Reviving Arsenal: Kroenke reflects on Super League fallout, Arteta's success

LOS ANGELES — Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke is in a tent looking out over a field at Loyola Marymount University, where Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay have just finished coaching 100 children at a community event.

“Just seeing Mikel and Sean out there standing, talking with the kids around, it is kind of a full-circle moment that we have been building towards for a number of years,” Kroenke says in an exclusive interview with ESPN. “I’ve always preached that we need to figure out a way to get our different groups together because it is apples, oranges and watermelon but it’s all fruit to fruit.”

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE), founded by Josh’s father, Stan, has enjoyed a ripe spell of late. It owns six professional teams and, in June 2023, the Denver Nuggets won their first NBA championship in their 48-year history. It was KSE’s fourth title in 18 months after the Rams won the Super Bowl in 2021, the NHL‘s Colorado Avalanche claimed the 2021-22 Stanley Cup, and the Colorado Mammoth were crowned 2022 National Lacrosse League champions. MLS side Colorado Rapids and English Premier League club Arsenal complete the six, and altogether KSE was valued by Forbes in January at $15.59 billion, making it the world’s largest privately held sports group.

“The benefit of the organisation my dad has built has given us the ability to cross-pollinate certain concepts and ideas across similar but different businesses, and those are our teams,” Kroenke continues.

“When you go through your hiring process, whether that’s your technical director/general manager-type role, a head coaching role, or you’re getting into new commercial enterprise driving the business, there are a lot of similarities, but they are all very different at times. With Sean and Mikel in particular, there is a relative template to putting good people in positions, giving them time and resources to succeed.”

There is a harmony within KSE these days. Stan is also in attendance to watch talent from two of his teams schooling children aged 7-12 from Inglewood and South L.A. Arteta and McVay speak regularly to share ideas, and, during Arsenal’s preseason tour of the U.S., staff members from both teams — plus others flown in from KSE’s Denver teams — had dinner together and held panel discussions they hope will lead to further improvement across the group.

Arsenal are beginning to reap the benefits, having finished fifth in the 2021-22 Premier League table before two second-place finishes in which they pushed Manchester City in incrementally closer title races. (Their points totals in those last two seasons, 89 and 84, would have been enough to win the league nearly any other season were it not for Pep Guardiola’s remarkable work at Man City.) A steadfast belief in a transposable template is what enabled KSE to navigate the mutinous atmosphere that for so long threatened to define its involvement with Arsenal.

KSE’s 2007 decision to buy a minority stake in the club was viewed with scepticism among Arsenal’s fanbase, many questioning whether U.S. owners with no background in elite football could truly have the club’s best intentions at heart. That scepticism grew into widespread hostility over the next decade as Arsenal’s last Premier League title, back in 2004, increasingly felt like a bygone era.

The club’s 2014 FA Cup win belatedly ended a nine-year wait for a trophy, but Arsenal’s inability to challenge for bigger prizes led many supporters to feel that then-manager Arsène Wenger was not sufficiently held accountable for the expanding distance between former glories and present travails. Debt repayments linked to the move to Emirates Stadium limited Arsenal’s transfer activity, and sights were consequently lowered from challenging for the title to simply qualifying for the Champions League. Between the second-place finishes in 2015-16 and 2022-23, the Gunners finished no higher than fifth and failed to even make it into the Champions League.

A reluctance to communicate with those disgruntled fans led Kroenke Sr. to be monikered “Silent Stan,” and protests were held time and again — supporters raging at what they believed was the dying of the light.

KSE eventually assumed full control in 2018 before Arsenal controversially became one of six English clubs to join the European Super League project in April 2021. It lasted barely 48 hours, but the damage had been done. Fans revolted, with thousands attending yet another “Kroenke Out” protest outside the club’s home ground. Other clubs involved in the doomed breakaway faced similar opprobrium, but at Arsenal the hostility was exacerbated by stirring up all that longstanding ill-feeling.

The homemade signs displayed by fans in attendance that day included: “Give us back what’s not yours,” “We Don’t Forgiv£, We Won’t Forg£t,” and “Stan, You’re Not Wanted, Get Out Of Our Club You Leech.” Swedish billionaire Daniel Ek, owner of Spotify, sensed an opportunity and made a £1.8bn bid to buy the club, and Kroenke has previously admitted there were other offers “from different parties around the world.”

So, was there ever the temptation to sell even when those bids came in at what felt like the darkest hour?

“No, there was never really … offers this, offers that,” Kroenke recalls. “My dad, our family are long-term investors, long-term holders. For me personally, I have been involved with the club for over 10 years now, around the board, and I really enjoy it and I love the club. I knew it would be very rewarding to get it back in a position to succeed and prove a few people wrong along the way.

“The real reward is when you enter the stadium, you feel the energy of what’s going on, that is the absolute payback of anything I could have ever imagined.”

Kroenke references the final day of last season, when Arsenal came from behind to beat Everton but missed out on the league as Manchester City beat West Ham United to win their fourth consecutive title, but by just two points.

“I was showing someone a video the other day of after our last match of last season, it was 45 minutes after the match but the only people who had left was the away section [Everton fans],” he says. “It was full all the way around. We’ve always had great support, but to see that love for Mikel and the players and for them give it back, that was a goose-bumps-type moment for me.”

But will KSE ever get that love, given everything that has gone before?

“I don’t know,” Kroenke replies. “I’d hate to say I don’t really care because it is a really big group of people. My dad has given us the ability to invest back into the club in a way that maybe wasn’t done previously but he does that because he trusts the group of people that we have.

“We’re in this business because we’re competitive. It is a lot to process at times, but the only reason we’re here is because we’ve got a great group and we want to try to keep it together for as long as we can.”

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The European Super League furore crystallised many underlying issues that in reality dated back to three years earlier.

In 2018, Arsenal gradually began transitioning away from Wenger, the legendary manager who had delivered three Premier League titles including the historic unbeaten campaign of 2003-04, forever immortalised as the “Invincibles,” but whose powers had waned as time wore on.

Wenger had enjoyed managerial autonomy to an extent that had fallen out of fashion in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, the Manchester United manager who had full control of his club for over 20 years, and KSE began appointing nine new department heads and a plethora of support staff, dividing responsibility and authority throughout the club. With KSE not prone to public statements, the manager had become a lightning rod for abuse. The disconnect was real.

“What’s really interesting to see now is more the connection on the fans side of things,” said Theo Walcott, who played for the club between 2006 and 2018. “We were connected, but not engaging as much as now. That’s credit to what Mikel has done as a unit with his staff.

“As a player he’s probably learned a lot about what it means to actually be on the other side as well, what the fans experience.”

Wenger left in the summer of 2018, shortly before KSE bought out Arsenal’s other significant shareholder, Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who had been denied a seat on the board for years amid differing visions for the future of the club. Shortly after announcing Unai Emery as Wenger’s successor, chief executive Ivan Gazidis suddenly left to join AC Milan. How did Josh Kroenke take the criticism of his family and KSE?

“I mean, it was not fun,” he replies. “But it is also a challenge and I really am a personality that likes to embrace challenges.

“The tenure that [Wenger] was on and the impact he had will continue with our club forever. Turning that page and getting that correct was never going to be an easy process and I don’t think anybody would have got everything 100% correct as you transitioned out of that.

“There’s a certain amount of change that exists in an organisation that is healthy. But if you go through too much change, it is very difficult to stay stable.”

Emery’s stint in charge proved a disappointment — missing out on Champions League qualification and losing the Europa League final to London rivals Chelsea in his sole full season in charge — and, in December 2019, the club took a chance on Arteta, who had never managed before but was a key part of Pep Guardiola’s successful coaching team for three years at Manchester City. Emery has since joined Aston Villa and successfully guided them to fourth in the Premier League last season, and a first Champions League campaign.

“Within a year and a half or so [of Wenger leaving], we had certain people in certain roles,” Kroenke continues. “Edu was on board [as technical director, later made sporting director in November 2022]. Unfortunately it didn’t work out with Unai Emery but I am pleased to see him go on to have success. He is a good man, I really respected him … I’m glad to see a good person having success somewhere else.

“The real impact of that time period was COVID. That was the rug pulled out from under us of some of the things we were trying to do.”

COVID hit all clubs hard as matches were played behind closed doors in 2020 and crowds were only gradually phased back in, but the Gunners were particularly vulnerable.

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire told ESPN: “Arsenal for many years were one of only two clubs regularly getting into the £100m a year bracket for matchday income. This often was 20% or more of total revenue whereas the average in the Premier League is around 13% and for some clubs it is as low as 4%.

“It is also indicative of the club perhaps taking an old-fashioned attitude towards commercial income which allowed clubs such as Liverpool, the two Manchester clubs and also Chelsea to power ahead. This is an area the club needs to address.”

KSE was widely criticised for announcing 55 redundancies as part of cost-cutting measures, which included the man behind club mascot Gunnersaurus, while the scouting network was also radically cut back. And so, when the European Super League venture surfaced, KSE felt a backlash with much greater depth to it.

“It is difficult to remember and underestimate how crazy the world was,” Kroenke continues. “On the back of that, we came out and I know from myself in particular, I got with some of our best supporter groups, got some feedback.

“As with any human being, if you feel like you’ve done something wrong or you’ve upset someone you raise your hand and say ‘How can we be better and can we work together?’ That’s what we did as a club in a major way and that requires a lot of humility, a lot of very direct communication that sometimes is tough because fans are coming at you with emotion but if they don’t have that emotion, they don’t have the same passion for the club that we need to keep things moving.”

Following the European Super League collapse, a new fan advisory board was formed to discuss club strategy with selected supporter representatives who are involved on a three-year cycle. Internally, the club had shifted transfer policy towards buying players predominantly under the age of 24. The club got tougher, too.

Having won the 2020 FA Cup, Arteta was emboldened to begin tackling big issues within his squad, identifying an absence or requisite professionalism or winning mentality to take the club back to the top. A new culture had to be formed, and the chosen route towards it was financially painful. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Willian, Sokratis, Shkodran Mustafi, Mesut Özil, Sead Kolasinac, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Héctor Bellerín all had their contracts ripped up and received payoffs to leave. Nicolas Pépé, the club’s record signing in 2019 at £72 million from Lille, became the ninth player to leave in this way last September.

Edu explained the policy in July 2022 shortly before being made sporting director: “When a player is 26 or older, has a big salary and is not performing, he is killing you. They don’t have a transfer value and sometimes it’s better to pay a player to leave than it is to keep them.”

“One of the terms that has come up at different times, whether we’re talking about Mikel’s first year or two on the job, is requiring patience or things of that nature,” Kroenke says. “That is required at times but you also need to be a bit ruthless and make sure you are not sliding in the wrong direction while you are showing patience. That’s where your trust with your group comes in.”

And that group — made up of Arteta, Edu, new chief executive Richard Garlick and key board member Tim Lewis — has been given space to work. Recommendations on big decisions are presented, predominantly by Lewis, to the Kroenke family for approval.

“I don’t want to give away any of our secrets but what my dad has taught me over the years is: one, know what you don’t know,” Kroenke says. “Two: put people smarter than you in positions to succeed and that’s a good way to find success.

“There are a lot of moving parts, but you want to understand on the front end of what we’re doing. We’re in this business to win and winning is a lot more fun than the alternative, I can assure you.”

Part of the plan was to try to use the KSE reach as a strength, rather than the drain many Arsenal fans viewed it as. Kroenke saw parallels between Arteta and McVay, who was hired aged just 30 and faced questions over his readiness from the outset but quickly revived the Rams’ fortunes.

“I connected [Arteta and McVay] via Zoom during COVID,” Kroenke said. “I know Mikel is not about to tell Sean how to run routes. And Sean is not about to teach Mikel how to play out from the back. But the way they approach the dressing room, the way they handle conversations with players, the psychology of managing people is there for everyone to absorb.”

It is a relationship McVay values.

“It was a really natural connection because there’s a shared passion, a lot of core values but I had been a fan of [Arteta] for a while just watching him from afar,” the Rams coach told ESPN.

“The leadership, the communication, his ability to communicate in a bunch of different ways but [also] the ways that he stayed steady through the good times and through some of the challenging times. But I love him, I look up to him and we have certainly remained close ever since.

“Humility is still one of his biggest traits. He loves these players. They feel that love from him. I think that’s why you see them play so hard and it is the same thing with the coaches. When you are inspired not to let these people down because of the way he leads, I definitely try to mimic and emulate that as much as I can.”

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After Arsenal’s mass clear-out of players, big spending followed. Arsenal’s net spend in 2021-22 is estimated at £94.8m. The following year was £187.4m, the year after £145.2m. Declan Rice was acquired for a club-record £105m in the summer of 2023.

Arsenal amassed 89 points and had the best defensive record in the Premier League last season while also breaking a series of club records — 28 Premier League wins, 91 goals, the highest-ever goal difference (+62) — but still fell short as Manchester City lifted the trophy for a fourth year in succession. The Gunners also returned to the Champions League for the first time in seven years and made their first quarterfinal appearance since 2010, losing to Bayern Munich 3-2 on aggregate.

Surely, then, KSE has answered the two big criticisms: that it lacks ambition and is unwilling to invest?

“The results that we’re having on the pitch obviously help but from the time that my father was able to purchase 100% of the club — and I know that came with its own criticism — that allowed us to enter a different phase of how we wanted to operate the club and operate it like we operate our teams over here,” Kroenke says in response.

“I just know this because we have experience winning with other teams, winning is not a linear process. Winning at the highest level is very difficult and putting a group together to go and win things and having a chance to win things year-in, year-out requires a lot of different elements.

“If you watch what the Gunners have done in the last few years, we went from fifth to second, to second. You see that finishing fifth, it stung because we wanted that Champions League slot but that missed opportunity gave us all of a sudden more firepower and a mentality to come back. We were playing out of our minds that following year.

“We kind of ran out of gas. You could see that there was an element that we didn’t quite understand towards the end of that season the weight of everything and within our squad, we had a few injuries. But then last year, you saw us and I was wondering ‘this group might be ready for it,’ but then we fall short.

“But I think this group is ready for the challenge and we’re going to keep adding some talent to it so we have a chance to get one spot higher and really give our fans something to celebrate.”

And what about the wider vision for the future? Kroenke revealed the club is starting to think about possible upgrades to Emirates Stadium, perhaps even an expansion, and continuing to invest in Arsenal’s women’s team.

“It would be premature to talk about any plans in depth, but the internal conversations are starting to occur about [the stadium]. It is not an easy renovation, but we see the possibilities of what’s there,” Kroenke explains. “Our goal was always to compete for the Premier League title because if you look around the world, if you are competing for the title year-in, year-out, you are competing for everything else.

“What can our fans expect? Everything they’ve gotten in the last few years. We’re going to keep adding to the group. I know Mikel’s energy is through the roof in the best of ways. In our women’s team as well, you see how women’s sport is taking off around the world. We are really excited about that part of the business.

“But as a club our main goal is to continue to make our supporters proud.”