On Thursday 16 October Arsenal will hold the Annual General Meeting of Arsenal Holdings PLC. The meeting will review the Report and Accounts recently published by the Club.

This is an opportunity for Arsenal shareholders and Fanshare members to pose questions to the owner Stan Kroenek and the Board.

The questions submitted by Fanshare and AST members are listed below. Other questions are also likely to be be posed by other shareholders. In previous meetings Stan Kroenke has refused to answer questions and that role has been taken by Ivan Gazidis and the Club Chairman despite the fact that neither of them hold any equity in the Club.

Questions AST/Fanshare Shareholders have submitted

It’s reported that Arsenal paid KSE £3m for advisory services. Was a competitive tender issued for these services and can you tell us specifically what the services were, why they were needed and whether such fees will become an annual feature?

The ticket price increase this season has created on-going bad feeling amongst the fanbase, made worse when we see the club sitting on such a large unused cash pile. Furthermore there have been very large increases in commercial and broadcasting revenue. Will the Board consider the difficulty fans have with keeping up with ever increasing costs of attending football and confirm there will be no increase next year?

Once again Arsenal have ended a transfer window with tens of millions of spare cash not invested in the playing squad. At this stage of the season we are four points down on the comparative points from the same fixtures last season and have gone four years without winning an away game against a team which has finished in the top four. Does the Board withhold these cash reserves from the manager and if not then why we are so short of defensive players?So much so that two weeks after the close of the transfer window the manager admitted we were “light at the back “!?

The Arsenal Board is currently all male, white and mostly no longer young. Are there any plans to improve the diversity of the board so that it better reflects those who play for, and support, the club?

Arsenal as a club have long traded on doing things the right way, ‘the Arsenal way’. The financial results also show we have strong financial resources and can reward and retain the best talent at the highest levels.  At the lower levels, however, recent times have seen an extension of the adoption of casual worker contracts. Is it only right, given the club’s enviable fiscal position, that ALL staff have access to the benefits of basic employment. In the interests of stadium safety, security and the club’s own reputation for basic decency, should the Arsenal Way be made to once again apply to all levels of employees? Will the Club also consider being a good citizen and signing up to the London living wage which is not a decision for Government as stated last year but a choice for a good corporate body to make?

Can Mr Kroenke explain why he doesn’t want to support the Fanshare scheme, which looks like it will sadly close, either by issuing new shares for it to purchase or through the club continuing to cover some of the running costs?”

Categorisation of ticket prices such as Arsenal have with A, B and C pricing  clearly offers benefits to home fans who can choose which games to attend based on their cost. But for away fans it can be very unfair as they have no such choice. An Arsenal fan who attends every away game of the season pays hundreds of pounds more than a Crystal Palace fan who goes to exactly the same games which could be described as discriminatory. The Football Supporters Federation and the Premier League have agreed to look at this issue. Will Arsenal support this review and any proposals made so that more can be done to protect Arsenal’s away fans who create such a good   atmosphere supporting the team?

Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger have previously supported Safe Standing returning to Football Grounds. Now the Football League and several Premier League Clubs are calling on the Government to trial some of the rail seating / standing options so that it can be assessed as an option for football. Will Arsenal publicly support trials so that we can assess its suitability for football matches?

Are Arsenal one of the Clubs who asked the Premier League to explore playing games overseas last week?; and can you set out the Club’s position on this?

Given the recent payment of £3m to Non-Executive Director and leading shareholder, Stan Kroenke, for Advisory services provided from another company within his KSE umbrella, can the Board confirm whether other companies within the KSE umbrella are deriving service based value from the U.S. data management and analytics company acquired by Arsenal in 2013. If so, has a fee structure been set-up to ensure Arsenal PLC will be re-compensated for the aforementioned services?