September 24 – Arsenal Mint | On This Football Day

September 24 – Arsenal Mint

THIS time last year the pesky credit crunch was beginning to take root and you couldn’t turn on the news or open a newspaper without reading about the latest aspect of our lives to be ruined by American mortgage holders and those reckless suits in the City gambling on the world’s economy like excited kids on an internet poker site.

In amongst all this misery and doom and gloom the very top end of football was immune and one club in particular were cock of the walk. Today in 2007 Arsenal announced their first set of financial results since they moved to their new stadium – and they weren’t ‘arf bad.

They revealed the club’s turnover had broken the £200m barrier, making them the richest club in Britain, ahead of arch rivals Manchester United, and hot on the heals of Real Madrid.

The Gunners had always lagged behind Manchester United in the money stakes, and had relied on Arsene Wenger’s wheeling and dealing in the past to keep pace with their richer rivals.

The key to the massive boost in their revenue was their move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium, and the £3m per match in revenue the new stadium delivered thanks to a much larger capacity and posh seats for the prawn sandwich brigade.

Their new money-bags status made the Arsenal suits confident they did not need a Russian billionaire of their own to make sure they stayed at the top of the game. Former vice-chairman and self-promotion specialist David Dein had sold his shares to Alisher Usmanov earlier in the year, convinced the club needed a rich backer.

Meanwhile, deep-pocketed Amercian Stan Kroenke threatened to make the Emirates a new cold war battle ground by hoovering up shares of his own. The directors were keen to resist all these overtures, and managing director Keith Edelman said at the time: “We are looking at a position where we don’t believe we need additional monies.

“We had £73.9m cash at the year’s end and we are telling people today we’ve got increased cash balances at this juncture.”

A statement from the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust said the group was delighted with the club’s current financial position. “These results are a testament to the success of the Emirates project. These results are the fruits of opening the new stadium on time and on budget,” the statement read.

Since then however it has emerged that the club has the biggest debt in its history (more than £300m) as they redevelop Highbury into fancy apartments, and Wenger has hinted he may still have to work his transfer market magic to bring money into club, while Kroenke has now been invited on to the board, despite initially being dismissed by club chairman Peter Hill-Wood.

Either way, in a Premier League that increasingly looks like a billionaire’s playground, the longer Arsenal can compete with the best without simply throwing vast amounts of cash at the problem the better as far as we’re concerned.

Have a look at this clip of the two old rivals of the Premiership being strangely pally with each other – a sure sign Fergie is finally cracking up – and check this out for more action from this day in football history.