Arsenal have confirmed that Sven Mislintat will start as the club’s new head of recruitment with responsibilities across the first team and academy in December.
The new arrival from Borussia Dortmund means Steve Rowley will step down from his current position. The Gunners have confirmed that Rowley will continue to work on an ad hoc basis for the foreseeable future.
Speaking about the new appointment, Arsene Wenger said: “We are delighted that Sven is joining us. Identifying and developing talent is a core part of our philosophy and Sven has an outstanding track record over many years. We look forward to him taking our existing recruitment approach forwards.”
Mislintat arrives at London Colney with a big reputation having helped Dortmund recruit some of the continent’s most high-profile players, including Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Shinji Kagawa and Ousmane Dembele.
The boss also had warm words for Rowley who has worked for the Gunners for over 25 years.
“We would like to thank Steve Rowley for all his hard work over many years for the club,” noted the boss.
“He has been a key figure in our recruitment of so many top players and has travelled thousands and thousands of miles, watching hundreds of games for us during his time at the club. We wish him well for the future.”
We seem to know who the best talent is… we’re just not very good at paying market rate or competing for their signatures
That’s really not how recruitment works I’m afraid.
Reus, Lewandowski, Dembele, Mikhitarian and much more were all unknown players when Dortmund bought them. They’re all established world class players today (with the exception to dembele who’s one of the most exciting prospects). That’s what we need, we’ll never be able to compete financially with city united and Chelsea, so we need to unearth some unknown prospects who can be world class within two seasons.
This appointment is more important than a sporting director, excellent coup from the Arsenal.
I wish Steve Rowley all the best and thank him for his 25 years of service!
Money is not a problem if you discover them early, like he did with osmane dembele. Next should be the coaching staff at youth level. The curse of the number “9” actually runs quite deep. We haven’t been able to produce an attacking talent with consistant end product in decades. However with changing coaching staff, one can hope.
If he’d joined us instead of them, I’m not sure dembele would have got into our 1st team regularly by now. The Bundesliga (like every league except the PL) is very different from the PL. The Bundesliga has no more than 3 strong teams in any season and loads of teams at what we would consider ‘championship’ level, where they can have very good games against the top (say) 3 but they aren’t consistent. The PL rarely has more than 2 teams at that level (some others may lack talent but make up for it by working very hard and… Read more »
I see your point. In another scenario, I think that if we had Ousmane in our ranks, Alexis would have left this summer as we would use Ousmane as our direct replacement.
Maybe, if he’d developed sufficiently, but would he have had the chance?
Everyone knows who are the best talent by simply reading the internet. An expert is someone, 3-4 years faster than that.not about money
True, i think there is too much competition for those players, which is why they all end up at academies with dead end prospects of first team football, chelsea, city, parma.
Dont forget that if you are successful people dont need to beat you, they just copy/follow you.
Scouting is a game of attrition these days.
Even transfers are full of feints and dodges. Unfortunately our board feints the fans rather than competing clubs.
All the right noises
Hope he gets us someone like cr7 and messi by jan ?
I would be just fine with CR7 and Messi themselves as well!
Hope that German together with another mad German can scare them with a half cut price.
I would hope we’re not paying big money to a scout only for him to tell us that Messi and Ronaldo will solve our problems.
Only if Wenger plays them in right position. Ronaldo as CB and Messi as wingback will not bring us any trophies I am afraid.
This is tired now. Give it a rest pls.
Yes. We have won one game, give it a rest please.
Yawn
The last 5 years under Wenger ‘Yawn’
3 fa cups, winning trophies is never a yawn in my book, better than that lot down the road that you seem to support mate.
Bob While i see your point and agree with it too but it doesn’t tell the full story. The fact that they have been punching well above their weight in recent seasons whereas we have been a model of mismanagement and complacency. Only 5 years ago, we were talking about quadruples in Feb and were told things will only get better from there but look where we are today. Let me put it this way: they have players in the team that are worth over 100mil and they can cash out on them if things go south but our most… Read more »
So liverfoul and spucks are not yawn?
Does anyone know if he is the direct replacement for Dick Law, Steve Rowley or both? In other words, who is actually negotiating transfers for us now?
He’s probably replacing Wenger.
Though being in the scouting department at Dortmund as the article says it would have been better if he was coming in to replace our chief scout Steve, who is stepping aside as the article above suggests
Of course he’s not replacing Aw. He’s replacing Steve Rowley. He has no managerial or coaching experience.
Martin you don’t seem to understand humor or sarcasm as you respond negatively to every post using it. Of course goner knows he’s not replacing Wenger
Yes of course I understand sarcasm and use it myself all the time. Probably see so many idiotic comments that occasionally miss the humurous ones. Anyway I think this a positive move
Don’t you know Wenger has always been the main man in the recruitment Dept?
Atom, humour is supposed to be humourous. Enough with the negativity, just get behind the team and try to be more optimistic about Arsenal. Otherwise what’s the point? We just beat the c*nts, enjoy!
This guy will have complete control over scouting and possibly developing players at the academy. I believe we have a different list of targets for Chief Negotiator. One of them is rumored to be Raul Sanllehi who was Barcelona’s chief negotiator. What a coup that would be. So far the changes have been- Shad – Well, he’s been here for a while. He was in charge of conditioning for the world cup winning German team. Ben Wrigglesworth – Video scout from Leicester Darren Burgess – Head of Performance, Aussie dude Huss Fahmy – Legal dude from Sky BFG – Future… Read more »
Yet, the narrative bandied about is of a club operating without careful planning. With Per Mertesacker’s appointment, added to Mislintat’s and the fact Wenger is himself from the Alsace region of France, there seems to be a growing German influence in the club’s philosophy. The icing on the cake will be if Wenger’s replacement is German.
Joachim Low after the WC maybe?
I found some highlights from WC2010 on my computer that I had downloaded years ago the other day, one of them was Germany 4-0 thumping of Australia (Ozil scored a fuckin peach of a goal that game) and I was shocked to see Joachim Low was the coach even back then. I’m sure I could google when he got the job but fuck me, that fella has some staying power
His club success as a manager is pretty poor.
Do you really think managing a National team successfully is sufficient qualification for a team like us?
I’ll be surprised if BFG is not our manager within 5 years, and when it happens I’ll fucking love it
That would be vunderful, as long as he knows how to handle the board. Which is why a high profile appointment would enforce a determination for high standards?
The “head of recruitment” roles as described by arsenal.com sounds very much like Steve Rowley’s role combined with Dick Law’s, with Huss Fahmy perhaps already taking on the contractual side of things that Law handled. Have to wait and see I think.
Also, I’m curious to see what happens to Arsenal’s other scouts (Grimandi etc)
The biggest travesty that comes from this is that Steve Rowley is one of only 4 scouts in the WORLD on Football Manager with the maximum rating of 20 for Judging Players Potential and Judging Players Ability.
This new guy only has 16 and 19 for ratings…PFFTTTT
haha
Curious as to what ratings Vic Akers has for Well-Ironed Kit Potential and Wearing Shorts Ability?
Also… who has the potential to say who has the potential????
Anyone know his new Arsenal email address? Going to send him my FM18 list of wonderkids. A good starting point I think.
Too late. He’s already compiling a list of potential FM 19 wonderkids. 😀
Assuming this man is responsible for some of the Dortmund’s recent recruitment, there is good reason to be hopeful. Aubameyang, Pulisic, lewandowski, Dembele……
BOOM
Surely our next manager has to be a German. Joachim Loew after the world cup?
Just think, if all goes to plan we’ll be sick of singing “he’s one of our own”
Proper good news. He is very very highly regarded in Germany (and all around Europe). Bayern allegedly tried to lure him away last year but he rejected them.
According to Mislintat, it was only when ex-Dortmund manager Tuchel threw one of his autocratic fits and banned Mislintat from the training ground and from talking to players (!), that he considered a move and seriously started looking at offers. Thanks Thomas!
Good news, although the problem is the guy who picks and coaches the team!
Yawn
Have an early night…
You know you can’t say that here when we’ve just won a game, right? Wait till after burnley.
Fucking loveth this
Big moves a gwarn
Yes arsenal
Sahin
Kagawa
Götze
Lewa
Miki
Hummels
Gundogan
Dembele
Just some of the players he brought in. Also, the Dortmund fan online community are in complete outrage over this. Top top signing!
Although they’ve all done well at BVB, some of those players like Sahin and Kagawa didn’t make much of an impression when they played for Liverpoo! and Manu respectively.
Although he’ll be a worthwhile addition even if he only finds us the next Lewandowski and Gotze…
Worth pointing out that this means we can all rule out Tuchel as the next manager (he was sacked after clashing with our new man at Dortmund)
Maybe Arsene has done this himself because Ivan had Tuchel lined up to replace him?! I do love a conspiracy theory..
So do I (conspiracy) people talking up Joachim Low after the world cup. But Wenger will still have a year left & you know he will want to give himself another 2 years etc
Great theory! If so, absolute genius from Wenger.
LANS!
Isn’t it weird that the manager is making the statement?
The existing transfer policy phrase is a kittle disconcerting, only because whatever happens the final say on a transfer of a youth player still comes from the board. Who are clueless.
We should reserve judgement on wenger having final say on transfers, since he does actually have a good record of signing decent ones, up until this new board. Who have a long track record of doing a Mike Ashley in terms of transfers and managerial appointments in their american franchises.
The existing transfer policy phrase is a little disconcerting, only because whatever happens the final say on a transfer of a youth player still comes from the board. Who are clueless.
We should reserve judgement on whether wenger actually has final say on transfers or whether park/perez were his choices, since he does actually have a good record of signing decent ones, up until this new board anyway.
A board who have a long track record of doing a Mike Ashley in terms of transfers and managerial appointments in their american franchises.
Yes Rowley has brought excellent talent over the years. But isn’t that because we have excellent scouts and had low competition at that time? We’ve always been good at spotting talents, it’s the recruitment part and get deals over the line where I see this appointment as an improvement. They have recently succeed on Dembele and other top youngsters unlike us. These recent years the only top prospect we recruited is Nwakali. We now have excellent scouts, data analysis and an excellent head of recruitment. I’m happy with these improvements.