Dein sells Arsenal down the river to satisfy his own ego & Usmanov profile.

David Dein cannot be trusted. That has now become abundantly and painfully clear. First of all, he tries to get an American sports owner in behind the board's back; now, after being ousted from the board for that act of dishonesty, he's involved a Russian crook to financially back his seemingly unswerving desire to become chairman of our club.

He has literally whored himself to the market and found, it would seem, anyone who will give him the money to finance a takeover bid that will lead to him being chairman, without a thought to the traditions and principles upon which Arsenal football club was built.

There's a lot that needs to be said about Dein personally. About how trading in Arsenal shares bailed him out of his failed sugar trading venture in the late 1980s. About how that sugar venture failed due to his involvement with a fraudster. About how he's lived off the PR of recruiting Arsene Wenger, and their subsequent friendship, for ten years. That article will be written over the coming days.

For now, let's take a look at the lovely man who now, thanks to David Dein, owns almost 15% of our club: Alisher Usmanov.

Now, let me speculate. I'm going out on a limb here, but I should imagine Usmanov is not an Arsenal supporter. More than that, I imagine he wouldn't even be able to locate the stadium on a map, tell you who Dennis Bergkamp is, who Charlie George is, or indeed anything about the club's history. Well, aside the facts his PR men have told him. His heart and soul is hardly welded to the club; what's he going to do when the going gets tough?

No, Mr Usmanov is only interested in the money and power that Arsenal football club can give him. The financial return is easier to understand, but don't underestimate the power he can and also wield if he controls one of the world's biggest clubs, especially if his pal Roman is controlling Chelsea just down the road. He will gain a level of political immunity that the Russian oligarchs are realising that purely business assets cannot give them.

He had this to say about his usual business strategy:

“All our projects work the old-fashioned way. We borrow money and invest it in a new company that is as a rule either in a state of bankruptcy or in serious financial trouble. After gaining control over its assets, we improve its finances so that we can make a profit off its future activity. After a certain period of time, we return the money to lenders."

So, he's clearly marked us out as an operation he can turn round and make money off. This money will not go back into the team, club or community, but back to banks and his already considerable back pocket. The man is worth over $5.5 billion, after all. At this level, he is interested in the club as a 'financial investment', not as a sporting operation which means much more than that to the millions of Arsenal fans around the globe.

But let's get personal. This man is a crook and possibly a gangster. He's a man who was 'wrongfully' imprisoned in the 1980s for extortion, and spent 6 years, yes 6 years, in a Soviet detention camp. Of course, as his lawyers have pointed out, he was wrongfully imprisoned. I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed he was the Uzbek Nelson Mandela.

Since then, he has made his fortune in the bandit capitalism of 1990s Russia, investing in the metals, mining and media sectors in particular. It is around this time that it is alleged that Usmanov made substantial connections with the Russian underworld; it has even been suggested that the British National Criminal Intelligence Service was monitoring him at this point for alleged links to mafia figures.

On the arrival of Putin, Usmanov cottoned on pretty quickly - unlike his compatriot Mikhail Khordokovsky - that to do business in Russia nowadays, you tow the Kremlin line. And while he has denied it, his purchase of Kommersant - a major Russian business paper - at the same time that Putin was re-monopolising state control of the Russian media is a pretty big coincidence, one Usmanov has been forced to deny. After all, this is what happens to journos who don't agree with Putin's policies.

So, here's man who's been imprisoned, who's helped erode freedom of speech in Russia, who's best mates with the lovely Mr Putin, who's undoubtedly made his money in the shall we say 'slightly' shady ways that the other oligarchs did, and who has been consistently linked to the Russian mafia.

You can say that there's a lot of speculation in this article, and there is. But this is only because every Russian oligarch, including our friend Roman, is notoriously secretive about their pasts. I'd love to know more about how Mr Usmanov went from being a convicted felon to a multi-billionaire in the space of a few years, but the information is simply not out there. And whilst its a cliche, in this case there is certainly no smoke without a quite considerable fire.

I would say a few things. One, this man does not have the interests of the club in any way at heart. He is only thinking of himself, how the club can financially benefit him and, as importantly, how it can politically protect him from meeting the same fate as Khordokovsky. The purchase will raise his persona and protect him from any tenuous 'fraud' charges.

His nationality, and I will say this clearly now, has nothing to do with it. If he was English and had led the same life I would say exactly the same thing. It's who he is, not where's he's from that bothers me. Sometimes money, despite what it can bring you, is tainted. His certainly is.

Ultimately, the question you have to ask yourself is this: even if this man can bring us trophies, does selling the heart and soul of our football club in return constitute a fair deal? I don't think it does and I would say this to Mr Usmanov in the vain hope he's reading:

Fuck off. You know nothing of our club and its history. You are not needed nor wanted.