Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Arsenal Holdings letter to Shareholders

When Arsenal announced their financial results on Monday, the club sent the following letter to all shareholders:

Arsenal Holdings plc (the "Company") announces that a letter, reproduced
below, has been sent to all shareholders.


24th September 2007

Dear Shareholder,

Enclosed you will find the Club's latest annual report and results. The Board
believes that these results speak for themselves. The Club is clearly in a
strong financial position. We are also buoyant on the football front with
manager Arsene Wenger extending his contract with us until 2011 and the team
making an excellent start to the season.

You will be aware over the last twelve months the Club's shareholder base has
changed significantly. Stanley Kroenke now owns 12.2% and Red & White
Holdings, a company controlled by Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, now
holds 21%. The Directors of Arsenal continue to hold 45.5% and have no
current intention of selling any of their shares as evidenced by their
statement of 18th April 2007.

Against the backdrop of the strong financial and playing position of the Club,
if you are contemplating the possibility of dealing in shares, we would
suggest that you take appropriate financial advice and consider the stance
taken by the Directors in committing not to sell their own shareholdings.

In closing, we recognise that many shareholders retain shares because they are
fans of the Club and wish to support the Club to the fullest extent possible
rather than holding shares solely as a financial investment.

We welcome shareholders' continued support at this time.

Yours faithfully
P D Hill-Wood
Chairman
Clearly the board are hoping small shareholders will hold out so that Usmanov cannot reach the 25% holdings barrier.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Music Review: Dragons, Here Are The Roses

I first heard of this band from a mention in the gig guide of the evening paper. Their 2 line description of the band made them sound pretty cool, so I thought I'd check them out. It took a while to track them down on the web, but I'm glad I did.

Best described as Indie Rock with sprinklings of Electronics, the album starts with the title track and first single, Here Are The Roses (video below). This track, like some of the others on the album, features some very Peter Hook-like bass guitar, plus some nice synth work sitting behind the guitars. Give the video a whirl and see what you think.

The second single, Condition, is a more up tempo number with more focus on the guitars. Along with the rest of the album, the lyrics and vocals are very strong throughout.

Another mention must go to the drumming - throughout the album the drumming is top class, which adds to the energy already present.

There are plenty of strong tracks on the album besides the singles: Trust (could easily be a single), Where Is The Love? (more down tempo, even goth like) , Rememberence and Forever.

A lot of albums seem to suffer from putting too many tracks on, running to 12 or more tracks. They often suffer from this, as they become over long with the inevitable fillers. Thankfully, at 10 tracks the album doesn't suffer in this way.

The single Here Are The Roses featured two tracks not on the album, Redemption and Love Like This - both of which are strong enough to be album tracks in my opinion. So it is well worth checking out the single.

This is by far my favourite album of the year - the only danger is I'm likely to play it to death.

Dragons Web Site


Monday, September 03, 2007

Champions League Group stages squad

Arsenal have submitted the following squad for the group stages of the Champions League:


Goalkeepers

Jens Lehmann
Łukasz Fabiański
Manuel Almunia


Defenders
William Gallas
Philippe Senderos
Justin Hoyte
Gaël Clichy
Kolo Touré
Johan Djourou *
Bacary Sagna
Emmanuel Eboué
Paul Rodgers *
Armand Traoré
Havard Nordtveit

Midfielders
Tomáš Rosický
Aleksandr Hleb
Gilberto
Cesc Fabregas *
Mathieu Flamini
Abou Diaby
Alexandre Song
Mark Randall *
Denilson
Kieran Gibbs *

Forwards
Robin van Persie
Eduardo da Silva
Emmanuel Adebayor
Nicklas Bendtner
Theo Walcott
Jay Simpson *

*Player list B

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Who's firing the £50 notes now?

Now David Dein has dumped (or more likely, been dumped by) Stan Kroenke, he is full of his usual self serving quotes. Even before the club has announced that Wenger has signed a new contract, Dein is trying to take the credit for it:


“I wouldn’t have advised him to if I didn’t have Arsenal’s best interests at heart."

"I want to see Arsenal become the best team in the world, and to that end I’ve been instrumental in getting Arsène to sign a new contract.”

Grating to say the least. Remember this is the guy who wanted Arsenal to share Wembley. What a farce that would have been.

I have been surprised by the board not upping their stake - holding 45% of the shares leaves them in a vulnerable position, even if they have friends among the other share holders. Lets just hope they are trustworthy.

The other option available to them is to invite Kroenke on to the board and form an alliance with him. He is in a position now where he can't get his hands on many more shares, and can't effectively mount a takeover without co-operation from the Board, so he maybe content with a seat on the Board. It is obvious Kroenke doesn't want much to do with Dein, so he may be prepared to sign up.

I just hope all this doesn't distract from our excellent start to the new season, and weigh everyone at the club down.