How Kroenkes’ 2019 reset changed Arsenal forever

Kroenke blueprint – From angry protests in the shadow of the Emirates to Tuesday’s title celebrations after Manchester City’s draw at Bournemouth, Arsenal’s transformation is traced to a 2019 “total reset” that brought in Mikel Arteta and a new approach to recruiting and football

The final whistle in Bournemouth on Tuesday night didn’t just end Manchester City’s title challenge. It kicked off the kind of night Arsenal have waited more than two decades for—one that spilled out of the stands and into the streets at the Emirates Stadium.

Lampposts were scaled. Flags were hoisted. Fireworks exploded. On the adjacent trainline. passengers heading north sat in a chaotic scene that felt bigger than football—22 years in the making. Club photographers were quickly despatched to capture images of euphoria and relief. Across champagne-drenched lips, familiar names came up again and again: Mikel Arteta, Declan Rice and homegrown Gooner Bukayo Saka.

It was a moment that also forced one question, hovering over the celebrations like confetti: what do these fans now think of the Kroenkes? Five years ago, those same questions were being shouted back in anger.

In April 2021, the same venue hosted a gathering where the banners didn’t carry joy—they carried fury. One sign read: ‘Love the club, support the team, hate the owner’. Others were blunt: ‘Kroenkes out’. No club photographers were present then. The contrast says a lot about how Arsenal’s ownership story has been rewritten in the space of a few short seasons.

At the center of the early backlash was Stan Kroenke—now 78—widely viewed as a driving force behind the failed European Super League bid. For many supporters, it was the final straw. There had been no Premier League title since 2004. and the perception took hold that Arsenal were drifting under clueless Americans more focused on profit than progress. The Arsene Wenger-led era—when Arsenal traded heavyweight punches with Manchester United and Chelsea at the top of the table—felt impossibly distant.

So how did the Kroenkes go from being treated as targets to being celebrated as architects?

The answer starts with a meeting that shaped the club in 2019 and continued to ripple outward. After Arsenal’s thumping 4-1 defeat to Chelsea in the Europa League final in Azerbaijan in May 2019. they missed out on Champions League football. The consequences weren’t only sporting—missing Europe’s top stage raised the prospect of major financial loss and opened up discussions between father and son.

Josh Kroenke. placed onto the board. told Stan Kroenke that the club needed to go younger—both in the dugout and on the field. Josh delivered the message that Arsenal required a ‘total reset’. The commitment to youth was already part of the Kroenkes’ DNA across other franchises. and it needed to be imported here.

The logic behind that thinking wasn’t theoretical. Two years earlier. the Kroenkes’ Los Angeles Rams had broken a modern-era NFL record by making Sean McVay head coach at the age of 30. In his first year. McVay took a team that had finished last for points. yards. touchdown passes and first downs to the playoffs. He was named coach of the year. The Rams would later reach two Super Bowls.

Josh had challenged his father with a direct question when doubts first surfaced about taking a similar path at Arsenal. Back then, Josh was 36 and asked: ‘Am I too young, too?’

That question landed in a turning point that followed quickly. In November, Unai Emery was sacked. After Freddie Ljungberg’s interim spell, Arteta—at 37—was handed the job.

Before the reset, though, the Kroenkes’ presence in north London had been a long time coming and a rocky start. They had been around since 2007, but only in 2018 did they fully buy out Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov in a deal that valued the team at around £1.7billion.

That deeper ownership was built on a particular belief. One insider described it simply: ‘Stan loves sport’. The account went back to Stan Kroenke’s early life—sweeping the floor of his dad’s lumberyard in Missouri and doing his books. He understood money “from way back,” and saw Arsenal and the Premier League itself as undervalued. To him, business could be predictable—while sport, by contrast, could be unpredictable.

The way the family tried to make Arsenal more predictable was to install people they trusted in senior positions—people with decision-making authority rather than endless committee process. Across other franchises. Kroenke has titles across the board. but the message from those who know is that he isn’t a fan of boards or bureaucracy. Owners who meddle, the family’s experience has taught them, don’t tend to succeed.

Still, the Kroenkes weren’t hands-off. They sign off on all major decisions, and spending requires justification. In north London, Josh has become the link between club and owner, and he has repeatedly shown up to set the emotional tone.

He gave a speech to the team at the Four Seasons hotel in Madrid before Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final first leg with Atletico Madrid. The message was straightforward: ‘Play hard. have your team-mates’ back. represent the badge with pride and have fun.’ He repeated that message in an all-staff meeting at the Emirates earlier this month.

Even the earliest stages of that push were described as deliberate and methodical. In December 2020. Arteta could be found swotting alongside Tim Lewis—Kroenke senior’s long-term lawyer—who had joined the board that summer. Their destination was Denver for the first of what would become regular meetings.

The plan was mapped out in offices below Kroenke’s penthouse at the Pepsi Center (now Ball Arena). home of the Nuggets. Avalanche and Mammoth. They drew up a five-year plan with each position covered and a list of transfer targets. Manchester City and Chelsea were used as examples in a presentation rehearsed before crossing the Atlantic.

Arteta, grasping what the meeting meant for the club’s future, was nervous. But things unfolded even better than he expected. Kroenke was receptive to the delegation’s message—so much so that they didn’t even finish what they had come to say.

The point they were making was that Arsenal would require serious backing to turn the club around and turn the family’s reputation around. Kroenke was convinced, investment followed, and the meetings became regular.

Around the business side, insiders described a culture earlier in the reign of ‘marking your own homework’. While funding from the family would still be required. the view was that the club could be more dynamic and resourceful. Bonuses had often been based on staying within budget rather than specific targets. That approach changed as the business side became more serious.

Then came the European Super League debacle and the protest in April 2021, when Kroenke had already become a hate figure for many. The anger looked like it was about the past. But it was also happening while the reset was being carried forward behind the scenes.

Akhil Vyas from the Arsenal Supporters Trust was among the people present on that angry day. After the takeover, he had asked Josh Kroenke what the ambition was. Vyas, now 38, remembered the conversation clearly.

‘He told me it was to win the Premier League and Champions League,’ Vyas recalled. ‘I remember chuckling. I was sceptical but it was good of him to show up. Lots of people didn’t even know who he was at the time. It sounded like PR spin. We were a million miles away – and then the Super League happened.’.

He said there was a meeting after the Super League fallout, and the trust demanded board involvement. Vyas described Josh’s response when he was told the family clearly didn’t understand English football or Arsenal.

‘There was a meeting and we demanded that someone from the board attend. Josh came and it was fiery. I told him that his family clearly didn’t understand English football or Arsenal and that it was time to sell up. I think I said: “We don’t want you here”. Josh apologised. He said that they had got it wrong and he asked for us to give them the opportunity to rebuild trust. They have done that.’.

Vyas now speaks with a different tone. He said the trust has an advisory board with the fans and that Josh attends. Vyas described Josh as relatively quiet, giving up a couple of hours every quarter to speak to them. The impression. he said. is that a lot gets done behind the scenes while the family stays in the background—along with CEO Richard Garlick. whose approach he compares to Josh’s.

‘They want the players and Mikel to get the limelight,’ Vyas said, adding that he had smiled when told Premier League and Champions League were the targets but now feels that promise is close.

The comparisons don’t stop at Arsenal’s stadium or its language of rebuilding. They stretch to how Kroenke-linked teams handle winning timelines. There are commonalities described as a Kroenke trait: bringing in mainstay players to build around and pulling out the chequebook to turn a solid team into a winning one.

At the Rams, that approach has included quarterback Matthew Stafford and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope at the Nuggets. The Kroenkes’ franchises have repeatedly delivered titles across sports: the Rams won Super Bowl 51 in February 2022. their first Vince Lombardi Trophy for 22 years. at SoFi Stadium. described as the most expensive sports venue ever built at £4.1bn. Four months later, the Colorado Avalanche ended a 21-year wait to win the Stanley Cup. A year on, the Denver Nuggets lifted their first ever NBA title in 2023.

Now Arsenal have their own drought broken—at least for the moment. Tuesday’s title party has become the clearest public sign that the reset worked.

The last two transfer windows are pointed to as the place where the investment deepened the squad—supporting the result that made the celebrations possible.

But the story isn’t finished, and the next tests are already visible.

Lewis, one of the senior board figures tied to the complex turnaround, abruptly departed in September following a boardroom reshuffle. James Ellis—highly regarded and seen as the brains behind much of the club’s transfer business—left in February and is now sporting director at Bristol City.

The reasons described for that shake-up include a Succession-style coup, with some believing Josh wanted the opportunity to take control and show his father what he could do. Whatever the motivation, it’s said to be wrong to airbrush Lewis’s impact on the turnaround.

Josh and Garlick—promoted to chief executive from managing director—will now be tested in the years and months ahead, particularly by the club’s financial and structural constraints.

Finance will need to be found to expand the stadium. Arsenal are hamstrung by a lack of space, like Chelsea. The aim is to deliver an extra £100million or so a year from an expansion of around 10. 000-15. 000 seats. alongside further high-end corporate facilities that would lift matchday revenue in a significant way.

There’s also a practical clock. The Emirates sponsorship deal for stadium and shirt expires in 2028.

In the short term, another pressure is already expected: there may need to be a sale of homegrown talent this summer to ensure compliance with UEFA and Premier League cost controls, as seen elsewhere.

While the title celebrations unfolded, Garlick took staff out for champagne in the office before an afterparty at the Drayton Park Arms on Wednesday.

Yet the hangover won’t last long. When minds start to clear, the spotlight shifts to Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest next Saturday. There will be little time to rest on laurels.

For now, though, Arsenal’s fans have every right to celebrate the unlikely turnaround and the way the ownership story changed tone—from hatred to handshakes, from banners reading ‘Kroenkes out’ to crowds scaling lampposts at the Emirates.

These are the Americans who arrived during controversy and. through a reshaped approach to football decisions and spending. have delivered the moment Arsenal had been missing. Chelsea may have emerged victorious on the night in Baku seven years ago that led to Arteta’s arrival. but their under-fire owners will now watch Arsenal’s title with envious eyes—because for the first time in years. the club across London is the one setting the benchmark.

Arsenal Mikel Arteta Josh Kroenke Stan Kroenke Emirates Stadium expansion Premier League title Declan Rice Bukayo Saka Tim Lewis James Ellis European Super League Atletico Madrid Bournemouth