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One of the best known chants in football is "Boring, Boring Arsenal". It used to be sung by the opposition fans but in recent times the song has been picked up by the home supporters and given an ironic twist.
Never more so than today. Top of the Premiership, five-nil winners at the weekend, possessed of young talent and the shrewdest of managers, owner of a breathtaking new stadium - everything is going in Arsenal's direction at present.Yesterday's sparkling financial results provided further confirmation: turnover up 46 per cent to over £200 million; operating profits increased by 274 per cent to £51 million.
Arsenal is now the second richest football club in the world after Real Madrid. The 60,000-seater Emirates ground which yields match-day receipts of £3.1 million has seen the North London club leap-frog Manchester United in the English wealth league (Chelsea's income, by contrast, is £50 million less).
The timing of Arsenal's figures, coming so soon after Chelsea parted company with their mercurial manager, Jose Mourinho, and as near neighbours Tottenham debate changing theirs, could not be more pointed.
Arsenal's motto is Victoria Concordia Crescit - victory comes from harmony. While others switch owners and managers, Arsenal remains the same, from Arsene Wenger, in charge of the players for eleven years and signed to 2011, to the board and its chairman, Peter Hill-Wood.
He's the third Hill-Wood to run Arsenal. His grandfather, Samuel, was chairman when the club enjoyed a first period of success in the 1930s. Then his father, Denis, presided over the show for 20 years, from 1962 to 1982. When he died, Peter took over.
In his 25-year reign, Hill-Wood has eschewed personal interviews. He normally prefers to let others do the talking. But these aren't normal times for the Gunners. The chairman, despite the success, on and off the pitch, is under pressure like never before. He's had to sack the club's popular vice-chairman David Dein when the latter supported an attempt by US tycoon Stan Kroenke to buy the club. And he now finds himself having to fend off the challenge of Alisher Usmanov, after the Russian magnate bought Dein's shares.
Unusually, Hill-Wood wants to meet. Typically, he's chosen a venue that does not appear in any Wag's personal organiser: the reception of the ultra-establishment Goring Hotel (Baroness Thatcher was just leaving after her lunch as I arrived) behind Buckingham Palace.
An Old Etonian and ex-City banker, Hill-Wood, 71, is not like other football chairmen. His solid-framed spectacles give him an owlish air. He's got an uppercrustbooming voice. He doesn't have a chauffeur - at one point, he frets that his Saab, parked on a meter, will get a ticket. Neither does he have an office at the Emirates. For being Arsenal chairman, he is paid £60,000 a year.
He lives in Chelsea - which is why we're in The Goring, it's near his home - rather than in red and white North London. Away from running and watching Arsenal, he plays golf (he's a member of the exclusive Swinley Forest and Royal St George's golf clubs and has a handicap of 12) and likes to shoot what he terms "luckless partridges and pheasants".
Make no mistake, though, he is a Gooner to the core. He can recount Arsenal games and incidents down the years. His best Gunners moment, he says, was when Michael Thomas scored in the last minute to beat Liverpool away and win the championship in the 1988-89 season (the goal was immortalised by Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch). His favourite all-time player is Dennis Bergkamp.
It's spread to his family. His wife Sally is forever going on football blogs and reading out the comments to him. And they have three children who are equally "mad keen".
Listening to him, there's no doubting his love for his club. Whether he extends that feeling to football as a whole, however, is a different matter. He tells how he'd just taken a call from Arsenal, asking if he minded if Mike Ashley, the new owner of Newcastle United, and his entourage turned up in football shirts and jeans to watch tonight's Carling Cup match.
He shakes his head wistfully. The game has changed, and is changing, so quickly.
There have been Hill-Woods at Arsenal for almost 100 years. "My grandfather joined the board in 1919. His business was in cotton, in Glossop, in Derbyshire. He was a mad-keen sportsman who financed Glossop into the First Division in 1911. He played rugby league and cricket for Derbyshire. He kept his own pack of hounds, he entered the Waterloo Cup for hare coursing and he owned racehorses. His dogs were all called 'HW' as in Heavy Weapon and so on. Years later, my uncle wanted to name a horse Heavy Weapon but the Jockey Club said that was rather rude."
His grandfather took over Arsenal in
1929. "He was MP for High Peak in Derbyshire - he never made a speech in the House of Commons."
As custom demanded, Hill-Wood followed his male forebears to Eton, the Coldstream Guards and into the City. He joined Hambros, the merchant bank. He worked closely with Jim Slater, the financier and stock-picker, and the late Sir James Goldsmith.
As well as Arsenal, he's on the board of Peter Hambro Mining, the booming Russian gold mining concern of his friend Peter Hambro. He's also involved with Top Technology, a venture capital outfit run by another pal, Harry Fitzgibbons.
"Years ago, Harry and I were approached to see if we wanted to get involved in cellular radio. We ended up with one of the first mobile phone licences which we shared with a Swedish firm and Ernie Harrison of Racal," he says.
"One Sunday, Ernie rang and said he wanted to see us. We thought he might want to buy us out. On the way to see him, we said to each other 'we'll take £10 million.'When we got to his house, he poured a glass of Dom Perignon and said he'd pay us £28 million. We tried to appear cool and said 'we'll call you'. We rang him back first thing the following morning and accepted."
What Hill-Wood was selling was effectively 5 per cent of what later became Vodafone (Harrison created the mobile operator out of Racal). If they'd kept the shares, Hill-Wood and Fitzgibbons could have made hundreds of millions.
It wasn't the only occasion he sold cheaply. A year after he became chairman of Arsenal, Hill-Wood sold the bulk of his shares to a young sugar trader - David Dein - for £290,250. At the time, Hill-Wood said he thought Dein was "crazy - to all intents and purposes it's dead money". This month, Dein sold his shares to Usmanov for £75 million.
He claims not to mind about the sale to Dein. "You can't jog backwards. Back then there was no money in football - the idea of making money out of football was unheard of."
He's right - when he sold the shares in 1983, nobody could envisage what a money-making machine Arsenal would become. It was well before the advent of the Premiership and the giant TV and sponsorship deals.
Hill-Wood may be chairman but he owns less than 1 per cent of the club. "I've repeatedly said to the board: 'If you want to get rid of me you only have to say so.' They've said: 'No - we're happy.'"
Nobody else, he says, has ever wanted to be chairman. Actually, he corrects himself. One did - Dein. "I don't see him now," he says. Does that upset him? His face fixes. "No. What's occurred is a major distraction and a pity when everything else has been going so well."
What he's referring to is the turmoil that set in following Dein's going. For a while, it looked as though Wenger who was close to the former vice-chairman, might also go. Hill-Wood went with Danny Fiszman, the club's principal shareholder, to see the manager. He denies they had to plead with him. "We said: 'We'd like you to stay.' He said: 'I'm very happy, I would like to stay.'"
Come on, I say, it can't have been that simple? "There was no twisting of his arm I assure you. He's got the best manager's job in the world. There's no interference, he's got all the money he ever needs. Nobody ever queries his selections or his methods. As a board you've got have patience. At Chelsea, Roman Abramovich interfered. He owned it and spent a lot of money and that was his right - but it's not our way."
Hill-Wood's own views on players, he admits, are useless. "Years ago, I was at our training ground watching the youth team. I said I wasn't impressed with the right-back, I didn't think he was up to it. The then manager said he tried hard and showed promise. I disagreed. The right back was Pat Rice who went on to be one of our best ever players and to captain Ireland. I ' ve never commented since."
Wenger must be every owner's dream. "I said: 'What would you do if we gave you £100 million?' Arsene said: 'I'd give it back to you. You're going to have to be brave this year. I've got every confidence in our young players. There's nobody I want and I'm not going to buy just to impress everybody."
Hill-Wood also had to fly to America to meet Kroenke. "I thought he was perfectly decent. The only thing that disappointed me was that he wouldn't tell me what he wanted to do. I think he got involved on a misunderstanding - I think he was surprised we were opposed to his involvement and we sacked David."
On the detail behind Dein's going, he won't be drawn. "He didn't introduce us to Stan Kroenke and then he denied he'd had anything to do with him," says the chairman.
When pressed further he sticks to the official version of "irreconcilable differences" between the board and Dein. When I badger him more, he gets visibly irritated. It's clear, however, the schism runs deep and is personal.
When was the last occasion he saw Dein? "The day I fired him."
Was it Hill-Wood's saddest day at Arsenal? "No. It was the saddest for Dein."
Will he ever make his peace? "I will not get involved with him again - I will avoid it if I can help it."
He is confident that no large shareholder will sell out to Kroenke or Usmanov. "The notion that Danny Fiszman is a seller is really farcical. He doesn't need the money. Nina [Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, another major shareholder] is also rock solid. She likes the involvement and the tradition that lies behind the club."
He makes the point that Fiszman was the driving force behind the building of the Emirates and so is unlikely to quit now.
If Usmanov, who says he will raise his stake to 25 per cent and Kroenke, speak for a total of 37 per cent, so be it - they will not be invited on to the board and he and his fellow directors will press on regardless. "I'm not worrying about them - until they or one of them gets to 51 per cent that's when there's a problem."
At some stage, though, he will have to go. One sadness is that no Hill-Wood will succeed him. "It's true, my children can't be chairman," he says. He shouldn't have sold to Dein, he knows that now.
Reader views (2)
What a great and rare interview, it's nice to know the thinking behind some of the moves. Congratulations to Mr.Blackhurst for giving it an evenhanded presentation, and also to Mr.Hill-Wood for giving us the insight. He might not know about recognizing the next Pat Rice or Dennis Bergkamp...he has the good sense to leave it to people who do! I'm sure he found a satisfying way to reinvest the money he made from various sale(Dean and Racal).Long live the Chairman!
- Paul Whitelaw, Mallorca, Spain., 26/09/2007 16:39
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Ha ha, he sounds like a walking stereotype of a bumbling upper class gentleman. Three cheers to him! He is clueless about football, and knows it, hence he does not interfere in Arsene's doings. I hope the board continue to resist any takeover bids!
- Raman Vikramadith, Bangalore, India, 26/09/2007 14:39
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