On the Premiership:Given Hollywood's predilection for remakes, perhaps it is time for some Anglophile director to turn his attention to the unappreciated 1939 thriller, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery.

Thorold Dickinson's quaint thriller concerned a player's poisoning during a friendly against George Allison's champion Gunners but an updated version already has a much juicier plot - the ruthless assassination of a boardroom figurehead - and a cast of characters that includes an enigmatic Frenchman, a shadowy US businessman and a clutch of old English toffs.

Throw in the odd rule-dodging detective and a busty love interest and you have an unlikely summer blockbuster.

Well, maybe not. But David Dein's dramatic exit from Arsenal last week - due to "irreconcilable differences" with his fellow directors and, in particular, chairman Peter Hill-Wood over Stan Kroenke's proposed takeover - was certainly one of the stories of the season, shattering the north London club's renowned stability and stony-faced dignity at a stroke.

Arsenal have long revelled in their reputation as English football's nobility and even when bulldozers reduced Highbury's Art Deco architecture to rubble, their regality remained, thanks largely to the oddly aristocratic nature of the club's board. Hill-Wood is the sort of name that would not look out of place on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph, while Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith really should be a character in a PG Wodehouse novel.

In such a blue-blooded boardroom, it is small wonder that Dein - a man who rose from west London market trader to owning an international company - felt ostracised. It was like asking Del Boy Trotter to go undercover at a Royal garden party.

The only wonder is he lasted so long. The 63-year-old is one of the game's most progressive thinkers, a man who has played an integral role in almost every one of English football's landmark decisions for the last 20 years.

Conflict with the notoriously old-fashioned Hill-Wood was always more probable than possible.

Hill-Wood's quasi-Victorian values are not, in themselves, an issue and there is a place for a traditionalist in a sport which is discarding its past with occasionally indecent haste. But when it comes to foreign investment, Hill-Wood is in danger of casting himself as football's answer to King Canute, desperately ordering back a tide of dollars even as the waves begin to lap at his feet.

His comments last week smacked not just of old-fogeyism but of outright xenophobia. "We would be horrified to see it [ the club] go across the Atlantic," he sputtered, conjuring images of the Emirates Stadium being dismantled brick-by-brick and rebuilt in Colorado.

"Call me old-fashioned," - already have done, Peter - "but we don't need Kroenke's money and we don't want his sort. We don't want these types involved."

Hill-Wood is lucky Kroenke is an American billionaire - and therefore unlikely to elicit much sympathy from the English press - and not an Asian businessman, otherwise he might be facing calls to clarify the remarks "his sort" and "these types". As any Big Brother fan can tell you, diplomatic incidents have been sparked by less.

These comments have largely been treated as the comical blusterings of a doddery old fool but it is unlikely Wenger gets the joke, particularly the line about not needing Kroenke's green bills.

The truth is quite the opposite. Arsenal are crying out for the sort of investment which has transformed Chelsea and enabled Manchester United to break the bank for Wayne Rooney. Without it, they will be forced to rely on a scouting network which has already plundered many uncut gems, but which will struggle to stay ahead of richer rivals in an increasingly globalised marketplace.

Besides, foreign ownership is no longer something to fear. The takeovers by Randy Lerner at Aston Villa, and Bill Hicks and George Gillett at Liverpool, were both handled with supreme sensitivity and Kroenke's would be no different.

The tycoon will have no desire to suffer the hate-campaign waged against the Glazers by disgruntled Manchester United supporters: his PR advisers will ensure he is fully briefed about Arsenal's standing within football and, if he has any sense, Dein will immediately be installed as the new chief executive. It will be as if nothing has changed.

Tellingly, fans' groups have remained sanguine about the prospect of Kroenke's arrival. It is Wenger's possible departure which concerns them, and quite rightly: it would be a calamity, not just for Arsenal, but for the English game as a whole. To prevent that, Hill-Wood - whose grandfather Samuel strolled the marble halls before Dickinson even started shooting The Arsenal Stadium Mystery - must realise an American dream need not be a nightmare.