from Berkshire’s retention and reinvestment of the funds than they would if the company paid them out. His letter offered competing hypothetical examples of the impact on a shareholder’s net worth under both scenarios. By paying dividends, he estimates that he’d reduce the company’s compound annual growth rate by 4%.

Most Arsenal supporters would subscribe to the “Buffett” model of Arsenal ownership and ask that owners re-invest profits back into the club in order to grow the club, team, and business rather than take dividends.

In fact, The Arsenal Supporters Trust reacted strongly to Usmanov’s reported demands for dividends “challenging” the businessman openly in the press saying:

It is completely wrong for Red and White to seek to extract profit. No dividends have been paid at Arsenal for more than 30 years. All extra monies should be reinvested in the club

A number of Arsenal supporters and supporters groups are openly worried, however, that majority shareholder Stan Kroenke will take dividends because he wouldn’t flat out refuse to do so, deferring the decision to the board. Despite the fact that Kroenke has never taken any money out of Arsenal Football Club (that we know of) and the fact that Usmanov has asked the board for a dividend and routinely demands his investments pay him dividends, the fear among some supporters is that Kroenke needs the cash more than Usmanov? “Why would he need that, it’s just pocket change to a man like Alisher who is richer than Croesus!”

It’s true, he is rich. And with another £250m dividend coming his way soon to be much richer.

Qq

P.S. There are some fans who will see the £250m and say “WOO HOO! He could invest that in the club!” but that may not be entirely true. UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) is supposed to prevent exactly that type of investment. Though whether FFP will pass the tests of the courts remains to be seen as it is being challenged as I write this.

Billy Shakespeare

Shakespeare on…

Hell is empty and all the devils are here
– Stoke City

And though he be but little, he is fierce.
– Cazorla

Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
– the Transfer Market

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
– Wenger

Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– 7amkickoff

Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.
– Ramsey

Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
– Samir Nasri

Wouldst thou not be glad to have the n*ggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable shame?
– Luis Suarez

One may smile and smile and be a villain
– Cesc (via @GiantGooner)

He’ll deliver all,
And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,
And sail so expeditious, that shall catch
Your royal fleet far off.
– Arteta

This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh!
–Arshavin

He were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scour’d to nothing with perpetual motion
– Diaby

To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title, which is within a very little of nothing.
– Tottenham Hotspurs

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favors nor your hate.
– Arsenal’s Youth Team

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
– Nicklas Bendtner

By heaven, I had rather coin my heart
And drop my blood for drachmaes than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection.
– What Arsenal Fans Want From Stan Kroenke

God hath given you one face and you make yourself another.
– Robin van Persie

The golden age is before us, not behind.
– Arsenal

I like how Luis Suarez pulls back his sock to reveal the devestating injury that Szczesny supposedly inflicted.

Why would anyone want Rooney or Suarez?

I can’t stand fantasy football. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the allure. It’s Dungeons and Dragons for sports nerds. I know because I used to play fantasy basketball. In fact I won my league two of the three years I played and I was the Seattle Supersonics fantasy “correspondent” for ESPN back in the olden days when fantasy basketball was just getting started.  But the end of fantasy sports came for me when I was in the stands at a Sonics game rooting for Derek Fisher of the LA Lakers to hit a three pointer. I needed threes that day and my fantasy team’s playoff position mattered more to me than my actual team’s playoff position. So I understand fantasy sports inside and out. And sometimes I wonder if our, us Arsenal fans, obsession with players like Rooney and Suarez doesn’t come from a bit of a fantasy sports perspective.

I get it, Suarez on paper looks like a beast. The man has attempted 291 dribbles this season, that’s a dribble more per game than Mr. Dribble himself, Franck Ribery. But he’s only pulled off 95 of those dribbles making him simultaneously a “trier” and one of the most wasteful forwards in all the big leagues.

Still, I hear people say, “he creates his own shot” and Arsenal need someone to “create their own shot”. And again, on paper, this is correct, he has a total of 187 shots this season, second only to Mr. Chucker* himself, Christiano Ronaldo. It’s no coincidence that both Liverpool and Real Madrid are number one and number two in shots per game among all the top Leagues — they have the top two shooters. Tottenham are up there in shots per game as well, and Bale is a big reason for that.

As an aside, Juventus are third in shots per game, which you probably didn’t expect. You also probably didn’t expect to find out that they have 8 players who average two or more shots per game and no players who average 3 or more shots per game. They don’t have a chucker, they share the ball.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that shots and shots on goal correlate well with winning football matches. It does, they do, hardly a surprise; you have to shoot the ball to score the goals and scoring goals means winning games. So, it follows that you want a player like Suarez on your team. I get it, on paper.

SUAREZ IS OUT

I don’t get it in real life.

Setting aside the diving, which all players do now and which Gary Neville has said is a prerequisite for playing football. In real life Suarez has been found guilty of biting and making racist comments. In real life, if you watch Liverpool play week in and week out, you see a team force-feeding him the ball like a duck in gavage. Liverpool live and die by what Suarez does on and off the football pitch. Which is big reason why Liverpool are going to finish below Everton this season, in 7th place.

That match against Chelsea epitomized Suarez’ entire career. He places the perfect cross to get Liverpool the opener, then handles the ball to gift Chelsea the draw, bites Ivanovich in a fit of pique, and scores the tying goal in the last minute with a brilliant header.

Another player Arsenal supporters seem to be keen on is Wayne Rooney. And here’s the thing about Rooney: fuck Wayne Rooney. Rooney is one of those players you don’t even take on your fantasy team because he’s unreliable. Even Manchester United’s own fans have grown tired of Wayne Rooney’s shit and they booed him at the team’s victory parade.

Rooney is 27 years old and should be in the prime of his career. Perhaps, if I give Rooney some credit, that’s why he turned in a transfer request. He’s ready to make a big splash in his career and playing second fiddle to noob Robin van Persie after years of service to Man U might sting a bit. What am I saying? Rooney is such a massive ego that it probably stings a lot. But it’s also his second transfer request in two years and the first one was really just all about the money so who knows, this could also just be about the money.

But his career stats and off the pitch antics are worrying as hell. Since 2008, Rooney has had one season on and one season off every year: 12 goals, 26 goals, 11 goals, 27 goals, 12 goals… I suppose he’s due for a 28 goal season! A lot of that record is down to an ankle injury he suffered between 2008-2010, though, he did score 26 goals on a dodgy ankle and a quick search of the press reveals Ferguson saying the ankle is both “not as serious” and “more serious” every other week. So, again, how much of Rooney’s success is down to him and how much is down to management by Fergie is unknown.

Personally, Rooney smacks of an old school footballer. You know the kind I mean, the guy who smokes on vacation, the guy who drinks when he’s injured, and the guy who cheats on his pregnant wife. Rooney is the player who throws a football at a referee and as he’s walking to the shower has a little spit in his direction. A player who looses his temper and kicks out at an opponent, getting sent off ahead of a crucial European campaign. The guy who doesn’t take care of himself and as a result ends up looking like a withered pear; it looks ill, it eats drily. A guy who dives to end Arsenal’s 49 game unbeaten run.

Thanks for the dive Wayne!

So who would ever want either Rooney or Suarez?

I think in many ways players like Suarez and especially Rooney hearken back to an earlier time in football. A time when the footballers were hard men and when the terraces were full of chants like “You’re gonna get your fucking heads kicked in!”

 

I’ve heard it said by many that Arsenal need some of that, some “steel”. To put it not too delicately, I’ve heard people say that what Arsenal need is “a cunt like that.” And I would agree, Rooney and Suarez are, in fact, cunts.

But I’m not so sure that what Arsenal need is a player who does a zombie impression in big games or a barely manageable half-Gascoigne. Times have changed and players like that are dinosaurs. I get it that you see Rooney busting a gut to beat Denilson that one time and think “why can’t we have players like that?” Orr that Suarez slips past his marker and pokes in a delicate little goal that reminds us of King Charlie in his pomp at Highbury.

But if you’re playing fantasy football and what you want is a player who will bust a gut and who has the talent to leave defenders standing still like pillars of salt why wouldn’t you aspire to have something better than Rooney or Suarez? Take a player whose worst attribute is that he’s had his ears pinned or that he’s a Spurs player!

Take Bale over those two any day.

And if you want someone in this Arsenal team who never stops working for the cause, who tackles hard but fair, and whose put his body on the line time and again for the Red and White, cheer for Aaron Ramsey.

I do.

Qq

*A “Chucker” is the player in basketball who shoots every time he gets the ball, rather than pass to an open teammate, see Kobe Bryant.