Arsenal: Darren Burgess departure the latest screw up

Arsenal have fired director of high performance, Darren Burgess. The Australian, who leaves after just two years in the role, is the latest management screw up at the club.

In the final 18 months of Arsene Wenger’s tenure, Arsenal positioned themselves to deal with the impending departure of their orchestrator and commander in chief about as well any professional organisation could have.

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Ivan Gazidis, as chief executive, slowly moved into a position of greater power. He hired Huss Fahmy, a negotiations and contracts expert, Sven Mislintat as the new head of recruitment and Raul Sanllehi as a head of relations, all in the hope of assembling a team into a which a head coach could be inserted. By the time Wenger did resign, the Gunners were ready. Apparently.

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Wenger left a year ago. From a footballing and performance perspective, the key individuals at the club after his exit were Gazidis, Mislintat, Sanllehi and new head coach Unai Emery. Fahmy was still a relevant figure, as was Darren Burgess, who was handpicked by Wenger to become the director of high performance. So you would think that all of these individuals would still be at the club to lead it forward, right? Well, no.

After just 12 short but tumultuous months in the post-Wenger era, almost every key individual that was tasked with managing the transition period has departed. Gazidis resigned months after, moving to AC Milan. Mislintat followed soon after, reportedly unhappy with his depreciating power and influence. And now, according to Charles Watts of Goal.com, Burgess has been fired by Emery, the Australian deemed surplus to requirements in the high-performance coaching department.

Now, I am obviously not in a position to comment on whether Burgess has done a good job or not over the past two years. It would be fair to argue that Arsenal’s fitness levels have improved since his arrival in 2017, which is what his job is. But clearly, Emery is not happy with something and the decision has been made.

I do not really have much to say either way on the decision made, but I do have concerns regarding the management structures of the club. They have lost a chief executive, a head of recruitment, and now their head of high performance, all in the space of a year after losing the most influential manager in world football. That is not ideal.

More than that, they are yet to replace their head of recruitment. Edu is expected to become the technical director after the conclusion of this summer’s Copa America, but in the meantime, Arsenal have been attempting to prepare themselves for a hugely significant summer without a director-of-football-type figure. Not ideal.

Burgess, then, is just the latest screw up in a long line of management mishaps. The post-Wenger transition was meant to smooth, but so far, it has been anything but.