The Athletic report that Arsenal have parted ways with Huss Fahmy, the club’s chief contract negotiator.
With a background in law, he was appointed by Ivan Gazidis in 2017 from Team Sky (Cycling), working at the time with Dick Law.
After the American stepped down he took a more prominent role in the post Arsene Wenger set-up which included Sven Mislintat and Raul Sanllehi.
Since Mikel Arteta took over, and Edu became the official Technical Director following Sanllehi’s sudden departure, there have been a number of significant changes behind the scenes, including the departure of many coaches and scouting staff – including Head of International Recruitment Francis Cagigao.
Sam Dean of the Telegraph reports that Arsenal will seek to hire a football operations executive to deal with contracts, not just for signings but in terms of renewals.
The debut of 19 year old Folarin Balogun in last night’s 3-0 defeat of Dundalk might well be seen as telling as his contractual situation had resulted in an ongoing stalemate – and perhaps a different approach from the manager and his team might well secure the future of the highly rated striker.
It now means that every hire made by Gazidis as he sought to put in a place to deal with life after Wenger has gone. Mislintat was forced out in a power struggle with Sanllehi; Unai Emery lasted just 18 months in the job as Head Coach; Sanllehi was removed from his position just six weeks after KSE appointed Tim Lewis, a corporate lawyer, to provide some oversight; and now Fahmy joins them.
I guess Edu’s at the wheel… jeez….
Wheel of Fortune maybe.
Lots of changes at Arsenal it’s important we get the right appointments for the sake of our future. I always wondered why we were so terrible at selling players for a decent amount of money. We spend 72m on Pepe yet we couldn’t get a dime for some players only got 3m for Gnabry etc its like we suck at negotiating deals when its our turn to sell never understood how we were so terrible at this. Maybe this guy leaving would change that. Levy at Spurs would never do the kind of deals we do when we sell players… Read more »
Levy is able to get good transfer fees because the spurs players wage bill is very manageable.
We cant because the ones we want to shift on are overpaid for their respective talent. So buying clubs dont want to or cannot buy a player of ours for a decent fee and pay the wages the players want.
Players are employees, and not many people willingly take paycuts in any profession.
I believe Jackstoney was talking about SELLING players not buying players.
So was I Harry
Sp*rs players are if anything underpaid (shrewd Levy) so when someone wants to buy one of theirs the buying club are more likely to pay a decent fee because they dont have the concern of somehow matching an obscene contract that said player shouldn’t be on.
At Arsenal we have the likes of Mustafi and Kola paid way beyond their means, or say a Chambers whose paid beyond what hes managed to achieve so far.
Anyone buying wont want to pay market rate because they have to somehow match their current wages at least.
Make sense?
Hope it is. This makes sense though when you aint able to sell someone like Mustafi and then offer him a new contract( should be double sacked for this) and he rejects, you deserve to be sacked.
Finally getting rid of all Ivan the Fraud appointments.
He was reported to have over ruled Arteta about the Partey transfer so that’s probably true.
Edu’s spreading his tentacles for sure.
The notification popped up and I just yelled “what is going on?!”
The cat was a bit shocked.
Same with me, but I inserted the F word after the ‘what’
I liked the Nosferatu vibes, but it can hardly be said he was doing a good job. Look at the Luiz contract, for example?
Look at liverpools contract negotiator then look at faymy enough said good riddons
Nothing was wrong with the Luiz contract. It was 1 year with an option for another. I have more of a problem with the Cedric and Willian contracts
Christ, a lot of restructuring going on still. Don’t think he’ll be missed looking at the state of current/recent contract negotiations.
100% agree. the evidence is there for all to see. too many people who IG recruited have proven to be inefficient at best and incompetent at worst.
Is Doris the tea lady still at the club? We spent decades as one of the most settled clubs in the world with regards to staffing, now we can’t predict who will be here by next week.
It all feels weird
#Doristhetealadyout
Give Doris money to Mustafi
Give mustafi money to Doris
give mustafi a free transfer
If Doris was appointed by Gazidis, she’s no doubt spent the last few years putting the wrong amount of milk and sugar in everyone’s cups, periodically running out of teabags entirely, and cancelling the club’s standing order for Yorkshire Tea to replace it with a new brand, “Joorabchian Blend”, for which she was awarded an acquisition bonus of £3m.
😂😂😂😂. Kia Joorabichan seems closer to Edu than Raul though. We aren’t done seeing that guy at the club just yet.
Her 30 year contract is starting to look like a bad piece of business
It was always going to be a turbulent transition after such a long and stable period under Wenger. He, and his system, at times seemed to be almost larger than the club itself (which was a problem). I’m certainly not blaming Wenger whom I adore, for this. The board gave him that power. But everyone knew that when he left a period of instability would surely follow. Let’s hope it’s beginning to settle down now.
The best scenario for the club would have been Wenger allowing a football director of sorts – even someone who was younger who he trained – to leave the club with more of a structure when it was time for him to leave. The real issue was you couldn’t strip Wenger of any power without firing him – which is pretty much what happened.
Doris would have been perfect in that role. What a missed opportunity that was.
To be perfectly honest, I think any tea lady worth her salt should be able to operate effectively within the parameters of a club like Arsenal, regardless of the personalities at the upper echelons. I get that it’s been an unstable period for the club, but employees in Doris’ position shouldn’t be using that an excuse for under performing. If we want to get back to where we want to be, at the highest level, everyone at this club needs to be carrying out their responsibilities to the utmost of their ability- from the manager, right down to the tea… Read more »
Mesut Ozil will. I’d put money on it.
I’m not surprised in the least at his going. Arsenal are now left with the over paid, under achieving players of the Gazidis/Sanllehi era.
The cull continues, and it may not be over yet. Like others, I suspect that Edu (with the backing of Kroenke jnr.) is probably the driving force at the club.
He does leave having (at least his title would suggest) worked on securing Aubu and Saka to new deals, which is a positive, but he has been involved in an extended run of woeful contract management and head-scratching deals by the club. How much of that was really down to him is unclear, but certainly feels like Arsenal could use another fresh perspective in this department..
Finally that shitty Gazidis flavour is expelled from the orifice of Arsenal. The palate is cleansed.
The exorcism goes on.
This is a good thing. The handling of contracts in this club is a disgrace and if you’r head of that departement than the head must roll.
Agreed.
So, the head of contracts has had his contract terminated, shows how efficient he has been.
“Sanllehi was removed from his position just six weeks after KSE appointed Tim Lewis”
I’m surprised they’ve managed to keep the details of this in house, unless I’ve missed something? All we ever saw was some vague suggestion it was connected to over paying for Pepe, but is that really the sort of thing the owners would appoint a lawyer to investigate?
Worst case scenario, Raul was embezzling through third party intermediaries. Paying high sums on a transfers in “consultation” fees and then getting his % a few years later.
That’s of course the worst I can think of. It’s definitely something some wealthy people would have you killed over in other countries.
If this actually happened, the board probably told him he’d better stay silent and not demand compensation if he ever wanted to work again let alone not see prison.
It DOES feel like there was some shady business going on at the club. I heard a report (I think it was here on Arseblog or on the Arsecast but can’t be sure and don’t want to mis-cite) that the amount we paid for Pepe was exactly the amount his old club was in debt. Add that on to what we paid for Saliba and you can’t help but feel like something fishy was going on behind the scenes, and saddled two promising players with exorbitant price tags and all the conflated expectations that come with them. I hope this… Read more »
I feel the same way regardless of the severity of Sanllehi’s misgivings. These type of transfers are more common than we supporters think. It’s the same thing with Joao Felix’s transfer to Atletico. The fee they paid for him was very close to what pretty close to what Benfica needed to mitigate their debts in their balance sheet for last season. And now that Felix is a young player struggling with confidence due to it. Atletico also acted funny with Alvaro Morata. Purchased him for £31.5m after a £16.2m loan fee. Now Morata has inexplicably been shipped off to Juventus.… Read more »
Saliba was totally worth of the pricetag. Leicester paid more for Fofana. Saliba is so good that he could be sold for thrice the price in the future. We just have to handle him well.
Yet to be seen as Fofana wasn’t loaned back a year with a second year on the cards & is already playing first team football. Saliba still doesn’t know where he’ll be playing in his 2nd year yet & could be half way through his contract before kicking a ball for the 1st team,.
If this is our reaction to (over) spending on one player, what must Chelsea employees be thinking.
Even their kitman is probably briefing the media on how he had nothing to do with Kepa, nothing, honest.
This is a good old fashioned power grab, no more or less. It’ll be judged the same way as previous grabs were – by on-pitch results. Else the musical chairs continues.
I know football, especially Premier League, is big business but the players themselves are humans. Seems to me as if they enjoy dealing with other humans like ex-players who have made it into management (Edu, Mikel) rather than corporate machine lawyers and the such like who have no idea what it means to be a footballer. They just buy and sell commodities. Maybe that is why Auba and Saka have chosen to stay on and give young Balogun a run in the team and he’ll probably sign on the dotted line too.
The players care most about money thats why they all want to come to england and playing in the champions league isnt as important to them as it used to be
most of the players dont even get involved in contract talks etc and deal with the club only through their agents.
Good! Finally scraped all the Ivan tainted dogshit off the bottom of our shoe.
Insane. Would love to have heard all of the conversations leading up to today.
Finally.
Why don’t we say sorry to ‘Sven’ and ask him back, start all over again.
Lichtsteiner and Sokratis that’s why!
Thanks for nothing, Ivan!
The Gazidis disaster is now over. Don’t know how this fool kept his job so long after the disaster with Arsenal contracts
They say there is only one thing worse than making a bad decision and that is not changing it when you realise your mistake. Let’s face it the Kroenkes are owners, they aren’t football people. They had to hire people they trusted knew what they were doing. It seems they have realised the people they hired weren’t good enough. They have dropped the axe. It almost seems like we are going back to a more Dein/Wenger like partnership, though not maybe in terms of who has the player knowledge and who does the deals. But certainly a tighter decision making… Read more »
Morbid, but we could observe the comings and goings at Arsenal through a liveblog. Or like Trainspotting
He was the one dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s on those dodgy Sanllehi deals and the one responsible for running out of time with the Saliba loan deal. He was probably on an exorbitant salary. Good riddance.
Huss Fahmy and Dick Law sound like porn names yet it was the club that was screwed.
Ivan the truly terrible.
Ivan Gazidiz CEO AC Milan, ““We have a clear strategy: to sign some of the best talent in the world”
Interesting to see if he re-employs Sanllehi now he’s free?
The Arsenal guillotine – No one is safe ✂🔪. Everyone’s getting sacked like an NFL quarterback.
I don’t know much about Fahmy, just that he’s also a solicitor. I do know that our track record on player management has been a disaster.
I hope his replacement will be much better and hopefully the club comes out better.
Watch out Edu!
Just get rid of everyone and bring back Wenger. I think I rather finish 4th every year, and I promise I won’t complain. I miss our attacking style of play under Wenger. Emery and Arteta are fkin boring.
I’m assuming offering Mustafi a contract extension was the final straw
When mustafi rejects a contract extension, then you know the future is not bright.
That would have been an Edu decision.
This chap simply executes on contract.
I don’t want to defend this guy, but I can not imagine that it is his decision if Mustafi is extended or not. Edu or Mikel communicate to him that Mustafi should be convinced to stay and that guy has to actually achieve that, but once again, who comes, goes or stays is certainly not decided by Fahmy.
Na na na na hey hey hey goodbye.
Paid £7.2m for Pepe, removed the decimal point and charged £72m to Arsenal. Trousered the remaining £64.8. What’s the issue?
We paid 72 for Pepe and 28 for Saliba, and 8 or 12 for the mysterious Mari. For the same amount Chelsea got Werner and Havartz. Saliba is not ready to play, Mari played one game, Pepe is hot and cold. These bastards should have been fired years ago. I am just glad we didn’t pay 40 million for Chambers.
Crazy 27m for a player who is then deemed not ready for 2 of those seasons. 72m for another who sporadically produces. BOTH on installments that hold us back in subsequent transfer windows. Then the salaries Ozil still on books, Auba increased (which is fair but an older player) and then Willian at 220K, at Partey on a big package too. Could not close out on Aouar. Still too many peripherals unable to move like Sokratis, Mustafi, Chambers, Torreira to some extent… Sales has been an issue. Contract negotiator is not what we need, we really need people who understand… Read more »
Hopefully Vinai is next
These are peripherals. They are probably on exorbitant packages which is the problem.
But Vinai really oversees the business end and operations. We should not be banking on him to come into the football side.
We need more experienced football men for that.
We use to have Wenger watching and dictating procedure (Perhaps too much) keeping an eye on our behalf. After he left, all the shennanigans set in as predictable. Not sure Edu is the right man either although at very least the owner’s thinking is he is ex-player so may have more loyalty. But what we really need as mentioned many times is people with in trench experience for us. We are still making silly mistakes with Willian on 220K per week for 3 years added to Auba’s raise etc We are still not well managed. As mentioned if we had… Read more »
Hakim Ziyech again for Chelsea today. Could have got him last season instead got Pepe. Edu and company wanked off Lyon on Aouar window of opportunity there gone too. Instead writing was on the wall when we confirmed (too early) on Willian for 220K per week for 3 seasons. Again we should have got in IMO a temporary solution for a year (diff to Willian deal) in Banega or Khedira at CM and prioritised the Aouar capture first and foremost. We were dicking about with a low 32m offer when we should know Aulas is a sensitive chap and we… Read more »