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George Smith

Ian Wright sends strong message to Josh Kroenke about Super League plan ahead of Arsenal protest

A busy night lies ahead at the Emirates Stadium - both on and off the pitch.

Arsenal will be looking to get back to winning ways in the Premier League when they face Everton, whilst off it the supporters will shortly be staging a protest against the club's owner - Stan Kroenke - after the fallout of the European Super League plan fell to pieces on Tuesday evening.

The Gunners, who secured a late 1-1 draw against Fulham on Sunday afternoon, were one of 12 clubs to confirm themselves as founding members of the Super League on Sunday evening.

That, like at the other five English clubs involved, was met with a wave of discontent, anger and fury by the supporters, who were disgusted with the Gunners' plan to join the breakaway league.

Although the plan has now come crashing down to its knees following all six of the English clubs' decision to pull out, supporters are still furious that Arsenal agreed to be part of it in the first place.

Ahead of this evening's clash with Everton, a protest has been planned outside the Emirates Stadium, with Arsenal supporters set to gather and protest against owner Kroenke's running of the club.

Yesterday, his son, Josh, who is a director at the club, participated in a Fans' Forum and was on the receiving end of some strong and powerful comments from some of the supporters who were on the call.

Despite the actions of the previous few days, Kroenke Jnr admitted that Arsenal felt the need to jump on board with the plan and compete with some of the world's biggest clubs, as opposed to being left behind.

He said: "As this project took shape in a very, very fast manner we asked ourselves two key questions. The first question we asked ourselves, what is worse - a Super League or a Super League without Arsenal?

"That was a very tough one for us to weigh, but basically the decision we made was a Super League without Arsenal was the worst of those answers. That's what we acted upon.

"The second question was 'what do the fans want?' We tried to answer that question in many ways as possible.

"We are obviously bound by certain confidentiality aspects of the decision we were thinking about making. It was a much more complicated answer than we had time to contemplate.

"I think the global fan wants to see Arsenal vs Barcelona regularly, as much as possible. I think the European fan wants to see more big matches between top clubs because their domestic league is so predictable."

Whilst Kroenke may have believed that the global fan would prefer to see Arsenal pitting themselves up against the likes of Barcelona more often, former Gunners striker Ian Wright has delivered his verdict.

However, the former England international, who is now a pundit for both the BBC and ITV, has insisted that the right to play the Spanish heavyweights has to be earned, not just automatically awarded because of the breakaway league plans.

Issuing a message on Twitter on Friday morning, Wright said: "This is what Josh doesn't understand!! We want to play Barcelona but we want to EARN the right to play Barcelona!!!"

With that said, it is clear that Wright wants to see the traditional route of the best clubs in Europe getting the chance to pit themselves up against each other in the traditional manner, which is, of course, qualifying for the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League via their respective domestic league finish.

Wright, earlier this week, blasted the idea of a Super League coming into fruition, meaning the Gunners' decision to back out will have pleased him to a certain degree.

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