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Thierry Henry issues firm reminder about Daniel Ek’s Arsenal takeover bid

Thierry Henry has issued a reminder to the Kroenke family that Daniel Ek will not back down in his bid to take over Arsenal.

Arsenal’s current owners are not very popular and the team’s decline on the pitch in recent years has only added to the dissatisfaction over the direction in which the club are heading. Change could come though if the Kroenkes are willing to sell – which they have not been as of yet.

A takeover offer has been on the table from Ek, the billionaire owner of music streaming service Spotify. His bid had the support of Henry, Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp, all of whom were members of the Arsenal Invincibles squad.

Vieira, of course, has since become manager of Crystal Palace, so it remains to be seen how much he could be involved in the project. But there is clearly the backing of club legends behind Ek.

The Swedish entrepreneur wrote to owner Stan Kroenke in May to table a £1.8bn takeover offer. As yet, there has been no response.

But speaking on Sky Sports‘ Monday Night Football programme – for a game between Vieira’s Palace and Brighton – Henry reaffirmed the commitment Ek has to his takeover bid.

“To be able to get there, you need to have someone respond on the other side,” Henry said. “It hasn’t happened yet, but we and he is here to stay.

“So, let’s see what’s going to happen. But for the moment, we enjoyed the win yesterday.

“There’s no dialogue at the moment and I feel it’s going to be a long process. I said this the last time I was on the show [in May]. How long it’s going to be, I don’t actually know.

“But we are here to stay.”

Ek was in attendance along with Henry for the north London derby against Tottenham at the weekend, which Arsenal won.

Still, it has been a mixed start to the season for the Gunners, who have won three and lost three of their opening six Premier League matches.

Ek wants to help them restore their identity as a force of English football, but the Kroenke ownership have shown little sign of wanting to sell in recent months.

Arsenal star makes trophy declaration

The Gunners initially looked to be back on track under Mikel Arteta when winning the FA Cup and Community Shield in 2020. But they have been plagued with inconsistency since.

Even so, the win in the derby has restored some optimism and left one of their players targeting trophies.

Bukayo Saka, one of the goalscorers on Sunday, said of their young squad: “We can achieve anything, no matter what age. With age comes experience but we have a lot of experience in this squad anyway which helps us.

“We have a lot of quality and enough experience to achieve a lot. We’re going to take it game by game but if we play like this we have enough quality to win trophies.

“I can’t really describe how good it feels. Starting with the atmosphere in the stadium — it was crazy! The fans gave us so much energy and, for us to repay them and win like this at the stadium, it just means everything for us.

“It’s been almost two years since we played a north London derby with the fans. And you could tell it’s been nearly two years by the way they received us and cheered us. It was a special game.

“We all wanted it. We knew how much the game meant to the fans, we knew how much the game meant to us. And of course to build winning momentum — we’ve won three games in a row — is really good for us.

“We’re getting closer as a team, getting more team spirit, so things are looking good.

“If we play like that all the time, we have a strong chance of doing well this season and winning some trophies. This is one game, we have to do it again the next week and the next week.

“We get into a lot of good situations but we need to score more goals. Yesterday, we were a lot more clinical, so we’re happy with that but we’ve got to do it consistently.”

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