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| Arsenal chairman Sir Chips Keswick |
THE raucous sound of the verbal bunfight echoed around the marble halls. Sir Chips Keswick standing dictatorially in the middle of it all struggling to bat away parallels with Sepp Blatter.
To think Arsenal pride themselves in being "the best run club in the world".
"You know perfectly well, you are just making a noise. Please don't. Who's next please?" the 75-year-old said at one point dismissing one errant shareholder to the back of the line.
"Difficult not to be patronising but I suppose the answer is to get more points than anybody else," he said in a question about what it takes to win the league that was clearly addressed to Arsene Wenger.
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| Keswick came under fire when the subject surrounding a £3m payment to shareholder Stan Kroenke |
"No, no, no! We are not going to have a debate," the flustered Arsenal chairman interjected when the clamour from the floor became that little bit louder.
"I think your ageism is unattractive," when one interrogator asked a question about the 81-year-old club employee. The shareholder tried to protest his innocence on that score, but was quieted abruptly with an uncompromising, "You stood there and shouted, you must expect me to reply."
"We don't want speeches - please, no more or I shall have to close the meeting." He was already 1hr 38mins too late.
Yet it had all started so well.
When he finished his introductory remarks, the white-haired Sir Chips looked up to the 300 or so people in the room over his spectacles and said self-deprecatingly, "It says here, 'Pause for applause'" and the shareholders dutifully clapped.
The mood changed, though, once the £3m payment to majority shareholder Stan Kroenke was broached.
The shareholder who submitted a written question about it stood up at the end of Sir Chips' opening remarks to contest that the glib statement offered by the chairman had not answered it.
"I shall invite you back at the start of the Q&A session," Sir Chips promised. When that moment arrived, the appointed time became the end of the Q&A session.
Even then, when he had for the second time tip-toed around explaining why Kroenke was worth £60,000 a week, the same as a half-decent full-back, he was harangued further from the floor.
"Is there a written contract or is it like Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter's verbal agreement?" Widespread applause for the barb in the phrasing.
"The answer is that I am not Mr Platini, I am Mr Blatter and there is not a written whatever-you-wanted because, as I have explained, good advice is where you can get it and how you get it and if you get good advice then you succeed. If you don't get the right advice, then you fail. That is my last answer on the question, thank you ladies and gentlemen," Sir Chips said.
According to city sources, there is nothing illegal about such payments to the majority shareholder. They can do what they want, and such payments for consultation are commonplace.
To transfer the funds without a written contract, however, was deemed "somewhat unwise in the climate". No wonder Wenger, who had rescued such occasions with Churchillian, seemed somewhat tired by it all.
His own speech was retrospective and even shed doubt, amid the mayhem, over whether it was all worth it.
"But looking back I am of course proud we won titles and FA Cups, but as well I believe the first quality of a club is to be consistent. If you look back we have 18 consecutive years in the Champions League qualified.
"Sometimes it is important to remind people that to remain at the top is difficult. And we do not rate that enough.
"The first years of my career here were quite easy, from 1996 to 2005. It was a period where it all went really easy, smooth and well.
"Then came 2nd period when we moved into this stadium.
"I believe too if you ask me to do it again, I would say no - let somebody else do it because I will not take that gamble any more."
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