Arsenal: Monchi succeeds where Sven Mislintat failed

Roma’s Sporting Director Monchi is being linked with Arsenal’s Technical Director role. He would succeed where the departed Sven Mislintat failed: a relationship with Unai Emery.

It was Ivan Gazidis who implemented the new managerial structures at Arsenal. In the final 18 months of Arsene Wenger’s tenure, he wanted to shift to a more modern approach, with the infamous role of a Director of Football discussed — and then rudely dismissed by Wenger, with the Frenchman saying that he does not know what one does.

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The plan was simple: a team of experts — himself, Sven Mislintat and Raul Sanllehi — would work behind the scenes on transfers, recruitment, commercial revenue, global contacts, to support a head coach, not a manager. In the summer of 2018, Unai Emery would become that head coach.

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Within four months of this new super-team being assembled, Gazidis, its spearhead, left. Four months later, reports of rifts between Mislintat, Sanllehi and Emery resulted in the former swiftly following suit. Very suddenly, it left Arsenal looking for a replacement.

One name that has surfaced in the past week is Monchi, the current Sporting Director at Roma. Emery, in his pre-match press conference before Friday night’s match against Manchester United, was asked about the highly regarded director:

"“I worked very well with him in Sevilla for three and a half years and my relationship with him is good. He is a good person and a good professional. I can say he is working in Roma and this issue is the club’s responsibility <…> Maybe if you do this recruitment quickly, maybe you can do with a mistake. It’s better to do it with calm and finding the best possible person to do this work. The club is working on that. It is not my issue."

It is clear that Emery and Monchi still have a strong relationship with one another, even after Emery departed Sevilla three-and-a-half years ago and Monchi duly followed just nine months later. And their strong working relationship was proven during a very successful period at Sevilla, one that resulted in three successive Europa Leagues.

And this is where Mislintat famously failed — it is up to debate whether this was his failure or the club’s failure, but the point remains the same: collectively, there was failure of some kind. The reason why the Swede is leaving is that he did not get on with Emery and Sanllehi, reportedly frustrated with the lack of influence he believed he held in the room, especially when it came to recruitment. Given that he was named Head of Recruitment, that is perhaps a fair gripe.

Monchi, presumably, would not encounter these same problems. I do not know what his relationship with Sanllehi is, if at all, though I would be surprised if they hadn’t conducted business at some point, being major figures in Spanish club football for more than a decade, but he does have a prior experience of working with Emery, and a successful one at that.

If Arsenal were to pursue Monchi as their new Technical Director then there are a lot of reasons to like it. He is proven. He is experienced. He understands European football innately. But more than anything, he succeeds where Mislintat failed.