A well attended question and answer session with Keith Edelman addressing members of the Arsenal Supporters Trust took place in the Woolwich Suite on club level on the east side of the club’s stadium on Thursday 17th May.

Mr Edelman stressed the importance of meeting supporters at events such as this with the emphasis on the club being inclusive rather than exclusive, and this is backed up by the Fans’ Forum and the relationships developed with groups such as AISA and RedAction as well as the AST.

I’ll spare you what I will call ‘speel’ and get down to what I consider the more interesting points. Any comments I have are italicized in brackets, everything else is what Mr Edelman told the meeting. Here goes…

The board are all ‘rabid fans’ who want Arsene to buy players and win trophies as much as any ordinary fan in the stands.

The club are in a strong financial position. All the stuff in the papers (and indeed on this website, amongst others) about the club being cash-strapped is simply untrue. The decision not to spend money on players to add experience to the squad has been Arsene’s.

The club’s wage bill is about 90% of that of Manchester United, and only just below Liverpool’s. So ignoring the transfer spend, Arsenal are keeping up with two off the big four. Financially, Chelsea are “on a different planet” (What this did not take account of is that Arsene’s playing budget includes both wages and transfers, so if he is working to a budget, the statement about money always being available for players would hold true only if he did not exceed the budget, although one doubts the managing director would have revealed what that budget is if pressed for obvious reasons)

A good structure for future generations is more important than throwing money around trying for immediate success. (I don’t think anyone doubts that the long term is healthy and obviously no-one wants a Leeds United phenomenon). Spending huge sums does not guarantee either of the two major trophies as Chelsea have demonstrated this season.

Some of the prospective profits from the Highbury Square development (which could reach £100m) have already been used as security for as loan for costs associated with the new stadium. So the development has provided a cash balance for the club.

Corporate law prevented Mr Edelman from buying one of the Highbury Square flats himself. He indicated that Robert Pires (who has bought one) was one of his favourite Arsenal players since his arrival in his job in the summer of 2000.

Mr Edelman described his visit to the States to meet Stan Kroenke two days after he bought ITV’s shares as ‘a great trip’, (with the accent on irony) . Our MD asked Mr Kroenke, ‘What are your intentions?’ To which the latter replied, ‘Intentions… I’ll have to think about that.” They watched a game together and that was it.

Mr Edelman emphasized that there were basically two types of club ownership. Firstly long-term commitment by people who support and love the club (such as the current board) and secondly by people who want returns from a business (such as the Glazers, although Mr Edelman did not specify Manchester United as an example, that’s your ed putting two and two together).

The £40 million player trading facility is not a transfer kitty as such, but an agreed facility whereby if Arsenal make an agreement to pay a transfer fee over three seasons, this facility exists as a financial guarantee that the club can cover the payments in years two and three in case times get hard.

Club level renewals were actually due in December, but the club allowed a few extra weeks and moved the date to March 7th because they did not want to leave themselves exposed in the event that a large number of club level season ticket holders decided against renewing in the summer. This would leave the club with relatively little time to get new people in from the waiting list. However, renewals have been healthy and this is not seen as a problem now. Mr Edelman did admit that the club were disappointed by the initial response to club level when they began marketing it in 2005. And they were concerned at one point whether or not they would sell all the places in both club level and the diamond club. All turned out okay in the end though, especially when club level was properly explained to prospective buyers.

Ken Friar and Keith Edelman are covering David Dein’s role at the moment, and probably will over the course of this summer. It is not 100% certain that anyone will be appointed to fill Dein’s shoes in this regard. The club will resolve this issue with Arsene once the issue ‘settles’ down over the summer.

Mr Edelman felt that the publicised £23m that ITV are supposedly selling their 50% share of Arsenal Broadband to Stan Kroenke for is ‘a lot of money’. (The indications from Keith’s reluctance to go into any detail would seem to be that the fate of Arsenal Broadband is the subject of active discussion between Kroenke and the club).

Arsenal TV will be available on TV by the end of the year, in the way that Man Utd, Chelsea, Celtic, Rangers and Real Madrid have their own dedicated satellite channels. It will not be on the Sky platform (I think this means that Sky won’t control it in the way that I believe they produce Chelsea and Man Utd’s stations, but I’m no expert. You will probably still be able to subscribe to it if you have a Sky system)

Nike have continuously let the club down this season and given our MD even more grey hairs as a result. Keith promised to resolve this for the new season.

The concentration on getting the stadium right has meant that a lot of other issues have been left on the back burner – these will now be addressed. Time is very much the enemy for Mr Edelman (suggesting that he could use some more hired help?)

Keith’s personal objective is to establish an Arsenal anthem (Forum regulars will be aware something similar is going on here, so we will get in touch with Mr Edelman). There seemed to be the suggestion that our MD might even play some role in the creation of a new tune (I’d rather he concentrated on transfer negotiations!)

The club have done some quite positive strategic things in terms of encouraging more women and children to attend matches. Family enclosure is three times the size that it was at Highbury. There are more ladies toilets than legally required to try and prevent the long queue at the ladies syndrome. Arsenal have the ‘highest female component’ of any club in the country in the crowd.