It was disappointing to see the announcement of Vinai Venkatesham being promoted to the most senior Arsenal employee he met with some casual racism.
What was equally as disappointing was that much of the abuse came from South Asian Arsenal “fans”.
Vinai is one of the few people from with a BAME background in a high profile Premier League job, and yet instead of him being celebrated, people racially abuse him.
He is in his role because of his ability, not because of his ethnicity. It is a role he deserves and highlights once more that Arsenal are a diverse club.
The racism is not needed. It is never needed.
The interview with Vinai was an interesting one.
In it he describes Mike Arteta and Edu as the “two experts” and “they have a very, very clear plan about how they want to rebalance our squad in the short term, in the medium term and in the long term.”
He also mentions Per Mertesacker overseeing the academy.
It is clear that Vinai understands his own expertise and is not going to pretend to be something he is not. He will not interfere in the footballing side of Arsenal – he will leave that to the experts.
The other interesting aspect is the age of all.
Vinai is just 39 (which is surprising!), Edu 42, Arteta 38 and Per 35.
We have a young, hunger, energetic management team looking to move the side forward.
Finally, it is that time of year when people diatribe fake opening day fixture lists. And it the media are reporting on these “leaks”.
Incredible really that media outlets should be fact checking stories before writing them.
It is no surprise those papers and radio stations reporting the news. It just shows that they are more interested in reporting news that gets hits, not news that is true.
We had heard rumours that Arsenal were playing a management restructure at the top, but we thought this might occur after the new season restarts so as not to disrupt this summers transfer business. Instead Raul Sanllehi left the club with immediate effect.
Why did Raul leave?
Well we really don’t know.
There are plenty of accusations on twitter, including that he profited from the Nicolas Pepe deal. There is no evidence that this is true.
But what is clear that since Arsene Wenger left, the club has been dysfunctional at the top.
Wenger ran everything at the club. Fingers in every pies. It was his overlord way of running the club that saw it successful.
But it was also the power he wielded that saw the club enter a downward spiral, as he became accountable to no one.
Arsenal needed refreshing. We needed a reboot. And the club decided to go down the root completely opposite to Wenger and bring in multiple people to run things.
Firstly we had Ivan Gazidis as CEO.
Under Wenger, Gazidis had very little to do with the footballing side of the club. He was mainly dealing with the commercial side.
With Wenger gone, Arsenal firstly bought in Raul Sanllehi as Head of Football Relations and Sven Mislintat as Head of Recruitment.
This left Gazidis in charge of the commercial side, Sanllehi in charge of the football side and Mislintat in charge of the recruitment. The Head Coach (ie Unai Emery) only had to focus on coaching and picking the team.
When Gazidis left, Sanllehi was promoted as was Vinai Venkatesham. The long time Arsenal employee taking over Gazidis’s role over seeing the commercial side of the club.
Then the battle of egos began as Arsenal transfer decisions went from a committee of 3 to a committee of two. What happens when they disagree?
Well when Sanllehi and Mislintat disagrees, Sanllehi establishes his seniority and Mislintat left.
Recently Mislintat labelled the clubs recruitment department “bloated”. He also said that the clubs structure was “dysfunctional”.
The actions taken by the board – making many scouts redundant and saying goodbye to Sanllehi would indicate that they agree.
When Mislintat left, Arsenal added Edu to the clubs upper structure as Technical Director.
I as it just a case of too many cooks?
We had Sanllehi, Edu and an outspoken manager in Mikel Arteta who wanted to “do things his way”.
Arteta is a strong minded character. He knows what he wants to do. How he wants to manage. The players he needs.
Was there a conflict between Arteta and Sanllehi in the same way Emery and Sanllehi disagrees over players?
Sanllehi reportedly over ruled Emery a few times on players, and the result was Emery didn’t have the squad he wanted and got sacked. The board backed Sanllehi.
But this time it felt different.
Arteta got his way with David Luiz’s new contract and the signing of Willian. The board backed Arteta above Sanllehi.
It fees like the board want to put Arteta front and centre of Arsenal Football Club. That Lord Harris of Peckham, Ken Friar and Tim Lewis see him as a long term manager.
Once the decision is made that Arteta is the most important man at the club, you then need other employees to work alongside him, not work against him.
Arteta and Edu have a very good relationship. Both former Arsenal players. Both central midfielders. Same mentality on how to ply a game. They seem to work well together.
That left Sanllehi as the odd man out.
He is the one that doesn’t have a history with Arsenal, that works in a different way to Arsenal. He wasn’t really an Arsenal man.
The promotion of Vinai is also something that should be shouted about.
The British born Indian is well respected throughout football, and at just 39 (yes, he had a hard paper round), Arsenal have a very youthful looking management team.
There could be more Senior back office Arsenal employees to leave in the coming weeks.
After years of criticism of the board, asking if they care, it is good to see them take action.
The decision on Sanllehi was made by Lord Harris of Peckham, Ken Friar and Tim Lewis.
They are going all in on the Edu / Arteta partnership.
For many years, fans have been critical of the Arsenal board.
Questions have been asked what they actually do.
Do they actually hold those running the club accountable (IE Ivan Gazidis and Raul Sanllehi), or do they just turn up to a monthly board meeting, drink expensive whiskey and get free tickets to games?
At least since the likes of David Dein left and Danny Fizsman passed away, it certainly felt like our board was just an “old boys club” rather than working to move the club forward.
Peter Hill-Wood (RIP) seemed to think his only role was to talk down to fans at the AGM, whilst Sir Chips Keswick was no better.
Sir Chips Keswick retired as Arsenal Chairman in May, leaving just Ken Friar and Lord Harris of Peckham on the board from the pre-Stan Kroenke days.
There is no doubting either of their Arsenal credentials.
Friar is the clubs longest-serving director and has been a mainstay of the Club for more than 60 years.
During this time, Mr Friar has done just about every job at the Club including working as Club Secretary and Managing Director.
Lord Harris joined the Arsenal board in 2005, having founded Carpetright in 1988. He is also a life long Arsenal fan.
Since Sir Chips Keswick stepped down, there has been an overhaul at Arsenal.
It started with the 55 redundancies, that saw the club slim down its scouting department and close the shop at Finsbury Park.
Then we have the reliable James Olley over at ESPN breaking the news that as part of the review into how recruitment team had operated in recent years, the transfer of Nicolas Pepe was under investigation.
Arsenal are currently looking into how to streamline and improve their operations.
This review seems to have been instigated by the board rather than Head of Football Raul Sanllehi.
Mikel Arteta has the full backing of the board and Arsenal view him as the man to re-build the club around.
The board have also fully backed Arteta’s decision to not play Mesut Ozil, listened to him over David Luiz’s contract and are encouraging him to be more involved in transfer decision making.
Arsenal’s greatest period of success in the modern era came when the board were highly active with the running of the club.
The likes of Lord Harris and Ken Friar are Arsenal through and through. They care about the club deeply.
Hopefully with them ensuring Sanllehi is held accountable, holding the Spaniard to account, the club will get out of its decline and begin moving forward again.
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 