We have been talking about the unquantifiable “phases” that Mikel Arteta has been talking about since the beginning of his second season at Arsenal and of course,
all Arsenal fans know that it was not long after Edu Gaspar joined Arsenal as the “technical Director”
(when Unai Emery was the coach) that Emery was sacked a year later,
and it seemed that Edu had decided that the club was in turmoil and had gone drastically awry since Arsene Wenger had left the club.
It now appears that Edu and Arteta had been having private discussions about how they had to come up
with a plan to take Arsenal back to the very top once again,
and these discussions came to a head when a replacement for Emery was needed,
and then the talks with Arteta became the focus on the long-term decisions needed to make those wishes become a reality.
Now, for the first time, Edu has revealed in an interview with MenInBlazers,
how he and Arteta made these long-term plans,
and why the first thing on the agenda was to get rid of the high-earning but underperforming
stars that were not a very good example to the few young stars we had left on the books.”
Sometimes you have to make decisions that are not popular and popular,”
he said. “You have to be very strong in your ideas, what you believe,
what is good for the club, what is good for the future of the club and everything.
“So for me, there is some elements here in football which I will always be with a lot of attention.
I always started to see the squad when I enjoyed or when I saw the squads I started to the squad balance,
the positions, the age, and the group that we have but there are three elements here which for me you have to be aware.
“First of all, we have to see the age of the player, and then you have to see the salary of the player and third you have to see the performance of the player. So if you are over 26, 27-years-old you need attention.
“If his salary is high, you need attention and if he’s not performing, you’re dead. Let’s come back,
if you have a player 27 years old, 28 years old, a big salary, but he’s performing you can accept.
“What you cannot accept is if you have those three elements and one of them went over 28 you start to be uncomfortable,
you should move on because maybe this player is blocking someone younger as an asset to help you.
So, when I came into Arsenal I saw all the squads with all my respect,
almost everyone was almost 26, 27, and biggest salaries not performing.
f you have those three elements, which club in the world wants to come here and buy one of our players,
no one. So how you deal with that situation when you have those situations in your hands,
you have to be strong and sometimes you have to make decisions.
“So, or you go strong and try to make those decisions to let those players go or your project is going to take instead of three, four years it will take seven, eight, nine.
Then unpopular decisions start to come because most of the players watch,
they have those elements sometimes in the club they have a fan base,
and they have the media which love the players but for the club,
it’s not healthy to keep those players in that situation.”
We now know that they went for the quick fix to start their “phases”
and as Edu said, they went for the 3 or 4-year plan, rather than the longer version,
and they very quickly started dismantling the older age players, like Sokratis, Kolasinac,
Lacazette, David Luiz, and of course, the one with the biggest wage was the famous
“Shirt-Seller” Mesut Ozil, seemed to be quite happy doing what he wanted while quietly building up his bank account without worrying about the fortunes of the club he was supposed to be working for.
Considering where Arsenal are right now, it would appear that their plans are coming to fruition,
whether you think the way they went about was considered ruthless or not is what I will leave you to discuss….