Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Hand Break Off podcast.

I'm Joe Devine from TIFO Football, and I'm here today to introduce a conversation that my colleague Seb from TIFO had with James McNicholas.

James is talking all about a piece that he's written with contributions from Amy Lawrence and David Ornstein,

published on the athletic called The Cronkays.

The piece includes lots of detail about Stan and Josh in particular

and expands into a broader conversation about Arsenal from an executive and ownership level.

If you prefer to watch this conversation happening, then you can head over to the TIFO

Football YouTube channel and do so. And of course, to read the piece, you can sign up at

the Athletic if you're not already a subscriber. So without further ado, I will leave you in the

hands of Seb Stafford Bloor and James McNicholas.

So I think the reason that we decided to do this piece is that Stan Cronkey, Josh Cronkey,

the Cronkey's in general, there is still that sort of air of mystery about them.

They're not particularly known here in the UK.

They're slightly more public in the US.

There is that characterisation of silent stand that's kind of followed him everywhere he goes.

And I think we wanted to sort of get past that silence, find out a bit more about what these people are actually like, you know, have that human side to it. But also crucially, look at their work, their time with Arsenal. And so what

we've done is we've looked at their initial investment to the club, how it all began. But then we've

focused more so on the period since 2018 when they became 100% owners of the club, because

that is the point at which this became the Cronkies Club, you know, in name,

indeed in everything. And it's been a really tumultuous time for Arsenal, a time of tremendous

change, not just on that front. We've seen managerial change. Asson Wenger left, Uni

Emery came in, he left, Mikhailoteta came in. It's been a time of significant spending in

...