The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust say they’re pleased with the statement Alisher Usmanov put out about not selling his shares to Stan Kroenke.

On Wednesday, there were rumours of a £525m bid from Kroenke for Usmanov’s stake in the club, which would’ve given Kroenke a large enough share to force the remaining shareholders to sell, leaving him with 100% control of the club.

The AST were particularly worried about this, as one of those minority shareholders who would lose out on the ability to attend Annual General Meetings, and so on.

Usmanov released a statement to allay those fears, confirming that he had no plans to sell to Kroenke. An AST spokesman told Football.London they were happy with Usmanov’s assurances, saying: “We got the statement we wanted from Usmanov.

“It’s actually a reiteration of where he has been all along, which is ‘I would put money in, ‘I would buy it if it were available and I want it to be stronger’. There is almost a hint there as well that if someone else came in to break the impasse, as long as Stan sold then he would sell as well.

“It’s really about keeping the club listed so you get the accountability that comes from it. And there are other protections that arise if he doesn’t own more than 75 per cent. He can’t do management fees, he can’t change the name of the club, he can’t load debt on. It’s as good as you are going to get out of the situation for now.”

In the end, nothing has really changed from a couple of days ago before we knew about Kroenke’s bid for the remaining shares. The two men still hold 97% of the shareholding between them, and that doesn’t look like changing for now.

However, as the AST point out, there are advantages to neither man owning more than 75% of the club, so their power struggle is in the interests of those who don’t trust either Kroenke or Usmanov to be responsible with the club’s finances.

For me, the AST are right, this is as good as you’re going to get for now.