Arsenal today appointed former Gunner Edu as our new Technical Director.
The official announcement came as no surprise, he was widely expected to rejoin the club he played for between 2001 and 2005.
We had attempted to give the job to Monchi but he chose to go back to his former club Sevilla, so in the end plumped for a man who had been linked with the job a number of times over the last few years.
Speaking about Edu’s arrival, Head of Football Raul Sanllehi described him as the final piece of Arsenal’s newly configured football set-up.
“We’re very excited that Edu is joining the team,” croaked the Spaniard.
“He has great experience and technical football knowledge and most importantly is a true Arsenal man. He understands the club and what we stand for to our millions of fans around the world.
“His 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.”
Arsenal have described his job thusly: “Edu will coordinate the work of our first-team coaching group, the academy and player scouting and recruitment in order to oversee the constant building up and efficient strengthening of our squad.”
Welcome home, Edu. Please do good work.
Lmfao!!! EDU is our final….???? nevermind ????
The jigsaw looks tough it says 3 to 5 years at least that’s what is written on the box.
The jury is still out for me whether Edu is the right man for the job. I think we have hugely missed a trick by not going after someone like Paul Mitchell. But with that being said I really hope Edu has the capabilities to push us on. And can really begin to work with Ljungberg to bridge the gap between our academy loanies and the first team. Which will go some way towards tidying up our transfer business. As I have no problem with Arsenal living off the academy prospects, but it has to work. Even more so if… Read more »
So does this mean there is not going to be a head of recruitment to replace Mislintat???
“Edu will coordinate the work of our first-team coaching group, the academy and player scouting and recruitment”
The new head of recruitment is going to be Francis Caggigao. He is currently our head of “international” recruitment.
*Inserts video clip of Robbie from AFTV screaming ‘sign some players’*
This man knows the entire Brazilian and im sure much of South Americas talent pool. Get the next Marcelo/Alves in as we already just signed the next neymar (heh)
All wankers though
Good players but still, wankers
Hope so. We’ll see how he does. I suspect Edu’s not the only person who knows about talent in South American football though. Real Madrid and Barcelona, for example, have huge scouting networks there and are a much bigger draw than English clubs. That aside, the big factors for us are being able to (a) afford them, and (b) get the necessary work permit (which has been a pain in the past on several occasions). Still, we live in hope.
And having a longterm development proven coach/board (yeah Unai isn’t leaving anytime soon ??)
I wonder if Brexit might change our recruitment strategy – at the minute we can only sign European youngsters (Martinelli has Italian joint nationality) since nobody else can get work permits, but removing the focus on Europeans might make it easier to recruit South American’s, which would really play into our hands now
There’s some great players over here in Canada that could really do a BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I almost had it typed out before i cracked up laughing…..
There used to be a great player here in Canada but he just signed with Bayern Munich.
I’m not sure immigration laws will be liberalised by much post-Brexit.
Why would losing the right of free movement for Europeans make it easier to sign non-Europeans? Seems a bit of a “unicorn” idea…
Not that far-fetched. If you expect low-skilled immigrant numbers to drop considerably, you can lower the threshold for skill-based immigration for certain professions and still achieve an overall decrease.
I think the idea is that post-brexit many expect the rules to be similar across the board. Currently since European movement is free, movement from other parts of the world is more heavily restricted so that net immigration isn’t too high. Post brexit more restrictions will be applied to Europeans, meaning more space for non-Europeans, and potentially a similar standard being applied universally across the board.
Blah blah bullshit! As long as we have an owner who knows nothing about football and doesn’t give a damn about the club other than its share value we’ll do nothing.
We’re heading for a car-crash season. It’s mid July and we’ve made NO significant signings despite needing to practically rebuild the rubbish squad after last season’s debacle. And we haven’t offloaded any off the dross.
I’m just waiting for the shit to hit the fan when the season starts next month.
Yes, even more so when we start leaking in the goals again, as it looks like we really don’t want to buy a defender,
We’ve apparently agreed terms with Saint-Etienne to sign their 18 year old defender William Saliba in a £27m (!!) deal. I’ve never heard of him. It looks like he’s one “for the future” as they say and, anyway, it seems he’ll be loaned back next season to reduce the fee instalments we’ll need to pay (it’s all down to money, or our lack of it really). We desperately need to replace Mustaphi of course as a matter of urgency – if anyone will buy him.
May turn out to be a fantastic signing. loaned back for a year then another year to settle in and he will still only be 20 years old. We need players for this year, proven players that can come straight into a struggling team. Laca and auba wont wait for ever to achieve thier goals in this term. We cant waste thier best years with unproven players despite the potential. Agree we need to make these kind of signings but they most concide with players that can help us improve straightaway or we fall even further behind the others and… Read more »
Quite possible … but that’s what was said about Chambers, wasn’t it? That hasn’t, so far at least, worked out very well for Arsenal, but we’ll see.
I think it is wrong to blame us for the fact that SE did not want to loose him this summer. Getting him next summer and paying most of the transfer sum at that point seems fine business.
Of course one can bemoan that we have spend so much time on recruiting one for the future, but if he is as good as some people say that migth prove to be worth it after all.
I of course agree with everyone that we should still sign someone to play at the center of our defense now.
They have less than one month to confound your prediction and come up with something. Are we confident they will……….?
Car crash already happened. We’ve been playing Europa League for a couple years now…
I don’t often agree with you fats, but in this you have my full backing.
“we stand for to our millions”
I am not sure Edu is a true Arsenal man as Sanllehi is pretending. As a player, he got a contract offer somewhere else and bye I am gone. Just trying to be accurate otherwise I like his appointment.
He was definitely trying to pander to the fan base. I would hope that his technical football knowledge and experience would be more important than being a “true Arsenal man.”
It must be exhausting being this sceptical all the time. If his technical experience wasn’t key to him getting the job and Arsenal required was a connection to the club, we could’ve appointed Nikolas Bendtner or Emmanuel Eboue. But we didn’t did we?
And describing Edu as a “true Arsenal man” is just an honorific that acknowledges his contributions to the club. Emery used the same phrase to describe Aaron Ramsey.
What exactly is your metric for which ex-players qualify as a “true Arsenal man”?
My metrics? See my name.
Titi and Pat also got contract offers from Barcelona and Juventus, and they said bye bye too.
So following your logic, they’re not true Arsenal men either
Certainly true about him needing to be strong in his vision and execution as an executive, but I do think he took a lot from Arsene in terms of understanding “the Arsenal way” judging from his memories from his early days at the club, the kinds of values I hope this club doesn’t lose even with Arsene gone now: “Edu revealed that he moved to Arsenal at a tough time for himself, following personal trauma in his family. But he claims that manager Arsene Wenger made sure that he was looked after, which made him feel instantly at home in… Read more »
Yeah I seem to remember Edu signing for us, then suddenly having to go back to Brazil because his sister was in a car accident.
Robert Pires said that when he got injured in ’02 and missed our title run-in and the World Cup, that Arsene would also call him almost every day for the first 3 months of his rehab to keep him motivated.
Yeah us old fogies remember this well. It’s not like Pires is “coming home” or something. That said, his work for the team wasn’t insignificant, that history doesn’t leave you.
The final piece! I’m sure he can still do a job in central mid. So thats already fixed the Ramsey shaped hole. And with Freddie and Bould for wing and CB, I have no concerns about the coming season. ? ? ?
Let’s hope he is actually there long enough to have a beneficial impact. And let’s hope he can kick start some action in this transfer window. Because we’re in desperate need of it. Until someone pointed it out this morning, I wasn’t fully aware of how active Leicester have been. They put us to shame. I am doubtful about Rogers – just like this site – but he isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. How on earth can Leicester – with no CL income and a stadium revenue half ours – be outspending and out thinking us ?… Read more »
A very very good joke.
They’ve been outsmarting us since they bought Kante.
They’ve had inflow of cash from player sales in the past 4 years the like of which we could only dream of. They’ll get a huge amount for Maguire most likely too.
They sold players for good money, while we gave them away for next to nothing or let them leave on a free. Ramsey and Sanchez, probably at least £80 million down the drain, the decision making was appalling.
Indeed ! Throw in Ozil’s contract ; Miktaryan’s wages and Danny leaving for nowt – and you can see where it has all gone.
More like £140. City offered £60m for Sanchez & Aaron Is worth more than £80m Maguire.
Inept.
Well, we’ll see how he does. The problem is not particularly with the (new look) backroom, technical, team but with the squad – which still remains so far in this Summer window, peppered with sub-standard, but unfortunately for us highly paid, players. We’ll need to dump the deadwood if we can to accommodate the transfer targets that said backroom team identify (assuming we can afford them, of course).
Great, the executive jigsaw is complete… now can we please move on to the squad sudoku pronto!
Not sure what he brings or his function. At best is to groom him. Being coordinator for the Brazilian National team doesn’t bring much to the game for us in the immediate term buying and selling. Nor does our structure seem to make any sense. We already promoted Caggagio (himself on a learning curve from scouting) and we have Sanlehi as well who presumably will dictate things with Mslintat out (thankfully). There seems several layers of culpability now to point fingers at if things go wrong. What we really should be doing (if the owner was more invested in interest)… Read more »
You just repeat the same fucking shit in every post.
I hope that we remember this statement from Raul when he flails about looking for someone to blame if we don’t get anything done this summer and then ignore the January window again in 2020.
BRING EVERTON SOARES
“croaked the Spaniard”
hehehehe
Quite apt, seeing as how he looks like Baron Silas Greenback.
Mate, let’s start putting a team together that doesn’t serve a shit show at regular intervals?
Welcome back Edu!!!
Danny DeVito + Tom Waits + Used car salesman = Raul Sannlehi
Until proven otherwise, this guy just seems like another oily BS artist.
Glad to be proven wrong, but so far he’s been shit.
Sven Mislintat was getting it done. He bolted or was kicked out. What does that tell you?
Prove us wrong Raul.