Arsenal are a team getting ready for an overhaul. Mikel Arteta, speaking to DAZN Spain stated he wants to make 5-6 new additions and when a manager makes statements like this, it means he doesn’t rate a majority of the players we currently have.
In past seasons, Arsenal ran their business in multiple different ways with a lack of continuity:
In 2016 and 2017, the club relied heavily on the use of data through their in house analytics company, StatDNA.
In 2018, signings were predominantly headed by the former head of recruitment, Sven Mislintat.
At the very beginning of 2019, Raul Sanllehi took control of the club and ran the show through an agent led contacts based approach. Edu Gaspar was brought in later that year as technical director.
Earlier this year, Raul Sanllehi was relieved of his duties, with Arteta being promoted from ‘head coach’ to ‘manager’ to work alongside Edu.
AN ABSOLUTE MESS, to put it lightly….
You can argue that the club needs stability and a couple of windows with Edu and Mikel – however, stability for the sake of just being stable is a dangerous game.
Arsenal are now entering a critical phase – numerous players are going to leave and this current cycle will soon come to an end.
It is imperative to have a solid plan in place to bring in the right replacements as that will influence the quality of the squad, the culture of the club, the style of football – these will trickle down into results that will eventually determine if a team is successful or not.
Does Edu fill you with confidence? I have my doubts. Thomas Partey and Gabriel are good additions, but we failed to bring in a creative player.
The signings of Cedric Soares, Pablo Mari and Willian are questionable because we gave these guys sizeable long-term contracts and then flinched when we needed to address our primary need (a creative player) citing lack of funds and squad space.
Arsenal cannot afford to do more of these ‘squad signing’ type stop-gaps.
We need someone who runs things for the betterment of the club, not to benefit certain agents. I have no issues using contacts with an agent for buying players and there is a lot of hysteria when it comes to doing this – Wolves, for example have done it and been successful.
You need to ask yourself though, who are the players we brought in using these agent contacts?
David Luiz, Willian and Cedric – all clients of Kia Joorabchian have benefitted the agent more than the club. Luiz, you can make a case to say he was good for a reasonable period of time, but all in all, when you look at the 3 players: they are underwhelming and we can definitely do better.
Pablo Mari is represented by Arturo Canales, who was close to Sanllehi and that deal hasn’t exactly benefitted us greatly either.
Spotrac estimates the combined ANNUAL wages of Willian, Cedric and Mari to be over £15m. This excludes agent fees and other charges paid.
Can Arsenal be run better? We certainly can – especially when two of the best in the game in Luis Campos and Ralf Rangnick are both currently available.
Campos, who is renowned for this work at AS Monaco and Lille was responsible for an important era in Monaco – with Fabinho, Martial, Bernardo Silva, James Rodriguez, among many others being brought in on the cheap and sold at huge margins.
At Lille, he had a knack of always finding replacements for the players who left the club – For example, they brought in Sven Botman to replace Gabriel who joined us this summer. The 20-year-old Dutch center-back has impressed with his performances and is attracting interest from numerous big clubs around Europe.
Aitor Karanka, who worked alongside Campos in his scouting role at Real Madrid, stated: “When you look at the players who he (Campos) signed at Monaco and Lille, the difference between the price they had and the price they have now is amazing. He’s one of the best.” Arsenal need the best in class for this role.
Arsenal don’t want to be a selling club, but when you inevitably lose players it is imperative to find the right replacement straight away. Campos has a knack for making profits from these types of scenarios.
Arsenal are yet to find suitable replacements for the likes of Santi Cazorla, Aaron Ramsey, and Mesut Ozil – 3 players with excellent contributions from midfield, the kind that hasn’t been replicated at Arsenal in a long time.
It is a huge failure for every person who was part of our club management in recent years to not sufficiently replace these three.
Ralf Rangnick is another interesting candidate – he is someone who has experience in building the culture and style of a football club, something Arsenal have lost in recent years. The way he built an identity at both Red Bull Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg is truly remarkable. Despite being in his 60’s, he is a man ahead of his time – plenty of aspects in Jurgen Klopp’s brand of football are based on Rangnick’s principles.
I find this quote by Ralf particularly interesting:
“If you want to increase the speed of your game, you have to develop quicker minds rather than quicker feet, At RB, we work on increasing the memory space and the processing pace. We put players into the Soccerbot, for example – a machine that simulates previous games and allows players to relive key moments of matches.”
Ralf, unlike many other sporting directors, was a great coach to begin with, but he is also well regarded for his business and management acumen. He is the complete package and would be an excellent choice to head a club like Arsenal in a new direction.
One thing to keep in mind is that Rangnick was on Arsenal’s managerial shortlist to replace Arsene Wenger in 2018 and was even interviewed by the club, as exclusively reported by David Ornstein for The Athletic.
It will be interesting to see if the club revisits this again.
TO CONCLUDE: Arsenal needs to make a decision soon – I strongly believe that bringing in a top sporting director with experience in the European landscape is imperative for things to turn around long term. We need a new direction and it is up to the club to make the RIGHT decisions to fill these important positions – something they have repeatedly failed at doing over the years. Let’s see if anything changes.
Interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below.