Arsenal hiring the right executives is key to squad rebuild

Picture this, Arsenal fans, you are at the grocery store and are making an absolute mess of picking a few apples. You turn around and see someone carefully selecting apples from the pile, using a combination of smell, touch and look. You request that person to help you pick a few apples and that person helps you out. A simple act of kindness that leaves you with better apples than you picked.

The global football transfer market is essentially a complicated version of picking the right apples for your club. The major difference being that there are no random acts of kindness but you can hire the person who knows to identify the right players and bring them in. Arsenal need to play this right.

Arsenal have recruited well on occasion in the recent years – Alexis Sanchez at £32m was an absolute steal while Santi Cazorla at £10m was a masterstroke. However, those transfers happened before the crazy shift in transfer prices that happened around 2016-2017.

To make matters worse for Arsenal, while they may have recruited well enough, the club has got little to nothing when moving players on. Liverpool managed to get £23.5m for Rhian Brewster – a player who played a total of four times for the club and scored zilch. Arsenal, on the other hand, were struggling to agree a fee of £15m for Ainsley Maitland-Niles in the same summer. Maitland-Niles had already played a 100 times for the club and is a versatile player, covering three positions.

Arsenal hiring the right executives is key to squad rebuild

Rebuilding a club of Arsenal’s stature requires the club executives to be the best in the business. Hiring Richard Garlick as Director of Football Operations is a step in the right direction. But the club needs to be even more aggressive.

1. Luis Campos (AS Monaco and Lille OSC)

If Arsenal wanted to go back to the time when Arsene Wenger smartly recruited unknown but excellent players from obscure academies, Luis Campos is the man who reinvented that process. During his time at AS Monaco, he managed to unearth a certain Kylian Mbappe who would lead the club to the Ligue 1 title and earn €180m in transfer fees. At Monaco, Campos would also be responsible for finding players like Bernardo Silva, Anthony Martial and Yannick Carrasco. All of these players and many more would actually move for at least four times the value the were bought for.

Even a player like James Rodriguez, who was purchased for €45m from FC Porto, was sold for €80m to Real Madrid.

At Lille, he has been arguably even more effective. He would bring in players like Nicolas Pepe, Victor Osimhen at €18-22m price point and then sell them for fees north of €70m. He would also find excellent free transfers like this season’s sensation Burak Yilmaz or midfield gems like Boubakary Soumare.

The beauty of Luis Campos’ process is that he always looks for players that would fit the coach’s system. If one player goes out, Campos already has a ready replacement lined up. When Gabriel left for Arsenal, he brought in Sven Botman. When Pepe left for Arsenal, he brought in Osimhen. And when Osihmen left, he brought in Jonathan David, with Lille not missing a beat due to any of these transfers.

Luis Campos would have been a great acquisition for Arsenal. A man who would be able to find the best-fit players for Arteta’s system without breaking bank. While Arsenal are not a selling focused club like Lille, receiving £50m instead of £5m, for a player like Serge Gnabry would go a long way to reducing those revenue losses.

As of writing this article, Luis Campos is headed to Real Madrid. That ship has surely sailed. He’ll get them Kylian Mbappe, won’t he?