Lady Nina Breaks Her Silence

It must have been difficult to keep her silence for the, oh, 36-odd hours between her departure from the Arsenal board and the articles deadline for today’s Daily Mail, but now she’s issued a statement, or given a press conference, or, I don’t know, sent a footman to Fleet Street with a hastily folded missive bearing her seal in red wax—it’s impossible to tell, since English newspapers aren’t required to put their quotes in any sort of context and thus all furiously pretend that they’ve landed some kind of steamy exclusive interview with a subject even when they and every other newspaper in creation are running the same faxed-over statement—and both the Telegraph and the Guardian have updated the stories I linked to last night with dialogue issuing from Bracewell-Smith herself.

The gist of it:

I’m in total shock and very upset about the appalling way I have been treated. The board have no manners whatsoever and my views were ignored on many occasions.

I can’t understand why I have been removed in such a ruthless fashion. I had no intention of selling my shares and was no threat to the lockdown agreement between the directors. I have also had no proper explanation as to why they wanted me out so much.

It is very difficult to accept, especially after what my family has done for Arsenal for so many years. I am extremely upset at what’s happened and the way it has been done.

I’ve never had a thought of selling my Arsenal shares and I still don’t.

Questions, naturally, abound as to the extent to which a statement this carefully stocked with leading adjectives—who in real life describes the way they’ve been treated as “ruthless”?—can be interpreted as true, or as telling the whole story. If the whole story is “board cruelly purge long-suffering ally/victim with no rational explanation,” I will be surprised, mildly. More importantly, I hear you say, the Mail is covering this as well! And what do Mail readers make of it? Fortunately, the Mail has a comments section!

It hurts when this type of thing happens. By keeping your obvious dignity and integrity events will turn out right. What goes around, comes around. —Flatroofer

Oh, Please sell your share to Usamanov, and bail out the club from the cruel hands of Hilwood. Arsenal do need investors desperately, or else, it will remain buried below the top 4. Please lady Nina, do yourself and the majority of Arsenal fans by selling your shares so soon. Dein has been so correct right from the beginning-that we need investment to prosper. —wube

Flatroofer and wube are the only commenters so far on the story (“EXCLUSIVE: Arsenal’s first Lady hits out at ruthless board coup”), but I think the combined theme of (1) admiration for Lady Nina’s deportment and (2) hope that Lady Nina will save the club from “the cruel hands of Hilwood” already situates us fairly effectively on the back lot of a Victorian fairy tale. What a beautiful carriage, I imagine Flatroofer saying to wube. Cor, Flatroofer, wube says, leaning on his hoe, she must be the finest lady in all Hilwood’s domain.

Cue eternal sleep, cue foreign prince, cue swoon from wube and Flatroofer. I’m just saying: the Flatrooferian/wubeite intuition of the operative genre logic cannot be a good sign for Hilwood.