Arsenal Football Club’s board members will on Thursday seek to reinforce their position against a possible takeover bid from leading shareholder Alisher Usmanov by making US sports franchise owner Stan Kroenke a fellow director.

The Premier League club wants Mr Kroenke, who holds a 12.4 per cent stake, to sign up to the lockdown agreement drawn up last year by board members that stops any of them trading shares without each other’s consent. The agreement was intended to counter the predatory instincts of Mr Usmanov, the Uzbekistan-born billionaire and Russian citizen who, with business partner Farhad Moshiri, owns slightly less than 25 per cent of the club.