WHO SPENT THE MONEY? by Ken 1945
Following on from the official announcement that Declan Rice had signed for The Arsenal (what a fantastic signing and a statement by the club) the comments, inevitably, began to discuss why this kind of eye watering money transfer hadn’t happened under AW or UE?
The claim was made that AW didn’t like spending money, but was quickly challenged by another claim that he had spent £100,000,000 in his last season and that didn’t seem to tally with my recollection of events, so I checked it out.
AW announced that on the 20th of April 2018 that he was leaving the club at the conclusion of that season.
Gazidis and Wenger’s relationship had deteriorated badly and there seemed to be a power struggle going on behind the scenes and, unfortunately, it became public knowledge, when Gazidis introduced his “three musketeers” as part of his backroom shake up.
Then, on November 21st, 2017, the club made this official statement, when introducing Sven Mislintat to the media, while giving him the title of “Head of Recruitment” from the beginning of December 2017.
“One of Europe’s most respected player recruitment experts, who has that responsibility across the first team and the academy”…. (One can still source this via Google if they want to)
In fact, one of his first actions, along with Gazidis and newly appointed Huss Fahmy (in charge of players contracts) was to go to Germany in December and agree the terms and conditions for Aubameyang to sign for the club in January 2018.
That is why I never gave AW any credit for signing Aubameyang, as, quite clearly, recruitment had been taken away from him, along with the contracts of players, by Gazidis and Kroenke.
Mislintat signed a further eight players, all of whom have left the club, as has Aubameyang of course.
Stephan Lichtsteiner – Denis Suarez – Henrich Mkhitaryan – Sokratis – Mavropanos – Guendouzi – Leno – Torreira.
These were all players signed by Mislintat, that Unai Emery was presented with at the start of his career as Arsenal coach. It was also UE who wanted Zaha, but was presented with Pepe, courtesy of Mislintat once again.
The statement was made on JA that Wenger would not have agreed to having transfers and contracts taken away from him, but he obviously did, as was the case for UE and MA when the latter joined after UE departed.
The point was also made that, if, as some suggest, the club was actively looking to replace AW, why would they let him spend £100,000,000?
A very sensible point whichever side of the fence one sits!!
Thank goodness that the club and Mislintat parted company and MA then became manager.
He has made some excellent, good, bad and downright terrible signings, just as AW did, but to say that Wenger spent £100,000,000 in his last season is wrong, as is the statement that he didn’t like spending money.
I believe he made three signings that broke the club record at the time, but he just didn’t have the Kroenke3s money backing him as it is today.
I only wish that the club, after looking into Mislintat’s handling of transfers, had made their findings more transparent, as there seems to have been some very questionable signings that took place financially.
Gazidis and Mislintat have a lot to answer for in my opinion.
ken1945
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