Morning Gooners. No other place to start – despite the fact we have a big Champions League game in around 36 hours (at the time of writing) – other than the shock news that Edu has resigned from his position as Arsenal’s Sporting Director, with what felt like a rather hastily put together announcement from the club last night, confirming the exit.

I think the very nature of the quick turnaround and style of the announcement shows that Arsenal must have been a little bit blindsided by it. As Andrew from Arseblog pointed out this morning, however, there were rumours of this in the summer so I do wonder whether they knew this must have been in the offing at least to some extent. When you’re at a business and somebody is looking for an exit, you usually know because they say things; not usually to their boss, but colleagues, peers, etc.

When you add to this that there were also the rumours from the press that started to emerge 24 hours prior and that doesn’t exactly sound like a completely random and out of the blue “hey Josh, I’m offski, here’s my letter” type approach to me. So both yesterday morning when I saw some of the news articles breaking, as well as this morning when I’m trying to parse what this means for us and the current ‘process’, there are a few questions that I have ringing around my head this morning.

What was the motivations behind this?

In a weird and perverse way, I really hope it is financial and career-motivated, because if not then that points to an underlying issue(s) that perhaps we as fans aren’t aware of. On the surface this was an ex-Arsenal player, an Invincible, a guy who always represented the club so well, spoke so articulately, seemed to be completely at one with the set up and was part of the stability we’ve enjoyed in the recent past. Whilst City were moving on their Sporting Director, United were still putting their back room in place and Liverpool had lost a key puzzle piece in Klopp, we were the epitome of a stable club going about its business and slowly building up it’s power base and success. This announcement feels like a bit of a foundational stone being given a bit of a bump. Sure, Edu has some questions to answer for some of his tenure, but in the last 18 months to two years it has felt as though we were finally getting all aspects back on track. The sales were starting to look better, we looked to have a good structure in place, he’d taken on more responsibility too.

With all of those conditions, you wouldn’t have thought he would be looking around, but if the rumours of this Forest Group move prove to be true then I kind of get it. He’d basically be fronting up the whole operation as a CEO-type equivalent, supposedly he’s having his wages tripled, so when you think about it like that, then you have to say “fair enough”.

What is Arsenal’s next move?

Firstly, I don’t even know if he has a notice period. There was no mention of it at all on the official release, so how long is he an Arsenal employee for? Does he just go on gardening leave? How does this impact plans for January and beyond? The way he has spoken previously, the club are usually thinking two windows ahead, so perhaps it doesn’t impact the immediate plans, but if there were conversations taking place for January between Edu and agents of players, how can he truly be expected to be leading on any discussions now? He’ll have – and I don’t blame him on this because I’ve moved on from roles and I know that you have your eye on your next move – his thoughts on his future role and Arsenal can’t afford to have a person doing any negotiations when they have one foot out of the door. 

If this was a ‘Edu is leaving next summer’ type thing then you’d think there is time for a succession plan to be put in place, but this doesn’t feel like that and that has to be a concern, surely? Arsenal can’t rush in to an appointment that ends up with somebody as disastrous as Sanllehi, so they can’t afford to just go for a name that isn’t going to work within the approach and culture that already exists at the club. 

Then there’s another important factor that they will have to consider, which is:

What impact will this have on Arteta?

The press reports talk of the strong relationship these two have. They have worked incredibly close in the last few years. We’ve all heard the cautionary tale of Wenger and Dein when he left, with the club giving more power to Wenger and it not exactly working out. So how do Arsenal strike the balance between getting somebody in who Mikel can have as an ally at Arsenal, but also somebody who will challenge him and his thinking so that we get the best for the present and the future of the club? 

Does Mikel feel like his position at the club is a little less shaky now? Again, I’ve worked at places where my boss has left and my immediate thoughts were to think about my position and whether I should start looking around. I know that Edu wasn’t Mikel’s boss, but he is somebody who he is very close to and it would be human nature to be thinking about your own position if you were Arteta. I’d be surprised if he didn’t even have the tiniest seed of doubt about what Edu’s departure means long term.

How do I feel about his departure and his tenure at The Arsenal?

I am surprised because I think he was finally starting to get everything spot on. There have been plenty of positives throughout his tenure, I am sad that he is going, but ultimately nobody is irreplaceable and given we had so many questions over the years when he was just terminating contracts and not bringing in decent fees for players, it would be silly to suggest that his time at the club was universally successful. So in short I’m not really sure how I feel about this. Because of the sudden nature of it, it’s probably a little more of a shock to the system than it might have been. Which is probably colouring my initial rection. But hopefully when the dust has settled Arsenal can press on and we can find maybe even a better replacement? That’s the hope, anyway. 

Back tomorrow with a pre Inter blog.