I’ve heard from 3 separate sources (one inside Arsenal) that Sven Mislintat will leave Arsenal, some reporting by the end of the month.

This is a stunning development.

The exDortmund scout has been the great white hope of the Arsenal rebirth, the one truly exceptional hire the club made under the doomed tenure of Ivan Gazidis.

I have no idea why he’s leaving, so I’ll speculate. You’d have to imagine it’s either because he doesn’t see a future at a club like Arsenal that’s in such turmoil, or he’s had a very big fallout with Vinai and Raul. I’m leaning towards him leaving as he’d just been promoted, but you never know.

There’s the possibility that he’s butted heads with Unai Emery in the same way he fell out with Thomas Tuchel. The Spaniard clearly has preferred players he wants to bring to the club. Denis Suarez, Ever Banega, and Yannick Carrasco have the odor of Emery as I can’t imagine for one moment Sven would be pushing for journeyman hacks lost in their careers.

There will no doubt be a lot of finger pointing toxifying the boardroom. The club has no real leadership with the absurd shared model of power they’ve adopted, so it’s possible Sven has taken the bullet for the subpar execution of the Arsenal rebirth. It’s probably not difficult to be unimpressed with some of his early signings. He leant hard into exDortmund players at huge expense to the club.

Regardless of the reason, it’s pretty clear why we’re not buying players this January.

This is a very bad look for Arsenal. We appear directionless on the pitch and now it seems the dreams we had of being united off it are a long way from the truth. My big concern is that we’re heading into an incredibly important summer with Emery being the only true footballing man at the club. His record at PSG for picking players was less than impressive, if he’s steering the ship now, we really are heading down a mediocre path.

I’ll be back with more thoughts tomorrow.

UPDATE: My story was 100% correct, Rapha Honigstein confirmed with ESPN. Just to be clear, I verified rumours shared by two disconnected fans. I wouldn’t have run the story if I wasn’t sure it was true.

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