Stan Kroenke owes £50m for Arsenal shares

Stan Kroenke, the American billionaire who has been steadily buying up shares in Arsenal taking his stake to 28.7 per cent in recent weeks, still owes £50m to club directors including Danny Fiszman and to other influential Emirates figures. The situation could allow his rival for control of the club, Alisher Usmanov, to leapfrog him and take over, the worst nightmare for many Arsenal fans.

The sports mogul Kroenke, a non-executive director at Arsenal who also owns Denver Nuggets basketball team and almost half of the NFL side St Louis Rams, has become the club's leading shareholder in the last month. However he has yet to complete payments for all the shares he has snapped up, including £10m to key Arsenal figure Richard Carr for 4.38 per cent of the club.

Although the American is a divisive figure at the Emirates - chairman Peter Hill-Wood said they did not want his "sort" at the club - he is deemed preferable to the mysterious Usmanov, who owns 25 per cent of the club.

The American has enough support within the club that he will probably be granted enough time to settle his debts; Arsenal's chief executive Ivan Gazidis, who worked for Kroenke's friend Don Garber in the MLS professional football league in the US, has hailed Kroenke as a "model owner".

However a boardroom source told the Times that it was unlikely the debts would be settled immediately, despite the revelations. "Unlike Usmanov, Kroenke doesn't have £500m sitting in a bank doing nothing. It could be many months or years before he has paid off all the money."

There is understandable anger at Arsenal that they are having to worry about predatory outsiders when the club itself is in rude financial health - the club reported an annual turnover of £313.3m last month, the highest ever reported by a British football club. With profits of £35m and the debt incurred on building the Emirates stadium reduced to just £47m, the club is on a sound footing. “We’re getting rid of our debt and taking £3m every home game," an Arsenal insider told The First Post. "Why should we have to wait for a carpet-bagger like Kroenke to make good on his debts?"

Meanwhile, manager Arsene Wenger has been told by Gazidis that he must deliver on the pitch this year. "It's absolutely our ambition to win a trophy this year. Second, third or fourth isn't good enough. We want to win something this season and we believe we have the squad to do that,” the Sunday Express quoted Gazidis, as saying. "We have created a team playing fantastic football. Now it’s very important for us to focus strongly on winning something for the fans."