GOOD BUY, MR CHIPS?
Arsenal chairman grilled at AGM about transfer dealings and £3M payment to main shareholder Kroenke hits back: I’m no Sepp Blatter
ARSENAL chairman Sir Chips Keswick enraged shareholders after furious exchanges about the club’s finances.
Fans at the annual general meeting demanded to know why majority shareholder Stan Kroenke was paid a £3million consultancy fee.
They had already questioned why the club spent just £10m in the transfer market – Petr Cech was their only summer buy – despite having cash reserves of nearly £200m.
But wealthy banker Keswick, 75, hit back when quizzed over the payment to US tycoon Kroenke and ridiculed any idea it was like a backhander for Sepp Blatter or Michel Platini.
“I’ll answer the question, and the answer is I’m not Mr Platini, I’m not Mr Blatter, and there is not a written whatever-you-wanted,” said Keswick.
Kroenke owns of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which includes a string of successful teams in his native USA and Arsenal insist the £3m is for advice on how to make the club more profitable and st reng t h en business links.
Keswick added: “I don’t know how many of you here run your own businesses but those of you who do will know the best advice you can get is the quick advice from people.
“And this is the point, people in other organisations know more about the problem than you do.
“If you’re humble enough to accept that then you go and you get good advice. That is precisely what we do at the Arsenal with KSE.”
Keswick annoyed shareholders with his remarks, saying: “That once again” when one asked about the club paying match-day employees the minimum wage. He also dismissed a question as being “noise” and his clumsy handling of inquiries about the Kroenke payment made more of the problem than it is.
Arsene Wenger and chief executive Ivan Gazidis also defended the club’s transfer policy.
Boss Wenger said: “We’re not scared to spend the money – I know I have that reputation. We have shown in the last three years if the player has the quality, we spend the money.”
Gazidis (below, in between Kroenke and Keswick) added: “I make no apologies for having a strong squad and b being in a strong financial c position. That’s a always been our aim.
“But that doesn’t m mean spending for the s sake of it. Spending m money on players who don’t contribute is incredibly damaging. Compromising on quality would be compromising on ambition.”
Gazidis also believes the FA’s quota plan for youth development would undo the Premier League’s work on the Elite Player Performance Programme. He said: “Quotas protect players. We hide heads in sand if we mollycoddle them. There’s no evidence quotas work.”