My Unpopular Decisions Have Made Arsenal Title Challengers – Edu Gaspar

Arsenal’s sporting director, Edu Gaspar has come out to say that his unpopular decisions have helped transform the club into regular Premier League title contenders. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, as a sporting director, it is his job to make harsh decisions even if they are not popular, so he simply had to offload older players who were earning huge salaries when he joined Arsenal.

Edu added that despite such players having a huge fanbase and lots of media love, they had to go.

His words, “When you live in the football world, sometimes you have to make decisions simple and sometimes you have to make decisions even if it is not popular. When I joined, I looked at the squad balance, the positions, and the age of the group. There are three elements that you have to be really aware of. First of all, we have to see the age of the player. Then you have to see the salary of the player. And third, you have to see the performance of the player. If you have a player over 26 or 27 years, you need attention. If his salary is high, you need attention. And if he is not performing, you are dead.

When I came to Arsenal, I saw all the squad, with respect, almost everyone was over 26, 27, on big salaries and not performing. If you have those three elements, which club in the world wants to come here and buy one of our players? No-one. Then unpopular decisions started to come. Because most of the players that have those elements, they have a fanbase and a media that love them. But for the club, it is not healthy sometimes to keep the player in that situation.”

WOW.

Arsenal Football Club is an English professional football club based in Holloway, North London. Arsenal compete in the Premier League, the top flight of English football.

The club has won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, two League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, the Football League Centenary Trophy, one European Cup Winners’ Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.

After conducting an overhaul in the club’s operating model to coincide with Wenger’s departure, Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club’s new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club’s first ever ‘head coach’ and second manager from outside the United Kingdom.

In Emery’s first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was dismissed as manager and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach. On 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the league season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994–95, but beat Chelsea 2–1 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season, Arteta’s title was changed from head coach to manager.