Football journalist David Ornstein has been talking about the recent departure of Arsenal’s head of football, Raul Sanllehi.
This comes after Ornstein recently hosted an episode of The Athletic’s Ornstein & Chapman Podcast to talk through the hottest topics surrounding a range of Premier League clubs at the moment.
After it was announced by Arsenal that Sanllehi had stepped down from his position at the north London club, Ornstein shared his thoughts on the matter.
He said: “It felt like it had come to the point where this decision wasn’t a great surprise, it was more the timing of it that was a shock. Now, Arsenal and Sanllehi have put it down to the effects of [the pandemic]. We saw that Arsenal made 55 members of staff redundant and on top of that, they really decimated their scouting department, which they say is a bid to modernise – people will have their own take on that.
“But to see a week or so later see Sanllehi go, makes me think there is more to it. We don’t know; Arsenal have assured us there’s nothing to it, but he was in the middle of the negotiations over the Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang new contract, over the potential signing of Gabriel [Magalhaes] from Lille and Thomas Partey from Atletico Madrid.
“He’s not just anybody at the club, he’s the head of football, and so removing that person at that moment in time is really curious, and I’m sure we’ll continue to look into it and ask questions about it.”
In their official club announcement revealing the departure, Arsenal also revealed that their current managing director, Vinai Venkatesham, would be the man to take over from Sanllehi.
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TIF Thoughts…
As Ornstein mentioned in the podcast, for Sanllehi to leave the club at this point in time where they are reportedly in the middle of securing a number of potentially crucial deals for the team going forward, does seem to raise a few eyebrows over Sanllehi’s decision to step down at this moment in time.
You would think that it would have been better to complete these reported deals first and then leave if he still wished to.
It will now be intriguing to see if Arsenal do manage to secure these reported deals this summer or if Sanllehi’s departure could be an issue regarding them.