I hope one day we’ll get some actual answers from Ivan about what went down during the final few transfer windows of Arsene’s tenure.
I want to know:
Doesn’t speak Italian bud, otherwise he’d be hired by now :kos2:
Stat DNA. Arsene wanted Van Dijk but our scouts convinced him not to pursue. Then we signed Mustafi cuz his stats were so amaze.
The medical team couldn’t even talk him out of signing a player with a broken back but sure, those scouts knew just how to convince him.
Shad Forsythe, Arsenal head of performance since 2014, is currently at Casa Milan to sign a contract with rossoneri. Gazidis wanted him to be part of the fitness team.
Can’t really see that much has changed under him for this to really matter anyway.
The less people associated with the Gazidis regime here the better anyway.
Did Big Shad end up fixing our injury problems? I really can’t remember.
Thanks for everything cunt.
I’m glad you’re ruining another club now.
him and wenger have proper fucked this club,
now have to hope gravel voice can get something sorted out.
At the risk of creating another 100 post argument, tbf to him, Wenger was bang on about Mustafi.
Wanted him shipped off to Inter ASAP after 2016/17 when he still had some value.
That Gazidis did not allow that shows he is woefully inept at being in any capacity of making football decisions.
The best thing to happen to this club was Gazidis leaving, because there is no way we’d have sacked him and we’d have fallen further and further.
Edit: like United, check them out with their own Gazidis.
Is there any confirmation of this?
Not confirmation but heavy rumours we wanted him as then and that Wenger was behind it cos he didn’t rate Mustafi.
I have missed that.
Pretty weird that he splashed 35m on him and a year later didn’t rate him. Or was Gazidis behind buying him as well?
For someone he didn’t rate Wenger played him a lot in 2017/18.
I’m not sure how reliable the information was but there have been lots of suggestions on Twitter that Mustafi was a STATDNA signing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Gazids, via STATDNA, was exerting more influence over transfers towards the end of Arsene’s reign. At the time we signed Mustafi we really needed a defender badly and it looked like Mustafi was a decent buy. However I think he’s the type of player where the statistics are incredibly misleading. He might play tons of through balls and make a ton of tackles but he’s absolutely useless in terms of positioning, decision-making and really makes the team worse every time he plays.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Wenger, even when he was not making good decisions towards the end, recognized that Mustafi was a bust and wanted him moved out. The problem might have been that Ivan was already making moves behind the scenes to force Arsene out and Stan/Josh sided with Ivan when it came to personnel decisions.
Seems conspiracy theory that doesn’t stand up honestly…
Yeah, this guy was terrible. New regime getting Pepe to top off summer business is a great start to help me forget about the Gazidis era.
You are completely correct, and this isn’t even a conspiracy. This is actually what happened. There are articles about it that you can Google if u want to read about it. Wenger wanted to buy VVD from Celtic the year before we bought Mustafi, but our head scout talked Wenger out of it. At that point Gazidis and the head scout were upset with Wenger for buying flops like Park and Chamakh so they convinced him to move away from his own system and to use Stat DNA. The following season they bought Mustafi who actually has better stats than VVD even last year 
I don’t think that Gazidis forced players on Wenger but I do believe the process of buying players became buying by committee more than Wenger’s opinion being the be all end all, and Stat DNA took central stage when identifying targets. For the record VVD was passed on because the scouting department had questions as to his sense of urgency or some bull shit.
More influence? Gaz? WTF does he know about scouting? I would agree there was perhaps more input/influence of a “scouting and management team” but as you say even in your write up “Wenger was convinced” - as in, he is the one that listened to all these knobs and lost his mojo and confidence in buying gems or evaluating how to evolve into the spending era.
Wenger was still very much in charge and even as his power waned, I think the notion that StatDNA is what took the void just doesn’t square with modern scouting/analysis and the complexity of how football operations evaluate players. Yes StatDNA and other sources of modern analytics certainly have played an increasing role in overall scouting, but it is just a piece in the whole puzzle.
Buck stopped with Wenger bottom line.
Yep, that’s true. Also rumours that Mustafi wanted to go as well because he preferred living in Italy.
I think the issue behind us being unable to sell Mustafi must be the asking price. I’m sure they have been looking to recoup or make at least some profit out of him over the years which has backfired as now he’ll more than likely go for not even half of what we bought him for.
Kolasinac is another guy Wenger deemed not good enough early on.