Arsenal: Monchi double down on Unai Emery sensible

Arsenal are reportedly set to hire Monchi as their technical director at the end of the season. Doubling down on Unai Emery and giving him the best platform for success makes a whole lot of sense.

With Ivan Gazidis departing at the start of the year and Sven Mislintat subsequently falling out with Raul Sanllehi, Arsenal had a rather gaping hole in their management structure. As such, the club have since been searching for a new technical director, with a slew of European targets linked with the position, including former players Edu and Marc Overmars.

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However, according to reports this week, it seems as though the club have settled on their man: Monchi, currently the director of football at Roma.

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There is a very clear reason as to why Arsenal want Monchi: He has a prior relationship with Unai Emery from their extremely successful time at Sevilla. And Monchi has been exceptionally positive about Emery in the past also. This is what he said in 2015 when at Sevilla about his head coach:

"Unai is critical for our model to be successful. He obtains results when we need them, he improves the players and is popular with our fans. He is the perfect fit.”"

After the 2016 Europa League cup final, in which Sevilla overturned a one-goal deficit to beat Liverpool 3-1, Monchi was equally as bullish about Emery’s managerial qualities:

"“We have a coach who is capable of bringing a dead man back to life. He spoke with a lot of calm at half-time and he convinced the players that if we got at Liverpool then we were capable of turning it around.”"

These quotes come from this excellent piece by Charles Watts of Football.London.

I am not here to comment on the working relationship of Emery and Monchi or to make an argument either way on the qualities of Monchi in managing a club and navigating a transfer market. I do not have the knowledge to say with any semblance of certainty either way. But what I can say is that Arsenal are clearly wanting to double down on their appointment of Emery, specifically targetting someone that he works well with. And that makes sense.

Whoever you are going to hire to replace Arsene Wenger, you should give them every opportunity to succeed in the role — i.e. do the precise opposite of what Manchester United did for David Moyes. Whether Emery is the right man or not, I do not know. But that does not really matter if Arsenal do not do everything they can to help him succeed. So bringing in Monchi to work with gives Emery the ideal platform to build from. If he then fails to do so, you can then say with some certainty that he was the wrong hire and move on to a new manager with confidence.

I have no idea if hiring Monchi is the right decision or not. No one does. If anyone tells you they do, then they are outright lying. But I like the fact that Arsenal are doubling down on their Emery hire. They are giving him every chance to succeed, which is precisely what they should be doing.