The background to Mislintat’s hire:
There was a lot of frustration regarding Arsenal’s dealings in the past seasons. The 2015/16 season saw us sign in 0 outfield players in the summer. The very next season, the club took things to the other extreme, bringing in Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez for over a combined £50m, in what can be categorized under ‘panic buy’ signings.
That summer, Arsenal wanted to bring in Jamie Vardy, who decided to sign a contract extension with Leicester City in the last minute. After missing out on him, there was simply no plan B for Arsenal which indicated a real lack of a plan.
When Mislintat joined Arsenal in October of 2017, there was a sense of excitement. The buzz around Sven at the time was he could discover obscure talents who would go on to become top-class players. Arsène Wenger had David Dein before and they worked very well together – it was thought that Sven could replicate the same.
Sven’s buys:
Mislintat’s first signing for Arsenal was Konstantinos Mavropanos, a player who many hadn’t heard of, but one Sven had on his radar for a while. He was one of Mislintat’s targets when he was with Dortmund and it was a relatively straightforward decision to bring him here.
The plan for Mavropanos was to go out on loan, but Wenger was so impressed with him in training that we decided to keep him – and he got chances in the back end of the season too!
With the club losing Alexis Sanchez, we needed to bring in someone of that quality. Sven responded by bringing in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who had the capacity to match Alexis’ goal output at Arsenal, something which summer signing Alexandre Lacazette was struggling to do. Henrikh Mkhitaryan was also brought in as part of the deal for Alexis – it was convenient for all parties involved, even if it might have not been the best option for Arsenal at the time.
Come summer, Arsenal were moving in a new direction after parting ways with Arsene Wenger and hiring Unai Emery, with a completely different management structure, one Ivan Gazidis termed ‘The continental model.’ Mislintat was given the keys to the transfer window, as he brought in Lucas Torreria, Matteo Guendouzi, Bernd Leno, Stephan Lichtsteiner and Sokratis Papasthathopoulos.
It is said that Mislintat wanted to promote youth players to fill the winger gap the squad had in January of 2019, but Unai Emery and Raul Sanllehi had other ideas, opting to go for Denis Suarez instead. As he admitted himself, Mislintat was also rejected when he applied for the technical director role which led to him opting to resign from his duties at Arsenal. More than anything, Sven wanted the responsibility to be able to shape the club in the way that he wanted – but Raul and Sven both had very different ideas and it was no longer sustainable for him to stay and work within those limitations.
Out of Mislintat’s 8 signings, you can say that only 2 have been an outright success – Aubameyang, and Leno. Auba has amassed 63 goals and 13 assists in 108 appearances, going on to become Arsenal’s captain and helped the club win an FA Cup, whilst Leno has been a reliable keeper for almost 3 seasons now and has given me a sense of calm in a way that many other keepers we’ve had in the recent past haven’t done. Credit to Sven where due.
One player Sven brought in that could well make it at Arsenal is Mavropanos, a player who is showing great promise at Stuttgart, a club where Mislintat himself is a sporting director. He revealed to The Athletic that he’d love to extend Mavropanos’ loan by another season. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Matteo Guendouzi played a lot under Unai Emery and whilst he’s talented, he has a long way to go to become a starting central midfielder at Arsenal. Recently, he’s even fallen out of favor at Hertha Berlin. There is definitely a player here, but we are yet to see the consistent refined central midfielder that he’s capable of becoming. He’ll only have one year left on his contract, so I can’t see us getting a huge fee should we decide to sell him. I cannot see Arteta deciding to keep him either because that would likely entail a contract extension which the club might be reluctant to do considering the disciplinary issues. Letting him go on a free wouldn’t be an option too. We might make a small profit at best should we decide to sell him, but overall this is a signing that underwhelmed despite promising so much in certain situations.
Lucas Torreira had an excellent start to life at Arsenal. Maybe, he got overrated by fans as we hadn’t seen a hard-tackling midfielder in a while. But as it turns out, he’s a pretty limited footballer and certainly not worth the reported £26m that we paid for him. Unai Emery was justified in his assessment when he stated that Torreira wasn’t at the level required when it came to helping our build-up play, something even Arteta seems to agree with. Arsenal tried shifting out Torreira last summer, but the player was tempted by Atletico Madrid and went on loan instead. He has struggled for game time since and a return to Italy will be best for all parties – Arsenal will certainly have to take a loss on the price we paid for him.
Sokratis had some solid defensive displays in Emery’s first season, but he wasn’t the defender we needed for the style we were looking to build, which was to play out from the back. It was made even worse due to the price that we paid for him which was £17.7m as per The Guardian. Speak to any Borussia Dortmund fan and they’ll tell you that Papa was on the decline and he was one of the players they were happy to shift out. His performances declined even more since the 2019/20 season, as he was left out of the squad by Arteta at the start of current season.
Lichsteiner, the less said the better. He was brought in to add leadership to the group and provide competition to Hector Bellerin. He was so bad that we had to play Maitland Niles (who was set to be groomed at CM during that time) at right-back. A free-agent signing that was costly!
Mkhitaryan might have been brought in for a direct swap deal with Alexis Sanchez, but we were better off taking cash and investing elsewhere. This was a player that hadn’t adapted to the Premier League. We also paid him a huge wage and in the end, we had to send him to AS Roma for no transfer fee, just so we can remove the wage off our books.
On the whole, a majority of the signings Mislintat brought in just haven’t made it at Arsenal. The older players like Mkhitaryan, Sokratis, and Lichtsteiner were underwhelming to various degrees. And the ones he brought in who are younger like Torreira and Guendouzi are set to be sold at a net loss overall. Far from ideal.
For me, I prefer judging someone based on what they bought, not the process behind the recruitment. Sometimes, I felt fans gave Sven quite a bit of leeway because he was very analytical in his approach. When it comes to transfers, the actual outcomes matter more than process behind them because there’s many models that have worked – what is most important is to find one that works for your club. I have to say Mislintat’s time at Arsenal was underwhelming overall and he fell way below what the fans expected of him.
Would our present be better if he was still in charge?
His work at Arsenal doesn’t suggest that to be the case. Once he departed, the club went on to sign the likes of Kieran Tierney, Gabriel Martinelli, Thomas Partey, and Gabriel Maghalaes. There are other contentious signings like David Luiz and the loan signing of Dani Ceballos that worked to varying degrees, Nicolas Pepe is a good footballer, but we certainly overpaid for him. William Saliba is set to become an excellent defender – it’s just a matter of integrating him in and I’m confident it will happen. Cedric Soares and Pablo Mari are proving to be decent squad options when you look at the low price we paid for them. The only outright bad signing has been Willian – giving a 32-year-old winger a 3-year contract is not a good decision by any means.
Overall, there has been an improvement in the recruitment since Sven left Arsenal and even if Mislintat was given more time and allowed complete control, nothing he did in the one and a half years at Arsenal suggests that he could’ve been the difference-maker.
Thanks for your patient reading – I’m intrigued to hear in the comments below what you made of Sven’s time at Arsenal.