Arsenal are facing a difficult summer with the club set to end the season in thier lowest position for a quarter of a century. 

Despite the Gunners reaching the FA Cup final a week on Saturday, Mikel Arteta's side are set to finish their league campaign between eighth and tenth place depending on their result against Watford at the Emirates on Sunday. 

The financial ramifications of such a poor showing could be severe - meaning a lack of cash for Arteta to use to rebuild and reboot his team. 

Supporters one again showing dissent against the American owner of the club - as witnessed by the banner flown over Villa Park during Arsenal's disappointing 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa this week by a light aircraft hired by fan groups on social media to send a message to Kroenke which read: 'Back Arteta - Kroenke out.'

All of which means the highly-rated Gunners head coach is heading towards a difficult conversation with the club's owner 'Silent' Stan Kroenke this summer, in a bid to loosen the purse strings.

We take a look at the three big questions Arteta must force billionaire Kroenke to answer.

1) How much money - if any - will Kroenke pump into Arsenal for transfers this summer?

Stan Kroenke is a property magnate worth around £7billion, and married to the heiress of the WalMart empire.

That doesn't mean that he is willing to loosen the purse strings like other billionaire owners in the Premier League such as Roman Abramovich at Chelsea or the Abu Dhabi interests in Manchester City.

'Silent Stan', so-called due to his preference to be rarely seen or heard as he stay out of the day-to-day affairs of his sports teams, has not put a penny into Arsenal since he bought into the north London giants.

Instead, he has taken out around £3million in 'advisory services' for Kroenke Sports Entertainment, the company that owns the Gunners

However, with the club having fallen out of the top four and lost their regular qualification status for the Champions League, the cash cow at the Emirates isn't what it was.

Raul Sanllehi must try to convince Kroenke that for once he must speculate to accumulate to at least put the team back to where they were, as perrenial contenders for fourth place, at least.

If he wanted to, the American could inject around £80million into the transfer budget without breaching Financial Fair Play rules.

Assuming that won't be an option, his head coach and head of football at least need clarity on what is to be done.

Yet, Raul Sanllehi must anticipate vital discussions with the sports billionaire, who started with a 9.9 per cent stake in Arsenal back in 2007 after purchasing ITV's holding, and ended up owning the entire club last year.

2) Where does Arsenal rank as an asset in Kroenke's sports empire?

'Franchise' is a dirty word in UK football circles but in the US Kroenke is known for accumulating them across a wide variety of sports.

He owns the LA Rams in the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, NHL franchise the Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Rapids in the MLS, as well as Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League.

Arteta has to ask where exactly Arsenal sits among these other ongoing concerns, in addition to other business interests they must compete with.

Fans of the Gunners are still pining for the days of the Hill-Wood's and their focus on matters in north London.

The family were the opposite of the current owners in that they never took a penny out of the club in nearly 100 years.

By contrast, Kroenke bought the Gunners outright to make money but without Champions League football revenues will continue to fall - meaning transfer budgets will also slide.

In LA, he is involved in an expensive construction project to build a new stadium for his NFL team, as well as a pending lawsuit, and will be kept busy with these issues.

The time he can devote to Arsenal could dwindle even further.

An honest answer from Kroenke would reveal a lot.

3) Where does Josh Kroenke fit into the picture?

Josh Kroenke is the son of Stan Kroenke and last year was sent across the Atlantic to London to run the rule over Arsenal and evaluate day-to-day operations in north London.

It was something of an audit as speculation grew over Josh’s future role behind the scenes at the Emirates.

He is already involved in three of his father's franchises in the USA - Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids and Denver Nuggets - as well as overseeing performance of teams and businesses within the KSE portfolio.

However, since his trip to London to observe and assess Arsenal, Josh too has been quiet, with Sanllehi and the managing director Vinai Venkatesham charged with steering the club into a new era following Ivan Gazidis' departure for Milan.

A thorough onceover of Arsenal's operations must surely have given both father and son some degree of insight into the problems the club face, and the roles they can play in solving them.

Knowing where Josh Kroenke fits in, and what he fed back about the Gunners from his time in London, would be an important issue for those responsible for looking to boost the Arsenal's transfer kitty this summer.