I have no proof, but I get the feeling Wenger saw Sanllehi for what he was.
With Mislintat it was cordially, but with Sanllehi, there was a man who was looking to take as much power away from Wenger and take it for himself. Just some of my musings on a Saturday morning 
Someone should ask Wenger about his final year at Arsenal. That would be quite the book.
Indeed, I’d have bought the book he put out if it was more like that.
I never liked a lot of Sven’s business but I do feel it was impacted heavily by a power struggle at the club. Either we have him the reigns to make the signings or we didn’t but the kind of guys he ended up bringing it were not what his profile suggested he would do.
I know some people defend the Sokratis signing but £16m on someone who was accepted to be physically unreliable and past his prime was always a stupid signing. We were told we had signed this big time scout who knew his way around the market and instead he gave us a bunch of 30 year old directly or indirectly his ex club and a goalkeeper that we overpaid for who wasn’t highly rated.
We massively fucked up the management transition.
Glad we had the Edu backup else the search for a proper director would have taken ages given our pace.
It isn’t great but looks worse when it’s listed like that.
Auba might have been a 58 mill net loss but scored 92 in 163 whilst here including single-handedly winning us an FA cup.
Not seeing a great deal that upsets me there.
We gave Auba away by choice and he played like a £56m striker for 3 years or so. Leno was replaced while performing reasonably fine, I’m not upset about spending £20m there. I’ve never hated Sokratis as much as others seem to and I don’t think £15m in break the bank money (though I’m not going to pretend there weren’t better options). Mavro was a low risk that turned a profit. Guendouzi was clearly talented, as was Torreira.
Lichsteiner on the other hand was a disaster. Mkhitaryan wasn’t great either, though I think that he could have got a second chance but was instead loaned out and also his signing was mostly down to the mishandling of Alexis. I don’t see it happening otherwise.
I think you’re being too generous. I wouldn’t call him a fraud, but his eye for potential was really poor.
Power struggle or not, those signings are inexcusable.
I have no issues with Lichtsteiner, Mavro, Guendouzi and Sokratis. I wasn’t expecting much from them anyway, and we made a profit on Guendouzi and Mavro. Can put Mkhi in that list too cause it was already a fucked up situation with Alexis and we took a chance on him which didn’t work out.
Auba is the big one there but we got some good seasons from him and an FA Cup. Leno, did the business when we needed him, brought some respect back to the Arsenal GK’s shirt.
The only real dud for me is Lucas.
But in the end, Sven was supposed to be the guy that finds diamonds in the rough. He was supposed help us compete with clubs with sugar daddies. And he failed miserably there.
“Diamond Eye” my arse.
Agree with this although I even don’t mind Lichsteiner, it was a freebie gamble to bring some experience and just turned out a bit shit, but the move wasn’t a bad idea.
The alexis swap is the truly pathetic one, even in the conditions set I think we should’ve done better as a club.
The MIkhy one flatters him too. That was at least a proxy value of 20-35 million, which makes the analysis far worse… it isn’t super uncommon for top teams to buy at peak value and get rid of at the drop off (they are trying to get best players in their peak), but still that is pretty tragic reading.
Guendog is also hard to stomach (although perhaps he is a head case) - selling an asset at 8.5 million seems like the worst kind of asset mismanagement… Leno and Torreira also feel a bit low, but meh.
Was a victim of poor overall strategy more than anything .
Club was desperately to get back into the CL and adopted a short termist approach rather than a slow build
Sven wasn’t the one selling them LOL
Several of them that cost anything were good prior and good after, what are we doing here.
We switched to a manager who had a vastly different style and who will not adapt after the playing material he has but will rather squeeze players into the style… which rarely worked in this case due to the differences.
Now if you switch to a manager who will work that way I’m sure that’s transparent from the hiring interview and you have to support the manager otherwise there is no point, so we had to get rid of the whole squad and buy an entirely new one it seems.
But we still should’ve planned better, they 100% knew and so what did we sacrifice? we got a couple of 5th-8th positions anyway, not great in hindsight, room for improvement there in the future.
I put it down to inexperience from everyone involved who are all new at the job, but the stadium is “done” and the Kronkedonks are economically supportive of this so learn and move on, onwards and upwards.
This. The graphic looks terrible, but there are extenuating circumstances for most of them–the 2 managerial transitions being a main driver.
Guen/Torreria/Auba sunk their valuations in part with a falling out w/Arteta.
If someone wants to say that Sven’s scouting eye is/was overrated, that’s fine, but pinning a selling fee on him after 2 different manager regimes and Raul’s shady dealings is a bit of a stretch.
The club does need to get better at selling players, no doubt. Hand in hand with that is having a much better contract structure (i.e. wages) that helps widen the net so to speak on clubs that can afford players no longer wanted/needed at Arsenal.
OA stop being so reasonable, we dont pay attention to silly things like context around here 
This is what you get for hiring two amateurs.
Not good enough.
Arteta and Edu have to go!
You can look for metrics to make Edu look just a big a mug. Especially in his first 2 years. Willian, Luiz, Runarsson. Every signing in football is a gamble. And when you have a manager that alienates players, plunges their worth, and forces moves… you’re going to get a shit return on those players. Just how it is.
Guendo, Auba, Mavropanos, Leno, and even Torreira are all good players. That Auba went for nothing and Guenouzi/Torriera when for pennies is all on Arteta. I get that he has “non-negotiables” but when you handle them like he did, you guarantee that you’re getting nothing for your players.
When Mislintat left his post Guendouzi, Torreira, and Leno could all probably have been sold for profit. These three were guilty of being signed before Arteta’s say so.
The Mkhitaryan signing was a failure of management. I’d argue that they should have kept Alexis and let him leave on a free rather than tie themselves to another big contract, but the allure of Champions League football was big.
Even the signing of Aubameyang was a bit short-sighted though it worked out long term. We had to sell Giroud to facilitate it, leaving us short in the Europa League which offered our best route back into the Champions League. Both deals scream desperation and were spearheaded by Gazidis imo.
A lot more detail is now gone into making signings and I think we’re in better shape for it.
He’s the true villain for me. Talked a lot of shit, made a disastrous appointment, did zero work to have a good infrastructure set up so when he did walk a criminal like Raul could take over.
His image rehab at Milan really grates. Dude used us like a finishing school.
Its not that we signed really bad players at this time, its that we signed players without any real vision of the type of football we wanted to play and how they would fit. That’s a shit formula, even if the players are individually good or at least not terrible. What kind of team playing what kind of football were we trying to build with that list of players?
Even beyond that, however, its also clear that except Auba none of these guys were good enough for where we want to be as a club. None of them except Auba has been signed by a club of Arsenal’s ambitions or better since they left (not counting Torreira’s brief spell on Simeone’s bench). Look at the list of their current clubs - Fulham, Olympiacos, Galatasaray, Marseille, Stuttgart, Roma, etc. Its not like mean old Arteta broke these players who would have been top level players otherwise. They weren’t good enough.
