Kroenke's Untouchables: Arsene Wenger & Jeff Fisher
theScore's NFL senior editor David P. Woods and in-house Arsenal aficionado Michael J. Chandler dig deep into billionaire owner Stan Kroenke's role in preserving two of sport's enduring, invulnerable bosses: Gunners gaffer Arsene Wenger and Rams coach Jeff Fisher.
With controlling stakes in Arsenal, the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and MLS' Colorado Rapids, Kroenke's influence on major sporting organizations extends further than any other American investor.
Rise to mediocrity
Chandler: When Kroenke gained majority control of Arsenal in April 2011 after purchasing the stakes of Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith for a 62.89 percent share, the Missouri-born businessman became the latest American investment in Premier League football. An era of family-owned interests was ushered out for multimillion-dollar corporate influences, and Kroenke's arrival received a mixed response.
At the end of his first season at the helm of the celebrated north London outfit, Arsenal finished third, marking the seventh consecutive campaign where the Gunners finished either third or fourth. Relative mediocrity had set in, and the Invincibles' 2003-04 standard-setting season already seemed a distant memory.
Arsenal has since finished no better than second and hasn't progressed beyond the last 16 of the Champions League, with only two FA Cup titles on the trot (albeit against Aston Villa and Hull City) to show for its efforts.
Wenger's been with the club for 20 seasons now after celebrating the milestone this week, and while the first half of his tenure was a successful one highlighted by three league titles and six FA Cups, his decorated career is nearing an anticlimactic denouement.
Woods: Similarly, Fisher's head-coaching legacy is built on an accomplishment nearly two decades old: losing the Super Bowl by a single yard. No greater loss, perhaps, but still a loss.
As in north London, Kroenke acquired the Rams by first buying a minority stake in the team and later exercising his right to buy the remaining interest from the estate of late owner Georgia Frontiere. Unlike with Wenger, though, he didn't inherit Fisher.
From the moment Kroenke controlled the Rams, his desire to move the team from St. Louis back to Los Angeles was rarely in doubt, and he hired Fisher as head coach in 2012 in the interest of that singular goal.
Fisher has a rare skill among football coaches: He's guided an NFL team through relocation with minimal off-field chaos, coaching the Houston Oilers as they became the Tennessee Oilers and then Tennessee Titans just prior to the turn of the century. Have questions about moving players, staff, equipment, and establishing new routines suited to your team's new environment? Fisher has answers.
Surely it's this experience and skill that tie Fisher to the reminted Los Angeles Rams to this day. It can't be his coaching; the Rams didn't post a winning season in Fisher's four years in St. Louis.
A Fisher-coached team finished with a winning record just six times in 21 years. By the end of 2016, he'll likely have lost more games than any coach in NFL history.
Acquiring and developing talent
Chandler: Wenger's willingness to promote from a once-stellar academy has transformed into tightfisted stubbornness, and with more autonomy in signings than Fisher enjoys, he can pinch all the pennies he likes.
Time after time, accolades are allowed to fall by the wayside in exchange for an economist's frugality. Wenger refuses to pony up for the likes of Luis Suarez and Gonzalo Higuain, while the Premier League's other massive clubs -Manchester United, Manchester City, and Chelsea - continue to address their weak spots by splashing the cash to lure the continent's biggest stars.
A month and change into what's shaping up as the most competitive season in Premier League history, Arsenal appears hamstrung by the same shortcomings that have defined the second half of Wenger's tenure.
Woods: In 21 seasons as a head coach, Jeff Fisher has developed a single above-average NFL quarterback: the late Steve McNair.
Former third overall pick Vince Young was a spectacular failure in Tennessee. (It remains unclear if Fisher truly wanted Young, but the rumor Fisher preferred fellow USC alum Matt Leinart is scarcely more flattering.)
After inheriting the right to draft Robert Griffin III in St. Louis, Fisher opted to stick with Sam Bradford. Three painful years later, he pulled the cord and swapped Bradford for Nick Foles. The experiment lasted 11 games.
What may define his Rams legacy, though, is Fisher's blockbuster trade up to select Jared Goff with the first overall pick in the spring's draft. Goff is the first quarterback selected first overall who hasn't started in Week 1 since JaMarcus Russell, and there are whispers he won't be ready to see the field as a rookie.
Tactical disadvantage
Chandler: Wenger's tactics are not adaptive, and mid-match changes are rare. While the likes of Antonio Conte and Diego Simeone streak down the touchline to encourage and inspire their players, pantomiming instructions, Wenger sits quietly alongside assistant Steve Bould, fiddling with his zipper while a star-studded squad habitually struggles against lesser sides.
To Wenger's credit, his focus on fitness and diet revolutionized Arsenal before it became the Premier League norm. His penchant for players rife with pace and panache was likewise once a trendsetter, but now it's the standard too.
With a year left on his deal at the Emirates despite some mercurial results, Kroenke appears poised to extend his manager amid the most divisive period in club history. Why? Doesn't Kroenke value both trophies and profits? Aren't the Gunners' successes tethered to increased revenue and merchandise sales? Since Arsenal supporters pay the highest ticket costs, aren't they entitled to a club with realistic title ambitions, not perpetual fourth-place finishes?
Woods: Fisher is on the wrong side of history. Despite years on the NFL's competition committee, a group tasked with improving the league's rules, Fisher's teams stand in stark opposition to the high-flying, high-scoring sport American football has become.
He masks his conservatism with a curious predilection for exotic trick plays on special teams, but there's no disguising the kind of coach he is at his core. Fisher wants to run, run, run, and then, if he's lucky, line up a field goal instead of punt.
Fisher's never met a workhorse runner he didn't want to ride into the ground, nor a quarterback whose role on the field he didn't seek to minimize. That approach helped Eddie George pulverize defenses and Chris Johnson top 2,000 yards, but Fisher's latest prized runner, Todd Gurley, has topped 100 yards rushing just once in his last 10 contests.
In a pass-first era where offensive records are toppled by the day, no Fisher offense has ranked in the top half of the NFL since 2003. In a division with innovators Pete Carroll, Bruce Arians, and Chip Kelly, Fisher is a dinosaur.
Making cents
Chandler: Simply put, Arsene Wenger makes Stan Kroenke money. Frugality boosts his profit margin, while consistent top-four finishes ensure the lucrative benefits of Champions League football.
One of the sport's biggest critics, Manchester United gaffer Jose Mourinho, has said plenty about Wenger, and while much of it is just speculative heresy, a few quotes struck a vein of veracity.
Discussing the job security of himself and the Premier League's other 19 gaffers, Mourinho hit out at Wenger, saying, "In this country, only one manager is not under pressure.
"He cannot achieve (success) and keep his job, still be the king. I say just one."
Woods: No head coach since the merger has endured four straight losing seasons and kept his job, but there's no financial impetus for Kroenke to move on.
Merely by relocating from St. Louis to Los Angeles, the Rams' value doubled to $2.9 billion, according to Forbes' accounting. The team's $2.6-billion stadium complex, now under construction in Inglewood, may house NFL Network's studios and serve as a permanent home for the draft. By the time it's completed, the Rams could have usurped the Cowboys as the NFL's crown jewel.
Fisher is in no way responsible for this monumental appreciation in value; he just saved Kroenke some headaches along the way.