Raul Sanllehi (sacked)

I’d say our defacto director of football Kia Joorabchian is about to find his influence at the club greatly diminished.

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We’re not a man down. At least I’ve yet to know of clubs with two managing directors (Raul, Vinai) and a technical director (Edu). The question is rather how good is Edu at this job?

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That has to be a good thing, right? I’m not being funny here, but is there a legit argument to be made that we should worry Kia might keep players from us?

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Kia is buddies with Edu. If anything his influence gets greater.

Oh absolutely fuck him. We paid money for a Southampton reserve to keep him happy.

I don’t have anything against Cedric and I hope he does well but thats objectively mental.

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Exactly. I don’t think we really know the answer. By his own admission he didn’t play much role in our business last summer.

Arteta is also in a much stronger position to influence our transfer business than Emery ever was. So I think he will be a big part of things now as well.

I’m expecting Edu to be fully exposed through our dealings moving forward. He should not be in his current position

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Arteta shouldn’t be in his current position either. Just give it some time hahaha.

I still think that’s the deal which got him sacked, not the Pepe deal. If we all went insane about it, I can imagine Tim Lewis wasn’t pleased if his remit was to examine cost cutting and quality assurance.

@sevchenko I’m inclined to agree. I think Edu looks very nice in a suit and he’s an Arsenal guy but if he was supposed to be the de facto DoF, it’s a little weird to bring him into this half measure academy position and then never hear from him again.

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Same here… it is all retrospect for me at this point… I don’t follow football or management hierarchy in football nearly enough… he came from Barca and things were certainly painted as positive… but man oh man he is just another in a line of stumbles and self-inflicted wounds it seems.

I could be wrong and I’d have to check the dates, but I think his tenure overlapped with some of the more…shitty Barcelona transfers.

Turan
Aleix Vidal
Andre Gomes

and of course the whole Neymar thing which was sketchy as hell.

EDIT: I’m not saying those transfers are all on him, but let’s not pretend he was at Barcelona out there scouting and signing diamonds in the rough.

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I don’t believe Covid is the reason.
If it was, the club would have waited till the transfer business was done instead of hamstringing ourselves during crucial negotiating period.

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valid point. As if their salary for the one month of August was that important. Actually extends to ‘the 55’ as well now that I think about it.

Coaching is a bit different to being a technical director no?

There’s no real evidence or track record indicating Edu has the qualities needed to oversee the large task at hand. Seems like theres going to quite alot of change at the club behind the scenes wrt talent ID, scouting and transfer negotiation which are critical areas for us, is Edu the right guy to step into a larger role?

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Given the odd timing, smells to me of malfeasance and AFC would rather not drag this out and air dirty laundry in a perhaps embarrassing way… AFC says “look, we don’t want to have to get a bunch of lawyers involved and make this super ugly, so let’s agree on an exit and move on…”

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You never know. Getting rid of your scouting team as well as your contact book guy reeks off weeding out an internal corrupt hierarchy.

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I honestly don’t know. But what made Monchi, Begiristain, Salihamidzic, Overmars, Zorc and all other former players qualified as TD’s?

I’m not making an argument against the viability of former players advancing into executive spots.

I don’t rate Edu, I think his appointment was suspect and based on bad ideals. I think the chances he morphs/develops into an accomplished exec, like the names you mentioned, is slim.

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You waiting for Arteta to fail?

It’s a good thing if he actually gets more influence. He has has the desire and knowledge to determine what the club needs to succeed again. But he’s proven enough anyway to be backed for the foreseeable.

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Only time will tell about Edu.

His first 2 deals have been Cedric and Mari, which are solidly bad.

Let’s hope he can improve. Or that now Kroenkes are alert enough to react to any more incompetence.

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