Absentee Arsenal majority owner, Stan Kroenke, was given even more incentive to stay away from North London yesterday when his NFL franchise, the Los Angeles Rams, were awarded the rights to host Superbowl LV in 2021.

That’s number 55, for those of us who aren’t so pompous to use Roman Numerals to describe their event.

The NFL awarded three cities the rights to host their showpiece event during 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Atlanta (who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new stadium), Miami (who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild their stadium) and Los Angeles (who……..you guessed it) were the winning cities, beating New Orleans and Tampa Bay who aren’t spending any money to improve their stadiums.

Coincidence? Lol.

What does this mean for Arsenal?

In the short term, not much, as the game itself is almost five years away.

But the Rams, and their new stadium, are already at the top of Kroenke’s priorities list.

Even with Arsenal making £100m from the Premier League alone this year, the Rams are by far his most valuable commodity, and having the rights to host a SuperBowl only enhances this.

In other words, come 2020, whatever little we see of Kroenke now will seem like a plentiful bounty compared to how infrequently we’ll see, or hear, from him then.

You thought seeing Tottenham finishing ahead of Arsenal in the league was rare? This’ll be like a Piers Morgan opinion that is agreeable; virtually non-existent.

In a world where Arsenal fans are already hugely frustrated with the hands-off approach that Kroenke has taken to running the club, this is only a sign that such a policy will be the norm for at least the medium-term, if not longer.