Me again! This week is our LAST of the free previews! If you don’t want to miss a newsletter, please:
Arsenal and the blame game
Blame.
It’s the cornerstone of football fandom, and part of what drives the narrative of the sport, even among journalists who might otherwise avoid painting things in black and white.
When a club begins to lose matches, the blame invariably rests with the manager. Even if there are clear issues with players, as with Granit Xhaka’s dramatic substitution in Arsenal’s shock 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace, they tend to be viewed as a reflection of a manager who has “lost the dressing room.”
The manager, in this case, is Unai Emery, Arsene Wenger’s successor. It’s safe to say that most fans, and some in the media, believe the former PSG and Sevilla manager is largely responsible for their current malaise.
Certainly that’s how the club front office views the situation, even if they’re apparently willing to give Emery until the end of the season before deciding to dump his contract and cut him loose. Here’s Ornstein for the Athletic:
Emery still has firm support from those above him, although there is now an acceptance that after a year and a half in the job and with the benefit of significant backing in the transfer market last summer, there is not much more the club can do and the onus is on him to deliver.
Except it’s here—the transfer strategy—where the picture of who is responsible for the current situation is a little less clear, and where ‘the blame’ for Arsenal’s current wretched state should be shared more widely throughout the club.
Too many cooks?
For one, as Swiss Ramble notes in a very long and enriching Twitter thread, the idea that Emery received “significant backing in the transfer market last summer” doesn’t quite hold up under scrutiny.
A number of factors—chief among them lack of Champions League qualification and a lack of owner equity investment—have significantly reduced Arsenal’s overall spending power. Worse still, it appears the man whom many believed was a commercial genius, Ivan Gazidis, now with AC Milan, was not quite as astute in drumming up the kind of commercial deals enjoyed by the likes of Man United and Man City.
Where has this left Arsenal? Well, if you want to judge the fruits of Arsenal’s 2019 summer transfer window activity, be my guest. Transfermarkt has the list here. Draw your own conclusions.
But the impacted spending power alone isn’t enough to explain Arsenal’s struggles. There are other potential factors, a few I wrote about this past May for Off the Pitch, and they again stem from Gazidis—specifically his departure from the club.
These issues are a little complicated, but the Coles Notes version is essentially when Gazidis left, Raul Sanllehi took over as director of football and Vinai Venkatesham as managing director. It was a nice arrangement separating church and state, that is, Arsenal’s football and business operations.
However, Sanllehi’s approach to the transfer market leaned more heavily on traditional scouting than his predecessor, Sven Milistat, Arsenal’s then-head of recruitment who preferred a more analytics-based approach. Sanllehi’s wish to hire a technical director to work under him felt like a demotion to Milistat and the latter left the club after only a short time at the Emirates.
None of this might have been a significant problem had Sanllehi managed to hire his dream TD, Monchi, the man whose notorious 700-person strong scouting network helped propel Sevilla to one of the most competitive mid-sized clubs in Europe, with a notoriously high hit rate in recruitment. Monchi too also had a previous relationship with Emery at the same club where they made the magic happen—Sevilla.
But those plans fell through when Monchi instead decided to go back to Sevilla after a relatively disastrous stint at Roma.
And so, after a brief period of waffling around, Arsenal managed to convince Edu Gaspar, their former player, to take the job as Arsenal’s technical director this past summer.
This also might have ended up as a good news story, except Edu wasn’t able to start work until the second week of July due to his obligations with Brazil through Copa America. That didn’t give him a lot of time to work with Emery in preparing for Arsenal’s transfer strategy, which was arguably one of the most important in the clubs’ recent history. With funds depleted and the Champions League out-of-reach, Arsenal should have had all hands on deck that summer to ensure they acquired undervalued players who could work with Emery and help the club secure fourth place.
Arguably, this is exactly why Edu’s role is so important, particularly when you consider how Sanllehi himself described it:
“[Edu’s] arrival is the final and very important part of the jigsaw in our development of a new football infrastructure to take us forward. He will be working closely with Unai Emery and the first-team coaches, and will play a relevant role leading our football vision and ensuring we have - and follow - a solid philosophy through all our football activities.”
If this is true, this is not someone you want to hire on a few months before the start of the season with a manager already in place and with CL qualification hanging in the balance!
Gazidis’ departure left a bigger crater than Wenger’s
All of this makes it clear that Arsenal is still sorting out a lengthy, post-Gazidis and post-Wenger reorg. Questions about Emery’s playing philosophy aside, this also may be why it’s wise for the Kroenkes to wait until the end of the season before deciding to pull the plug and wreaking yet more havoc.
But the deeper question is whether the club is truly fully aligned on its overall approach and whether it is truly Edu who has the license and authority to implement Arsenal’s ‘football vision’ and not someone else.
Who’s really in charge right now? Sanllehi? Edu? Emery? Are they all on the same page? And is ownership aligned with them?
Note that I haven’t made mention of analytics yet. Analytics is only truly effective at a club working in some form of alignment. Arsenal may yet get there, but the situation is grim. The dressing room rot may have already set in too deeply. But if there are plans to replace Emery, it should be Edu who takes the lead, with a strong assist from Sanllehi.