Quote:
“If you want to win championships then you would never get involved. I think the best owners in sports are the guys that sort of watch both sides a bit. If you don't have a good business then you can't really afford to go out and get the best players unless you just want to rely on other sources of income.
“Over there [in the Premier League] it was sort of like 'well, we've got guys from the Middle East, the oil price is over $100, they can spend anything they want'.
“But the problem I saw with all of that; those people can lose interest. It doesn't mean that they will, but I sort of threw that out there: 'What happens when the Middle Eastern family, this thing's costing a lot of money and they decide to go home?' I said what really happens in those situations is the fans get hurt because the players get picked up and paid if they're good, the front office gets other jobs.”
“What did I learn specifically [from England]? You learn very quickly what that brand means,” said Kroenke.
“We have a gentleman who comes to Arsenal games, he flies his helicopter from South Africa, Cape Town to London quite often. It’s just an example of what a brand can mean, and what we can do in sports.
“We’re all working on that and that’s the big opportunity. Michael Jordan showed it - you can get paid a whole lot more if you can extend your brand. Manchester United showed it. They established benchmarks that people had thought heretofore unattainable, but their brand extension made people want to pay for it.”
Sifting away the headline and fluff...this isn't news to us. That headline is misleading because he doesn't say that.
Quote:
“If you want to win championships then you would never get involved. I think the best owners in sports are the guys that sort of watch both sides a bit. If you don't have a good business then you can't really afford to go out and get the best players unless you just want to rely on other sources of income.
Some mischief is going on with this one. Looking at the above sentence, it sounds to me like he’s saying as an owner, you can’t get involved on the management side of things to win the championship but he’s not saying he’s completely hands off with the sports side. The best owners watch both sides of the fence. Honestly, I don’t think he’s saying anything different to what’s been said on here by some fans about being a billionaires ‘plaything’ and I also wouldn’t want owner that is too involved with the on field stuff and telling a coach who to sign or sell. We’ve seen it at Chelsea with Roman, we’ve seen it at Liverpool and Real Madrid. We’ve always been a club that relies on our own resources and what he’s said has been before he joined Board and became owner. We can’t compete financially with the big hitters. We all know that. We’re can’t drop £250m on a new team. But I don’t have a problem with our £75m budget. I have a problem when that sort of money isn’t spent wisely.